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William Mitchell Was Basically a Real-life Willy Wonka · 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. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Heads up, you're gonna learn
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Speaker 1: that tapioca was way more important back in the day.
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Speaker 1: But but it's only part of this amazing story. So
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Speaker 1: shout out as always to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
0:49
Speaker 1: I am the condom, the condom mom. There should be
0:54
Speaker 1: a condiment man too. It's too many syllables for the song. Ben,
0:59
Speaker 1: you'd be the indiment man because you've been getting into
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Speaker 1: that that vein a lot recently. That's true. I was
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Speaker 1: sending I was sending uh, yeah, I've been uh. And Noel,
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Speaker 1: remember I was sending you and Max like pictures of
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Speaker 1: various condiments around the world, mastarto being one. No, thank you,
1:20
Speaker 1: like fruit gelatin with mustard oil. I'm good. I know
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Speaker 1: I'm gonna try something but uh. But yeah, So we
1:31
Speaker 1: do have a history of condiments, as you ongoing serious folks.
1:35
Speaker 1: As you know, Noel, Max and I love love love
1:39
Speaker 1: talking about the history of the food. Wow, history of
1:43
Speaker 1: foods in general. No, keep it of the food. Uh,
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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about illuminary today. Man named
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Speaker 1: William A. Mitchell is a prolific inventor, and he loved
1:57
Speaker 1: inventing food, uh different types of foods, often called novelty foods,
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Speaker 1: some of which remain commonplace today. As a matter of fact,
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Speaker 1: if you, uh, if you celebrated Thanksgiving, if you're based
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Speaker 1: in the US and you had a bunch of people over,
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Speaker 1: you might have seen one of Mitchell's inventions cool whip
2:19
Speaker 1: right maybe yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I first
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Speaker 1: ran into this guy when I was doing that uh
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Speaker 1: Stuff of Genius series way back in the day, and
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Speaker 1: his career gave me so many questions that still remains.
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Speaker 1: So I would love to get you guys input or
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Speaker 1: perspective on some of these outstanding questions. Which will which
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Speaker 1: will get to? But what do we know about William
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Speaker 1: AY Mitchell. Well, he was a food scientists. We know
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Speaker 1: he passed away, uh not terribly terribly long ago, given
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Speaker 1: the greater timeline of you know, the nun units in
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Speaker 1: two thousand four. And he was, as you said, a
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Speaker 1: bit of a candy man, a bit of a Willy
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Speaker 1: Wonka esque figure. You know, he really liked food with
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Speaker 1: a gimmick, you know, food with a twist. Yeah. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: He lived to the ripe old age of ninety three,
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Speaker 1: which you would think for someone who lives in the
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Speaker 1: world of candy and novelty, he would have some health repercussions,
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Speaker 1: but he had a life well lived. He was born
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Speaker 1: to a farm family in Minnesota nineteen eleven, right after
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Speaker 1: the turn of the century, and unfortunately, his childhood was
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Speaker 1: pretty tough. His father passed away while he was still
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Speaker 1: in grade school, and he became one of those kids,
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Speaker 1: this was common at the time, one of those kids
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Speaker 1: who had to balance working on the farm to support
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Speaker 1: his family with pursuing education. And he would actually go
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Speaker 1: and contract out as a child to other farmers in
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Speaker 1: the area to help with a bean and pe harvest
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Speaker 1: because the family needed the money. By the time he
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Speaker 1: was a teenager, he's in Lamar, Colorado, and he still
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Speaker 1: is taking on sidework to help supplement the household income.
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Speaker 1: He is trapping muskrats, and he's harvesting melons during the
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Speaker 1: melon season. I think a big change for him comes
4:21
Speaker 1: in high school where he takes on the graveyard shift
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Speaker 1: at a place called the American Beat Sugar Company. So
4:29
Speaker 1: he stays up in the wee hours operating sugar crystallization
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Speaker 1: tanks and then maybe sleeping two hours before he goes
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Speaker 1: to school. Yeah, he was a busy boy, balancing a
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Speaker 1: lot of things, spinning a lot of plates. But education
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Speaker 1: was very important to him, and he actually also worked
4:50
Speaker 1: as a carpenter for a time in order to pay
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Speaker 1: his tuition at Cottoner College in Lincoln, Nebraska, and then
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Speaker 1: he would further education um with a master's degree in
5:02
Speaker 1: chemistry from the University of Nebraska, and then became a
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Speaker 1: research chemist UM with a pretty relatively high level role
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Speaker 1: at the Agricultural Experiment Station. I love when you have
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Speaker 1: a station on a thing. It makes me immediately think
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Speaker 1: of like the thing, you know, or like these like
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Speaker 1: research stations and in uh In in Alaska, you know,
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Speaker 1: where people kind of lose their minds and end up
5:26
Speaker 1: murdering each other or become sentient blobs that subsume one another,
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Speaker 1: you know, or maybe just maybe just doing research, who knows.
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Speaker 1: But not long after he started that job, there was
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Speaker 1: a laboratory explosion that happened as a result of a
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Speaker 1: crack and a beaker of alcohol, and he was injured
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Speaker 1: pretty badly. He got second and third degree burns over
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Speaker 1: eighty percent of his body. Um. And this this actually
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Speaker 1: comes from a how stuff works article from from the
5:55
Speaker 1: old days. Yeah yeah, big big fans of house So
5:59
Speaker 1: for would I made stuff of genius, it was for
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Speaker 1: house Stuff Works. So shout out to Laurie L. Dove.
