Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Happy Holidays. Thank you always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer
Speaker 1: Max the Atlanta Sanna Williams.
Speaker 2: O La La la la. Indeed, man, you've been back
Speaker 2: pocketing that one, Ben, just for the holiday time.
Speaker 1: Off the Dome, Off the Dome Freestyle days. Thank you. Noel,
Speaker 1: I am Ben Bullen. You are Noel Brown. This is candidly.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a weird therapy thing
Speaker 1: for me because I have kicked soda again and it's
Speaker 1: crazy uphill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I do it every now and again,
Speaker 2: just like for a treat like the salami for the cats,
Speaker 2: if anyone remembers that meme. But by and large I
Speaker 2: am a Seltzer guy. Seltzer has replaced soda for me.
Speaker 2: I have a soda stream, but I never put in
Speaker 2: the I never put in the syrups. I just like
Speaker 2: a good old fashioned regular plane Seltzer. Plane.
Speaker 3: Old Seltzer is a way to go. Yeah, Ben, how's
Speaker 3: the dreams going?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean to tell you about this.
Speaker 1: Nola has heard this from the last Tomic with soda.
Speaker 1: But the thing I didn't expect where the weird soda
Speaker 1: withdrawal dreams. Probably the strangest one was I was in
Speaker 1: a fight with a vampire very like climactic Stephen Kink's
Speaker 1: Midnight Mass style, okay, and then part way through the fight,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, wave it like fighting it off
Speaker 1: with like a quarter staff thing as a cross on it,
Speaker 1: And part way through the vampire pauses and says time out.
Speaker 1: And then it took from somewhere a can of Coca Cola,
Speaker 1: opened it and did the iconic coke drink where you go,
Speaker 1: and then put it down, and the dream continued. I
Speaker 1: had a sponsored ad and a dream.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's we're not too far from that, irl.
Speaker 2: But not to like editorialize your dream too much. But
Speaker 2: wouldn't it have been fun if the vampire had just
Speaker 2: sunk his fangs into the can itself. That would have
Speaker 2: been a fun little twist, it would have. It would
Speaker 2: have Speaking of vampires and being good at fighting, I
Speaker 2: think all three of us have been enjoying Skyrim lately,
Speaker 2: and in one of my very first journeys out into
Speaker 2: the wilds of Skyrim, I was attacked by a vampire,
Speaker 2: and I guess they got to hit in because a
Speaker 2: little bit later I kept getting a notification that you
Speaker 2: are starting to grow weary as the sun comes up,
Speaker 2: and you have a strange craving.
Speaker 3: It's when they do that spell. They they kind of
Speaker 3: suck on you, like spell they can give you vamp purists.
Speaker 2: I forget what the name of it. In the s
Speaker 2: it seems to have subsided though I didn't really do
Speaker 2: anything about it. No, I don't think I did. But
Speaker 2: maybe will the the potion to cure all diseases fix
Speaker 2: that for you? Yeah, okay, I must have done that. Then.
Speaker 3: It's one of these things that if you take care
Speaker 3: of it in you know, a couple of days, it's fine.
Speaker 3: But if you kind of don't, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: most things, if we don't take care of it, it
Speaker 3: can turn out really good.
Speaker 2: Where some people go that route though, right where they're like,
Speaker 2: I want to do this and I miss I imagine
Speaker 2: if you service it correctly, it gives you special perks
Speaker 2: to some degree. But then you do have to feed
Speaker 2: on human blood.
Speaker 1: Without spoiling too too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was very into the vampire quest line. I wanted
Speaker 1: to love the were wolves, but I chose vampire and
Speaker 1: have got You can become a vampire lord, and so
Speaker 1: you do get some you get some cool perks.
Speaker 2: They have their own boots, the vampire boots, so you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: but Sun, yeah, well you can fix that problem too.
Speaker 2: But one thing the vampires do not have in Skyrim,
Speaker 2: despite all their cool stuff, is soda pop. Because you know,
Speaker 2: the world of Elder Scrolls in Skyrim is fascinating and
Speaker 2: endless and so cool, but it has a severe lack
Speaker 2: of soda. They have a lot of beverages, but they
Speaker 2: don't have carbonated's mead all toe wine is a popular choice.
Speaker 2: You guys. You know, I think we are not allowed
Speaker 2: to just casually do this out of nowhere, but I
Speaker 2: really love people from a certain part of the country
Speaker 2: that calls soda uh just pop. I think that would
Speaker 2: be a little bit too much, even a form of
Speaker 2: cultural appropriation, if we just started casually referring to Coca
Speaker 2: Cola as pop.
Speaker 3: I guess I could kind of, because I.
Speaker 2: Mean, Michigan, You're a Michigander.
Speaker 3: I have family who call it pop. It's it's kind
Speaker 3: of cringe when I hear it.
Speaker 2: I honestly think.
Speaker 3: It's it's like it's with the Midwestern accent. It's very
Speaker 3: it's a little Mickey Mouse, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's a little like ah shucks, right, it really is.
Speaker 1: There's also I mean, you know, when in Rome do
Speaker 1: as the Romans do, so I've I've referred to it
Speaker 1: as pop. I still think that's better that when I'm
Speaker 1: traveling there. I still think that's better than the tendency
Speaker 1: we see sometimes in the in the South to call
Speaker 1: every soft drink a coke.
Speaker 2: I just call it soda. But I do have to
Speaker 2: walk back my claim of having kicked soda entirely full
Speaker 2: sugar soda, I have kicked entirely, but I do drink
Speaker 2: diet coke still on a pretty regular basis. Call them
Speaker 2: DC's nice.
Speaker 1: I like it not to be confused with R C Cola,
Speaker 1: which will going to name check later in our exploration. Folks,
Speaker 1: soda pop is just amazing. It's not healthy, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people probably drink too much of it. I
Speaker 1: sure did back in the day, but can we blame them.
