Stuff You Should Know - The Humble and Deadly Cigarette

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

This is not about smoking or lawsuits or lung cancer. This is about the cigarette itself, a truly unique and destructive invention.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second. season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm and even just reading the comments. That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart Gloucester on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Every season is a chance to grow. And the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford, and each week we dive into real conversations that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just Smoking, smoking. No. Feel all right, just keep on choking. And this is sufficient. Uh, Boston. Yeah, okay. Yep, that's right.

I was in my head. I was getting there. Man, you were so good. I thought you were going to go with smoking in the boys' room. No, I always thought that was just kind of a lame. Yeah, that was a remake, you know, Motley Crew. Mm-hmm. Covered it.

I don't remember who did the original, do you? No, I don't remember. You don't need to email in and tell us. That's all right. If we're curious enough, we'll go look it up. Or you can. Feel free. Okay. Okay, tell someone not to email. Now I do want to know. I'm going to look while you talk. Well, I think you should wait for the email. Maybe the writer of that song is listening.

Brownsville Station. Okay, there you go. I'd never a million years would have come with that because I've never heard those two words together as a band name. Oh, well, you've never taken a train there then. Have you ever heard of Brownsfield Station? Just when I took a train to Brownsville Station. That's gross. I think I know what you're talking about.

Oh, God. All right. Let's get off this and get on something even grosser, which is cigarettes. Nice. And this was from our pal Julia. And I just sort of, I commissioned this one because I was like, you know what? Let's just do one on the cigarette itself. Not like smoking and not the lawsuits and all that stuff or lung cancer, but just on the thing.

the object, and Julia sent us an article called the cigarette itself, appropriately titled, and I learned a lot in this one, chiefly, that the cigarette was born in Spain in the early 16th century when cigar smokers, cigars were around, and it was sort of a luxury item for the wealthy at the time because they were, you know, hand-rolled and imported from Mexico and South America. But when they would, you know, stub out that last, you know, half inch of a cigar or whatever, people that didn't have as much money would come along, grab that thing, and take out the tobacco, you know, grind it up and pick it apart a little bit,

and wrap it in paper and smoke it. And that was a little cigar or a cigarlo. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, I mean, I never thought about the word cigarette being a play on cigar. Oh, really? Like a tiny cigar, like, because I always heard cigar, but like a kitchenette, a cigarette is just like the same sort of version of that. Ironically, I never thought of a kitchenette as a small version of a kitchen.

Come on. So, Chuck, let's just hold our horses here. Before we go any further into the history, let's give a few basics about the cigarette. Great. So they're about 84 millimeters long, a standard cigarette. And for a reference, that's about the length of a cigarette. they're sold in packs of 20, and if you really want to get technical about a cigarette

next time you're at a party and you're bombing one from somebody or castigating somebody for smoking, even better, you can say that a cigarette is also technically known as a heated tobacco product. That's right. As we'll see, a camel first started putting them in packs of 20, and I could not find out if, I think they did that to match the number, of matches in a matchbook, which is 20. Oh, really?

I'm pretty sure that's the story. I wish somebody would have told the hot dog makers that, because you know you got the buns of eight or a pack of eight hot dogs and buns of six. I can never keep up these days with witches. Yeah, that just still doesn't make any sense at all. But yeah, I'm pretty sure that they put it in a pack of 20 eventually to match the matches in a matchbook. But that may also be apocryphal. Who knows?

That's a good one, though. what cigarettes are for is to deliver nicotine to your body, which is a feel-good chemical that is naturally occurring in tobacco. And the whole point is to with a pipe, cigar or a cigarette or anything like that in ESIG, is to get you that nicotine, to get you addicted to it to eventually kill you from it. Yeah, it's crazy, but that's essentially the point. And I think before the advent of mass-produced cigarettes, maybe you had a lesser chance of developing all sorts of hideous cancers and other diseases. But even if that's not true, or even if it is true, it doesn't matter because we live in the age of mass-produced cigarettes. And these things are exquisitely engineered products that so much time and money and effort has gone into and so much research that most of,

of what we know about cigarettes, what cigarettes do to the human body, how addictive they are, comes from the research the tobacco companies did over the decades that they kept, that eventually had to be handed over to the state attorneys general who sued them back in the 90s. Yeah, it's crazy how it all panned out. If you're looking at, you know, and Julia kind of breaks it down with the white end and the brown end, but there are plenty of cigarettes that are white through and through, meaning the filter end is the same color. But the tobacco end is a filler of cut tobacco leaves

and then plenty of additives. I think, how many did they admit? 599. Yeah, they wanted to get to 600 so bad. But they finally in 1994 released their additives, and it was a list 599 long, which is crazy to think about. I think they had 600, but some very sharp-eyed tobacco lobbyist It's like, you got arsenic in here twice.