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Speaker 1: We're not going to give you the title of this
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Speaker 1: article just yet because it's got some spoilers in it. Okay,
6:13
Speaker 1: here's my first question. It's gonna give you this statement,
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Speaker 1: which is true, is confirmed by multiple sources, and I
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Speaker 1: want to learn more about it with you guys. So
6:23
Speaker 1: he's known for cool whip, right. He's known for several
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Speaker 1: other things, including powdered egg whites, which are a thing.
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Speaker 1: But his real breakthrough, his breakout single, was the creation
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Speaker 1: of not tapioca, but a tapioca substitute. During World War
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Speaker 1: Two off air, Max and I were talking about the
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Speaker 1: last time we had knowingly tried tapioca, and for me,
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Speaker 1: it's almost exclusively in Boba ti. You know, you get
6:53
Speaker 1: the little balls in the tie t or whatever, and
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Speaker 1: then it's great. It's great stuff. But I had no
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Speaker 1: idea tapioca is such a big deal, correct, I mean,
7:02
Speaker 1: just in terms of think of it like an additive
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Speaker 1: like gelatin or something like that, or like a thing
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Speaker 1: you might use to preserve foods. So he came up
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Speaker 1: with actually a tapioca substitute during World War Two when
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Speaker 1: supplies of O G. Tapioca were very, very scant um.
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Speaker 1: The Associated Press had that to say about it. And
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Speaker 1: what he did was use starch grains found in cassava
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Speaker 1: roots that came from the eastern part of the world,
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Speaker 1: and he was able to kind of supplement disrupted supply
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Speaker 1: chains that were a problem for some of these prepackaged
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Speaker 1: foods in terms of the availability of these preservatives you know,
7:47
Speaker 1: during wartime of course, and and these were probably been
7:50
Speaker 1: what for things like m R. E s or various
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Speaker 1: things to make them shelf stable. Yeah, yeah, it seems
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Speaker 1: like it is used as a thick, mean agent. It's
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Speaker 1: also a way to just load more carbohydrates into food.
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Speaker 1: It's strange because tapioca, which is still you know, commonly
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Speaker 1: used in tropical areas today, it's low in various nutrients.
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Speaker 1: It's almost entirely carbs. So maybe this was just the
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Speaker 1: idea of getting more energy to people. But this combination
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Speaker 1: of starches and gelatine kept the soldiers in the war sated.
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Speaker 1: It kept them full right, and they may not have
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Speaker 1: loved the taste. As as everybody knows, World War two
8:39
Speaker 1: military rations were not ideal, but an army marches on
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Speaker 1: its stomach, so he really did genuinely help the war effort.
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Speaker 1: But that that's just his breakthrough, right, He's just the
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Speaker 1: father of tapioca substitutes. It's his next creation that becomes
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Speaker 1: the subject of of modern folklore. Honestly, it's a big
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Speaker 1: big deal. You know him, You love them pop rocks.
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Speaker 1: Mitchell is the guy who invented pop rocks. Yeah, still
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Speaker 1: a delight to this day. There's all kinds of silly
9:23
Speaker 1: you know, cocktails even that will use pop rocks, so
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Speaker 1: you know, and and and like themed bars and things
9:29
Speaker 1: like there's one in l A actually called Scum and
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Speaker 1: Villainy that is a Star Wars kind of Cantina themed bar,
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Speaker 1: and they use pop rocks and and as as like
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Speaker 1: a thing to put on the rim of some of
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Speaker 1: their cocktails. And it just adds a delightful little carbonated
9:44
Speaker 1: uh pop that to whatever you know you put it in. Also,
9:48
Speaker 1: aren't there like urban legends about combining pop rocks with
9:51
Speaker 1: something else and I'll like kill you or something. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think it's it's been debunked, but it's definitely of
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Speaker 1: of of urban food lore. Yeah, that's one of the
10:00
Speaker 1: um That's another one that gets thrown around a lot.
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Speaker 1: That's where it became part of modern myth and folklore.
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Speaker 1: Has it has been debunked. But he also stumbled on
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Speaker 1: this one sort of by accident. It's nineteen. He wants
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Speaker 1: to create self carbonating soda and what he ends up
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Speaker 1: with is instead the candy pop rocks. And you know,
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Speaker 1: everybody knows how pop rocks work, right there. These they're
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Speaker 1: these little bits of candy, hard candy that have carbon
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Speaker 1: dioxide trapped in bubbles inside the candy, and so when
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Speaker 1: you put it in your mouth that your saliva dissolves
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Speaker 1: through the candy and then you get those fizzy, effervescent
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Speaker 1: pops of the carbon dioxide releasing. If you're not expecting it,
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Speaker 1: it's weird, but if you're a kid looking for a neat,
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Speaker 1: novelty candy, then it's kind of awesome. You know. You
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Speaker 1: can also open your mouth and people can actually hear
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Speaker 1: the popping if they get close snuff. So make sure
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Speaker 1: you have good breath exactly exactly, and they come in
11:05
Speaker 1: you know, you could call them flavors. I guess, uh.
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Speaker 1: You know, results may vary in terms of does it
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Speaker 1: actually taste like blueberry or whatever. Food sciences is somewhat
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Speaker 1: of an imprecise science at times, you know, in candy
11:18
Speaker 1: and cereal, like do the various colors of tricks cereal
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Speaker 1: actually tastes like the fruits they're intended to or does
11:25
Speaker 1: it pair with like the shape of it to to
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Speaker 1: lead to the suggestion of the taste of a fruit.
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Speaker 1: A little more mental gymnastics involved in that. Yeah. And
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Speaker 1: he talks about this himself in in later interviews. We're
11:36
Speaker 1: getting a lot of this from mash dot com and
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Speaker 1: an excellent article in The Atlantic. He says, we would
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Speaker 1: try to make a carbonated beverage powder that would taste good.