Speaker 1: If you, like us, spent some formative years in the
Speaker 1: Georgia or Atlanta area, you're probably most familiar with Coca cola.
Speaker 1: But that is only the beginning of the story. The
Speaker 1: world of soda is wide and vast. We've been texting
Speaker 1: each other in our little group chat with sort of this,
Speaker 1: remember this vibe, but what happened to this one? And
Speaker 1: it's the history of this is bub bubbling to the
Speaker 1: brim with ridiculousness. So let's pop the top and get started.
Speaker 1: Maybe we talk with the terms like soft drink, soda,
Speaker 1: pop itsever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got to imagine, just right off the rip,
Speaker 2: that a soft drink refers to anything that like isn't alcoholic,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's a soft It's like if it's
Speaker 2: for kids, you know, it's a soft drink. Also, it's
Speaker 2: a little bit of a backhanded, almost disc kind of
Speaker 2: it's like you you're soft. One thing, just another Skyrim reference,
Speaker 2: a term of abuse thrown around a lot in that
Speaker 2: game is a milk drinker. Being a milk drinker it
Speaker 2: means that you're a little baby boy who doesn't like
Speaker 2: to consume or and bube, you know, the hard stuff.
Speaker 1: My new favorite, my new favorite anachronistic insult that I
Speaker 1: recently learned is calling someone fatherless.
Speaker 2: Geez. That's kind of like a baster, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's almost worse though it's more direct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worse than that, you know, I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: use that one carefully, folks. Soft drink, No, you're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: is an umbrella term for any number of non alcoholic beverages.
Speaker 1: That's their primary commonality. They're usually carbonated, but not always,
Speaker 1: and they'll often nowadays, they'll have some kind of angle,
Speaker 1: some flavor profiles, so it's not just carbonated water. There
Speaker 1: will be all kinds of natural or artificial flavors. They
Speaker 1: might add some juice if they're getting fancy, and there's
Speaker 1: almost always a sweetening agent, whether it's corn syrup or
Speaker 1: actual cane sugar, et cetera.
Speaker 2: I love this term you threw into the dock here
Speaker 2: ben edible acids. That that seems like an umbrella term
Speaker 2: in and of itself. It could perhaps refer to things
Speaker 2: that might make you see stuff as well.
Speaker 1: There we go, shout out to our friends at the
Speaker 1: at Britannica. There we gotta, we gotta do a history
Speaker 1: of Britannica one day.
Speaker 2: That way, well, and speaking of rule Britannia or Britannica,
Speaker 2: you know, you'll often hear people referring to a soft
Speaker 2: cider in the UK as being you know, a cider
Speaker 2: still have some alcohol in them, but they are a
Speaker 2: little bit of a lighter alcoholic beverage. So soft cider
Speaker 2: as a term I've seen used a lot in like
Speaker 2: BBC stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was another one historically. I think it
Speaker 1: was weak beer, which sounds kind of like an insult,
Speaker 1: but it was just a normal phrase back in the
Speaker 1: day and week sauce man weak sauce and not everything
Speaker 1: that fits these commonalities counts as a soft drink because
Speaker 1: coffee is not a soft drink, or not refer to it,
Speaker 1: not referred to as one, tea, milk, hot chocolate, straight
Speaker 1: up vegetable or fruit juice, those don't count in general.
Speaker 1: The main thing is, as you described, is that a
Speaker 1: soft drink was meant to be a distinguishing description from
Speaker 1: hard liquor.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, we certainly know too. Historically there was
Speaker 2: a time where people drank beer, you know, like water
Speaker 2: because of the fact that the fermentation process killed all
Speaker 2: the bad stuff that would have been in the normal
Speaker 2: water supply. So, you know, especially in like Nordic times
Speaker 2: or whatever, you know, you'd have people that were just
Speaker 2: stay and toasty all day long because it was really
Speaker 2: the only alternative to drinking, you know, kind of putrefied water.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, it's kind of like the choice between dysentery
Speaker 1: and day drinking, and history decided for.
Speaker 2: A while, right, there should be a rapper with the
Speaker 2: name mc dysentery, but dis you know, nice? I like
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Also, there was really interesting cherry
Speaker 1: picked historical fact I've found and I haven't verified it,
Speaker 1: but someone was like when the Irish first discovered whiskey,
Speaker 1: they didn't do anything for two hundred years.
Speaker 2: It was like man discovering fire, you know, right, fire water.
Speaker 1: And it's strange because going into this, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you guys, but I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: would assume that soda pop is a pretty recent invention.
Speaker 1: But the story really starts back in the seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and the idea of carbonating stuff is way way older.
Speaker 2: That's right. Beer and champagne, of course, are both alcoholic
Speaker 2: beverages that are best enjoyed carbonating or actually the I
Speaker 2: believe the very process of the fermentation creates some amount
Speaker 2: of carbonation, if I'm not mistaken, right, it gives you
Speaker 2: sort of a natural amount of bubbles. Those drinks, of course,
Speaker 2: have been around for centuries. By the seventeenth century, street
Speaker 2: vendor in Paris were selling lemonade, which has its own story.
Speaker 2: I believe we've done a history of lemonade and lemonade stands.