So it says cut tobacco leaves. It's held in a porous wrapped paper that is sealed by an adhesive. And if you'll look closely, there's printed information on that paper that you're also smoking. And you're going to be burning when you're smoking that tobacco, that paper, those additives, that ink, that adhesive, and everything. And the smoke that comes out, and these are words I did not know, the smoke that comes, Just from a burning cigarette sitting there, it's called side stream smoke. Okay. The stuff that you inhale is called mainstream smoke.

Yeah, the mainstream smoke comes out of the filter in. You draw through the filter and the smoke that comes out. That's the mainstream smoke. The filters, we'll see, it does something a little bit here or there, but not really. It's essentially to give smokers the illusion that they're preventing some sort of harm to themselves when they actually aren't. Another illusion is that these cigarette butts, which are the most littered item in the entire world, I saw something like 4.1 trillion cigarette butts are littered, not thrown away, littered every year around the world. And a common misconception among smokers is that they're biodegradable. They're not.

They're photo degradable, not biodegradable, which is a real problem because they kind of, well, they, they live. litter all over the place and they're a type of plastic. Yeah, those filters are cellulose acetate. And there are companies that put charcoal in there because charcoal is a great filter generally, naturally, but there aren't any studies that show that charcoal in a filter helps at all. Yeah. As far as like health outcomes or anything like that. There are two paper wraps on the filter in. There's a plug wrap around the actual filter. And then there is, if it's a brown filter, there's the brown, it's called tipping paper around the paper.

around the plug wrap, and that is also sealed up so that, you know, you don't want that smoke coming out of the side of the filter. Right. You want it going into your mouth. And then that filter is also treated. They changed the pH on that filter to purposely turn it brown as you smoke. So you look and you see, man, look at all that brown stuff that's not getting into my lungs. It fooled me for 20 years. Up until a couple days ago, I had no idea that that was the case.

Yeah, just one of the dirty tricks that cigarette manufacturers use and still use. That's just nuts. So let's go back to the cigarillo, shall we? Let's do it. So the cigarillo, I think you said it was the early 16th century. So the early 1500s, right after the Age of Discovery kicked off, right? And it took all the way to the late 1700s before it really started to spread outward into Italy and Portugal, which are not that far away. Apparently, people didn't think that much of the cigarillo by then.

But as Europe started to go to war with itself, the cigarillo kind of hitchhiked to the fronts and was like, hey, what do you guys think about me? Pretty great, huh? Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. The rise of the cigarette is tied directly to the various wars over the years. And the fact that soldiers wanted to smoke, it was, you know, helped calm their nerves. I think it was a comfort piece when you're. I bet a cigarette.

And kids, don't ever try it. Don't ever even try it. But I bet when you're a war sitting in a foxhole in miserable conditions, I bet that cigarette is one of the few pleasures that comes your way, you know? Yeah. I bet that's a great cigarette to smoke. I would think so, too. Yeah.

So anyway, French and British soldiers discovered them in the early 1800s during the Napoleonic wars. And this is where the French came up with the word cigarette instead of cigarilli. And the Crimean War around the middle of the century came along. A new generation of British and French soldiers got this, you got these cigarettes with that pretty harsh Turkish tobacco. They said, we love this stuff. They brought it home. And there was a tobacconist named Philip Morris that had a shop on Bond Street in 1847 where he was selling cigars and tobacco products. And he was like, I'm going to start making cigarettes.