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Speaker 1: That's the hardest part of food science, that and making
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Speaker 1: it safe to eat. Uh. And he said, I was
11:50
Speaker 1: working on this drink powder. My idea was when you
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Speaker 1: mix it with water, it would transform into a fizzy
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Speaker 1: carbonated drink. Drink mixes were already a thing, for sure.
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Speaker 1: He wanted to take it to the next step, and
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Speaker 1: he wasn't able to that's a big reason why there's
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Speaker 1: not powdered coca cola or pepsi today. He tasted a
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Speaker 1: bit of this stuff when he was trying it in
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Speaker 1: the lab, in the food lab layer, in the food station,
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Speaker 1: and then he said, hang on, this is a crap
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Speaker 1: soda that I've made, But I like these little chunks
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Speaker 1: they pop in my mouth. You know, this is Willy
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Speaker 1: Wonka moment. And people from all over the company heard
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Speaker 1: about this, and they started showing up at his lab
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Speaker 1: and saying out to out try I'll pop your rocks,
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Speaker 1: which was not as unpleasant and euphemism as it might sound.
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Speaker 1: And uh, and then he says it became a game.
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Speaker 1: Co workers would show up and try to swallow the
12:48
Speaker 1: biggest chunk of pop rock. Oh maybe this is where
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Speaker 1: the myth about. Maybe one of them swallowed too big
12:55
Speaker 1: a chunk in there and their head exploded. Yeah. Maybe.
12:58
Speaker 1: And and it was just just like in the thing, right,
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Speaker 1: the thing is based on the invention of pop rocks.
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Speaker 1: There's a lot more to the story. And then you
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Speaker 1: can put it in things right. You can put it
13:09
Speaker 1: in bubblegum, for example. And it created I love I
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Speaker 1: love this era of of food and treats. You have
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Speaker 1: such funny, like futuristic at the time sounding names like
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Speaker 1: incredibubble popping gum. And there's an incredible bubble add that
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Speaker 1: you can hear right about here. Watch people try amazing
13:29
Speaker 1: incredibubble theilings crackling bubblegum. This bubblegums strange than I am.
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Speaker 1: That's a Dracula character. Yeah, looks like f Murray Abraham
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Speaker 1: fantastic clucking bubblegum that's loaded with long, laughing labor puppet,
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Speaker 1: say from Charms. What so so this pop Yeah, So,
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Speaker 1: our our buddy research associate Zach sent us a version
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Speaker 1: of this commercial, and it really is of the time.
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Speaker 1: For some reason, there is a Draculasque vampire there. He's
14:12
Speaker 1: also nuts about incredibubble popping gum. He's insane. He's insane, exactly.
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Speaker 1: He's like, I've been drinking blood this whole time. They
14:21
Speaker 1: caught that part. Uh. So you see that this, this
14:25
Speaker 1: is a new sensation, and that the very same popularity
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Speaker 1: of this new material science for food leads to these
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Speaker 1: disturbing urban legends that we've been teasing. Correct what we
14:41
Speaker 1: tease earlier was and I had it a little bit wrong. Um,
14:44
Speaker 1: let's let's just correct the record here. I didn't have
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Speaker 1: it wrong. I just couldn't remember what the other ingredient was.
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Speaker 1: But it's too much carbonation, you know, like right, so
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Speaker 1: you combine pop rocks with an actual carbonated soda, it's
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Speaker 1: extreme uh and potentially uh. The idea of of this
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Speaker 1: almost like satanic panic thing began to circulate, the idea
15:04
Speaker 1: in the seventies that the kids were doing these like
15:07
Speaker 1: you know what you might look at on TikTok today,
15:10
Speaker 1: these bizarre challenges that kids are doing. You know that
15:13
Speaker 1: that the kids are doing um and it was causing
15:15
Speaker 1: them to die, you know, um in mass quantities. Yeah,
15:20
Speaker 1: there was this. There was this rumor that a popular
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Speaker 1: kid from advertisements of the era died because he ate
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Speaker 1: pop rocks and he washed it down with soda. Too
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Speaker 1: much carbon dioxide, too fast, too soon, too young. In ye,
15:38
Speaker 1: Quaker Oats makes this commercial for Life Cereal and it
15:42
Speaker 1: has it's all about winning over kids, right, because kids
15:46
Speaker 1: want candy for breakfast, not something healthy, and they're like,
15:48
Speaker 1: this cereal looks too healthy. So in the commercial they
15:52
Speaker 1: tested on a character named Little Mikey. Little Mikey, Hey,
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Speaker 1: it's everything but life Cereal. He tries it and he
16:02
Speaker 1: loves it. And then there's this catchphrase that's like Mikey
16:05
Speaker 1: likes it. See even Mikey, who's a real pill likes
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Speaker 1: life Cereal. And then this rumor starts and it says
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Speaker 1: that remember that kid who played Mikey, he died because
16:17
Speaker 1: pop rocks and soda exactly. And of course this is,
16:21
Speaker 1: you know, not the truth, but it is typically the
16:24
Speaker 1: way of these things. You know, it starts with word
16:27
Speaker 1: of mouth and then it just starts to spread and
16:29
Speaker 1: the rumor becomes more interesting than the truth. And this
16:31
Speaker 1: is also of course in the days before the Internet,
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Speaker 1: where it was a lot harder to verify independently these
16:36
Speaker 1: kinds of things. So we had a backlash more or less,
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Speaker 1: and William A. Mitchell actually had to do some damage
16:45
Speaker 1: control and speak to the science of pop rocks. He
16:49
Speaker 1: spoke to People magazine where he said, quote, there is
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Speaker 1: no danger. The worst thing the rocks can do is
16:55
Speaker 1: make you burp. The amount of gas in pop rocks
16:58
Speaker 1: is less than one tenth the amount in a can
17:01
Speaker 1: of soda. Pop Yeah, exactly. He's just he's doing the
17:05
Speaker 1: basic math and MythBusters later incorporated this idea into their show.