Speaker 2: And also ciders were not that hard to come by either,
Speaker 2: But the very first drinkable man made glass of carbonated
Speaker 2: water wasn't around until more along the lines of the
Speaker 2: seventeen sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, shout out to what was that episode Rise
Speaker 1: of the clown Pants.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, sir, that was a gross one. Check it
Speaker 2: out though, it's a good classic, And yeah, I love
Speaker 2: the idea. You know, people refer too often as one
Speaker 2: of their favorite characteristics of a soda pop or of
Speaker 2: seltzer is that burn of the of the carbonation. People
Speaker 2: call it the bite and the burn, and it was
Speaker 2: referred to back in the day as sort of a
Speaker 2: being almost spicy. And I have heard little kids say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's spicy, but they're referring to more of the way
Speaker 2: it hits the throat, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sensation of effervescence was a huge factor in
Speaker 1: the creation of modern soda pop because in the days
Speaker 1: of the Greco Romans, people believe that natural mineral water
Speaker 1: had curative medicinal properties. Because you feel the little bubbles,
Speaker 1: it feels like something is happening, so people assumed it
Speaker 1: was good. If people thought the effervescence, if they assumed
Speaker 1: that tingly feeling was bad, then we might not have
Speaker 1: soda pop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's almost like it feels like it's doing something,
Speaker 2: you know, it feels like there are curative properties at work.
Speaker 2: And you know, mineral water is still around today. Of course,
Speaker 2: you know Perrier and San Pellogrino. I have a little
Speaker 2: bit more mineral content in them because I believe of
Speaker 2: the source and some you know, carbonated water, they believe
Speaker 2: they come out of the ground carbonated you know, there
Speaker 2: are these like kind of bubbling springs where that stuff
Speaker 2: comes out like that. If I'm not mistaken, I might
Speaker 2: be overstating the case. I know you're correct, I think.
Speaker 1: And so in this meliueuring soft drink invenors wanted to
Speaker 1: reproduce this health enhancing quality or perception. It wanted to
Speaker 1: make really kind of a patent medicine, and they first
Speaker 1: started using chalk and acid edible acid we assume to
Speaker 1: carbonate water.
Speaker 2: Shock weird. Okay, So the first soft drinks that were
Speaker 2: actually mass marketed came around in the seventeenth century as
Speaker 2: a mixture of water and lemon juice with a little
Speaker 2: bit of honey added to sweeten the deal. In sixteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, the Compigni de Lemonadillos was formed in Peri
Speaker 2: and granted a monopoly. They were given a monopoly to
Speaker 2: produce and sell these products, and vendors would carry around
Speaker 2: tanks of the stuff on their backs, like an early
Speaker 2: predecessor to the camelback from which they dispensed these cups
Speaker 2: of lemonade. That would you know, they'd reuse the cups.
Speaker 1: And everybody knew when they started working on soda as
Speaker 1: a concept, everybody knew the primary thing was the bubbles.
Speaker 1: That is how you made it feel official and medicinal.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people worked on just the concept
Speaker 1: of carbonation. We're talking about academics, we're talking about independent
Speaker 1: scientists kind of doing their renaissance man thing. You can
Speaker 1: see the first time someone used the term gas to
Speaker 1: talk about this carbon dioxide stuff. That was a Flemish
Speaker 1: scientist named Jean Baptista Van.
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, what a great name. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2: In Germany, carbonated water is referred to as mit gas.
Speaker 2: That just means with gas with bubbles and also, guys,
Speaker 2: isn't it funny? How if you accidentally drink some coke
Speaker 2: that has gone flat, it is disgusting. The bubbles make
Speaker 2: all the difference. It's a psychological thing. It's weird. It's
Speaker 2: literally making you think that something tastes better than it
Speaker 2: actually tastes. It's an illusion of the mind, an.
Speaker 1: Illusion of the mind. Yeah, and you're absolutely right, because
Speaker 1: soda shares something a similar quality to French fries. Right,
Speaker 1: they're good while they're fresh, and then they turn into
Speaker 1: just regular oddly cut potatoes.
Speaker 2: I sat let them get cold. So there's a.
Speaker 1: Guy named Robert Boyle who occurs in the stories of
Speaker 1: philosopher and scientists. He later helps found modern chemistry. He
Speaker 1: talks about mineral waters in a book with a cartoonish title,
Speaker 1: Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters.
Speaker 1: Rolls off the talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was in sixteen eighty five, and in
Speaker 2: that book there were sections about examining some of these
Speaker 2: mineral springs that we were talking about, and you know,
Speaker 2: looking into the properties that this water contain as well
Speaker 2: as their effects on the human body. And to quote
Speaker 2: the book of the Imitation of Natural Medicinal Waters by
Speaker 2: Kamic and other Artificial wys, this is like old English
Speaker 2: stuff at its finest, chemic good chym i col and
Speaker 2: ways as wayes. So let's fast forward a little bit
Speaker 2: to talk about the kind of rise of the soda industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, there's a guy named Joseph Priestley. He was
Speaker 1: an English clergyman and a scientist, and his street name
Speaker 1: now is the father of the soft drinks industry, because
Speaker 1: he demonstrated how you could take the fermenting vats from
Speaker 1: a brewery and experiment with the gas that they created,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, during the fermentation process. So it's seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy two. He's hanging with the College of Physicians in
Speaker 1: London and he says, look at this, I've made a
Speaker 1: corbinate apparatus and if only I had a pump, I
Speaker 1: could have more high impregnation of fixed air within the water.
Speaker 2: I mean, he basically invented the prototype for the soda stream, right,
Speaker 2: you know, because I mean, it's so cool. It's also
Speaker 2: like if it's fun, it's like almost like doing your
Speaker 2: own little science project at home. You get these can
Speaker 2: these these well I guess, these kind of metal tanks,
Speaker 2: miniature tanks of CO two, and then you put it in,
Speaker 2: You put the bottle in, and it essentially imbues, you know,
Speaker 2: or injects the water with this gas, and then it
Speaker 2: creates carbonated water.
