Latest / Ridiculous History / A History of Pregnancy Cravings, Part 2: Stereotypes, Superstitions and Science

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A History of Pregnancy Cravings, Part 2: Stereotypes, Superstitions and Science · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. This is part two of
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Speaker 1: a two part series on pregnancy cravings. They called me Ben.
0:39
Speaker 1: I texted my mom earlier to see if she had
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Speaker 1: any cravings while I was in utero, and I'll update
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Speaker 1: with with what we find if she gets back to me.
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Speaker 1: She's a busy person. What about you, Nold? Did we
0:53
Speaker 1: talked about this at the beginning of part one, the
0:56
Speaker 1: idea of pregnancy cravings, right, Yeah, just like I said,
0:59
Speaker 1: the spicies up with my uh with my kid. Um,
1:03
Speaker 1: I don't really have that kind of relationship with my mom,
1:05
Speaker 1: but um, she always has weird cravings. She likes to
1:08
Speaker 1: eat like peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. But that's has
1:10
Speaker 1: something to do with pregnancy. Uh, She's she's an elderly
1:13
Speaker 1: person at this point. But I just yeah, she's always
1:16
Speaker 1: had weird taste, I imagine. I mean, you know what,
1:17
Speaker 1: I'm going to broach the subject. Maybe it'll bring us
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Speaker 1: closer together of what she craved when she was pregnant
1:23
Speaker 1: with me. I'm gonna guess, really, spicy like Chinese food.
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Speaker 1: But that's just a conjecture based on what I know
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Speaker 1: about her. But yeah, it's an interesting thing. It's an
1:31
Speaker 1: interesting historical thing how it's been used to kind of
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Speaker 1: predict everything from you know, the size of a child's genitalia,
1:40
Speaker 1: to what kind of adult they will end up becoming,
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Speaker 1: and what maybe some of their you know, tendencies will
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Speaker 1: be to this idea that does have kind of a
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Speaker 1: modern analog in epigenetics, this thing called the theory of
1:53
Speaker 1: maternal imagination, the idea that experiences can be passed down
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Speaker 1: from the mother while don't still pregnant, to the fetus
2:03
Speaker 1: that then will carry those experiences on throughout their life.
2:06
Speaker 1: That's probably the closest thing to something that we have
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Speaker 1: seen some scientific evidence to back up. Although Ben, if
2:13
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, epigenetics is still something of a fringe science,
2:16
Speaker 1: is it not. Well, it's definitely emergence. We're learning more
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Speaker 1: about it every day as a species, sort of the
2:25
Speaker 1: same way that you and I are learning more every
2:27
Speaker 1: day about our super producer, Max Williams. Max thought I forgot,
2:32
Speaker 1: but that's sounding you in there there. It is the
2:35
Speaker 1: largest asparagus, Max, the largest asparagus. Williams is live and direct.
2:40
Speaker 1: You're you're absolutely right. Now. The study of how our
2:44
Speaker 1: lives impact our descendants continues today, and I would argue
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Speaker 1: that the study of food cravings during pregnancy is a
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Speaker 1: predecessor to our current studies in the field of epigenetics.
3:02
Speaker 1: You know, we mentioned I believe in our in our
3:05
Speaker 1: previous episode, we mentioned Nicholas Colepepper's work where he found
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Speaker 1: that food cravings were the quote chiefest signs of conception.
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Speaker 1: So back before people could get you know, a sonogram
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Speaker 1: or something like that, you would be a person, you know,
3:24
Speaker 1: in the sixteen hundreds and you would say, man, why
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Speaker 1: do I want to only eat pickles? And then someone
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Speaker 1: would say, well, that's because that's that's because you're expecting
3:37
Speaker 1: that's the only reason anybody would be into pickles this
3:41
Speaker 1: much to this degree. And then you know, it was
3:45
Speaker 1: solid well and like like we were saying to you know,
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Speaker 1: I mean, aside from the Egyptians, it seemed to have
3:51
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on lock. Before anyone else got
3:53
Speaker 1: to the idea of like what peeing on certain uh,
3:56
Speaker 1: was it pieces of wheat or something like that, barley seeds?
3:59
Speaker 1: And which ones would sprout the quickest. And then I
4:02
Speaker 1: wonder you said that we we had some evidence just
4:05
Speaker 1: to show that this was effective in predicting pregnancy. But
4:08
Speaker 1: I wonder, is there some enzyme that's excreted in the
4:11
Speaker 1: urine of a pregnant woman that maybe is conducive to
4:14
Speaker 1: helping cultivate barley or or is there I don't know,
4:18
Speaker 1: We don't we we didn't quite get that far into it,
4:20
Speaker 1: but it is interesting. And the Egyptians did figure out
4:23
Speaker 1: some pretty science e stuff before they really had any
4:26
Speaker 1: business doing so, just based on the available wisdom and
4:29
Speaker 1: technology of the time. But they made those pyramids somehow.
4:32
Speaker 1: But we do know that the idea of certain cravings
4:36
Speaker 1: or certain bodily changes are often good predictors even today, um,
4:41
Speaker 1: when you know, like you said, women know their body
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Speaker 1: and know when something is changing. But it was really
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Speaker 1: taken to the extreme right, the absolute extreme, back in
4:50
Speaker 1: the sixteenth, seventeenth and even the eighteenth century. Uh, And
4:54
Speaker 1: today's episode, I'm just gonna do a tiny little previously
4:58
Speaker 1: on the last thing we talked about her one of
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Speaker 1: aside from throwing strawberries at at at pregnant women, um,
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Speaker 1: either hindering or bringing about these strawberry birthmarks that we
5:10
Speaker 1: we know our thing. There was a story of the
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Speaker 1: midwife by the name of Sarah Stone, and Sarah Stone
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Speaker 1: was a very prominent eighteenth century midwife who took copious
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Speaker 1: notes and you know, went through and assisted in hundreds
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Speaker 1: of pregnancies. And out of all of those pregnancies, one
5:28
Speaker 1: involving a woman who was having some very heavy bleeding
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Speaker 1: that could have you know, caused her to actually bleed out.
