Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance

As schoolchildren learn, the invention of agriculture 12,000 years ago was among the great turning points in the human story. Farming created reliable food surpluses that allowed for the creation of big cities and states.

It also wrecked humanity’s teeth.

The new agricultural diet—full of carbohydrate- and sugar-rich cereals and grains—triggered an explosion of tooth decay. Millennia of oral misery ensued. Painful jaws were an inescapable part of daily life, and nothing could be done about it. As recently as the 1970s, most American 70-year-olds didn’t have a single tooth in their head. 

Then the dental outlook changed—slowly, at first, then rapidly.

In 1780, William Addis, an English rag trader, was thrown into jail, supposedly for inciting a riot. Confined in London’s infamous Newgate Prison, he carved a chicken bone into the prototype for a now-ubiquitous occupant of contemporary bathrooms: the toothbrush. He began selling them soon after he was released. Then, in 1873, came the first mass-produced commercial toothpaste: Colgate (yes, the same Colgate sold today). And the world began to change, or at least the world’s mouths did.

Subjects discussed include:

• The Grisly Dental Aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo
• Apparent Failures of Evolution
• Charles’s Astounding Dentists
• Early Modern English Prison Conditions
• Proper Stick Etiquette
• Origin of George Washington’s False Teeth
• Tidal Wave of Dental Exemptions from Second World War Draft
• Statistical Failures in Twentieth-Century Oral-Hygiene Testing
• The Fluoride War(s) 

References, further reading, and credits:

From Mount Vernon (Washington’s home, now a museum), a full exploration of the president’s false teeth, replete with images and videos.

The story, surprisingly interesting, of how our teeth evolved: Peter Ungar’s The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, 2018. 

Scholarly history of the toothbrush: Aditya Tadinada, et al. The evolution of a tooth brush: from antiquity to present: a mini-review, Journal of Dental Health, Oral Disorders & Therapy, 2015.

The wince-inducing tale of dentistry: James Wynbrandt, The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces, 2000.

World War II military video in which the army instructs recruits on how to brush their teeth. “Whatever it is, the majority of you fellas simply refuse to look after your teeth.”

Virginia’s Bloomberg Opinion article on the invention of nylon (story told in more detail in The Fabric of Civilization).

Charles’s Atlantic article on fluoridation (gift link).

Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance

Zillow photographs today routinely feature glamorous expansive kitchens with islands, track lighting, and gleaming appliances, inviting viewers to imagine gathering friends and family for dinner.

Historically, this is extremely strange.

For most of human history, people neither gathered around the table for a family meal nor hung around the kitchen. Instead, they mostly ate whenever they wanted, with whomever they wanted (although, to be sure, people have always celebrated communal feasts).

Far from flaunting their cooking areas, the first thing anybody with money did with the kitchen was to hide it—outdoors, if possible, in a separate space, where its smoke and smell would be unnoticeable. In the 19th century, the kitchen was brought indoors, but even then it was kept away from view. It was a place for servants. But over the twentieth century the entire interior of the house inverted itself…

Subjects discussed include:

• The Honeymooners
• Charles’s Pilgrim Ancestors
• Starches and Cellulose, Ripping Apart
• Slow Horse Digestive Systems
• Tiny Human Teeth
• Algonkian Stews
• No Chimneys, No Nails
• Virginia’s ‘70s “Breakfast Nook”
• Raw Carbs
• The Kitchen Triangle
• Biochemical Sugars
• RISD’s Universal Kitchen Project

References, further reading, and credits:

Ground-breaking examination on the role of fire in cooking and the rest of our lives: Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, 2009. 

Scholarly study of oldest known pottery: O.E. Craig, et al., Earliest Evidence for the Use of Pottery, 2013.

Archaeologists on Natufian feasting: David Eitam and James Schoenwetter, Feeding the Living, Feeding the Dead: Natufian as a Low-Level Food Production Society in the Southern Levant (15,000–11,500 Cal BP), Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society, 2020 

More than you could imagine knowing about Plains communal hunts: Eleanor Verbicky-Todd, Communal Buffalo Hunting Among the Plains Indians, 1984. 

Algonquian cooking: Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, 1588.

Early colonial cookery: Trudy Eden, The Early American Table: Food and Society in the New World, 2010.

