Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Earworms. There are those songs you get stuck in your head and just can't seem to shake. I'll spare you the torture of mentioning the names of a few, knowing what sort of impact they might have on your day, But I think we can all agree that earworms exist and can really burrow their way into our minds. There's no science behind it, from what I can tell, it just seems that every so often the composer happily stumbles upon a few notes arranged in just the right way that produce an almost infectious tune. Kids love to share them, adults love to hate them, and everyone does their best to avoid them if they can. One early version of an earworm started out life in France in the early seventeen hundreds. It was a folk song written to lament the death of the first Duke of Marlborough, who had been rumored to have died during a battle in seventeen o nine. Even though his death wasn't true, the song struck a chord and stuck around for many decades. It floated on the fringes of French society, known only by a few. It wasn't printed or included in collections of other songs. It was just the sort of tune you heard at a friend's house or at a local gathering, and if you remembered it, you might share it with someone else. And of course all the best earworms are really easy to remember. Then something changed in the seventeen eighties. The simple tunes started to get pulled into new compositions of the day, sort of a calling card that composers knew their listeners would understand and relate to. But things really took off when King Louis the sixteenth and his Queen Marie Antoinette had a new baby in sevent You see, Little Louis the seventeenth had his very own wet nurse, a poor woman from a small village south of Paris. One of the skills that she brought to the job was her knowledge of lesser known folk songs, and this one, the ear worm we're talking about today, known as the Marlborough has Left the War song, was a tune that had been floating around in her village for a very long time, so she sang it to little baby Louis, which of course meant that Marie Antoinette heard the tune in the process, and the earworm took roots. She started humming and singing it as she walked around the palace, infecting others in the process. From there, the song went viral in away most social media influencers could only dream of. It showed up in plays and musicals, It could be heard in the background at fancy dinner parties of the wealthy elite, and it was heard by tourists and travelers, so much so that some of them complained that the song was everywhere and they were sick of it. But that's not how earworms work. You can't just make them go away, can't you. From France, the little Song spread to England and from there out even further. Charles Dickens included it in an issue of his weekly magazine Household Words, and in Spain it's sometimes even sung at birthday parties But the biggest change, and the one that made it memorable to just about everyone around the world, was the new set of English lyrics that replaced the original French ones. Now no one really knows who wrote them. The words aren't a translation of the French words, just an entirely new set of lyrics paired up to the old folk song's melody, and the mood definitely changed since the original French song was about the death of a nobleman, and the new English version is more of a general celebration song, a celebration of someone great, someone special, someone jolly. But the rich story behind the song means that every time we sing it, we draw a line backwards in time to the early seventeen hundreds and straight through some of the most memorable figures in history. You might sing it at an office party or a gathering to celebrate a retirement, or maybe you just like the way the tune sounds and can't seem to get it out of your mind. It's an earworm, after all, one of the first, and I doubts it will ever go away. The song for He's a jolly good fellow. Everyone needs a hobby, something they can do to unwind and channel their creativity into Albert Einstein played piano and violin. Humphrey Bogart was an avid chess player, even once coming to a draw with noted Polish grandmaster Samuel Raszewski and actor Daniel day. Lewis left his craft in the mid nineteen nineties for ten months to pursue one of his passions, shoemaking. And then there was Horace born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in eighteen forty nine. Horace didn't play an instrument or hustle amateurs at chess. No, he didn't cobble together shoes In Italy, Horace Fletcher like to chew. As a young man, Fletcher traveled around performing odd jobs following his interests. He worked as a writer and artist, and even managed in New Orleans opera house for a time. He loved to read, and he indulged in many of life's pleasures, mainly food. It was this pleasure, however, that inflicted some of the worst pain he'd ever experienced in his life. For one, as he got older, he struggled with obesity and its side effects, such as chronic stomach pains. He also found himself being refused coverage from a life insurance policy, a rejection that sounded alarm bells for him. He quickly realized it was time to make a change. One day, while traveling to Chicago on business, the middle aged Fletcher began chewing his food. He'd always chewed his food before, but this time was different. He kept chewing, and chewing and chewing until all that was left was a liquid e goo on his tongue. He believed that this was the key to proper digestion and weight management. According to this new practice, which he dubbed