So, yeah, okay, so Philip Morris, the Philip Morris company, one of the largest producers of cigarettes in the entire world, is directly related to Philip Morris. It's not just like a shoutout or something like that. Oh, I never looked that up, but I just assumed that it was eventually became the big company. I mean, it would make sense because a lot of, a lot of these companies did grow out or were consolidated by larger companies. a lot of the original cigarette companies. So it's entirely possible for sure. But regardless, he was one of the people who brought it to London and made it kind of like a fancy thing,

which is really surprising because Chuck, in America, it went a totally different way. When it really became a thing in the United States, as we'll see, it became associated essentially with juvenile delinquents at first. It was not a fancy, like, a Bond Street type thing to do. It was kids playing craps rather than going to school were smoking cigarettes, too. Yeah, near do Wells.

Yes, near do Wells. So at Philip Morris's Bond Street tobacco store, they started making their own cigarettes. They were not mass produce, obviously. He had people hand rolling just like they did with cigars. But they were pretty good. They would get out, they would pump out like three or four a minute, which is pretty, fast. They were pretty expensive as a result. And a couple of things happened that really made cigarettes, you know, way more widespread. One was the invention of a rolling machine, like a machine

that could pump out, you know, eventually like $250,000 a day for a company. And the American cigarette, which used a combination sometimes of Turkish tobacco or sometimes just straight up American tobacco that was a lot less harsh and more palatable for, I guess, American appetites. Smooth, mild. So, yeah, there's a guy named James Duke who was a Durham, North Carolina tobacco air. And I think I remember correctly when we went to Durham for our show recently, I think both times, they have like a big Duke stencil on a, like a smokestack at some place.

Oh, that's funny. I'm pretty sure. On smugstack? He created W. Duke's Sons and Company in 1883 to start. making cigarettes, sorry, 1881. By 1883, he was making 250,000 a day, thanks to the invention of James Bonzac, who created that cigarette rolling machine that you mentioned earlier, that could roll 200 cigarettes per minute. Yeah, that's quite an increase from three or four over there on Bond Street. So Duke said, hey, give me a deal. I'll buy a few of those things if you give me a good price on him.

He's like a wrong. Yeah, exactly. And he said, sure. And he said, all right, I'll use cigarette rollers. You're out of business. And they said, no, you can't hire a machine to do work that humans do. And he said, watch me. And so he put these machines in.

All of a sudden, they were a lot cheaper to sell, to make and to sell. They were readily available. And like you said, they were smoother and they got popular, at least with the, with the juveniles. But that would be the first step toward making. them a little more mainstream. But it is interesting that they were, I think in 1900, 2% of the market was tobacco market with cigarettes. People were still really into chewing tobacco at the time and dipping snuff. Yeah. People love that kind of stuff. So by the 1890s, though, this was enough of the thing that kids were smoking cigarettes, that as early as the 1890s, states started to

pass bans on selling cigarettes to minors. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. I mean, I didn't think, I didn't think they cared about children at all back then. Apparently they were like, hey, this doesn't look good. These kids walking around smoking like they're seven years old. They're like, what are you doing out of the coal mine? Right, exactly. Do you want to keep going and talk about where the cigarette really broke out in America, or do you want to take a break first?

I think it's break time, buddy. Okay. We're going to take a break, everybody. We just decided. Not a smoke break, just a break. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI. know, will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person?

I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Like if we're on the air here And I literally have my contract here

And I'm looking at You know, as soon as I sign this I'm going to get a seven-figure check I've told them I won't be working here in two weeks From the underground clubs that shaped global music To the pastors and creators who built a cultural empire The Atlanta Ears podcast Uncovers the stories behind one of the most influential cities

In the world The thing I love about Atlanta is that It's a city of hustlers, man Each episode explores a different chapter of Atlanta's rise featuring conversations with ludicrous Will Packer, Pastor Jamal Bryan, DJ Drama, and more. The full series is available to listen to now.

I really just had never experienced anything like what was going on in the city as far as like, you know, seeing so many young, black, affluent, creatives, in all walks of life. The church had dwindled almost to nothing. And God said, this is your assignment. And that's like how you know, like, okay, oh, you're from Atlanta for real. I ain't got to say too much. I'm a gradie, baby.

Shut up. Listen to Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Lines and Times with Spencer Graves on the IHart Radio app is a podcast designed for hunters and fishermen to enjoy success. I like the idea of like, hey, put me on a big deer. You know, hey, there's a big deer out here. He's doing this. Be looking for this deer.