Tower of London: Edward Impey and Geoffrey Parnell, G. The Tower of London: The Official Illustrated History, 2000.

Supper vs dinner: Anon. Has “Supper” Always Meant “Dinner”? Merriam-Webster.com, 2018.

William Bradford complains about Billingtons in Plimoth colony: Bradford, W. Of Plimoth Plantation. Boston: Wright & Potter, 1898 (1647-1648). Online

House fires in 19th century: Tebeau, M. Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003. Online

Kitchen triangle: Andrew. The Kitchen Work Triangle: An Expert Guide, Naked Kitchens, 2023.

RISD Universal Kitchen Project: Archives and summary, Rhode Island School of Design.

Lavishly illustrated volume on Julia Child’s kitchen: Paula J. Johnson, Julia Child’s Kitchen: The Design, Tools, Stories, and Legacy of an Iconic Space, 2024.

Child’s kitchen on exhibit at the National Museum of American History.

Virginia’s The Power of Glamour on Amazon

Good popular history of cooking, eating, and the technologies that make them possible: Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bea Wilson

General histories of the Western home and kitchen:

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, 2010.

Judith Flanders, The Making of Home: The 500-Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes, 2014. 

Winifred Gallagher, House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live, 2006.

Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities, 1982. 

Lucy Worsley, If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home, 2011.

Image credits:

Modern kitchen Seattle Municipal Archives

I worked out after work: Few sentences would have been more baffling to people in the 19^th century, especially if spoken by a woman. Join Virginia and Charles as they explore a little-noticed revolution in daily life: the transformation of hard physical labor from a daily burden to an emblem of personal virtue—and a globe-spanning, multibillion-dollar industry whose omnipresence is as much a sign of our time as social media beefs or flying drones.

Podcast website: http://abundance.institute/EverydayAbundance

They are everywhere: women carrying gym bags filled with sneakers, sports bras, and high-waisted leggings; men hauling duffels stuffed with performance joggers and training gear. So ubiquitous today is exercise culture—and so large the industries that support it—that it is hard to realize that they are thoroughly new phenomena, enabled by recent breakthroughs in textiles and materials. 

A century ago, people expended so much effort in their daily lives that the idea of seeking out more was literally unheard-of. A few isolated souls promoted “physical culture,” but exercise was not a common ideal, especially for women, until the arrival of one of the more important U.S. cultural figures in the 20^th century: Jack LaLanne, who launched the first televised workout program in 1953. And then came the 1960s, the discovery of “fitness,” and a revolution that literally reshaped the human body.

Virginia and Charles explore how exercise evolved from necessity to aspiration—and how gyms, Lycra, bodybuilding, aerobics, and athleisure conquered the modern world.

Subjects discussed include:

• Virginia as Class Traitor
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Body-Fashion Icon
• Charles Dickens’s Ideal Life
• Impact (Astounding, Decades-Long) of University of Oregon Track Team
• Indolence as Ambition
• Spandex, Empire of
• Jogging, its Rise and Fall
• Jane Fonda, Lioness of Leotards
• A Tiny Bit of Polymer Science and Engineering

References, further reading, and credits:

Getting Physical: The Rise of Fitness Culture in America, by Shelly McKenzie

“The Long-Run Growth in Obesity as a Function of Technological Change” by Tomas J. Philipson and Richard A. Posner

“Americans' waistlines have become the victims of economic progress,” Virginia’s 2001 New York Times column explaining this research (gift link)

Arthur Jones,  New York Times obit (gift link), Seattle Times obit

Frank Bond obits here and here

Kathrine Switzer’s account of becoming the first woman to officially enter the Boston marathon (registering as K.V. Switzer) in 1967. She was attacked by the race manager but finished the race.

Lycra by Kaori O’Connor

“If you love your workout gear, thank the girdles and Flexatards of the past,” by Danielle Friedman, Popular Science (excerpt from Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World).

“How Polyester Bounced Back,” Virginia’s article for Works in Progress

Correction: The President’s Council on Physical Fitness was renamed the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in 2010.

Nautilus demonstration video/photo courtesy of Aly Wilson, The Extreme Fitness Studio, Shreveport, Facebook, Instagram

Bowerman waffle sole shoes courtesy of Mark Cullen, The Cullen Collection