Fletcherism, all food needs to be chewed until it has been turned into a liquid. Any solid particles were deemed unnecessary and could be spat out. It sounds absurd today, but at the time Fletcherism caught on, he became known as the Great Masticator and argued that his practice could increase a person's strength despite reducing the amount of food they actually ate. He also had strict rules about when to consume sustenance. Followers were instructed to avoid eating when they were sad or angry, and to wait until they reached a point that Fletcher called good and hungry. No midnight snacks for him. He started touring the United States giving lectures on his methods, methods which were scoffed at by doctors and scientists as nothing more than self important hokum. That didn't matter, though Fletcherism had reached far more important spokespeople than doctors. Celebrities and titans of industry had begun chewing with wild abandoned. Among them were John D. Rockefeller and author Upton Sinclair. Even Mark Twain was considered a friend. But something as important as eating healthy couldn't rely on word of mouth from business men and writers alone. Fletcher needed to show its merits definitively. With the help of Yale University's athletic department, the sixty year old master Cator put on a demonstration of his system and how it had reinvigorated his youthful stamina. He performed a series of strength and endurance tests, even competing alongside Yale's own athletes. According to the stories, he outperformed all of them, going so far as to lift three hundred pounds of dead weight with his right calf over three hundred times, quite a feat. Meanwhile, Fletcherism was working its way overseas, where London diners would throw munching parties. There, people would eat together in one big room, seated close together, chewing their food hundreds of times a minute until it had been reduced to liquid. Stop watches were even implemented to time how long people chewed. Fletcher continued to elaborate on his system. He devised menus where he listed how many choose it, took the breakdown specific foods, and pushed low protein diets. Although Fletcherism made its founder a millionaire, though the fad eventually fell out of favor. Physicians advocated against it, not only because it lacked empirical evidence to back up its claims, but also because its followers were at risk for things like constipation and other elements. Fletcherism was just one in a long line of food fats, right up there with Lord Byron's vinegar and water diet and the popular grapefruit diet of the nineteen thirties. And that's the problem with food fads. They promise good health and weight loss, but in reality their flaws simply make them too hard for people to swallow. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.

Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Earworms. There are those songs you get stuck in your head and just can't seem to shake. I'll spare you the torture of mentioning the names of a few, knowing what sort of impact they might have on your day, But I think we can all agree that earworms exist and can really burrow their way into our minds. There's no science behind it, from what I can tell, it just seems that every so often the composer happily stumbles upon a few notes arranged in just the right way that produce an almost infectious tune. Kids love to share them, adults love to hate them, and everyone does their best to avoid them if they can. One early version of an earworm started out life in France in the early seventeen hundreds. It was a folk song written to lament the death of the first Duke of Marlborough, who had been rumored to have died during a battle in seventeen o nine. Even though his death wasn't true, the song struck a chord and stuck around for many decades. It floated on the fringes of French society, known only by a few. It wasn't printed or included in collections of other songs. It was just the sort of tune you heard at a friend's house or at a local gathering, and if you remembered it, you might share it with someone else. And of course all the best earworms are really easy to remember. Then something changed in the seventeen eighties. The simple tunes started to get pulled into new compositions of the day, sort of a calling card that composers knew their listeners would understand and relate to. But things really took off when King Louis the sixteenth and his Queen Marie Antoinette had a new baby in sevent You see, Little Louis the seventeenth had his very own wet nurse, a poor woman from a small village south of Paris. One of the skills that she brought to the job was her knowledge of lesser known folk songs, and this one, the ear worm we're talking about today, known as the Marlborough has Left the War song, was a tune that had been floating around in her village for a very long time, so she sang it to little baby Louis, which of course meant that Marie Antoinette heard the tune in the process, and the earworm took roots. She started humming and singing it as she walked around the palace, infecting others in the process. From there, the song went viral in away most social media influencers could only dream of. It showed up in plays and musicals, It could be heard in the background at fancy dinner parties of the wealthy elite, and it was heard by tourists and travelers, so much so that some of them complained that the song was everywhere and they were sick of it. But that's not how earworms work. You can't just make them go away, can't you. From France, the little Song spread to England and from there out even further. Charles Dickens