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Speaker 1: That is a thing that happens, but it was stopped
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Speaker 1: when she realized that she had been just longing for
5:39
Speaker 1: craving a peapod or some kind of you know, like
5:43
Speaker 1: a salad made of peace. And when the midwife was
5:46
Speaker 1: able to get that for her, the bleeding stopped. So Ben,
5:49
Speaker 1: you used the term confirmation bias, which is the idea
5:52
Speaker 1: of something enhancing a belief when it happens, maybe even
5:56
Speaker 1: only once, And that is absolutely the case here, because
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Speaker 1: in all of the rest of her notes, there were
6:00
Speaker 1: no other examples of some sort of satiated craving instantly
6:05
Speaker 1: causing a very dangerous complication to to go away. But
6:10
Speaker 1: you know, moving on in history, some of these cravings
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Speaker 1: get absolutely bonkers. Don't they bear? They do. Yes, that's
6:18
Speaker 1: that's correct, and it ties into some of the many
6:22
Speaker 1: stereotypes the medical community had about women in general at
6:27
Speaker 1: the time. They would describe some cravings as quote hysterical,
6:33
Speaker 1: and we've all heard the phrase hysterical, but sometimes I
6:37
Speaker 1: think people forget the etymology of that word. The term
6:43
Speaker 1: hysteria itself comes from a Greek word hystera, which means uterus.
6:50
Speaker 1: So be careful with the word hysterical. It's it's historically
6:54
Speaker 1: used to dismiss the very valid and legitimate concerns of women.
7:01
Speaker 1: So imagine you're a doctor, you're a midwife six century,
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Speaker 1: and you're noting that some expectant mothers seem to have
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Speaker 1: an incredible desire for certain foods. They have an excessive
7:18
Speaker 1: desire something that one German text It's Miller's Abridged or
7:25
Speaker 1: a Complete System of Theory and Practice of Physics, would
7:28
Speaker 1: call a quote violent and insatiable longing. Uh. This this
7:35
Speaker 1: is this is something people were aware of. There would
7:38
Speaker 1: be very specific and sometimes extreme desires for certain foods,
7:44
Speaker 1: but people also noticed that at times these cravings could
7:49
Speaker 1: become even more unorthodox. Some expected mothers appear to desire
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Speaker 1: things that are not usually classified as food. You know,
8:03
Speaker 1: this condition is known as pica today p I c
8:07
Speaker 1: A and that comes from the Latin, which means magpie.
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Speaker 1: And we can only assume that this word comes about
8:16
Speaker 1: because people with this afflection collected all sorts of weird
8:20
Speaker 1: stuff to eat, like nickels, stickers. I'm making these things up,
8:25
Speaker 1: hopefully not cans, paint um, toenails. Maybe they were eating toenails.
8:29
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's certainly possible, but we we know
8:31
Speaker 1: these conditions exist. And I actually have a friend who
8:34
Speaker 1: has a form of of pike ar pica where she
8:38
Speaker 1: craves eating clay, uh specifically like a kalin just like
8:44
Speaker 1: a Georgia, a Georgia thing. It's like, you can get it.
8:46
Speaker 1: It's it's edible, and it's it's it's got some kind
8:49
Speaker 1: of nutritional qualities to it. But it is something that
8:52
Speaker 1: she eats in place of just wanting to like literally
8:55
Speaker 1: eat dirt. So people that have this condition kind of
8:58
Speaker 1: need to mitigate it in some way, right, But there
9:01
Speaker 1: are extreme examples, very rare examples, one in particular known
9:05
Speaker 1: as extreme polyphasia. We actually did an episode on this guy.
9:09
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken a former French soldier and sideshow
9:13
Speaker 1: artist named Terrere who was accused of actually eating a
9:17
Speaker 1: baby out of a maternity ward. It's kind of weird,
9:20
Speaker 1: full circle. They're unverified, unverified, but we do know that
9:24
Speaker 1: he would eat things like candles and nails and that's
9:27
Speaker 1: part of his Apparently the smell was absolutely unbearable, but
9:32
Speaker 1: it's true. There are some extreme examples noted in some
9:36
Speaker 1: midwife you know collections of notes that do show some
9:42
Speaker 1: forms of this and pregnant women. Yeah, yeah, and you know,
9:46
Speaker 1: shout out to cal and I tried it on a
9:50
Speaker 1: show that I used to do with our colleague Lauren
9:53
Speaker 1: vocal Bomb called snack Stuff, which is I'm pretty sure
9:58
Speaker 1: still kicking it a out of Facebook somewhere. But we
10:01
Speaker 1: we ate a lot of weird stuff. Yes, you're right. No,
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Speaker 1: people have followed their cravings, and these cravings were not
10:10
Speaker 1: always for things that we would ordinarily consider food, like
10:14
Speaker 1: the clay example. Hopefully I am just making up the
10:18
Speaker 1: nickel and stickers thing. But most unusually, some expecting mothers
10:25
Speaker 1: apparently developed an appetite for long pig. Long pig is
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Speaker 1: the old historical euphemism for human flesh. In six seventy
10:44
Speaker 1: one midwife named Jane Sharp wrote a book called The
10:48
Speaker 1: Midwives Book, and she said the seventh sign that a
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Speaker 1: woman was with child was that quote, she hath a
10:57
Speaker 1: preternatural desire to something not fit to eat nor drink,
11:03
Speaker 1: as some women with child have loaned to bite off
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Speaker 1: a piece of their husband's buttocks. Husband's buttocks, by the way,
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Speaker 1: you should point out those are capitalized. Now you gotta wonder,
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Speaker 1: is this really a specific craving for human flesh or
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Speaker 1: she's just angry and irritated at the husband and in
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Speaker 1: a in a bad mood and wants to bite him
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Speaker 1: in the ass? Right? Is it in any old but
11:24
Speaker 1: will do situation? Or is it like, no, you jerk,
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Speaker 1: you got me into this exactly. Um, So that's okay
11:32
Speaker 1: once again, Ben, in all the collections of all the midwives,
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Speaker 1: you know, we probably have just one or two examples
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Speaker 1: of this, and yet it kind of invaded the Zeitgeister,
11:41
Speaker 1: became conventional wisdom, even though when it was very um
11:45
Speaker 1: confirmation by a city. So okay, we've got women who
11:50
Speaker 1: are now trying to bite their husband's butts. Um, We've
11:54
Speaker 1: got Daniel Center in his book Practical physic He claimed
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Speaker 1: that a woman quote though she loved him her husband,
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Speaker 1: that is very well, had killed him, eat part and
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Speaker 1: powdered the rest to satisfy her desire for his flesh. Yeah. Yeah,
12:11
Speaker 1: And I love the point you bring up about these
12:14
Speaker 1: being isolated incidents in the in the historical record. But
12:20
Speaker 1: it's not a case of just one instance. There's another
12:26
Speaker 1: medical text, a Golden Practice of Physics, which has spelled
12:30
Speaker 1: the old school way p H Y s I c K.