But I also love doing it on my own. I love going out there and saying running my cameras. I love patterning in the deer. I like showing up at the right time, checking the win, knowing what stand I need to be in, and then whenever it all comes together and it happens, that's the most satisfying thing ever. So when you do it on your own, it's like, I then can hang my hat. But if I had somebody say, hey, pull up on these dots and catch them right here, and you're going to win, and then when I go win, it's like, yeah, that's cool.

I won the tournament. The ultimate goal is done. But it's like, dude, when you find them and you make them right, that's the puzzle. I love it. Listen to lines and times with Spencer Graves on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So just like in Europe, Chuck, war helped cigarettes just blow up, basically. And World War I in particular brought cigarettes to America by introducing it to American troops. And like you said, the men fighting World War I in the trenches were like, we need something.

Somebody give us something to smoke. And the U.S. government was like, that's. fine, but cigars are kind of pricey. I don't know if you guys have been to a cigar shop lately. We can't really give all of you cigars all the time. What about these cigarettes that are being made that are pretty cheap? And the men in the trenches said, whatever, we just need to smoke something. So very quickly, a steady, never-ending stream of packs of cigarettes started being sent to the boys on the front in Europe. And also like businesses, individual citizens, the government, they were all paying for it. And they just smoke, smoke, smoked out of the trenches in World War

1. And when they came back, they were like, you guys, you got to try these. They're amazing. Yeah. I mean, it was kind of perfect for a foxhole because it was much quicker than a cigar. Like, you know, you said you can smoke a cigar for an hour. And you didn't have that kind of a time. If you just wanted a quick nicotine fix, the cigarette was kind of perfect for wartime. And Buddy, did they explode? Camel cigarettes in 1913 sold about a million packs of cigarettes. Or is that a million cigarettes? A million packs. A million packs of cigarettes. In 1914, they sold 425 million packs. And by 1919, they sold 21 billion packs of cigarettes. Yeah, which not coincidentally, was after World War I ended, and all of those men fighting in World War I came back with

pretty healthy little cigarette habits by then. That's an astounding number, and I knew it was going to be a lot, but that kind of jump, I mean, can you imagine the kind of money they were making? I know, and that's just camel cigarettes. That's not all cigarettes. It's just camel, yeah. Another thing World War I did was kind of change the United States' view on life and was like, okay, a lot of people just died, and maybe we should start thinking of life as a little more

valuable and precious and relax a little bit and enjoy ourselves. So we'll smoke. Exactly, right. One of the upshots of that was that, I guess, norms and expectations around women really loosened up. And one of the things that women did almost immediately was they started smoking. It became socially acceptable for women to start smoking. And the tobacco companies clapped their hands together and rubbed them and just started drooling.

at the jowls. Oh, yeah. All of a sudden, they were targeting with advertising campaigns about how glamorous it was, how feminine it was, how independent you were if you were a smoker as a woman.

Yep. This is also a very fun fact. Philip Morris, the Marlboro Cigarette, which I have always associated with like... Cowboy killers? Yeah, like a dude cigarette,

cowboy killers, that the Marlboro Man and the famous Sunset Boulevard, you know, cut out that was there forever. And Kramer. Don't forget Kramer was the Marlboro man for a minute. That's right, he was.

But the Marlboro cigarette, I had such a hard time saying that. It's hard to say. It was launched as a women's cigarette. It was known as mild as May. And I'm not sure when that switch, but that's kind of a fun little fact. I vow to pick up mild as may as a phrase I'm going to start using. I like that. Lucky Strike was also like, hey, rather than reaching for a suite,

which will eventually disappoint your husband. Reach for a lucky strike instead. Just smoke anytime you have a chocolate craving. Yeah, and all those accessories that, hey, listen, again, kids, don't smoke. But I'd be a liar if I didn't say in an old movie when someone took out one of those little slender cigarette cases and popped out a cigarette from that neat row and tapped it on the outside of that metal case.