17:11
Speaker 1: They disproved the claim that you could combine pop rocks
17:15
Speaker 1: and soda to make somebody's stomach burst. They did it
17:19
Speaker 1: using a pig stomach, which is close enough to a
17:22
Speaker 1: humans stomach for this purpose. The host ultimately concluded Mitchell's
17:27
Speaker 1: claim about burping and he said, Okay, that checks out,
17:31
Speaker 1: And they said the pop rocks soda combo all together
17:35
Speaker 1: just cannot produce enough gas to actually explode a human stomach.
17:40
Speaker 1: So that's debunked. But like a lot of other urban
17:43
Speaker 1: legends that get debunked, it stays around because it's a fun,
17:46
Speaker 1: scary story to tell. Uh. And still that damage control
17:51
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, right, People still were alleging a conspiracy, right,
17:55
Speaker 1: maybe a cover up, and this led General Foods to
17:59
Speaker 1: take out ads in forty five pretty significant magazines and
18:04
Speaker 1: newspapers and also going to letter writing campaign. They sent
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Speaker 1: fifty thousand letters to school principles across the United States
18:12
Speaker 1: saying yeah, no fooling pop rocks really definitely will not
18:18
Speaker 1: kill you. And you can learn all about this on
18:22
Speaker 1: the actual pop rocks site pop dash rocks dot com. Well,
18:27
Speaker 1: the Fay thing about it too, is it's like, it's
18:29
Speaker 1: probably not the carbon dioxide content they should be worrying about,
18:31
Speaker 1: it's the sugar content. This stuff is is is teeth
18:36
Speaker 1: rot city. Yeah, And because of the popularity of this legend,
18:42
Speaker 1: the damage control campaign doesn't work. So for a time,
18:46
Speaker 1: pop Rocks are pulled from the market. They later get
18:48
Speaker 1: bought by another company and reintroduced to the public and
18:53
Speaker 1: they're still around today. But this look this, these are
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Speaker 1: only two of Mitchell's inventions. First off, we have tapioca
19:02
Speaker 1: substitute because tapioca was a big deal. Now we have
19:05
Speaker 1: pop rocks, and now we're on two more. He's like
19:09
Speaker 1: the DJ Khalid of food scientists. He's just sitting there
19:12
Speaker 1: in the lab going another one. Well, well Mitchell, yeah, yeah,
19:19
Speaker 1: So we're gonna, you know, turn back the clock a
19:21
Speaker 1: little bit to nineteen fifty seven. Uh. And a product
19:25
Speaker 1: that if you haven't tried, because it's certainly fall out
19:27
Speaker 1: of favor, a good bit you've probably heard of, usually
19:29
Speaker 1: as it relates to the space program. In nineteen fifty seven,
19:34
Speaker 1: Mitchell made a big splash when he debuted a product
19:37
Speaker 1: called Tang and Discover magazine in their reporting on this phenomenon,
19:42
Speaker 1: said that at the time it was actually intended to
19:44
Speaker 1: be a breakfast drink, sort of an orange juice replacement
19:48
Speaker 1: because of all of the vitamins that it contained, Vitamin C,
19:51
Speaker 1: Vitamin A, vitamin E, and lots of calcium, and it
19:56
Speaker 1: was in a handy dandy, easy to mix powder. Again,
20:00
Speaker 1: outers of the time were kind of considered like futuristic.
20:04
Speaker 1: You can get all your vitamins and minerals and a
20:06
Speaker 1: pill in pill form, you know, or in powder form. Yeah,
20:09
Speaker 1: finally it's real retro futurism. Now it feels very Jetsons.
20:13
Speaker 1: So this stuff was not an instant hit, but it
20:18
Speaker 1: became popular after John Glenn drank something that looked like
20:25
Speaker 1: tank on a rocket ship in nineteen sixty two. This
20:30
Speaker 1: became a space age success. You know, it's kind of
20:33
Speaker 1: the reason powdered ice cream or dehydrated ice cream excuse me,
20:37
Speaker 1: still has that novelty appeal, and it's sold at all
20:40
Speaker 1: the gift shops associated with space And you know what,
20:44
Speaker 1: if you haven't tried it, give it a go, give it,
20:47
Speaker 1: like I think it's all right, yeah, and I don't
20:50
Speaker 1: have that much of a sweet tooth, but I do
20:52
Speaker 1: like space, and I'm gullible. They got me there, so
20:55
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta have my dried ice cream, my
20:58
Speaker 1: space creams. It's a way of feeling like you're participating,
21:01
Speaker 1: you know, in some way. Or it's like I'm like
21:04
Speaker 1: an astronaut because I'm eating this like gummy powdered brick
21:08
Speaker 1: of like sugar. You know. I have so many dumb
21:11
Speaker 1: like space food themed things in my pantry, like astronaut rice.
21:19
Speaker 1: I keep the ice cream around in case, just in case.
21:22
Speaker 1: I don't know, guys, I might be turned into a
21:23
Speaker 1: food hoarder. But you ever had you ever had moon cheese,
21:27
Speaker 1: the most unappetizing named sash. It's the same day. Yeah,
21:32
Speaker 1: it's dehydrated cheese product chips, you know, good crunch. But
21:37
Speaker 1: they sell it's very similar consistency to astronaut ice cream.