12:34
Speaker 1: And in this in this medical text by a guy
12:38
Speaker 1: named Felix platter Uh, the author warrens quote, some love
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Speaker 1: raw flesh like min eaters, min eaters, but all one word.
12:48
Speaker 1: Some have been like beasts and bitten people's arms by violence.
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Speaker 1: So this was jokes aside. This was a cause of
12:57
Speaker 1: concern for medical professionals of the day because they knew
13:02
Speaker 1: that these cravings were coming from somewhere, and you had
13:06
Speaker 1: to do a kind of a cost benefit analysis. If
13:10
Speaker 1: we aid and abet someone having an extreme craving like cannibalism,
13:16
Speaker 1: then we have to also wonder if there is a
13:20
Speaker 1: danger in denying this craving, if they're endangering the child,
13:26
Speaker 1: like if someone is saying, okay, I want to eat
13:31
Speaker 1: I want to eat this clay, and you say, well,
13:34
Speaker 1: this clay has no nutritional value, but your body is
13:38
Speaker 1: saying you want it. Who am I to deny you?
13:41
Speaker 1: And and at this point, you know, in the six
13:45
Speaker 1: people don't have the benefit of the medical knowledge we
13:48
Speaker 1: have today. So it's not as if you could go
13:51
Speaker 1: to a doctor, get a series of like blood tests,
13:54
Speaker 1: get your b am I checked, and then be put
13:56
Speaker 1: on a nutritious diet. You would literally really think, well,
14:01
Speaker 1: should I eat this soft cheese? Should I eat these
14:04
Speaker 1: rabbit heads? What are they gonna do to my kids?
14:07
Speaker 1: And why is my body telling me I have to
14:09
Speaker 1: eat these now? Also, if you're a woman in the
14:13
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, as terrible as it is to admit, we
14:16
Speaker 1: have to tell the truth here. People just don't believe
14:20
Speaker 1: women in the six and even today. Not only do
14:24
Speaker 1: they not, I mean like to talk about man splaining,
14:26
Speaker 1: I mean that term it was just at its absolute
14:28
Speaker 1: peak back in those days. Especially Again, that's also why
14:31
Speaker 1: I appreciate that midwives and these wise women were often
14:35
Speaker 1: the go to, you know, individuals in these situations, but
14:38
Speaker 1: they were operating largely on wisdom that was passed down
14:41
Speaker 1: from men like we talked about Hippocrates, we talked about Aristotle.
14:45
Speaker 1: I believe, so a lot of that kind of incorrect
14:49
Speaker 1: stuff that maybe they would have used to not believe
14:52
Speaker 1: their own bodies, uh, instead to to kind of throw
14:55
Speaker 1: that intuition that they absolutely have out the window and
14:58
Speaker 1: just go with these you know, quote unquote powerful men.
15:01
Speaker 1: That's a negative force as well, I think in this
15:03
Speaker 1: whole situation. But these types of superstitions, right, and this
15:08
Speaker 1: stigma of you know what these uh, these cravings meant
15:13
Speaker 1: in pregnancy and after really hung on a lot longer
15:17
Speaker 1: than you'd think. You know, we're talking about medieval times, right, Okay,
15:19
Speaker 1: all this stuff makes sense. Seventeenth century Okay, maybe, okay,
15:23
Speaker 1: there should be some remnants, but it should be mainly
15:24
Speaker 1: going in a little bit more of a progressive direction.
15:27
Speaker 1: Eighteenth century, surely. No, in the ninete centuries, you still
15:33
Speaker 1: had a lot of this very you know, kind of
15:37
Speaker 1: superstitious and wrongheaded thinking wrapped up in pregnancy and those cravings. Yeah,
15:43
Speaker 1: in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, one guy, Joel
15:48
Speaker 1: Shoe called pregnancy cravings overall abnormal, and he said that
15:54
Speaker 1: women who have these cravings tend to be quote those
15:58
Speaker 1: who suffer from into just should those who have constipation,
16:02
Speaker 1: and especially those who are hysterical any ignorant nervous women
16:06
Speaker 1: seem to suppose that it really is a necessary part
16:10
Speaker 1: would there be to have these logs in pregnancy nets.
16:15
Speaker 1: Can I get a like get out of here sound
16:18
Speaker 1: cue or something, because this guy just forget him. I mean,
16:22
Speaker 1: he's using hysteria in the misogynistic way, like he's on
16:27
Speaker 1: purpose using it to dismiss the concerns of these expecting mothers.
