Futility Closet - 214-The Poison Squad

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a $20,000 dot to a war of pants. This is episode 214. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1902, chemist Harvey Wiley launched a unique experiment to test the safety of food additives. He recruited a group of young men and fed them meals laced with chemicals to see what the effects might be.

Starting point is 00:00:38 In today's show, we'll describe Wiley's poison squad and his lifelong crusade for food safety. We'll describe Wiley's poison squat and his lifelong crusade for food safety. We'll also follow some garden paths and puzzle over some unwelcome weight loss news. At the turn of the 20th century, food manufacturers weren't regulated by the U.S. government. There were no federal requirements for labeling. A food's package didn't have to list its ingredients, and manufacturers were free to adulterate the contents. And adulterate they did. They put morphine in cough syrup that was given to babies, they represented cheap cottonseed oil as olive oil, and they diluted honey with glucose syrup. Fruit jams were often made from apple cores and peels that were thrown into a tank and flavored to order, and pepper and other spices were sometimes only ground nut shells.

Starting point is 00:01:28 In some cases, this was almost comical. The food commissioner of North Dakota could not find a can of potted chicken or potted turkey in his state that contained chicken or turkey in determinable quantities, and ten times the amount of Vermont maple syrup was sold every year than that state could produce. of Vermont maple syrup was sold every year, then that state could produce. Altogether, the Agriculture Department estimated that 15% of American manufactured food products were adulterated, and that consumers lost a billion dollars every year paying premium prices for inferior foods. Ostensibly, food safety fell to state and local governments, but as the food industry expanded nationwide, its trade increasingly qualified as interstate commerce,

Starting point is 00:02:04 which the states couldn't regulate. And increasingly, foods were made in factories, using untested chemicals as preservatives and coloring agents. Those chemicals were potentially dangerous, and they weren't listed on the labels. There had been increasing alarm about all this since the 1870s, when a pure food movement had started, and bills to improve food safety were introduced in Congress as early as 1897. But they kept getting shot down by the packing and canning industries. One reformer who was appalled at this state of affairs was a chemist named Harvey Washington Wiley. Wiley had been born on a farm in Indiana, and at age seven was already helping to plant and harvest natural crops. He took a medical degree at Indiana Medical College and a science degree

Starting point is 00:02:41 at Harvard, and by his late 30s he was teaching chemistry at Purdue. His inspiration came at age 34 when he went to Europe and saw his first polariscope, an instrument that could be used to analyze foods. He persuaded Purdue to buy one, and he found that almost none of the foodstuffs that he analyzed were pure. In 1883, he left academia and accepted a position in Washington as chief chemist at what is now the Department of Agriculture. There, he would be supporting the agricultural industries, but he could also work on developing tests for food purity, which would become his passion. He was convinced of the need for honest labeling and a legal standard of what constituted adulteration, one that would be set by experts, administered without political bias, and enforced by the courts. The food industry argued that it was only following

Starting point is 00:03:21 common trade practices and called Wiley a crank for interfering. Wiley asked for money and resources to pursue his cause, but lobbyists kept blocking his efforts. Finally, in 1902, Congress gave him $5,000 to study the effects of food additives on human volunteers. That was the chance he needed. He set up the test in a very memorable way. His labs were in the basement of the Agriculture Department on Independence Avenue. There he set up a kitchen and a dining room, and he recruited 12 young men who agreed to spend at least six months and up to a year in his service. And he hired a chef. The deal was this.

Starting point is 00:03:53 The men would get three meals every day for six months. They had to eat these meals in the lab's dining room, where each man's weight, pulse, and temperature would be recorded before he sat down. They could have no snacks between meals, and away from the table they could have only water, and each man had to carry a satchel everywhere he went to collect his urine and feces for laboratory analysis. The reason for this was that during each trial, the chef would put a steadily increasing amount of some additive into the food, an additive that was common in the nation's food supply but had never been tested. Once a trial started, the men could withdraw only if they got sick, in which case they'd be removed until they felt well enough to continue. Each of them agreed not to hold the government responsible for any harmful results.