Speaker 1: And this this is all interesting, right, this is all
Speaker 1: very ted talkie. Look at the world we could create
Speaker 1: in the future. But it's still just a series of
Speaker 1: proofs of concept. The brand of sort of the first
Speaker 1: like production of carbonated water comes from a guy named
Speaker 1: Thomas Henry, and he cribbed Priestley's work, or we should
Speaker 1: say he read it and then he applied it. He
Speaker 1: made his water in these twelve gallon barrels. And then
Speaker 1: someone heard about Priestley, someone heard about Henry, someone heard
Speaker 1: about some other guys. One of the main characters in
Speaker 1: the history of soda Jacob Schwepp, a Swiss jeweler who said, hey,
Speaker 1: I can play along at home. He started selling his
Speaker 1: artificial mineral waters, still unflavored, to people in Geneva where
Speaker 1: he lived, and then later he started his own business
Speaker 1: in London, which makes Sweps super old and the oldest
Speaker 1: soda brand still around today.
Speaker 2: It's honestly still one of the best. You know, I
Speaker 2: think that the Ginger Sweps ginger Ale is, you know,
Speaker 2: pretty universally considered one of the best, and it's just
Speaker 2: the most popular one you see on the shelf. You'll
Speaker 2: see Seagrums every now and then. But it's funny how
Speaker 2: like even coc Cola purchase I believe put coca and
Speaker 2: pepsi they own Schweps and Seagrums, respectively. I can't remember
Speaker 2: which owns which, but they didn't make it themselves because
Speaker 2: this pre existing legacy company had already kind of cornered
Speaker 2: the market and the recipe on ginger Ale.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Schweps in this regard reminds me a little
Speaker 1: bit of Henry Kissinger Jimmy Carter, because it outlived so
Speaker 1: many of its competitors rivals. Some folks will tell you
Speaker 1: there's another another brand that deserves the title of first
Speaker 1: soda or oldest soda, and that's something called Verners, which
Speaker 1: comes about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really popular war I'm certain I believe in Michigan
Speaker 2: had to.
Speaker 3: Do very big in Michigan. That's a very very very popular.
Speaker 2: They make a spicy one. If I'm not missing incredibly spicy. Great.
Speaker 3: I don't drink sod at all, but you know I
Speaker 3: will have a Werner's a fresh. Verners just don't get
Speaker 3: the two leader of it, because after you crack it open,
Speaker 3: it goes from spicy to.
Speaker 2: Not that's and then it's just then it's just weird,
Speaker 2: gross spicy fla favored water exactly.
Speaker 1: And also so we wanted to give Verners their due,
Speaker 1: and we want to note that in the great swep
Speaker 1: Verner's Debate, it really depends on how we define soft drink,
Speaker 1: and there have been some serious debates about it. You
Speaker 1: can find them online. It's amazing how people spend their time.
Speaker 2: Don't we know it? Right? Yeah? I mean look at us. Right.
Speaker 1: So this was again mostly these kinds of drinks were
Speaker 1: considered medicinal, and people would make different grades of carbonated water.
Speaker 1: There was a letter written by a business tycoon named
Speaker 1: Matthew Bolton to the philosopher Erasmus star When in seventeen
Speaker 1: eighty four, and Noel, I thought you would enjoy this
Speaker 1: when they break down the types of carbonated water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jay Schwepp prepares his mineral waters in three varieties.
Speaker 2: Number one for common drinking with dinner, Number two for
Speaker 2: nephritic nephritic patients. Help me out with that one, any problems,
Speaker 2: got it? Okay? And because once again we're still leaning
Speaker 2: into the medicinal aspect of these products at this point.
Speaker 2: And number three contains the most alkali, given only in
Speaker 2: more violent cases. I don't know what that means. I
Speaker 2: don't either, what the use your imagination?
Speaker 1: You are fatherless in a violent case, Yes, you have
Speaker 1: a violent kidney. So these things were humming along, but
Speaker 1: we still haven't reached the age of modern soda quite yet.
Speaker 1: The first US patent for the creation of what they
Speaker 1: called imitation mineral water comes around eighteen ten.
Speaker 2: That's so funny because it really is they're trying to
Speaker 2: duplicate again from the earliest days, the effects of a
Speaker 2: very natural process. So I love that. You know, the
Speaker 2: whole idea for this racket comes from nature. So yeah,
Speaker 2: to your point, The first US patent comes through around
Speaker 2: eighteen ten. Then in eighteen nineteen, a guy named Samuel
Speaker 2: Fanstock creates the modern day roughly soda fountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is cool because it's older than I thought.
Speaker 1: I guess I assumed it was late eighteen hundreds or
Speaker 1: post Civil war, but they were. People were already expanding
Speaker 1: all aspects of this industry. Nobody knows to this very day,
Speaker 1: nobody knows exactly who started adding flavoring and sweeteners to soda,
Speaker 1: and no one knows exactly when they did it.
Speaker 2: But we know that by.
Speaker 1: The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, people were already
Speaker 1: selling wine with carbonated water.
Speaker 2: They were Lincoln the weird to me. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess Champagne, you know, honestly, unless it
Speaker 2: comes from the Champagne region of France, it's usually just
Speaker 2: considered a sparkling wine, so a white. But can you
Speaker 2: imagine drinking carbonated red wine? That seems just wrong.
Speaker 1: I saw I saw someone at a party, I want
Speaker 1: to say, who was drinking some kind of like die
Speaker 1: coke red wine thing.
Speaker 2: That's the thing I have heard about that. Yeah, coc
Speaker 2: and red wine is a thing. Maybe I'll try it.
Speaker 3: What do you guys think of those people who put
Speaker 3: coffee in their coke?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I actually just heard about that watching a new
Speaker 2: show called Murder at the End of the World from
Speaker 2: Oh Gosh, the woman and her directing partner who did
Speaker 2: like another Earth and sound of my voice and the
Speaker 2: OA it's good. But there's a whole scene involving a
Speaker 2: character putting coke into their coffee or vice versa, and
Speaker 2: then the other person in the scene tries it and
Speaker 2: find it disgusting. But you may recall there was a
Speaker 2: brief period where a Coca Cola had a coffee coke hybrid. Right,
Speaker 2: it was black. I wanted to like it.