16:33
Speaker 1: He goes on and he says, we need hardly see
16:37
Speaker 1: that these longings should never be gratified. No possible good
16:41
Speaker 1: can come from it, only harm. The same as at
16:44
Speaker 1: other times talk about man splating Noll. This guy isn't
16:48
Speaker 1: a real pill exactly. Not the soapbox too much. But
16:51
Speaker 1: it's something we still deal with today in terms of
16:54
Speaker 1: these kind of powerful men dictating what women should or
16:57
Speaker 1: shouldn't or can and can't do with their bodies. Uh,
17:00
Speaker 1: it's very much a product of this type of thinking
17:03
Speaker 1: that's been going on throughout history. We do start to
17:06
Speaker 1: see a little bit more progressive thinking, relatively speaking, in
17:10
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, early twentieth century. When it comes to
17:15
Speaker 1: starting to debunk some of this superstition, we have Josiah
17:19
Speaker 1: Morris Siemens, who was a a well known physician who
17:24
Speaker 1: addressed the issue of maternal imagination which we talked about,
17:27
Speaker 1: which was really almost a product of folklore and had
17:31
Speaker 1: become kind of morphed into this notion that if you
17:34
Speaker 1: didn't gratify these maternal cravings then there would be great
17:39
Speaker 1: harm done onto the child by malevolent spirits or forces. Right,
17:43
Speaker 1: and Siemens had this to say, Uh, there is a
17:45
Speaker 1: well known tradition that women who are pregnant are subject
17:48
Speaker 1: to longings for one article of diet or another, and
17:51
Speaker 1: that unless the desire to be promptly gratified, the child
17:54
Speaker 1: will be marked. Uh. This evidently is nonsense. A prospective
17:59
Speaker 1: mother everyone else does frequently desire one article of food
18:02
Speaker 1: more than another. So long as the object of her
18:05
Speaker 1: wish is not obviously harmful, it should be granted. But
18:09
Speaker 1: if it is not granted, no harm will come to
18:11
Speaker 1: the child. Boom. That's about as progressive as we're gonna
18:15
Speaker 1: get at this point. I would say, Yeah, I think
18:17
Speaker 1: that's pretty reasonable, because what Slimmons is basically saying, is
18:21
Speaker 1: you know, if someone wants If someone wants a bunch
18:25
Speaker 1: of grapes and plums, then fine, let them, Let let
18:29
Speaker 1: them eat what they will. But if someone wants like plutonium,
18:32
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe maybe have a check in. Maybe
18:36
Speaker 1: have a check in before you start eating uh plutonium.
18:40
Speaker 1: Slimmons also says that popular culture has affected people's perceptions
18:46
Speaker 1: of what pregnant women do and do not want, and
18:51
Speaker 1: he notes that remarkable instances in which disgusting substances have
18:55
Speaker 1: been craved and eaten are often talked about, and slim
19:00
Speaker 1: points out they've even found these stories, these anecdotes have
19:03
Speaker 1: even found their way into fiction. But he also seems
19:09
Speaker 1: to note that there is a little bit of cherry
19:12
Speaker 1: picking here, right. People are looking for the most sensationalist,
19:18
Speaker 1: tabloyd e buzzfeedy kind of stories, and this leads Slimmons
19:24
Speaker 1: to conclude that the people who have these abnormal and
19:28
Speaker 1: or dangerous cravings are unfortunate victims who are not of
19:34
Speaker 1: sound of mind. So he is arguing that there is
19:38
Speaker 1: something else going on. It's not just the pregnancy, right,
19:41
Speaker 1: there is there is some other factor at play, and
19:45
Speaker 1: this is I think a very sound position to take.
19:48
Speaker 1: There is a good basis for his thoughts here. But
19:54
Speaker 1: you know, at this point, it's strange, folks, Because Max
19:57
Speaker 1: and Nolan I are recording this episode in two parts.
20:02
Speaker 1: We wanted to give the subject it's it's full do
20:06
Speaker 1: and no. You know, I cannot wait to hear everybody's
20:11
Speaker 1: stories about their own experiences with food cravings during pregnancy.
20:18
Speaker 1: I have a couple of close friends whose mother's famously
20:21
Speaker 1: had very strange cravings. My mother just got back to me,
20:27
Speaker 1: as we said in the beginning of this episode, and
20:30
Speaker 1: apparently I'm a pickle boy. Yeah, apparently was all pickles.
20:38
Speaker 1: That's what did it? Huh. I don't really eat pickles,
20:41
Speaker 1: you know, I've I've only in maybe the last handful
20:45
Speaker 1: of years, come around two pickles. I don't really like
20:47
Speaker 1: them on their own. I like them on certain types
20:49
Speaker 1: of sandwiches and stuff. I like pickled things, but I
20:52
Speaker 1: would you know, you see people eat a giant, you know,
20:54
Speaker 1: pickled spear like a dope. That just doesn't do it
20:56
Speaker 1: for me. But I know they they're definitely a certain
21:00
Speaker 1: flavor profile. Well, I guess as a pickle boy myself,
21:06
Speaker 1: I love that term. Now I'm gonna start using that convention.
21:09
Speaker 1: What what do you guys think? Uh? Max, you think
21:12
Speaker 1: we can pull off pickle boy and just random conversation
21:15
Speaker 1: like look at that pickle boy? Oh, most definitely we can,
21:19
Speaker 1: most definitely. Thanks for thanks for supporting, validated and enabling
21:24
Speaker 1: us facts. I will always enable you all. So So, No,
21:31
Speaker 1: it's actually pretty on point for my mom to have
21:36
Speaker 1: said that she was desirous of pickles, because right now,
21:42
Speaker 1: in the modern era, the stereotypical crazy snack for expected
21:47
Speaker 1: mothers is apparently pickles and ice cream. So, going back
21:52
Speaker 1: to part one, Man, I am convinced I haven't checked yet.
21:56
Speaker 1: I'm convinced if there is not such a thing as
21:59
Speaker 1: like still pickle ice cream, we can make bank on this.
22:03
Speaker 1: We can come out with ridiculous history pickle ice cream,
22:07
Speaker 1: and and the tagline is it's straight seahorse teeth, it is, indeed,
22:12
Speaker 1: it is indeed. Um, just the idea of those things together,
22:18
Speaker 1: um really make me completely nauseous. Uh, surely we pickle
22:24
Speaker 1: ice cream exists so right as a as a thing nowadays.