I don't know. It was pretty cool looking to young. Chuck. Yeah, I recently read Rebecca by Daphne DeMorier. Have you ever read that? No, was it the Rebecca, the Hitchcock movie, Rebecca? I think Hitchcock may have made it. Yeah, and that tracks, because I think it was written in the early 30s. Have you seen the movie? Was it about a woman who is basically living in the shadow of her husband's first wife? Yeah. So that's the book. But people... Great undervalued Hitchcock movie, by the way. It's a great book, too. But people, out cigarette cases like every couple paragraphs in there and offer cigarette and everyone smokes

after tea and all this stuff. So I know exactly what you're talking about. It just stuck out to me. I think, I guess, as a 21st century person, knowing what smoking does, looking at people who were living at a time when they didn't know what smoking did. It's kind of not funny to see, but it's just bizarre to look back like that. Yeah. I mean, I remember in college in Athens, It was always one like classy co-ed who like carried her cigarettes in a case and maybe even had one of those little cigarette holder extenders or whatever. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because, you know, they were like, hey, look at me. I'm different.

And, you know, I'm an art major. So this is what we do. I'm like friggin Audrey Hepburn here. The other thing that happened was they started putting cigarette lighters in cars in, I think 1925, 1926 is when they became standard in cars, a little push-buburned. button cigarette lighter. So now they're saying like smoke everywhere. Yeah. And it just so happens 1925, 1926 is when the first cars came up basically. So right out of the gate they had cigarette lighters, huh? Yeah. And right out of the gate, movie stars started smoking on screen, men and women and started getting deals, started getting sponsorship deals with

certain cigarette companies. Yeah, you could get 150 grand plus a year's supply of Lucky Strikes if your smoking was sponsored by Lucky Strike, which I think Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, they all had those deals with Lucky Strike. So they would out in public be smoking Lucky Strikes, but during interviews they'd also stop and be like, wow, this Lucky Strike is so mild, smooth, or whatever. Like, they would talk about it, like, as if it were,

you know how people try to place ads or they used to? I don't know if they still do in podcasts, where suddenly we'd just be talking about a product and it'd take you a second to catch up. That's what they used to do with Lucky Strikes. Yeah. And they're like, they send me a year supply, so they sent me 1,000 packs of cigarettes. Exactly.

It was nuts. So there's just tons of stars smoking. They were literally sponsored by tobacco companies. And even if you weren't, you could still be pitching them in regular ads. And there's a push today to, I think, retroactively and moving forward, give our ratings to movies that have smoking in them, which I hadn't heard of. I ran across that recently. Yeah, I heard about that. Much different back then, obviously.

By the middle of the 20th century, cigarettes had 81% of the tobacco market. So people really ditched the chaw and the snuff for cigarettes, generally speaking. And people, you know, pregnant women were smoking. You smoke in the movie theater, smoking planes, on buses, and the office. Your doctor would smoke in front of you during an appointment. People reading the news on TV would be. smoking while they were giving you the news. It's crazy when you look back at old, like, TV show either, not just episodes, but like Dick Cabot

show and stuff like that. Just like everybody was smoking all the time. Yeah, I mean, there were ads that were doctors recommending a certain kind of cigarette because they were smoother. They made you cough less or something like that. It's just absolutely crazy. But eventually, people started getting hip to the idea that these things might kind of be bad for us.

I think as far back as the 1760s, there was a doctor named John Hill who wrote cautions against the immoderate use of snuff because he'd noticed that people who were using snuff tobacco, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's powdered tobacco. You sniff like it's a bump of cocaine. Right. But they were, he had observed nasal swellings and excresences in snuff users. And he's like, I think puffy pussy lumps in their nose. and he's like, I think those are probably cancerous. And this is back in the 1760s. Yeah, so that's super early on.

In 1900, they finally put like tobacco extract. They did like official scientific tests. They put tobacco extracts. They applied it to guinea pigs, of course. And they saw cellular activity associated with cancer development. They linked it to cheek cancer as early as 1928. And then about a decade after that, they said, you know what, if you smoke, you're not going to live as long. No. And then I think by 1950, they started having enough studies that they could do meta-analysis essentially and say, if you smoke, you have a higher chance of getting lung cancer than somebody who doesn't smoke.