Speaker 1: It was not good. It was not good. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that got off the drawing board.
Speaker 2: But well, because I think it's one of those things
Speaker 2: like people just do and they're like, well, what if
Speaker 2: we just give it to them? Give people what they want.
Speaker 2: But it turns out maybe there aren't that many people
Speaker 2: that want that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe they're sample size was weird. Maybe they talked
Speaker 1: only to the twelve people who like that. But we say,
Speaker 1: as coffee lovers folks, by the way, so we know
Speaker 1: that coke when they made coke black, and when pepsi
Speaker 1: makes pepsi clear and all those things. They're really just
Speaker 1: doing iterations of a centuries old phenomenon. Which is adding
Speaker 1: flavors and any kind of kick to to regular old
Speaker 1: seltzer water. Ginger becomes popular in eighteen twenty is a flavoring,
Speaker 1: then lemon, and then tonic.
Speaker 2: Well, and to your point about the soda fountain, you
Speaker 2: know what we have today that are still referred to
Speaker 2: as fountain drinks. All of that stuff is mixed kind
Speaker 2: of by machine or like by these you know, this
Speaker 2: process where it just injects the flavoring into the carbonated water.
Speaker 2: Which is also why you'll find that a fountain drink
Speaker 2: version of a particular soda tastes different a lot of
Speaker 2: times than the canned or bottled version because it the
Speaker 2: mix isn't always scientifically a curio, but the soda fountain
Speaker 2: early days, it was, you know, a person that was
Speaker 2: hand mixing these things, you know, like the old soda jerk.
Speaker 1: Also, not to turn anybody into germophobes, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the variants in soda, in soda from a fountain
Speaker 1: depends on whether or not the fountain is clean exactly.
Speaker 2: You ever had like a diet coke from a soda fountain,
Speaker 2: and it tastes a whole hell of a lot like
Speaker 2: regular coke. That's because there's some what's the word contamination.
Speaker 1: Going on there, and people quickly realized that they could,
Speaker 1: with relatively little effort, they could turn one product line
Speaker 1: of plain old saltz water into a monopoly of different
Speaker 1: spicy flavored drinks pineapple, orange, lemon, apple, just like picture
Speaker 1: of fruit. And at some point someone decided it should
Speaker 1: also be a soda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you know, we've again with the kind of
Speaker 2: craze of you know, just Seltzer's one joke that I
Speaker 2: always love to repeat. I don't remember where I heard it,
Speaker 2: but they say, like Lacroix flavored Lacroix tastes like somebody
Speaker 2: whispered the name of a fruit from the next room.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Whatever, take with that, do with it what you will.
Speaker 2: But of course, these you know, syrup based.
Speaker 3: Drinks, you guys never had the lemon. I hate it
Speaker 3: and I don't like Yeah, there's no quiz.
Speaker 2: It's too much, it's too heavy, and it tastes more
Speaker 2: like oil, like like it says it's like you're drinking
Speaker 2: essential oils or something that's sweet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm also, just to be honest, I'm not the biggest
Speaker 1: fan La Croix is ever gonna have. I respect people's
Speaker 1: right to enjoy what they want, but I'll just drink
Speaker 1: water and then eat whatever fruit that stuff.
Speaker 2: Propos to be smart. I like Polar, I think better
Speaker 2: than Lacroix. Polar is pretty good. They're on black cherry.
Speaker 2: Montanees is a local Seltzer company outfit here and the
Speaker 2: lad But what I was saying, the syrups in question
Speaker 2: here that we're being used in the eighteen sixty five
Speaker 2: incredibly sweet. And that was by design. Yeah, that was
Speaker 2: the whole idea. It was really like a treat kind
Speaker 2: of a drink.
Speaker 1: And they're figuring it out as they go, As we
Speaker 1: say in Corporate America, they're sort of building the plane
Speaker 1: while they're flying it, and they make a lot of
Speaker 1: great breakthroughs, but of course there are also a lot
Speaker 1: of mistakes along the way. Probably the most infamous mistake
Speaker 1: in the history of soda occurs in eighteen eighty five
Speaker 1: when a guy named Charles Alderton, who must have been
Speaker 1: having a terrible day, invents something that is called doctor Pepper.
Speaker 1: It was originally called Waco and people are still drinking
Speaker 1: it of their own volition. You don't I get I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have that many ingredients make a
Speaker 1: couple of them not.
Speaker 2: Poop fair enough. I don't know about that. We'll get
Speaker 2: to it. But to me, Doctor Pepper always I think
Speaker 2: was it was kind of one of those things where
Speaker 2: it's like, what is this supposed to taste? Like it's
Speaker 2: vaguely black cherry but sort of not. Let's hear more
Speaker 2: about this, Ben, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 1: This is this is the side note. Yeah, I'm really
Speaker 1: glad you talked about the taste.
Speaker 2: This is. This is so weird.
Speaker 1: Uh, but we do know what Alderton was attempting to
Speaker 1: do with Waco now known as Doctor Pepper. The story
Speaker 1: is no true this is. But the story is that
Speaker 1: he was working in a in a pharmacy and he
Speaker 1: was trying to recreate the He wanted the soda to
Speaker 1: taste the way that the pharmacy smelled.
Speaker 2: Okay, so medicinal like cleaning product like bleach. What are
Speaker 2: we talking about here?
Speaker 1: I see there's a there's a method to the madness, Noll.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that I'm dunking on Doctor Pepper. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm leaning into it. I just should get a funny
Speaker 1: but uh but yes, and you know, honestly, Doctor Pepper
Speaker 1: went on to have an amazing uh product, but the
Speaker 1: whole game changed very shortly afterwards. Like doctor Pepper invented
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, just one year later, a guy in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia in eighteen eighty six he invents something called coca cola,
Speaker 1: and he does it. The rumor is to help him
Speaker 1: kick his war feet out.
