April 10, 2017
EP. 175 — Commonplace Ideas Invented More Recently Than You Think
Nowadays, there’s a huge emphasis on eating natural foods. Staying away from GMOs, pesticides, and processed sugars is generally thought of as a good thing. Some call it the paleo diet and it’s a way to harken back to a simpler time, when our ancestors ate gathered fruits and hunted animals.
Going paleo is very noble and all, but the problem is: the plants and animals we eat are nothing like they were thousands of years ago, let a hundred years ago. Before test tubes were ever a part of the equation, we selectively bred everything from cows and chickens to apples and bananas. You’d barf in your mouth just looking at an OG banana, let alone trying to eat it. And cows? They were bred from their ancestors, cattle-like animals called aurochs, who would fuck you up if you tried milking them.
The food we eat today and think of as normal is just one example of a historical blindspot we have where we think commonplace objects and concepts have been around forever. But in this week’s episode, Jack O’Brien is joined by Michael Swaim and Teresa Lee to discuss how things like food, love, racism and mourning dead children are all surprisingly recent developments.
Footnotes:
Article: Cracked: 7 Concepts We Totally Take For Granted, Like White People: https://goo.gl/dVJVIL
Article: Cracked: 6 Man-Made Things You Totally Thought Were Natural: https://goo.gl/QvjHtN
Article: Cracked: 5 Simple Things You Won’t Believe Are Recent Inventions: https://goo.gl/NzAfxQ
Article: Seeker: Cows Almost Impossible to Domesticate, DNA Reveals: https://goo.gl/w6Uai1
Article: Pacific Standard: How Lobster Got Fancy: https://goo.gl/qa1LaL
Article: Gawker: ‘Breathtaking’ Document Reveals Pepsi’s Logo is Pinnacle of Entire Universe: https://goo.gl/9tYW
Article: Time: The Invention of Teenagers: https://goo.gl/gWgJDs
Article: The New York Times: Who’s White?: https://goo.gl/fAzpSE
Podcast: Duke University Center for Documentary Studies: Seeing White: https://goo.gl/6fWI65
Text: Ralph Waldo Emerson: English Traits: https://goo.gl/LBPZFQ
Article: The Atlantic: Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist: https://goo.gl/F9McpQ
Scholarly Article: Did The Ancients Care When Their Children Died?: https://goo.gl/ozHK5a
The Romantic Love Test: https://goo.gl/ITk7yA
This episode is brought to you by Louis C.K. 2017 on Netflix, Harry’s (www.harrys.com/cracked), and Adam and Eve (www.adamandeve.com code: CRACKED).
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