Starting point is 00:04:33 The ethics here are certainly questionable, but Wiley disclosed his intentions to the young men. He had chosen them for their hardy constitutions. He figured that any dosage that affected them would put children and old people at even greater risk. Wiley's rule was that if large amounts of a preservative caused one of the volunteers to feel even temporary discomfort, he would recommend that it shouldn't be used in food because there was no way to control how much of it an individual in the general population might consume. Despite the risk, the volunteers were eager to participate. Wiley said the squad became the most highly advertised boarding house in the world. Most of them were either employees of the Bureau of Chemistry or students from Georgetown Medical College

Starting point is 00:05:07 who had been attracted by the promise of extra money and free room and board. They received no credit as individuals, and to this day, most of their identities are unknown. We know that all of them had passed the civil service exam, that all were judged to be of high moral character, and that all of them had reputations for sobriety and reliability. They began this odd existence in 1902, and the study continued for five years. Wiley made sure to limit each volunteer's service to a single 12-month term. He said that one year of this kind of life is as much as a young man wants.

Starting point is 00:05:36 In addition to stools and urine, their hair and sweat were collected, and they were given weekly physicals. One member who got a haircut without permission was ordered to go back to the barber to collect his hair. To begin, Wiley fed the men unadulterated food for 10 to 20 days to establish baseline readings of their health and symptoms. Then the chef began adding a half gram of borax to their butter. Borax is a ground mineral that was used to preserve meats. The men quickly noticed that the butter tasted metallic and stopped eating it. Wiley switched to putting borax in the milk and they stopped drinking that. Finally, he just gave them capsules filled

Starting point is 00:06:07 with borax and asked them to swallow them after the main course. As Wiley increased the dose, the men complained of diminished appetite, feelings of fullness, headaches, and abdominal pain. He said at the end, everyone's appetite was very badly affected, and some of them were unable any longer to eat the full amount. They developed persistent headaches in most cases, followed by general depression and debility. His report on borax was published in 1904. The effects on the men were evident even to casual observers. A reporter for the New York Times wrote, Today the men are thinner than usual and all show the effects of the strain.

Starting point is 00:06:39 And the study showed that the preservative wasn't excreted in their feces, perspiration, or respiration. Today we know that borax irritates tissues and can cause weight loss and damage to the reproductive system if it's used for an extended time. When I first started researching all this, I assumed it was a publicity stunt. Wiley was a crusader for food safety, and these experiments seemed tailor-made for news coverage. But in fact, the opposite is the case. Wiley was afraid that the media might trivialize his experiments, and he ordered a blackout and threatened to fire any member of the group who leaked information. But it was impossible to keep the story quiet. It was too good. Wiley had referred to his study as the hygienic table trial, but a Washington Post reporter, George Rothwell Brown, coined the term

Starting point is 00:07:17 poison squad, and reporters got so eager that he caught them trying to interview his chef through a basement window. He gave up and began to publicize the squad, and it quickly became a national sensation, even inspiring poems and songs. They nicknamed Wiley Old Borax. In the midst of this, he went on with the tests. His volunteers dined on saltpeter, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid, with sometimes alarming results. Copper sulfate, which food producers used to turn canned peas bright green, turned out to cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, liver damage, kidney damage, brain damage, and jaundice. Today it's used as a pesticide. Formaldehyde, which was used to preserve meat, is used today in embalming fluid. It's a known poison and a suspected carcinogen.