Speaker 2: Oh weird. What's the guy's name again? I always forget
Speaker 2: the coke guys?
Speaker 1: John Pemberton.
Speaker 2: Pemberton, that's right. So, yeah, you've got some nice ub
Speaker 2: let's call them honorifics. I guess he've made up for
Speaker 2: the Spello, the Gretzki of guzzle, Oh, the tiger Woods
Speaker 2: of tonic water, the Kobe Bryant of soda. Yeah, no, accurate.
Speaker 2: This guy really did change the game for better or worse.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty six, John Pemberton did just that. He
Speaker 2: invented coca cola, and the history of coke is rife.
Speaker 2: You know, we've all heard the rumors that are largely
Speaker 2: true that the original recipe of coca cola did in
Speaker 2: fact contain cocaine in addition to the cola nuts, not
Speaker 2: to be confused with koala nuts. Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, cocaine had a much less sinister reputation.
Speaker 2: They gave you a papa, It gave you a little zip.
Speaker 2: It was in a lot of stuff back then. It
Speaker 2: sure was a lot.
Speaker 1: Of metals, a lot, a lot of medicine. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this all happens during the period of rapid expansion. By
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, there are one hundred and twenty three bottling
Speaker 1: plants for soft drinks in the US, and then just
Speaker 1: ten years later there are three hundred and eighty seven.
Speaker 1: By nineteen hundred, there are almost three thousand different plants
Speaker 1: just making soda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, popular stuff. It really did kind of kick off
Speaker 2: a bit of a craze, but still doesn't quite explain
Speaker 2: the absolutely meteoric rise of soda and how I just
Speaker 2: became such a staple. And believe it or not, we
Speaker 2: really owe a lot of credit to the temperance movement,
Speaker 2: the idea of being a teetotaler and soda being sort
Speaker 2: of a mandated I guess, substitute for alcoholic beverages. People
Speaker 2: needed something to take the edge off, and it did
Speaker 2: contain you know, chemicals, you know, caffeine, sugar. Obviously, it
Speaker 2: made you feel something. It's better than you know, not drinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, these party police here's how I picture it.
Speaker 1: I picture it like they're kind of militant. They had
Speaker 1: a reputation.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sorry. They they had cocaine in them too.
Speaker 2: By the way, they really did make you feel something better, right,
Speaker 2: carry on there.
Speaker 1: It's weird because I'm picturing in my mind a media
Speaker 1: of teetotalers and they're worried about their public image, and
Speaker 1: they're like, guys, people are saying that we're not fun,
Speaker 1: and well, don't listen to them. They're drunk, and they say, no,
Speaker 1: we need something, We need something positive. So we're not
Speaker 1: a movement that's just dedicated to eradicating something. We need
Speaker 1: an alternative. So let's get the kids hanging out at
Speaker 1: pharmacies and selling soft drinks a soda fountains. That made
Speaker 1: those places wholesome social hanging spots, like going to a
Speaker 1: community center or something. And then that made in the
Speaker 1: teetotaler calculus that made bars and later speakeasies even worse.
Speaker 1: These were like the last refuges of low lifes and
Speaker 1: degenerates before they reached the grave.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're not wrong, you know, there are certain
Speaker 2: type of dive bar situations that are the sort of
Speaker 2: roosting places for you know, the problematic elements, you know,
Speaker 2: folks that are maybe what you might call problem drinkers.
Speaker 2: You're more likely to see a fight or a knifing,
Speaker 2: you know, break out in one of these spots than
Speaker 2: you would say, at a soda fountain or what we
Speaker 2: call it.
Speaker 3: Like, I feel like I've worked in many of these places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you certainly have, Max, That's where we first became
Speaker 2: acquainted with one another, and you worked at a pretty
Speaker 2: reputable joint. But there are certain spots that, you know,
Speaker 2: especially in bigger cities, where you may well not be
Speaker 2: welcome if you're not a known quantity.
Speaker 3: I actually got to jump in here because I legitimately
Speaker 3: cannot remember the name of this place in Chicago, so
Speaker 3: I can't really slander them. But there's this bar in Chicago.
Speaker 3: It's cash only, and you have to I forget that
Speaker 3: there's a way to get in. But there's like the
Speaker 3: big thing about it is it's everyone knows like everything
Speaker 3: they're doing inside is illegal, Like they're selling like boozze,
Speaker 3: Like after hours, you can't smoke inside any building in Chicago.
Speaker 3: People are just chain smoking, and there's all the sides
Speaker 3: up from the said like, oh, all this stuff. But
Speaker 3: it's just so funny to walk in because it's like
Speaker 3: there's this facade and everyone knows this is a total facade,
Speaker 3: but as soon as you walk in, it's like nope.
Speaker 3: And the one thing is all the bartenders are all
Speaker 3: really old and they're all really mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's stuff I've seen. I've seen similar things, Like
Speaker 1: in London, I stumbled onto a place through through contact
Speaker 1: and it was you were able to smoke cigarettes inside,
Speaker 1: probably other stuff too. I didn't stay too long. It's
Speaker 1: a weird vibe and they were doing after hours things.
Speaker 1: In their loophole was that they are a private club
Speaker 1: or they're a private property kind of thing, so they're
Speaker 1: not quote unquote open to the public.
Speaker 3: I think they had something similar to that. But I
Speaker 3: think their loophole was they had some hands in organized crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. Not unusual and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, you know we talk about these speakeasies, right
Speaker 2: and once you know, the temperance movement took hold and
Speaker 2: the laws changed and alcohol was illegal, that did become
Speaker 2: a hotbed of organized crime. A lot of these locations
Speaker 2: were run by you know, the mob or mob like elements.