Four years after that, a British medical journal published a study that said that cigarettes were killing doctors in significant numbers, too. And the fact that doctors are now dying from smoking cigarettes, that kind of got people's attention. Yeah, and these are all unfiltered basically up until 1950. In 1950, the Winston cigarette was the first one to come out as a mass-marketed filtered cigarette. And again, you know, it helps a little bit. It's not like the filter is completely useless, but it's not filtering out. It was largely a ruse to say, hey, they're saying smoking's bad for you. and now we've added a thing to make it safe.

Yeah, I read that initially it was an earnest attempt to create a healthier, less deadly cigarette. And they were just like, well, we failed at this, but now we've basically fooled people into thinking the filters are actually doing something. We have to keep filters on forever. And, yeah, it very quickly just became a device rather than something that actually worked. It can catch some particulate matter. but it's doing nothing to the gases in the smoke. They're just coming through fully toxic. But again, smokers were like, okay, great, we've got that licked.

We have filters now. Let's all go back to smoking as much as we want. Yeah, I think by year, 1965, 42% of American adults smoked. In 1980, it went down to 33. By 95, it was down to 25, 2010, 19%. just a couple of years ago in 2023, 11%. But that's nuts. Like close to half of American adults in the 60s were smoking.

Well, it's funny. It's based on old movies and TVs and books and stuff like that or TV shows and books. That seems low to me. Yeah, it looks like 100%. Yeah. It really does for sure. But yeah. I wonder who didn't smoke.

Like half the people probably just were like, I mean, I'm sure some people were like, this seems really unhealthy, but some people, you know, they make your fingers smell nasty. They make your breath gross. That probably had a lot to do with it. I would guess so, too. And then also, I mean, if back in the 20s, they were like, you can get mouth and cheek cancer from it, it's probably trickled out to some people more than others, you know? For sure. So they add the filter, but a lot of R&D and money was spit because all of a sudden you're adding this barrier between the smoker and the smoke. And so they had to invest a lot of money into making sure, like, the draw was correct

and that you weren't, you know, what they didn't want was for you to lose any of that habit-forming nicotine. So they put a lot of dough into, I guess, like you said, probably earnestly trying to reduce some toxins, but also make sure that experience stayed the same to keep people smoking cigarettes. Yeah, and they spent billions of dollars figuring this out, Because if you're a smoker and you have to, like, if you have a crushed filter, it makes it hard to draw through. And it's essentially a ruined cigarette because you don't, like, you don't want to have to exert any kind of effort in smoking. And if you do, it's just, it's not worth it. So they could not mess with the smoking experience.

They had to make it as good or better while also preserving all the best parts of an unfiltered cigarette. What they essentially came up with was to use more porous paper than actually poke like little tiny holes in the seam where the tobacco comes up against the filter, which is sealed, as you talked about by that tipping paper. But they poked little holes in that end of the tipping paper so that more outside air could be sucked in and mixed with the smoke. So it was a milder smoke.

And from what I can tell, light cigarettes, that's it. They have more tiny holes than a non-light, a regular cigarette. That's the only difference. Yeah, it's not like lighter chemical additives or lesser chemical additives and stuff like that, right? But the big tobacco companies are very happy for you to walk around thinking that that's what it means. But all it means is it just hits you lighter because it has more little micro holes in that tipping paper at the end. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?

just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI.

No, it will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Like if we're on the air here And I literally have my contract here And I'm looking at You know, as soon as I sign this I'm going to get a seven-figure check I've told them I won't be working here in two weeks From the underground clubs that shaped global music To the pastors and creatives who built a cultural empire

The Atlanta Ears podcast Uncovers the stories behind one of the most influential cities in the world The thing I love about Atlanta is that It's a city of hustlers, man Each episode explores a different chapter of Atlanta's rise featuring conversations with ludicrous

Will Packer, Pastor Jamal Bryan, DJ Drama, and more. The full series is available to listen to now. I really just had never experienced anything like what was going on in the city as far as like, you know, seeing so many young, black, affluent, creatives, in all walks of life. The church had dwindled almost to nothing. And God said, this is your assignment. And that's like how you know, like, okay, oh, you're from Atlanta for real.

I ain't got to say too much. I'm a gradie, baby. Shut up. Listen to what Atlanta is on the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Lines and Times with Spencer Graves on the IHart Radio app is a podcast designed for hunters and fishermen to enjoy success. I like the idea of like, hey, put me on a big deer. You know, hey, there's a big deer out here.