Starting point is 00:08:03 Wiley had to stop those tests early because the men couldn't get out of bed. Wiley became convinced that a new policy was needed. Chemical preservatives should be used in food only when necessary. It should fall to the producer to prove that they were safe, and every additive should appear on the label. These are the foundations of today's law and regulations. Wiley's first report was well-received, but food lobbyists were quickly alarmed at the findings and began to pressure Wiley's superiors to keep him quiet. Even the Secretary of Agriculture tried to suppress the results on benzoic acid. That report happened to get out only because a staff member mistakenly sent it for printing while the secretary was away on vacation. Wiley said his goal was to substantiate the

Starting point is 00:08:37 deleterious effects of food preservatives, and he didn't hide the fact that he hoped the study would get the government to regulate chemicals in food. Four of the compounds that he tested disappeared quickly from use, borax, salicylic acid, formaldehyde, and copper sulfate. Only formaldehyde was banned outright. But while Wiley was a crusader, he wasn't a zealot. He acknowledged that the use of some chemicals might be harmless, and that in some cases using preservatives might be preferable to the risk that food would spoil without them. But he insisted that using preservatives in small amounts didn't guarantee that they were safe. Some of them might still accumulate and pose a threat to public health. When the trials were over, the squad simply broke up. No long-term follow-up

Starting point is 00:09:13 studies were done, but anecdotal reports suggest that none of the members suffered any lasting harm. There was one accusation. In 1906, a member named Robert Vance Freeman died of tuberculosis, and his family blamed the borax he'd ingested and threatened to sue. Wiley had discharged Freeman from the study in 1903 when his symptoms prevented him from continuing, and he dismissed any idea that borax was involved in his death. No charges were ever filed, and Freeman's mother seems to have been given to exaggeration. She claimed that her son dropped one of the capsules and the boric acid had taken the paint off the floor. That was the only such case, and in fact, Wiley noted that many of the men had actually emerged healthier at the end of the study, probably because they were eating well and had agreed

Starting point is 00:09:51 to drink nothing but water. One of them, William Robinson, died at age 94 in 1979. As I mentioned, there was a growing public outcry about this issue, even apart from Wiley's experiments. Muckraking journalists were exposing abuses in the food and drug industries and identifying congressmen who opposed legislation. Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle came out in 1906 and exposed some appalling conditions in the American meat industry. And Wiley's work even inspired a little spate of copycat poison squads that tested everything from sulfites in fruit to caffeine in coffee. Wiley worked actively to publicize food safety,

Starting point is 00:10:23 lecturing to women's clubs and other groups to educate consumers about the issue, and a million women wrote to the White House supporting the Pure Food and Drug Act, new legislation that would stop companies from adding untested chemicals and fillers to food. They won the battle on June 30, 1906, when Teddy Roosevelt signed the Act, the nation's first law regulating food and pharmaceutical manufacturing. It had largely been written by Wiley, and he was appointed to oversee its administration. In fact, many people called it the Wiley Act. Two years later, 176 cases of alleged violation had been made, and proceedings had been successful in every case that had gone forward. A New York Times editorial read,

Starting point is 00:10:58 Before its enactment, folks had reason to suspect the presence of harmful preservatives in their meats, butter, milk, and cream, and in condiments, pie fillings, fruit jams, and fermented beverages. They were not sure that their clover honey was not made of corn stalks or the Vermont maple sugar of sugar cane. Patent medicine companies could advertise cures for cancer in consumption. They can no longer. After assuming responsibility for the act's enforcement, Wiley's Bureau of Chemistry grew steadily.

Starting point is 00:11:22 It would evolve eventually into the Food and Drug Administration, but it was an uphill fight. The industry hated Wiley, and every report he wrote made more enemies for him. That seemed only so bitterly against me is the best endorsement I could have that the methods of the Bureau of Chemistry are effective. Here's another exchange from a court case where Wiley was appearing as a witness. The industry attorney said, these tests were immensely important to the business world and involve thousands of dollars in property and products. Wiley said, I don't give a hang for the business world. What I care for is the health of the people. The attorney said, you consider that more important than the interests of those who have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in property and products? Wiley said, I most certainly do. Where there are hundreds of thousands of dollars involved, there are millions of lives hanging in the balance, which these investigations affect. It is these that I consider and not the business, which may be done by any corporation. and not the business which may be done by any corporation.