21:40
Speaker 1: But it's funny. I was in Seattle a couple of
21:42
Speaker 1: years ago and at the Space Needle gift shop. Because
21:44
Speaker 1: again the space need nothing to do with space whatsoever,
21:47
Speaker 1: more of correct, more of just sort of like a
21:52
Speaker 1: retrofuturist kind of thing. They sell astronaut ice cream at
21:56
Speaker 1: the Space Needle gift Shop. Yeah, and Uh. The thing
21:59
Speaker 1: about she's it's not a thing because it is tasty.
22:02
Speaker 1: It's a nice crunch. I find it leaves a little
22:05
Speaker 1: bit of a film boy does it all the stuff
22:07
Speaker 1: does all all these like powdered things kind of do.
22:11
Speaker 1: And also what I've done is too I'm a big
22:12
Speaker 1: fan of crystal light. Uh. It is a you know,
22:15
Speaker 1: very low calorie kind of juice mix powder, um, and
22:19
Speaker 1: when you put the powder in the in the picture,
22:22
Speaker 1: it like gets in the air and you kind of
22:25
Speaker 1: start inhale it a little bit. It's like a little
22:27
Speaker 1: weird like to think about it, you know what it
22:30
Speaker 1: is in terms of the chemical ness of it all.
22:33
Speaker 1: But hey, it tastes delicious and it's a it's locale,
22:35
Speaker 1: and I like to mix it with soda water. Here's
22:38
Speaker 1: and here's why. Here's why tang gets associated with the
22:43
Speaker 1: space flight. When John glenn is on the Mercury space flight,
22:48
Speaker 1: tang is used to mask the metallic flavor of the
22:52
Speaker 1: water stored on board, so just to make it taste
22:56
Speaker 1: a little bit less elementy, you know, And and this
23:00
Speaker 1: works right, and then later it's aboard other space flights.
23:04
Speaker 1: By the time the Apollo eight mission is televised in
23:10
Speaker 1: Tang is a major sponsor of the ABC Space Launch broadcast. Uh,
23:15
Speaker 1: there's this is going back to excellent article by Loriel Dove.
23:19
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of a little bit of a
23:22
Speaker 1: level set later when astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who also drank Tang,
23:28
Speaker 1: goes on to say in an interview, Tang sucks. He
23:32
Speaker 1: apparently didn't have a lot of nostalgia for it. Uh,
23:38
Speaker 1: he didn't sucks. Yeah, he said it is. He's mounting.
23:45
Speaker 1: He's quoted in the Seattle Times saying this. So even
23:50
Speaker 1: as it gets more and more popular and all these
23:54
Speaker 1: all these kids want it because it makes them. You know.
23:57
Speaker 1: It's like how kids would eat wheaties to try to
24:00
Speaker 1: be like the athlete on the on the cover of
24:03
Speaker 1: the box, right or on the Yeah, be like Mike.
24:06
Speaker 1: This implies the sort of purpose to Tang, right. The
24:09
Speaker 1: makers were completely happy letting people think Tang have been
24:13
Speaker 1: invented specifically for astronauts. But really, if you look at
24:18
Speaker 1: the history, Mitchell is just this Wonka esque character. He's
24:24
Speaker 1: just the zany inventor. He likes food to be fun,
24:27
Speaker 1: and I think we need more people like that in
24:29
Speaker 1: the world. He didn't give up. He didn't rest on
24:32
Speaker 1: his laurels. After these three inventions. He wanted to make
24:36
Speaker 1: stuff better, faster, stronger for home cooks, and so in
24:40
Speaker 1: sixty seven he makes a new kind of jello. You
24:43
Speaker 1: can make it with cold water instead of hot, so
24:46
Speaker 1: it's that much faster to make jello at home. He
24:49
Speaker 1: didn't original stuff, certainly jellatson I think especially. I think
24:54
Speaker 1: there's like a vegetable based gelatin. And I know some
24:57
Speaker 1: of the stuff just form watching Great British Bake Off.
24:59
Speaker 1: But sometimes in those technical challenges, or they don't give
25:02
Speaker 1: you instructions, they they'll throw you a curveball and there
25:04
Speaker 1: is this one. Or they used a certain type of
25:06
Speaker 1: gelatine that had to be dissolved in hot boiling water,
25:11
Speaker 1: and if you just mix it into the cold water
25:14
Speaker 1: and then got it up the temperature, it wouldn't set.