Speaker 1: And just like with boot lagging, transportation played a big
Speaker 1: role in the rise of soda because for a while,
Speaker 1: you could only get this stuff if you were living
Speaker 1: in proximity of some sort to a factory and there
Speaker 1: was a horse drawn carriage that could reach you. But
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, we have gas powered trucks
Speaker 1: and automobiles. The American shipping industry is experiencing a revolution,
Speaker 1: and the reach of soda extends as well. So by
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, the US alone is home to more than
Speaker 1: five thousand bottling plants, and that's all they do, day in,
Speaker 1: day out. They make weird Sodas the first vending machines
Speaker 1: come along, they put soda into cups. And I can't
Speaker 1: say cups for some reason without remembering that amazing meme
Speaker 1: of the lizard drinking out of cups. I think we
Speaker 1: talked about this on stuff. They want you to know.
Speaker 1: Oh it's classic, not all of it aged well, but
Speaker 1: it's so funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's take a quick pause in the history,
Speaker 2: just talk a little bit more about process. We talked
Speaker 2: about injecting the bubbles. You know, into still water to
Speaker 2: kind of mimic the effects and qualities of this naturally
Speaker 2: carbonated stuff. But you know, these early processes were much more,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of single serving. Right, We're now in
Speaker 2: a situation where we've got to mass produce this stuff.
Speaker 2: So how does the technology start to evolve to meet
Speaker 2: the demand. Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it starts with the water. Of course, often that's
Speaker 1: coming from a safe processed municipal supply, but just to
Speaker 1: be certain, these companies also will process it further, so
Speaker 1: it's weird without getting two in the weeds. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: just run it through a sand filter to get rid
Speaker 1: of solid matter, and then they run it through an
Speaker 1: activated carbon purifier to get rid of chlorine color and
Speaker 1: other taste or odors, except in the case of course
Speaker 1: Doctor Pepper, where I think they just go to a
Speaker 1: sewer and start scooping stuff up with a lab.
Speaker 2: How do you really feel about Doctor Pepper?
Speaker 1: We had to pick one. We had to pick one
Speaker 1: to dunk on. Max is giving a thumbs down. Wait, Max,
Speaker 1: are you the I know?
Speaker 2: I I don't think so at all.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I hate Doctor Pepper because they have like the most
Speaker 3: annoying commercials of all time to play NonStop during college football.
Speaker 3: I've also adopted this thing where I don't buy products
Speaker 3: that advertise during college football fa So I've continued to
Speaker 3: not buy doctor Pepper, and.
Speaker 2: That is a reasonable bias. It is not something that
Speaker 2: I necessarily reached for when I'm having my little soda treat.
Speaker 2: But I don't hate it, perhaps as much as you
Speaker 2: guys do. And there are better versions of it, like
Speaker 2: what is it? You know, geez not Werners, but there's
Speaker 2: another you see him at like cool like Delis like
Speaker 2: in New York. It's got this weird bearded man on
Speaker 2: the on the like, but they have a really good
Speaker 2: black cherry Doctor Brown Doctor Brown's good. That's not the
Speaker 2: one that is very similar, very much in the same wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: They also Doctor Brown's has an excellent black cherry soda.
Speaker 2: So of course, all of this starts, like you said,
Speaker 2: with water. Oftentimes, as we know, even with bottled water
Speaker 2: made by these soda magnates that they got into the
Speaker 2: business and hey, let's just sell the stuff that we
Speaker 2: make the stuff out of. It just comes from the
Speaker 2: good old fashioned municipal water supply, though it is oftentimes
Speaker 2: processed a little bit further in order to maintain some
Speaker 2: sort of standards for the finished product. Impurities within water
Speaker 2: supplies for different parts of the country. Municipalities can of
Speaker 2: course vary from time to time, and there are allowable
Speaker 2: levels of impurities that can vary as well by municipality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in most plants these days, the water is
Speaker 1: going to go through a process called super chlorination and coagulation.
Speaker 1: For two hours. The water gets exposed to a cartoonishly
Speaker 1: high amount of chlorine and to something called a floculent.
Speaker 1: Floculant is just a fancy word for thing that removes
Speaker 1: algae and bacteria and then it goes back through this
Speaker 1: sand filter carbon thing. But at that point you still
Speaker 1: don't have something you can sell as soda. You need
Speaker 1: the bubbles, you need the magic. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: this got me watching the old school Gene Wilder, Willy
Speaker 1: Wonka or Charlie in the chocolate factory. It holds up, man,
Speaker 1: it's really good.
Speaker 2: So now we've purified the water to some degree, let's
Speaker 2: talk about how we get those bubbles, which is kind
Speaker 2: of the feature of the whole product into said water.
Speaker 2: Carbon dioxide gas gives these beverages that sparkle that bites.
Speaker 2: And also it makes it more shelf stable, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: It really does. Yeah, And the carbonation is created by
Speaker 1: chilling the liquid and then cascading it in thin layers
Speaker 1: over a series of plates in this enclosure that has
Speaker 1: pressurized carbon dioxide gas. It's a really cool like how
Speaker 1: stuff gets made opportunity. You know, you can see videos
Speaker 1: of this on YouTube. And the amount of gas the
Speaker 1: water will absorb depends on how high the pressure is
Speaker 1: and how low the temperature is. So it's fascinating science.
Speaker 1: We're still not done. Now we've got basically selter our
Speaker 1: imitation mineral water, but everybody's selling seltzer. How do we
Speaker 1: hush it up a little? How do we add some
Speaker 1: so an angle?