Starting point is 00:12:25 But he had no ambition for himself. In 1908, when Congress proposed increasing his salary from $3,500 to $5,000 a year, he said he was a bachelor, that his present salary was ample, and that if his pay were increased, he'd give away the extra money to a college. Industry worked constantly to paralyze or discredit the Act's provisions, and it constantly sought reasons to remove him from his post. The controversy that finally finished him, in 1912, was tiny. He had allowed a chemist to work at $20 a day when he should have worked at $9. Rather than punish Wiley, the president, William Howard Taft, exonerated him and all his associates. But Wiley had had enough and resigned. One headline read,

Starting point is 00:12:59 Women Weep as Watchdog of the Kitchen Quits After 29 years. He was out of government, but he wasn't finished with his work. He went on to the laboratories of Good Housekeeping magazine, where he stayed for 18 years, championing truth in labeling and other consumer issues. He worked out of his own chemistry labs in Washington, where he could monitor government activities and kept up the fight for tough regulations and pure, safe food. The public regarded him as a reliable authority, and the Good Housekeeping seal became a recognized consumer emblem. Interestingly, in 1927, he said he suspected that tobacco in any form might be harmful and that it might promote cancer. Good Housekeeping stopped accepting cigarette ads in 1952, but the Surgeon General didn't issue a formal warning until 1964, nearly 40 years after his warning.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Harvey Wiley died on June 30, 1930, on the 24th anniversary of the signing of the act he had fought so hard for. The New York Times praised what it called his successful 30 years war in support of the pure food and drugs law. His obituary in science called him a very mountain among men, a lion among fighters, a keen student of human nature, and a prince of good fellows. Senator Royal Copeland of New York said, no one has contributed more to the cause of pure food than this noble man. We as a people owe him a great debt. Last week we updated wallabies, and this week's marsupial is qualls.

Starting point is 00:14:29 A few of our listeners wrote in about the toad sausage puzzle from episode 210, spoiler alert. Apparently the timing of the puzzle was really coincidental, as qualls were in the news a few days after our episode came out last month. So for example, Rob Emick wrote, Dear Futility Closet, I immediately knew the answer to the qual lateral thinking puzzle having just read today's New York Times before listening to the Futility Closet while running. What are the chances of hearing about previously unknown to me quals twice in one day? As a reminder, quals are small carnivores

Starting point is 00:15:03 whose Australian populations have been severely threatened, in part because they've been eating poisonous cane toads that were introduced into Australia several decades ago. The article in the New York Times was about how scientists noted that in one area of Queensland, the qualls weren't eating these toxic toads and thus were doing better than populations in other areas. It turns out that some qualls apparently have a genetic aversion to eating toads, which is quite beneficial. Further, scientists discovered that if you breed these qualls with toad-eating ones, most of the offspring seem to inherit the toad aversion. So they are hoping that through selective breeding of the qualls, they can sort of fast-track evolution through

Starting point is 00:15:44 a process called targeted gene flow to help preserve the qualls, they can sort of fast-track evolution through a process called targeted gene flow to help preserve the quall populations. An article that I found in Nature expanded further on how important these targeted gene flow experiments are for areas like Australia, which currently has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world. It's hoped that a current real-world experiment with the quolls will demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique of boosting an adaptive trait in an at-risk population. If so, then this strategy could hopefully be applied to help other endangered species too, such as Tasmanian devils and corals on the Great Barrier Reef. Meanwhile, researchers are now waiting to see how many of

Starting point is 00:16:25 different kinds of qualls, some toad-eating, some toad-averse, and some hybrid offspring, will survive on a toad-infested island off Australia's north-central coast. While I was looking into the story on qualls, I came across another example of how this species seems to evolve rather rapidly in response to environmental changes. There was a story from the Australian ABC from a little earlier this month about how qualls who were removed to an island in 2003 to protect them from cane toads seemed to have lost their genetic instinct to avoid some predators. Conservationists had placed 45 qualls on Astle Island as a kind of