22:27
Speaker 1: Pickle ice cream, Yes, Nona's pickle ice cream. There's a
22:33
Speaker 1: frozen pickle you can get a pickle ice freeze pop
22:36
Speaker 1: uh and then dull es a gelato has a pickle
22:40
Speaker 1: ice cream flavor, and Lucky Pickle Dumpling Company this seems
22:45
Speaker 1: like a smaller brand also has debuted a pickle ice cream,
22:50
Speaker 1: so it exists if you're really down with it. But
22:52
Speaker 1: I think typically folks, you know, usually go for one
22:56
Speaker 1: or the other. I'm seeing pictures here that are really
22:58
Speaker 1: making my stomach turn. There's like a nice waffle cone
23:01
Speaker 1: with a soft served swirl of green ice cream with
23:06
Speaker 1: dill sprinkles on it, and an actual looks like more
23:10
Speaker 1: like a gherkin, you know, those little pickles almost in
23:13
Speaker 1: place of like the cookie. You know, what is it?
23:15
Speaker 1: A tweel kind of situations? So pretty gross. But if
23:18
Speaker 1: that's what does it for you? Who who am I
23:20
Speaker 1: to say? I'm not out here to yuck someone's yum.
23:23
Speaker 1: I do want to point out, while I myself, oddly enough,
23:27
Speaker 1: am not a not a personal fan in the pickle,
23:31
Speaker 1: you can find recipes online to create your own pickle
23:36
Speaker 1: ice cream if the spirit moves you so. But why
23:40
Speaker 1: did this become such a cliche? If you look back
23:45
Speaker 1: through the newspapers of the US in the early twentie century,
23:50
Speaker 1: you'll see tons of mentions of pickles and ice cream
23:54
Speaker 1: associated both with pregnancy and without. Like chure es and
24:01
Speaker 1: schools and your rotary club or your Lions club. They
24:04
Speaker 1: would put on picnics social gatherings that included ice cream
24:09
Speaker 1: and pickles because these were treats, delicacies, tasty things that
24:16
Speaker 1: people could make at home. And this was before the
24:19
Speaker 1: time of commercialized, mass produced food and distribution. So, for instance,
24:26
Speaker 1: if you were the Masons in breck and Ridge, Kentucky
24:31
Speaker 1: in the nine twenties, you would have a lunch with
24:34
Speaker 1: a menu that included things like beef roast, potatoes, pickles,
24:39
Speaker 1: and ice cream, because those are all things you can
24:43
Speaker 1: make at home. So as weird as it sounds right
24:46
Speaker 1: now for someone to say, oh, I'm expecting all I
24:50
Speaker 1: want our pickles, all I want is ice cream, then
24:53
Speaker 1: we have to understand that in the context of history,
24:56
Speaker 1: it's not that weird because they're common foods. Yeah, that's true,
24:59
Speaker 1: and it's something that we even see, like absolutely become
25:02
Speaker 1: a trope in pop culture. Right like in the fifties,
25:07
Speaker 1: we have probably one of the most popular comedy shows
25:10
Speaker 1: in the universe still remains one of them to this day.
25:12
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy which also incredibly interesting feminist story in
25:17
Speaker 1: terms of Lucille Ball and the way that she essentially
25:20
Speaker 1: started you know, her own empire. Um. You know, Ricky
25:23
Speaker 1: was involved to Ricky Ricardo, her husband, but Lucille was
25:26
Speaker 1: really the one who was the driving force behind it.
25:29
Speaker 1: She pioneered multi camera shoots for sitcoms the look that
25:33
Speaker 1: we know today, uh, you know, in terms of like
25:36
Speaker 1: shows like Friends or like more kind of traditional sitcoms.
25:39
Speaker 1: That was all Lucy, and she insisted on having creative
25:42
Speaker 1: control and also getting paid, as did Ricky. But Lucy
25:46
Speaker 1: really was absolutely toe to toe with with Ricky in
25:49
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, control over that empire even when
25:51
Speaker 1: they split. But in a famous episode of I Love
25:55
Speaker 1: Lucy UM, where Lucy is actually pregnant, Lucille Ball is
25:59
Speaker 1: that pregnant. She plays her character as being pregnant on
26:03
Speaker 1: the show as well. Lucy sends Ricky out to get
26:06
Speaker 1: a Papaya milkshake, which would have been a nod to
26:09
Speaker 1: his Cuban roots, I believe, and also and a dill pickle.
26:13
Speaker 1: So that really is kind of like almost one of
26:16
Speaker 1: the earliest examples of pickles and ice cream that we
26:18
Speaker 1: see in pop culture. And then he comes back and
26:21
Speaker 1: he looks, uh, you know, like kind of like he's
26:24
Speaker 1: been through the ringer, and she asks, you know, indignantly,
26:27
Speaker 1: what took you so long, to which he replies, what
26:29
Speaker 1: took me so long? I had to go all over
26:31
Speaker 1: town because you know, Papia milkshake would have been a
26:34
Speaker 1: very specific thing. Then she dips the pickle and the
26:37
Speaker 1: milkshake and eats it, and we get a big laugh
26:40
Speaker 1: out of that, you know, from the audience, because that
26:42
Speaker 1: would have been something they hadn't really experienced before and
26:44
Speaker 1: would have been absurd, but also it was the beginning
26:48
Speaker 1: of a real trope. Oh yeah. And then go back
26:51
Speaker 1: even further in nineteen nineteen, you'll see comic strips commenting
26:56
Speaker 1: on this, like Mutton Jeff cartoons have My and Jeff
27:00
Speaker 1: famously saying, cut out that toss in about in your sleep,
27:03
Speaker 1: I told you not to eat those pickles in that
27:05
Speaker 1: ice cream before you went to bed. And this this
27:09
Speaker 1: shows up right, and it's everywhere in fiction. It's in
27:13
Speaker 1: I Love Lucy, it's in comic strips, it's on stage
27:17
Speaker 1: and screen, and really since the era of I Love Lucy.
27:23
Speaker 1: Pickles and ice cream have been cemented in US popular
27:27
Speaker 1: culture as this cliche, this sort of shorthand for pregnancy.