25:16
Speaker 1: So this was again part of the process. And what's
25:19
Speaker 1: interesting too about all of these things we're talking about
25:21
Speaker 1: is you have to remember that food scientists are just that,
25:24
Speaker 1: they're scientists. They're not marketers. So there's this whole other
25:28
Speaker 1: wing of selling these things. And sometimes it'll be a
25:32
Speaker 1: use that wasn't really the intended use, and then because
25:34
Speaker 1: of these associations with things like the Space Program, the
25:37
Speaker 1: marketing wing will just their eyes will light up and
25:39
Speaker 1: with dollar signs, and they'll just let go Ham on
25:42
Speaker 1: that association, even though it wasn't necessarily what the creator
25:45
Speaker 1: had in mind at all. Yeah, and I want to
25:48
Speaker 1: say something neat that I realized about the British Baking Show,
25:51
Speaker 1: which is a great show. It's wholesome and you should
25:53
Speaker 1: check it out if you're feeling stressed. It really is
25:56
Speaker 1: true that peanut butter is in the West, at least,
26:01
Speaker 1: it's such an American thing, and like a pp J,
26:05
Speaker 1: a peanut butter jelly sandwich is not super familiar, at
26:08
Speaker 1: least the way I've seen it treated on the British
26:11
Speaker 1: Baking Show. The judges are like, you combined a peanut
26:15
Speaker 1: favor with that of a very how absurd and strange
26:20
Speaker 1: yet delectable. That's very It's got a real novelty to
26:24
Speaker 1: it over there, and they do the same thing like
26:25
Speaker 1: there was an episode recently where they had the contestants
26:28
Speaker 1: make quote unquote s'mores and there was this backlash because
26:32
Speaker 1: they used what are called digestive biscuits, which are not
26:35
Speaker 1: Graham crackers. They are like these kind of little tea
26:39
Speaker 1: cracker or tea cookies, you know that they call them
26:41
Speaker 1: biscuits over there. But there was this whole like, what
26:45
Speaker 1: it's an abomination what they've done with the with the
26:47
Speaker 1: humble s'more and uh, they also had a real kind
26:50
Speaker 1: of wonky one where they did Mexican Week and they
26:53
Speaker 1: made tacos. You know, people clearly had they don't get
26:57
Speaker 1: good Mexican over there, I think, and in across the pond,
27:00
Speaker 1: and so there was some definitely opportunities for mockery there. Yeah.
27:05
Speaker 1: And and look, you know the bakers on Great British
27:09
Speaker 1: Bakeoff are they're doing their best to innovate, and in
27:13
Speaker 1: that way there are a lot like Mitchell. Mitchell is
27:22
Speaker 1: on a roll post hang. Just a few months after this,
27:25
Speaker 1: he comes up with cool whip. Uh, this is the
27:28
Speaker 1: very first frozen, non dairy whipped cream. That's a lot
27:32
Speaker 1: of caveats, but you know what we're talking about. You've
27:34
Speaker 1: seen it in grocery stores throughout the land. This is
27:38
Speaker 1: a huge success for the company General Foods because you
27:42
Speaker 1: can freeze cool whip, which makes it easier to ship.
27:46
Speaker 1: You also make it easier for people to use whipped
27:49
Speaker 1: cream in recipes. Nowadays, they've tinkered with Mitchell's original invention
27:56
Speaker 1: a bit. Cool Whip does have some milk and cream,
28:01
Speaker 1: mainly because a lot of American consumers said, I don't
28:05
Speaker 1: want it to be entirely artificial, you know, I feel
28:09
Speaker 1: like I've seen something on the news about that. So
28:12
Speaker 1: they put in a little milk. But but honestly, if
28:15
Speaker 1: you're getting cool Whip, you don't expect it to be
28:19
Speaker 1: straight from some Cool Whip branded cow. You know, it's
28:23
Speaker 1: clearly artificial, and they wanted to save the convenience. It
28:26
Speaker 1: reminds me of Betty Crocker cake mix. Do you know
28:29
Speaker 1: what saved that cake mix? It's the idea of adding
28:32
Speaker 1: an egg. You totally don't need to. They just wanted
28:35
Speaker 1: people to feel like they were cooking a little more.
28:37
Speaker 1: Exactly now, that's exactly right. And you know, all of
28:41
Speaker 1: his work um that was popularized by General Foods kind
28:46
Speaker 1: of gave way to another phase in his career involving
28:51
Speaker 1: his daughter, Cheryl Mitchell, who wanted to be a bit
28:55
Speaker 1: more health conscious than some of these packaged, you know,
28:58
Speaker 1: mass produced foods that that that General foods company was
29:02
Speaker 1: putting out using Mitchell's innovations. Yeah. Yeah, So they stumble
29:08
Speaker 1: on something that they start calling du copa. And they
29:12
Speaker 1: do this because Cheryl Mitchell and her spouse grows some
29:16
Speaker 1: dahlias on their property and her dad comes along and says, oh,
29:21
Speaker 1: we should roast the tubers of these dahlias. They end
29:25
Speaker 1: up with this brown substance that kind of tastes like coffee,
29:28
Speaker 1: and so they start selling it as this stuff they
29:31
Speaker 1: called dacopa, a coffee substitute that is supposed to have
29:35
Speaker 1: some health benefits. It doesn't work. It doesn't catch on.
29:38
Speaker 1: Most people stick with regular coffee or god forbid decalf.
29:43
Speaker 1: Mitchell does make a miscalculation. He says, look, we're going
29:48
Speaker 1: toward an age of convenience foods. He didn't predict that
29:52
Speaker 1: coffee would go the other way and become more specialized,
29:55
Speaker 1: would have ritualistic processes. You know, you just don't get
29:59
Speaker 1: a cup Joe at a lot of places. Now you
30:02
Speaker 1: wait and then there are you know, making it is
30:06
Speaker 1: an art form for the barista in the fancy places.
30:09
Speaker 1: That's more of a modern thing though, right, I mean,
30:11
Speaker 1: like the idea of you know, coffee used to be
30:13
Speaker 1: all about the Maxwell house or the taster's choice or
30:16
Speaker 1: the freeze dried coffee and all that that you could
30:18
Speaker 1: just it was about quickness and convenience because it was
30:21
Speaker 1: such a part of people's routine that it was all about,
30:24
Speaker 1: you know, how quickly can I get this, you know,
30:26
Speaker 1: from can to cup? Yeah, exactly and this look. But
30:32
Speaker 1: we're talking about one of the great food scientists. It's
30:35
Speaker 1: kind of like talking about the Shakespeare of sweets, right.