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Should we take another break? Yes. All right. We'll be right back right after this. So there are different sizes of cigarettes. If you've ever been a smoker or worked in a convenience store or something like I did at the Golden Pantry in Athens, Georgia. You learn a lot about cigarettes and what kind of people smoke, what kind of cigarettes. It's pretty interesting, actually.

Yeah. I worked at last chance. gas station and liquor store and we sold cigarettes for a dollar 25 a pack which is far in away the cheapest cigarettes in all of Athens so we had a lot of people come in there too what was the cheapest brand do you i totally remember the ones that we had i don't remember what they were back then the cheapest cigarettes and these are the people this is the stuff i always felt the worst about was when people were like i can only afford to buy the bare bones swept off the floor tobacco cigarette brand uh that was just more

depressing to me even. In our store, they were bucks. I don't remember those at all. Had a big antler deer on the front of it. And bucks were really cheap compared to the other one. So I can't imagine what was in those things. That sounds very scary. But there are different links, different kinds of filters.

I remember the parliaments had the recess filter. Occasionally when I had cigarettes here and there. And New Jersey, that's a lot of people smoke parliaments. You can have those long 120s. They're called extra longs. and different diameters, including something I tried in college occasionally, was the old camel wide. Oh, I forgot about those. Remember those plugs?

Yep. I went the opposite direction. I smoked Capri Ultra Slim 120s for a little while. Are you serious? They were essentially as big around as like a popsicle or a sucker stick. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember my friend Justin's mother smoked those, and I never saw anyone that wasn't a mom.

Smoke those. Yeah, I took a lot of crap back in the day because I would smoke those. I smoked Virginia Slims for a while. That's really funny. I don't remember how either of those came to be my brand, but I would guess that I started smoking Capri's because I like the watercolor design on the box. That's probably what first caught my attention. You always have marched to the beat of your own drum, so I could see Josh Clark doing that just to be different. Yeah, we're good, though.

I liked them. Wait, let me rephrase that. Kids, kids, kids, please don't listen to. any kind of nostalgic tone and anything I'm saying, because if I could go back and do it again, I never, ever, ever was smoked. Of course. Quitting smoking was the single hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life by far.

It is definitely not worth it. Yeah, totally. I was the dreaded social smoker who all my smoker friends hated because I could always take it or leave it. Oh, yeah. It never got its hooks in me as far as an addiction goes. That just did not compute with me, but I was always in awe of people like you.

Yeah, I was the one who would bum the cigarettes off my smoker friends. And they were always nice about it. I was not the guy at the party who lit the filtered in because I had too much to drink. I was the guy who would smoke with the flu. Or the guy that if the cigarette broke, the tobacco and broke a little bit, you would hold your finger around that part just so you can still not waste that cigarette. But again, we're not waxing nostalgic, everybody. So where are we, Chuck?

Oh, we were talking about some innovations at the time, I guess. Yeah, I mean, one innovation, and by innovation we means terrible things cigarette companies did to make them worse and more addictive, basically. So, like, innovation for them was what's called puffed or expanded tobacco. And that's when they soak tobacco leaves in ammonia and Freon. To make them puff out and increase their volume, they swell up some, and then they freeze dry that, and they do that so then get more cigarettes out of less of a tobacco purchase or harvest. Yeah, it's just a space filler. And from what I saw Frion, they only used that only for about 30 years that just continued a couple decades ago.

But ammonia is still very, very much an ingredient in cigarettes. One of the big things ammonia does is it allows you to absorb free-based nicotine more easily. So you get more nicotine out of each puff of cigarette, which a lot of observers point to is clear evidence that tobacco companies went out of their way to make their products more addictive. Yeah, for sure. Also, we should mention while we were kind of talking about what kinds of people smoke wet cigarettes and if you work at a convenience store, you kind of see repeated patterns. it's clear if you've ever sold cigarettes that African Americans tend to prefer menthol cigarettes. I think more than 85% of black smokers smoke menthols. And once again, the tobacco companies found this out kind of during the civil rights movement. And they're like, hey, we found a new target demographic of people that we can try and kill and market to.