27:34
Speaker 1: If you go to I Love This website, if you've
27:36
Speaker 1: never heard about this before, I want to warn you
27:39
Speaker 1: it is going to eat your entire afternoon. There is
27:42
Speaker 1: a there's a fantastic website called TV Tropes. Be warned
27:47
Speaker 1: it is a time vampire. And and if you go
27:51
Speaker 1: to TV Tropes, check out their Wacky Cravings page where
27:56
Speaker 1: they list all these examples of different tie that pickles
28:01
Speaker 1: and ice cream have been used in fiction to refer
28:06
Speaker 1: to pregnancy. It even shows up in romance novels. And
28:11
Speaker 1: there are you know, of course, no shortage of cookbooks
28:14
Speaker 1: specifically for expecting parents, and they talk about pickles and
28:20
Speaker 1: ice cream as well. It's a joke. And I don't know, like,
28:25
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people actually do crave pickles
28:30
Speaker 1: and ice cream? Like do we have aside from you know,
28:34
Speaker 1: works of fiction like Mutton Jeff and I Love Lucy.
28:38
Speaker 1: Is there someone who specifically said I really do need
28:43
Speaker 1: pickles and I really do need ice cream? And if so,
28:46
Speaker 1: what flavor of ice cream? I'm just so curious, man,
28:49
Speaker 1: it's a weird one. Ben. It's almost like Luke, I
28:52
Speaker 1: am your father. Right. It gets reported so much that
28:54
Speaker 1: that's what the line was, that people start to believe
28:57
Speaker 1: that's actually what the line was. I almost think that
28:59
Speaker 1: pickles and ice cream is more of a creation of
29:02
Speaker 1: pop culture and fiction than perhaps the exact craving of
29:07
Speaker 1: those items. But it represents a larger history of these
29:12
Speaker 1: types of cravings. Right, it's just sort of the most
29:14
Speaker 1: extreme one that's good for some laughs because it's so ridiculous, uh,
29:18
Speaker 1: And it also kind of brings across this very historical
29:22
Speaker 1: and understandable thing. It's very much part of the human
29:24
Speaker 1: experience as we know, because it goes way way far back.
29:28
Speaker 1: Another example is in a similar I think it was
29:30
Speaker 1: in the same Lucy episode, she also sends Ricky back
29:33
Speaker 1: out again at four am to get pistachio ice cream
29:37
Speaker 1: and fudge, which she eats topped with sardines. So it's
29:42
Speaker 1: really just kind of this gross confluence of savory and sweet,
29:46
Speaker 1: and it's just sort of meant to indicate that, like
29:48
Speaker 1: things are just wild, you know, in the mind of
29:51
Speaker 1: a pregnant woman or in the body or rather of
29:53
Speaker 1: a pregnant woman that things are just going absolutely bonkers. Yeah,
29:57
Speaker 1: and you know, this touches on an interest point raised
30:01
Speaker 1: by Rebecca Onion, who is writing about hysterical cravings on
30:06
Speaker 1: slate dot com. This is a great article, and in
30:09
Speaker 1: this article, Onion points out that it's kind of weird
30:14
Speaker 1: that women apparently have to have these special extenuating circumstances.
30:20
Speaker 1: Right the way this joke goes, the hapless husband has
30:24
Speaker 1: to go out, you know, at three am for pickles
30:27
Speaker 1: and ice cream or pistachios or sardines or what have you.
30:31
Speaker 1: Why can't you just ask your partner to do something
30:34
Speaker 1: for you, you know what I mean? Like, why does
30:36
Speaker 1: it have to be, Oh, this person is crazy because
30:40
Speaker 1: they're pregnant. Like, I get it. It's you know, if
30:43
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship with someone, you should want to
30:46
Speaker 1: help them regardless, right, regardless of whether they're expecting. Like,
30:50
Speaker 1: if you're dating someone right now and they say, you
30:55
Speaker 1: know what I need? I need a pretzel hot dog,
30:59
Speaker 1: then help him out, you know what I mean. They
31:02
Speaker 1: don't have to They're doesn't have to be a special
31:04
Speaker 1: reason that they want a pretzel hot dog. I think
31:07
Speaker 1: you should just have people's backs. But again, but again,
31:12
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary on a cultural level. We know
31:17
Speaker 1: that other cultures have a deep understanding or a long
31:21
Speaker 1: fascination with pregnancy cravings. And one of our one of
31:26
Speaker 1: our most interesting examples comes from the Hindu culture. Right now,
31:30
Speaker 1: it absolutely does bend um. In the Hindu culture, the
31:35
Speaker 1: idea of pregnancy cravings is very much codified in many
31:41
Speaker 1: of their writings. They have specific words for these things.
31:44
Speaker 1: One of them is dohata, which means too heartedness. And
31:48
Speaker 1: this is a concept that makes a lot of sense.
31:50
Speaker 1: That you're a woman who is pregnant literally has two
31:53
Speaker 1: hearts in her body. And so the idea of this
31:55
Speaker 1: two heartedness encapsulates the idea of this second heart and
32:00
Speaker 1: I can soul or will I guess within the mother
32:03
Speaker 1: and the idea of kind of feeding these cravings is
32:08
Speaker 1: meant to cultivate like a prosperity within the growing life
32:13
Speaker 1: within the Body's very much important in the Hindu culture
32:16
Speaker 1: to um satiate these these cravings, to satisfy those cravings
32:20
Speaker 1: in whatever way they might make themselves known. Yeah, yeah,
32:25
Speaker 1: And then we see other examples in Kenyan culture where
32:30
Speaker 1: it's thought that the song go an agent of health
32:33
Speaker 1: present in the bodies of women is essential for life
32:37
Speaker 1: and day to day digestion and successful reproduction. So when
32:42
Speaker 1: a woman becomes pregnant, the song Go looks after the
32:46
Speaker 1: kid and watches over how food is transported from the
32:52
Speaker 1: mother to the child, ensuring that everything is five by
32:56
Speaker 1: five on the mom's side. Kenyan culture, we should not.