30:38
Speaker 1: Not everything he made was a hit. We remember the successes,
30:42
Speaker 1: but we should also remember that he, like any other scientists,
30:46
Speaker 1: had a lot of trails that went cold, you know,
30:49
Speaker 1: a lot of gelatin of innovation that just would not set.
30:53
Speaker 1: And one example of this is his nineteen sixty nine
30:56
Speaker 1: patent four Dessert on a Stick. It's a dessert powder
31:00
Speaker 1: that was so thick it could may be made into
31:03
Speaker 1: popsicle like treats at room temperature. You didn't have to
31:06
Speaker 1: freeze it. It wasn't a hit through our research, associate
31:09
Speaker 1: Doctor's Act says he definitely would try it so for
31:13
Speaker 1: Christmas bro dessert. Anything on a stick becomes you know,
31:17
Speaker 1: in the whole fair food phenomenon FFP, everything on a
31:21
Speaker 1: stick just seems more fun. You know, you've got like
31:24
Speaker 1: now you've got kind of throwback companies like a hot
31:26
Speaker 1: dog on a stick. Just having on a stick in
31:29
Speaker 1: the name hearkens back to like a time where everything
31:33
Speaker 1: should should come on a stick. But yeah, it really
31:35
Speaker 1: was kind of again one of these about portability, about
31:40
Speaker 1: you know, kind of self contained nests one stop shop ory. Oh,
31:44
Speaker 1: and let me correct something here while I while I
31:47
Speaker 1: remember it. He was not three when he passed away.
31:50
Speaker 1: He was ninety two. He passed away in July four.
31:54
Speaker 1: And he also made carbonated ice. He had a patent
31:58
Speaker 1: for that. Over the course of his life he would
32:01
Speaker 1: receive seventy patents and he retired in nineteen seventy. Different
32:07
Speaker 1: weird ideas for food. This guy had. His daughter went
32:10
Speaker 1: on to become a food scientist, and she's more of
32:14
Speaker 1: a again, like we mentioned, she's more of a health
32:17
Speaker 1: conscious or health focused inventor. She does stuff like vegan milk,
32:21
Speaker 1: trying to create dairy taste from non dairy sources for sure.
32:26
Speaker 1: Um and great article on on all of this stuff
32:30
Speaker 1: from Smithsonian by Emily Matcher. Um hipped us to the
32:35
Speaker 1: book about Mitchell called Pop Rocks The Inside Story of
32:39
Speaker 1: America's Revolutionary Candy uh And there's a quote from the
32:44
Speaker 1: author Marv Rudolph saying that Mitchell was a true inventor,
32:48
Speaker 1: a person who looks at problems differently and can find elegant,
32:51
Speaker 1: sometimes simple solutions that no one else considered. If you
32:55
Speaker 1: generate enough intellectual property in the laboratory to issue a patent,
32:59
Speaker 1: on the average every ten months of your career, you
33:02
Speaker 1: have joined a very exclusive club. And this was a
33:06
Speaker 1: club that that Mitchell was was very much front and
33:09
Speaker 1: center in Yeah, I mean in the world of food.
33:12
Speaker 1: He might be a club of one. He might be
33:14
Speaker 1: a slow club. Here you see the lay of the land, folks.
33:18
Speaker 1: Some of his foods, his innovations remain very popular today
33:22
Speaker 1: because they have become attached to some part of the
33:26
Speaker 1: American zeitgeist. Right. You associate cool whip with certain desserts,
33:31
Speaker 1: and you associate those desserts, in turn, often with certain
33:35
Speaker 1: seasonal celebrations. Right, pop rocks you associate with childhood, with
33:41
Speaker 1: that ugly, ugly urban legend that sort of dares you
33:45
Speaker 1: to try it yourself and see. But a lot of
33:48
Speaker 1: his other stuff fell out a favor, and now the
33:53
Speaker 1: trends of food have reversed. Right in post World War two,
33:58
Speaker 1: I was seen as very future and forward facing to
34:01
Speaker 1: have convenience foods. Make this a powder, right, make this
34:04
Speaker 1: a mix? Save me some time, I'll use the microwave.
34:08
Speaker 1: But now increasingly we see movements like slow food, organic food,
34:13
Speaker 1: locally grown food. And you know, we all, I think
34:17
Speaker 1: we've all been there where someone who is a real
34:21
Speaker 1: has a real hobby horse about one of these things,
34:24
Speaker 1: maybe guilt you a little about enjoying stuff like cheese
34:27
Speaker 1: whiz not a Mitchell invention, or some processed food that
34:31
Speaker 1: you really like, like to Rito's or something to each
34:34
Speaker 1: their own. But no matter what those folks do, they're
34:39
Speaker 1: probably not going to get rid of cool whip. It's
34:43
Speaker 1: just so convenient. That's what Mitchell was all about, and
34:47
Speaker 1: that was his legacy. We do want to add he
34:51
Speaker 1: had a normal funeral ceremony. It was not like shoot
34:57
Speaker 1: him into a cannon at a cannon made a full
35:00
Speaker 1: of op It's not a pop rock style Viking funeral.
35:03
Speaker 1: They put them in a jar of cool whip. They
35:08
Speaker 1: did not that one not. Can we also say too
35:12
Speaker 1: that the cool whip has also done wonders for like
35:14
Speaker 1: supplementing people's tupperware collections. Let's just say I didn't know,
35:18
Speaker 1: you know, growing up, I don't remember cool whip. I
35:21
Speaker 1: just remember the containers. I hear rumors that those containers
35:25
Speaker 1: have had cool whip in the midtimes, but I've never
35:28
Speaker 1: seen that discovery firsthand. You know, Yeah, what do people use?