Speaker 2: You know? Yeah, syrups right, and you know, of course
Speaker 2: we've got syrups that are naturally occurring, like maple syrup,
Speaker 2: you know, from the sap of the maple tree. But
Speaker 2: when you're talking about concentration of flavor, you know, to
Speaker 2: get that sort of essence of like a particular type
Speaker 2: of flavor with be a lemon, black, cherry, raspberry, or
Speaker 2: what have you, we're talking about creating this stuff. First,
Speaker 2: you have a simple syrup which is a great thing
Speaker 2: in and of itself. I'm a big fan of using
Speaker 2: simple syrup and iced coffee or even regular coffee, which
Speaker 2: is basically just cooking down sugar into sort of a
Speaker 2: more viscous solution, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a solution of water and sugar, and
Speaker 1: you can take some other steps. You can treat this
Speaker 1: simple sugar with carbon you can filter it if sugar
Speaker 1: is not you know, top quality, and all the other
Speaker 1: ingredients are added in a precise order to create what's
Speaker 1: called the finished syrup. This is where stuff like a
Speaker 1: secret recipe comes in, because it's not just what you
Speaker 1: put in. It's when you combine these things your order
Speaker 1: of operations.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, hence the Willy wonknness of it all. And
Speaker 2: there are two methods for producing that finished syrup. In
Speaker 2: the first method, the syrup is diluted with water and
Speaker 2: then the product gets cooled carbonated. You know, it's cooked
Speaker 2: right like I said, with making the simple syrup, and
Speaker 2: then it's cooled down, carbonated and bottles. And in the
Speaker 2: second to the maker actually measures a precise amount of
Speaker 2: syrup into each bottle. You got the carbonated water separately,
Speaker 2: then you fill it with the syrup or add it
Speaker 2: and first then you know, dilute it with the carbonated water.
Speaker 2: In either case, the sugar is about fifty one to
Speaker 2: sixty percent of the syrup and it is reduced to
Speaker 2: around eight to thirteen percent in the finished beverage, So
Speaker 2: it is considerably I guess, packing a lot of punch.
Speaker 2: It's a very dense like it's like dark matter, you know,
Speaker 2: when it comes to flavoring.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, if you ever, if you ever worked
Speaker 1: in a restaurant or hospititality industry, you may have heard
Speaker 1: of people who just tried the straight syrup. It's very
Speaker 1: much not as cool as the soda. It's just too concentrated, right,
Speaker 1: And one twelve ounce soft drink can contain more than
Speaker 1: forty grams of sugar as a result. Here, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of sugar, right.
Speaker 2: Seeing those images in like health class where it's like
Speaker 2: it shows you the pile of sugar, the physical pile
Speaker 2: of sugar that would go into forty grams of sugar
Speaker 2: physically to look at is a frickin' ant hill of sugar.
Speaker 2: I saw.
Speaker 1: I saw Bernie Sanders, the politician Bernie Sanders recently and
Speaker 1: his his rant for the day was soda and children.
Speaker 1: And he had like a twenty ounce Coca cola bottle
Speaker 1: that buddy yeah, and he was, yeah, it's what he asked,
Speaker 1: Coca cola bottle.
Speaker 4: And he's like, this single bottle of Coca cola alone
Speaker 4: contains fourteen tea spoons of sugar. That's far more than
Speaker 4: is recommended or even allowed for twoldren.
Speaker 2: That's ten percent of the five percent of the one
Speaker 2: percent of the allowable limits of sugar intake for the
Speaker 2: American people.
Speaker 1: And then he'll bet his percentages.
Speaker 2: It's Bernie Sanders catchphrase.
Speaker 1: And shout out to who whatever genius is cutting his hair.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, I'm I'm personally hey.
Speaker 2: He doesn't. He just kind of runs his fingers.
Speaker 1: I find him just such a fascinating historical.
Speaker 3: Is not the best thing ever. It was BID's inauguration.
Speaker 3: He wore these ned and yeah, they got him on.
Speaker 3: Colbert got him on like right afterwards. Ask him and
Speaker 3: he's like he like said who it was, and then
Speaker 3: he very quickly tried to retract it because he's like
Speaker 3: everyone's like flooding this woman asking for more, and she
Speaker 3: just made she like knitted them for him, and everyone's like,
Speaker 3: can we get some of these herself? And she's like, no,
Speaker 3: this is just something I did. I like to knit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is.
Speaker 1: He always looks like in so many appearances, I I
Speaker 1: can't disassociate him from his cousin's fantastic show Curb Your Enthusiasm,
Speaker 1: and I always feel like he's sort of in a
Speaker 1: Curb Your Enthusiasm episode when.
Speaker 2: I say her distant cousins that, I think, yeah, I say, though, yeah,
Speaker 2: they definitely have a vibe that they share. So we've
Speaker 2: got this mega, mega concentrated flavor you know, crack that
Speaker 2: is now you know, uh, injected into the carbonated water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and look, politics aside, our Palbernie is absolutely correct
Speaker 1: about the health concerns surrounding soda. It's delicious, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's it's a heck of a treat, but it is
Speaker 1: not healthy. And here we're going to pause, not for
Speaker 1: a soda break. We're staying strong throughout this episode. But
Speaker 1: this is gonna have to be a two parter because
Speaker 1: we're setting up the history, some of which is ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but we have yet to get to the most ridiculous part,
Speaker 1: which is the sodas of yesteryear.
Speaker 2: That's right, and the Yeah, there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 2: history there too, and just a lot of absurd marketing
Speaker 2: that goes into this kind of stuff, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: a lot about the nostalgia factor of it all is well.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams, his brother Alex Williams,
Speaker 2: who composed our theme.
Speaker 1: Big Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quizter, Big
Speaker 1: Big thanks to A. J. Jacobs aka the Puzzler. Check
Speaker 1: out our friends over on Ridiculous Crimes Aaron Elizabeth, Dan
Speaker 1: Dave if you want to hear more ridiculous often heist
Speaker 1: related history. And I'm hoping that we can. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about forever, but I'm hoping we could get a
Speaker 1: crossover going with them in the New Year.
Speaker 2: I think that's definitely gonna happen. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.