33:00
Speaker 1: It does not specify what a woman should do regarding
33:03
Speaker 1: particular food cravings, but it does demand that an expectant
33:08
Speaker 1: mother balance food intake to prevent the song Go from
33:12
Speaker 1: becoming too strong or too weak. Because, just like the
33:16
Speaker 1: contradictory information we saw in part one of this episode,
33:21
Speaker 1: there's this idea of balance, right, there's this idea that
33:24
Speaker 1: eating too many strawberries reading no strawberries can have an
33:29
Speaker 1: equally delatorious potential impact on the child. But you don't
33:40
Speaker 1: know before we go, before we before we call it
33:44
Speaker 1: a day on part two of this series, remember in
33:47
Speaker 1: part one we talked about ancient pregnancy tests. We found
33:52
Speaker 1: a couple of other historical pregnancy tests that we wanted
33:57
Speaker 1: to share with you today. Ridiculous. His story is uh,
34:03
Speaker 1: I guess you would call them piss profits pp profits? Yeah, yeah,
34:09
Speaker 1: does this is this anything to do with those old
34:11
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian pan on barley tests. If this is not,
34:15
Speaker 1: then it definitely seems to have a similar systemilar genre
34:20
Speaker 1: of things. Right, I'll answer my question. It's not exactly
34:23
Speaker 1: the same, but it does sort of have a similar
34:26
Speaker 1: borderline scientific um yet ultimately somewhat arbitrary method to its madness.
34:34
Speaker 1: This is the idea of using urine to diagnose different conditions.
34:38
Speaker 1: I think just about the only one that we can
34:40
Speaker 1: use for real is dehydration. I think if you're urine
34:44
Speaker 1: is super super super orange, that means you're like dehydrated. Um.
34:47
Speaker 1: But they would take it to the extremes in the
34:49
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and up until the seventeenth century. Like you said,
34:52
Speaker 1: ben Uh, this is known as euroscopy, and they even
34:57
Speaker 1: had something called the euroscopy wheel that would help with diagnosis.
35:01
Speaker 1: It was all graded by color, so for example, clear
35:05
Speaker 1: pale lemon color leaning toward the off white, perhaps with
35:09
Speaker 1: a little bit of a cloudiness to its surface, that
35:12
Speaker 1: would be something that would indicate pregnancy potentially. Right. Also,
35:17
Speaker 1: they would sometimes mix the urine with wine and see
35:20
Speaker 1: how the alcohol kind of you know, intermingled with the
35:24
Speaker 1: urine and that would be another way of seeing if
35:27
Speaker 1: if a woman was pregnant or not. Yeah, that's a lot,
35:31
Speaker 1: that's that's all true, that all actually happened. And if
35:34
Speaker 1: we fast forward to the early twentieth century, we see
35:38
Speaker 1: the scientists discovered the rule hormones can play in female reproduction,
35:42
Speaker 1: and they identified a specific hormone was present only in
35:47
Speaker 1: expectant mothers. It's called h c G max. Help help
35:53
Speaker 1: me out with a sound cue here as I mispronounced
35:56
Speaker 1: this human choreotic gonado trup god add to trop in, gona, tropin,
36:11
Speaker 1: gondo trop in. Okay, Well, we'll keep all three of those.
36:15
Speaker 1: One of those, hopefully is right back in the nineteen thirties,
36:19
Speaker 1: and the doctors figured out a way to test for
36:23
Speaker 1: the presence of hCG and it's it's a little weird,
36:27
Speaker 1: it's a weird flex. Here's what they did. All they
36:31
Speaker 1: they would inject urine from a human into an immature mouse, rat, frog,
36:37
Speaker 1: or even sometimes a rabbit, and if the woman who
36:42
Speaker 1: produced the urine was pregnant, then this test subject would
36:46
Speaker 1: go into heat despite being a juvenile. So for a while,
36:52
Speaker 1: to announce their pregnancy status, some women would use euphemisms
36:58
Speaker 1: like the mouse died or I killed the easter bunny
37:02
Speaker 1: because you had to kill and dissect the animal to
37:06
Speaker 1: confirm the results. That is messed up. It's so messed up,
37:10
Speaker 1: and again very very imprecise, not even imprecise, just absolute.
37:16
Speaker 1: Look at me, Max cradling his forehead and sadness. I'm sorry, Bro,
37:19
Speaker 1: I know he didn't sign up for this. It's okay, Max,
37:21
Speaker 1: you didn't kill the easter bunny. Bro, it wasn't you.
37:24
Speaker 1: It was these animals from the the twenties and thirties
37:28
Speaker 1: got again like it's it's it's it's it's insane how
37:31
Speaker 1: much this stuff carried over into relatively modern times. Right,
37:35
Speaker 1: Thankfully we have actual you know, strips you can pee
37:39
Speaker 1: on now that will turn a color you know, or
37:42
Speaker 1: give you a plus sign? Which one is it? Plus?
37:44
Speaker 1: The good one? I forget, I can't remember. There's one
37:47
Speaker 1: where it's like you get two stripes one stripe, but
37:51
Speaker 1: what a wild ride? Well, you know it's I gotta say.
37:56
Speaker 1: The whole time we've been recording this week's series, I've
38:01
Speaker 1: just I've been thinking about our fellow ridiculous historians who
38:05
Speaker 1: are expecting kids as they hear this, you know, and
38:10
Speaker 1: just shout out to you folks. It's gonna be amazing.
38:13
Speaker 1: And I know that these kinds of things can be challenging,
38:18
Speaker 1: you know, and they can be scary, but they're huge
38:21
Speaker 1: and I would like to just I think all of
38:24
Speaker 1: us on on the show today would like to congratulate
38:27
Speaker 1: the expecting parents in the crowd. Yeah for sure. And
38:31
Speaker 1: I'd like to congratulate you Ben for getting through this, uh,
38:34
Speaker 1: this massive two part episode about eating weird food and
38:39
Speaker 1: pregnancy and all of this stuff. Uh, this isn'tssary that
38:41
Speaker 1: we're particularly qualified to discuss nor as any of the
38:44
Speaker 1: topics that we do here on Ridiculous History, but that's
38:46
Speaker 1: sort of part of the front of the show and
38:47
Speaker 1: we hope you agree Ridiculous Historians. But I think that
38:50
Speaker 1: does it for this too part or band that we
38:53
Speaker 1: totally decided to do in advance. We did. We did
38:56
Speaker 1: kudos to us, pickles and ice cream all around Max Square.