Starting point is 00:17:06 insurance against the extinction of the species. In a few years, the island's quall population boomed from that original 45 to about 8,000, which is pretty impressive. That's a lot. Meanwhile, researchers were discovering what we had covered in our puzzle, that qualls could be trained to avoid eating cane toads by making them sick from drug-laced toad treats. Researchers tested this training by releasing two groups of the Astle Island qualls into a national park, one group that had been trained and one that hadn't. The untrained qualls quickly ate toads and died, while the trained ones lived a bit longer before tending to be eaten by dingoes. Further experiments showed that the Astle Island quolls, unlike ones from Queensland,

Starting point is 00:17:51 didn't avoid the scent of a predator. Researchers were surprised that in no more than 13 generations, the quolls seemed to have lost this very important instinct. The point of putting them on Astle Island had been that they could be reintroduced back to their native areas to bolster quall populations in those areas, so now the question is how to reinstill the fear of dingoes. One possibility under consideration is placing some sterilized dingoes on the island to create selective pressure for dingo avoidance while ensuring that the dingo population won't grow and overly threaten the qualls. while ensuring that the dingo population won't grow and overly threaten the qualls. So I was thinking that maybe it's not so surprising that at least some qualls develop toad aversion, assuming that there could be a type of gene that could account for that, because there'd be a very strong selective pressure in that direction. But what did

Starting point is 00:18:39 surprise me was how quickly the Astle Island ones lost their instinct to avoid dingoes. To me, that seems to imply that there would be some disadvantage to qualls who tend to avoid dingoes, so that when the benefits of that behavior are removed, the negatives of the trait, whatever those might be, would cause the behavior to die out so quickly. But the benefits of avoiding predators are gigantic, you'd think. You would think, and so I was trying to think about that, because I was thinking in the absence of predators, if the trait is even neutral, you would expect to see it in at least some of the population. And apparently they just weren't seeing it anymore. So that seems to imply that

Starting point is 00:19:14 there's a strong negative or at least a significant negative to it. All I could come up with was that maybe qualls that avoid predators are just more cautious in general. And more cautious qualls don't find food as readily or don't find mates. Yeah. So being cautious is only good if there's an actual threat. Otherwise, it's actually to your detriment. Yeah, I agree. That's surprising. Besides passing along the New York Times story about qualls in his email, Rob also said, while on vacation in Cape Cod last week, I had a reminder of show 34 when I purchased a four pack of Spring Hill Jack London style porter. See attached photos. The beer was great and I saved a can. So if you are ever up in Poughkeepsie, New York, stop by. And we'll have photos of a can of Spring Hill Jack Porter in the show notes for those who remember the story from episode 34 and want to see them.

Starting point is 00:20:08 That's, it's a very colorful character, but that's not the first choice I'd make in making it a mascot of the product, you know? Beer? Yeah. Maybe if you drink enough of them, you think you're seeing Spring Hill Jack. Also on the puzzle from episode 210, Bert McMahan wrote, I know you guys like language ambiguity, so I thought you might want to know about one I just heard on this morning's episode. The puzzle started with, why are sausages made from toads dropped from a helicopter into the wilderness? Instead of hearing the puzzle as intended, I assumed you meant,

Starting point is 00:20:43 why do people make sausages from toads that were first dropped from a helicopter? And I thought, wow, what a great puzzle. I figured it out pretty quick, but that was a funny mental image I thought I'd share. I've always found these Garden Path-style sentences to be quite entertaining. Thanks again for such an awesome and enlightening podcast. That would be confusing. I guess we don't have an answer to a lateral thinking puzzle about that. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with one.