35:31
Speaker 1: I guess cool whip is kind of used for topping,
35:34
Speaker 1: for like those kind of you know, jello type deals. Um,
35:37
Speaker 1: you might use it maybe in a trifle or something
35:40
Speaker 1: like that. I actually like to make a strawberry trifle,
35:42
Speaker 1: but you know, I I will make my own whipped cream. Um.
35:46
Speaker 1: But there is different about the mouth feel of of
35:49
Speaker 1: cool whip, and you can also eat it frozen, and
35:51
Speaker 1: it's almost like can be treated like a super low count.
35:54
Speaker 1: Let's also remember it is lower calorie than heavy whipped
35:58
Speaker 1: heavy whipping gray, which isn't hard. That's a that's not
36:01
Speaker 1: very high bar. But but also, you know, I associated
36:05
Speaker 1: a lot with pies, right, You see it on top
36:08
Speaker 1: of different types of pies. You can see it in cupcakes.
36:12
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's it's basically you could just eat it straight.
36:17
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, I mean, I've got no shame,
36:19
Speaker 1: I've done it. It's it's delicious and a pinch. It
36:21
Speaker 1: is the poor man's ice cream. There we go, cut friends,
36:26
Speaker 1: and this is where I think we end our episode today.
36:31
Speaker 1: One of the other questions I can get to his
36:32
Speaker 1: powdered egg whites. He made some innovations there, but out
36:36
Speaker 1: what about powdered milk? Is that that Lee? He didn't
36:38
Speaker 1: have to do with that, but that was sort of
36:40
Speaker 1: one of the early powdered things. Yeah, powdered milk also
36:45
Speaker 1: a also a thing. Uh in This really tells us
36:49
Speaker 1: a lot about like, if you want to learn about
36:52
Speaker 1: a culture in an interesting way, learn about its food.
36:57
Speaker 1: Learn about the foods they like, which are considered aspiration,
37:00
Speaker 1: which are tied to specific events, which are considered you know,
37:05
Speaker 1: on the lower end. That's how you learn that. Like,
37:09
Speaker 1: that's one of the most amazing ways to learn about
37:12
Speaker 1: people and place. Anthony Bourdain was correct, and you was
37:15
Speaker 1: certainly not the first. Can I just say, Ben, as
37:18
Speaker 1: it relates to food, the term aspirational makes me think
37:21
Speaker 1: it's like foods that you're more likely to choke off.
37:24
Speaker 1: There we go, Well, some people do choke on their aspirations.
37:28
Speaker 1: It's true, but not William Mitchell. So hats off to you, sir.
37:32
Speaker 1: I am not personally a cool whip guy, but I
37:36
Speaker 1: gotta say, what a legend, What an absolute legend this
37:40
Speaker 1: man is. Uh and thanks to everybody for tuning in.
37:44
Speaker 1: You know what, here's how popular his inventions are. Statistically speaking,
37:49
Speaker 1: someone listening to this episode is eating cool whip or
37:53
Speaker 1: pop rocks right now, maybe drinking tang I don't know,
37:57
Speaker 1: maybe drinking tang that hasp rox and it topped with
38:02
Speaker 1: cool whip. Yeah yeah, great, great, And and and substitutrious
38:06
Speaker 1: of tapioca, all mixed with the copa. Oh boy da
38:10
Speaker 1: copa the last word in coffee substitute. Can we also
38:16
Speaker 1: just add just as a as a last little bit
38:18
Speaker 1: of trivia that um you know Mitchell did actually earlier
38:22
Speaker 1: in his career also contribute to the photographic arts. He
38:26
Speaker 1: was responsible for some chemical processes that helped develop the
38:30
Speaker 1: color green better for the Eastman Kodak company. Yeah, and
38:35
Speaker 1: he apparently made a little bit of an enemy with
38:40
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart. Can't say too much of that because about that,
38:43
Speaker 1: because she's technically our coworker now, she'll cut you. Yeah,
38:47
Speaker 1: she doesn't, she doesn't play. Uh. So shout out to
38:50
Speaker 1: our good pal Dylan Fagan. It's good to do. Yeah, Dylan,
38:59
Speaker 1: Dylan killing. Yeah, it's killing. Oh yeah, do you guess
39:05
Speaker 1: so who's here? Oh he's my friend God massive fun. Yeah, Dylan.
39:18
Speaker 1: We should have Dylan on the show at some point.
39:21
Speaker 1: He's such a such a breath of fresh air, that guy.
39:24
Speaker 1: But we're lucky. You know, pretty much everybody we work
39:28
Speaker 1: with are actually great, brilliant, curious people who will sit
39:33
Speaker 1: here and natter on with us for hours about the
39:36
Speaker 1: most obscure, strange things. And we're so happy that you're
39:40
Speaker 1: part of the show. Is well ridiculous historians. So thank
39:43
Speaker 1: you first and foremost, and then thanks also to our
39:46
Speaker 1: super producer Mr Max Williams. Big ups to Alex Williams
39:50
Speaker 1: who composed our theme. Christopher Haciotes here in spirit, Jonathan
39:55
Speaker 1: Strickland may may or Mayor rocks always pop goods, May
40:01
Speaker 1: they pop your bald head off. We've gotta we get
40:04
Speaker 1: well that's a little far, that's a little okay, but
40:07
Speaker 1: we gotta we've gotta have Jonathan backed on before the
40:11
Speaker 1: end of the year. Let's do it. Let's make it official.
40:14
Speaker 1: Let's see if we can get it. Let's do it.
40:16
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks, and happy holidays. For
40:25
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I heart
40:27
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
40:30
Speaker 1: favorite shows.