39:00
Speaker 1: We add on that largest asparagus. So I've done a
39:02
Speaker 1: little bit of some you know, research here and I
39:04
Speaker 1: got the largest asparagus in history. It is from Harry
39:09
Speaker 1: and Carson Willems. I've probably saying that last name wrong.
39:12
Speaker 1: They are a port Elegant Canada and it came in
39:16
Speaker 1: at three hundred and fifty one point seven centimeters or
39:21
Speaker 1: about eleven and a half feet. What, yes, eleven and
39:25
Speaker 1: a half foot sparagus. Remember these just grow straight out
39:27
Speaker 1: of the ground, just like kaij asparagus. What kind of
39:30
Speaker 1: weight are we talking here? Max? I Unfortunately it's not listed.
39:34
Speaker 1: And unfortunately I don't think asparagus last generally pretty long
39:38
Speaker 1: because this is from two thousand and four. So I
39:42
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have to put a challenge out there
39:44
Speaker 1: into like, you know, the universe. We need a larger
39:47
Speaker 1: asparagus in this and we need now because I've done
39:50
Speaker 1: some more research. There is pickle ice cream. There is
39:53
Speaker 1: asparagus ice cream. There is not a pickle asparagus ice cream. There.
39:57
Speaker 1: He is, that's our that's our guy right there, Max Williams.
40:01
Speaker 1: Larry is Max with the facts once again. Uh, he
40:04
Speaker 1: has our backs. I'm sorry, I'm in a rhyming move this, Moe.
40:08
Speaker 1: This was fun, dude. Uh yeah, world's largest spar What
40:10
Speaker 1: did you say, Max? It was one thirty eight point
40:12
Speaker 1: five inches. That's in the Guinness Book of World Records.
40:14
Speaker 1: That I'm seeing that's it. That's the one. Oh no, no, Max, Max,
40:18
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, buddy, I think I got you beat. I
40:20
Speaker 1: think this one I'm seeing is from and the family
40:23
Speaker 1: of Charlotte Briggs and her wife in Pioneer Valley wherever
40:28
Speaker 1: that is. And there's even a picture of it with
40:30
Speaker 1: some kids, um standing next to it for scale. So
40:33
Speaker 1: I think maybe I got you beat. Not by much, though, Guys,
40:37
Speaker 1: stop everything. Nope, nope, we have to figure out this
40:40
Speaker 1: asparagus question. I'm kidding a little bit, fellow ridiculous historians.
40:46
Speaker 1: We are. We are going to call it a day.
40:48
Speaker 1: But as you know, one story leads to another. So Noel, Max,
40:54
Speaker 1: I propose that we get offline and we really dig
40:57
Speaker 1: down into this asparagus question. This might be a new mission.
41:01
Speaker 1: This could be big for us. Oh my got Max.
41:03
Speaker 1: You're right. Um. I found this article I think the
41:05
Speaker 1: same way you're looking at in the Greenfield Recorder, where
41:08
Speaker 1: it looks like some local they're thought they had the
41:12
Speaker 1: world's biggest asparagus, but then an asparagus expert of some
41:16
Speaker 1: sort kind of chiming and say, oh, hold hold the phone.
41:19
Speaker 1: Uh huh, yeah, there's actually a much larger one from
41:23
Speaker 1: from two thousand four. So it's hotly contested, but I
41:27
Speaker 1: think you are on the right track, my friend. Well,
41:30
Speaker 1: you know, I have to say, Max, I am impressed
41:34
Speaker 1: that you went and actually you dug this up. This
41:38
Speaker 1: has been a wild ride. We hope that it has
41:42
Speaker 1: been helpful, and you don't know. I cannot wait to
41:45
Speaker 1: hear about people's own experiences with food cravings. Yes, of
41:51
Speaker 1: course for expectant mothers, but also are there any other
41:56
Speaker 1: weird cravings that you just get for some reason? And
42:00
Speaker 1: if so, why we'd love to hear from you. You
42:03
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook and Ridiculous Historians. You can
42:06
Speaker 1: also find us on our email. We went legit, right,
42:11
Speaker 1: we got an email addressed now we gotta have Yeah,
42:14
Speaker 1: what is it ridiculous that I heart media dot com? Right, Yeah,
42:18
Speaker 1: that's right, ridiculous at I heart media dot Com. Thanks
42:23
Speaker 1: as always to our superproducers, one and only Max Williams
42:26
Speaker 1: as well as superproducer Casey Pegroom. I gotta ask you know,
42:32
Speaker 1: what do you think the Quisters take would have been
42:34
Speaker 1: on on the history of food cravings? Probably something weird
42:37
Speaker 1: about like meat fruit remember those? Like we were some
42:41
Speaker 1: weird Renaissance Fair stuff you know, uh, you know, he's
42:45
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing. Oh and it's a bummer
42:47
Speaker 1: because the Renaissance Fair just ended here in Georgia and
42:50
Speaker 1: I didn't get to go this year. It's over. It's over.
42:53
Speaker 1: Last weekend was the last weekend. Hang it. It's a
42:55
Speaker 1: fun time. It's a fun time. And if you go
42:57
Speaker 1: and you want to meet the Quister in person next year,
43:00
Speaker 1: just ask around for the Admiral. It's one of his
43:02
Speaker 1: other many alter egos. And as always, huge shout out
43:07
Speaker 1: to Alex Williams who composed this slapping bob you're hearing
43:12
Speaker 1: at the very end and beginning of the show. And
43:15
Speaker 1: big big thanks to Gabe Losier, our research associate, big time.
43:20
Speaker 1: This was a delight. Uh we'll see you next time, folks. Right, yeah, yeah,
43:24
Speaker 1: that's one. Okay it. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
43:34
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
43:37
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.