Starting point is 00:21:11 But according to the Wikipedia page that Bert helpfully sent a link to, a garden path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect. And garden path is a reference to the saying to be led down the garden path, which means to be deceived or tricked. These sentences start in a way that causes a false assumption about what the first part of the sentence means, which leads to the full sentence often seeming ungrammatical or making no sense, and often requires the reader to have to work a bit to parse the sentence differently. You can find several lists of such sentences on the internet,

Starting point is 00:21:47 and I'll have a link to one in the show notes that nicely helps you parse the sentences properly if you get stuck. A few examples of Garden Path sentences are, Mary gave the child the dog bit a band-aid. Wait, wait, wait. You want to see if you can figure it out? Mary bit, oh, I see. Mary gave the child the dog bit a band-aid.

Starting point is 00:22:07 Yeah, that helps. The girl told the story cried. The girl told the story cried. Wait, I still don't get it. The girl told the story... Oh, the girl who was told the story cried. Yeah. The dog that I had really loved bones.

Starting point is 00:22:30 The dog that I had really loved, Bones. The dog that I had really loved, Bones. And the old man, the boat. I'll let you see if you can figure out that one. The old man, the boat. Meaning old people, man. Yes. The old man, the boat. Good for you. I wonder if that happens in other languages. I was wondering that too. Yeah. I mean, I don that happens in other languages. I was wondering that too. Yeah. I mean, I don't know any other languages well enough to have a guess.

Starting point is 00:22:49 I would think it would have to. And while we're having fun with words, in episode 205, I read some of the output of a neural network that Dave Lawrence had trained on Bozeman, Montana police reports. Dave recently sent us some more neural net results, such as training a network on the titles of the 16,000 sound effects released by the BBC for public use. The list of BBC sound effects themselves tend to be a bit amusing to read through, including imaginative sound effects such as half a dozen werewolves or wild boars having tea, which sounds like it would have come from a neural net, but is actually a real sound effect. So it's someone's job to come up with those? It seems like they've

Starting point is 00:23:34 been just collecting these for many, many years, and somebody just released them, a whole library of them, to the public recently. And each one of them has a name. And each one of them has a name. And many of them are rather specific, such as man in 30-foot drainpipe crawling away from microphone, man in 30-foot drainpipe crawling away in steel-toe caps, man crawling away through a 30-foot drainpipe in a cave, man in 50-foot drainpipe approaching microphone. And there were a few more like that, and I was just wondering if it was the same man who had to crawl through all the drain pipes. That would be a real lifesaver if you're looking for exactly that effect. And they had just the one you were looking for. There are also a lot of really specific baby sound effects, such as baby girl, restless in cot,

Starting point is 00:24:19 early morning, nine months old, five-week-old baby boy crying, tired and hungry, weight 5.0 You could put all this in a time capsule and just confuse the heck out of someone. They also had some that were really, really specific, such as Street Scene, Christ Church, Outside Arts Center, Afternoon, Horse-Drawn Carriage Passes, Tram Approaches, Stops, Then Departs with Honks, Clanks, and Hiss of Steam. So feeding all of those titles into a neural network, Dave got some back out, such as liquid bubbling, fairly late morning. 15-month-old baby boy rowing. 34 men, weight 6.0 kilograms. Very small men.

Starting point is 00:25:17 Walking, two men and one jet airliner. Monks running, which made me wonder how monks sound different than other people running, two horses trotting onto a large computer, 100-year-olds in a theater, barley demolishing house of people, one horse eating steam train, and aircraft pig. You can hear all of the BBC sound effects if you're interested, but unfortunately, Dave does not have sound effects to go with his neural net output. So what an aircraft pig or a horse eating a steam train sounds like will have to remain a mystery. We should have a contest or something. Dave also fed the titles of our podcast episodes through the neural net and got the following back out.