included it in an issue of his weekly magazine Household Words, and in Spain it's sometimes even sung at birthday parties But the biggest change, and the one that made it memorable to just about everyone around the world, was the new set of English lyrics that replaced the original French ones. Now no one really knows who wrote them. The words aren't a translation of the French words, just an entirely new set of lyrics paired up to the old folk song's melody, and the mood definitely changed since the original French song was about the death of a nobleman, and the new English version is more of a general celebration song, a celebration of someone great, someone special, someone jolly. But the rich story behind the song means that every time we sing it, we draw a line backwards in time to the early seventeen hundreds and straight through some of the most memorable figures in history. You might sing it at an office party or a gathering to celebrate a retirement, or maybe you just like the way the tune sounds and can't seem to get it out of your mind. It's an earworm, after all, one of the first, and I doubts it will ever go away. The song for He's a jolly good fellow. Everyone needs a hobby, something they can do to unwind and channel their creativity into Albert Einstein played piano and violin. Humphrey Bogart was an avid chess player, even once coming to a draw with noted Polish grandmaster Samuel Raszewski and actor Daniel day. Lewis left his craft in the mid nineteen nineties for ten months to pursue one of his passions, shoemaking. And then there was Horace born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in eighteen forty nine. Horace didn't play an instrument or hustle amateurs at chess. No, he didn't cobble together shoes In Italy, Horace Fletcher like to chew. As a young man, Fletcher traveled around performing odd jobs following his interests. He worked as a writer and artist, and even managed in New Orleans opera house for a time. He loved to read, and he indulged in many of life's pleasures, mainly food. It was this pleasure, however, that inflicted some of the worst pain he'd ever experienced in his life. For one, as he got older, he struggled with obesity and its side effects, such as chronic stomach pains. He also found himself being refused coverage from a life insurance policy, a rejection that sounded alarm bells for him. He quickly realized it was time to make a change. One day, while traveling to Chicago on business, the middle aged Fletcher began chewing his food. He'd always chewed his food before, but this time was different. He kept chewing, and chewing and chewing until all that was left was a liquid e goo on his tongue. He believed that this was the key to proper digestion and weight management. According to this new practice, which he dubbed Fletcherism, all food needs to be chewed until it has been turned into a liquid. Any solid particles were deemed unnecessary and could be spat out. It sounds absurd today, but at the time Fletcherism caught on, he became known as the Great Masticator and argued that his practice could increase a person's strength despite reducing the amount of food they actually ate. He also had strict rules about when to consume sustenance. Followers were instructed to avoid eating when they were sad or angry, and to wait until they reached a point that Fletcher called good and hungry. No midnight snacks for him. He started touring the United States giving lectures on his methods, methods which were scoffed at by doctors and scientists as nothing more than self important hokum. That didn't matter, though Fletcherism had reached far more important spokespeople than doctors. Celebrities and titans of industry had begun chewing with wild abandoned. Among them were John D. Rockefeller and author Upton Sinclair. Even Mark Twain was considered a friend. But something as important as eating healthy couldn't rely on word of mouth from business men and writers alone. Fletcher needed to show its merits definitively. With the help of Yale University's athletic department, the sixty year old master Cator put on a demonstration of his system and how it had reinvigorated his youthful stamina. He performed a series of strength and endurance tests, even competing alongside Yale's own athletes. According to the stories, he outperformed all of them, going so far as to lift three hundred pounds of dead weight with his right calf over three hundred times, quite a feat. Meanwhile, Fletcherism was working its way overseas, where London diners would throw munching parties. There, people would eat together in one big room, seated close together, chewing their food hundreds of times a minute until it had been reduced to liquid. Stop watches were even implemented to time how long people chewed. Fletcher continued to elaborate on his system. He devised menus where he listed how many choose it, took the breakdown specific foods, and pushed low protein diets. Although Fletcherism made its founder a millionaire, though the fad eventually fell out of favor. Physicians advocated against it, not only because it lacked empirical evidence to back up its claims, but also because its followers were at risk for things like constipation and other elements. Fletcherism was just one in a long line of food fats, right up there with Lord Byron's vinegar and water diet and the popular grapefruit diet of the nineteen thirties. And that's the problem with food fads. They promise good health and weight loss, but in reality their flaws simply make them too hard for people to swallow. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.