Starting point is 00:26:08 And maybe some of these will suggest future episodes for us. The man who volunteered for lions. The unknown supervillain. The worst joke of the ballooning. The great derby murder corpses. The unlikely pigs of Mattoon. Voynich Manhatt, Crossing the Post Office,

Starting point is 00:26:29 Lateral Thinking Puzzles Nazis, The Mystery of the Rustless Farm, and one that kind of covers some of the breadth of our show in one title, The Disappearance of Science Murder. So thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us, and extra thanks to those who have also sent pronunciation help. If you have anything that you'd like to share with us, please send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:27:00 It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation, and I have to see if I can work out what is going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener David Palmer. A woman receives a tweet congratulating her on losing weight. She immediately knows that her husband is cheating on her. How? Okay.

Starting point is 00:27:22 A woman receives a tweet congratulating her on losing weight a tweet yes uh does it matter who the tweet is from yes congratulating her on losing weight oh well i was gonna say if she hasn't lost weight and so like she knows that her husband has been seen with another woman perhaps doing something compromising with a thin-looking woman, and she knows that she has not lost weight, then she would be like, well, he must be stepping out with somebody. That's not far wrong, but that's not it.

Starting point is 00:27:54 But it matters who the tweet was from. Yes. Somebody she knows personally? I can't answer that. Because you don't know, or because I phrased it funny? Rephrase it. Rephrase the first question or the question I just asked you?

Starting point is 00:28:13 The first question. I'm confused. Okay. Okay. The wife received a tweet from a single person? No. Ah. From like a group person? No. Ah. From like a group account?

Starting point is 00:28:28 No. The wife received a tweet. Yes. From a bot? From like an automated kind of? Yes. And since she knew somebody was impersonating her uh no what you mean by that okay um uh was this from a group like weight watchers or some group that would be concerned

Starting point is 00:28:57 with following her weight no no um some kind of a medical group no No. Okay. But you said it was sort of like an automated response. Yes. So it's not that somebody specifically wrote this tweet to her? Would you say it's like a form tweet that would go out to people on some event being triggered, some event triggering it? Not in the way that I think you mean that. She was the only one who received it. Right. But would somebody else have received it in a similar circumstance?

Starting point is 00:29:29 Yes. Like, that's what I meant by like, it's a form letter. It's a form tweet. Like it's, you know, when event A gets triggered, tweet X goes out. Yeah. Okay. But she knew she hadn't triggered it. That's right. So she's figuring somebody else triggered it, and she knew she hadn't triggered it that's right so she's figuring somebody somebody else triggered it and she knew that that meant that her husband was having an affair

Starting point is 00:29:50 yes so i guess there's different ways to go there it's it's i'm trying to think is that it could either be a question of that because her husband was seen with this other woman or this other woman was with her husband when the event was triggered, or somebody was impersonating her, or some third thing I'm not thinking of. No, it was the first. The first. So another woman was with her husband, and an event occurred that triggered this tweet.

Starting point is 00:30:19 Exactly. Okay. So I have to figure out what the event was. Were the other woman and the husband in a particular place that matters? Yes. Okay. A hotel? No.

Starting point is 00:30:36 On a vacation? No. And it has something to do with weight? They were at the woman's home. Oh. At the husband's home. the mistress was weighing herself on the scale? Yes. And the scale sent her a tweet. She's been dieting, so she bought a smart scale that tweets encouragement whenever she meets a weight goal.

Starting point is 00:30:59 While away on business, her husband's mistress, who was lighter, had weighed herself. And David writes, this actually happened. Oh, no. And I didn't have the temerity to ask for details. Oh, no. Apparently, that's a true story. So thanks, David, for sending that. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This podcast is supported primarily by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:31:36 Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll get outtakes, extra discussions on some of the stories, more lateral thinking puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and updates on Sasha, the official Futility Closet podcast. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see our website for the link. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 bite-sized distractions, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:13 All the exceptional music that you hear in our shows was written and performed by the incomparable Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 214-The Poison Squad

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