Yeah, because about the same time as the civil rights movement was just barely starting, and the black press became an actual viable outlet for national brands to advertise in all of a sudden, menthol cigarettes became a thing. Salem, Newport, Cool, Alpine all came out within a year or two of each other. Alpine's not around anymore. And so just by essentially, I guess, targeted happenstance, the tobacco companies started heavily advertising menthols in the black press. And so that eventually came to be the favored kind of cigarette among,

black people in America. And I read an article by a guy named Alan Blum, who is the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. And he kicked out an estimate that about a third of the ads in some issues of Ebony and Jet magazines, Black-oriented national magazines in the U.S., were for tobacco products, mostly cigarettes, mostly menthol cigarettes. Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. A third. And then in 1990, Some people say like peak targeted advertising and branding came when RJ Reynolds was going to release their Uptown menthol cigarette. The first cigarette made like specifically targeted toward black Americans. They did a bunch of market research and RJR was like, hey, you know what they'll really like is this classy black and gold package and the name, Uptown cigarettes.

They were the only cigarettes with had the filters down in the pack because the company found through research that black smokers open, open packs from the bottom so they could grab the tobacco in to avoid crushing that filter and or to keep their fingers for being on it because that's the part that went into their mouth. So they literally flipped how they packaged cigarettes to appeal to black customers. Yes. And this did not land well with people in the United States. There happened to be a black health and human services secretary at the time named Louis Sullivan, and he bucked tradition and directly targeted Uptown Cigarettes and R.J. Reynolds as basically a vile product that needed to be removed from the shelves. It hadn't been released yet. The release was targeted for February of 1990, not coincidentally, Black History Month. And enough of a protest erupted in the U.S.

U.S. led by Lewis Sullivan, that R.J. Reynolds withdrew it before they could ever roll a mountain and sell uptown cigarettes. Hurrah for them. But the upshot of this is that, like you said, 85% of black smokers smoke menthols, and because of the apparent feeling of menthol, it feels nothing like you're killing yourself. In fact, it almost feels refreshing in some cases. The black press relying so much on tobacco average, that they didn't tend to cover the dangers of smoking, like mainstream press. Heavily targeted advertising in black communities.

By 1990, Black Americans had a 58% higher rate of lung cancer than white people. And it still goes on today. There is a national ban on flavored cigarettes, but menthol got exempted because black-led community organizations tend to lobby the White House to prevent men's. Menthol's being taken out of circulation because those groups tend to be funded by tobacco companies. So essentially their fronts for the tobacco company lobby. And this one 2012 study found that nearly 40% of black smokers said they would quit if there weren't menthols any longer. So the tobacco companies have a lot to lose. And half of an entire market if menthols are done away with like all the other flavors.

It's the only flavor still allowed in the U.S. pretty despicable stuff. So you're probably wondering like, hey, if smoking's so terrible, surely it started to wane, and I gave you some stats earlier, and it has. And that's because in the 1960s, we started slow rolling a little bit more warnings, Surgeon General warnings. In 64, the Surgeon General released smoking in health. This is a report that basically said it's the single largest contributor to

lung cancer and men. It's linked to premature birth. It'll increase your risk of a fatal heart attack by 70%. In 65, just a year later, they started mandating warning labels on PACs. In 1970, they said you can't advertise on TV and radio, even though in print you still could. And then in 1972, finally, the surgeon general said, and this was really the beginning of the change of how they reviewed and like public smoking. In 72, they said involuntary smoking, which is secondhand smoke, it's also really bad for you. We're just going to leave it there. And 14 years later in the mid-80s, they said it can actually give you lung cancer.

Like you cannot smoke at all and be around smokers and get lung cancer. Yeah, that happened to screech from Save By the Bell. Dustin Diamond died of lung cancer and he never smoked a cigarette in his life, apparently. He attributed it to staying in cheap hotels where you could smoke still. Oh, interesting. I mean, I remember my parents never smoked or anything, but I remember having friends whose parents smoked in the car with the windows rolled up. Yeah, that's nuts.

I lived in college with a guy who did that. I was just, even as a smoker, I was like, this is wrong. There's something really wrong with this. Oh, God, in the car. Like, good luck selling that. Yeah, also, you're key. kids in the back seat. Like, that was definitely a thing. Yeah. I mean, well, the other thing we should mention that I never really thought about until this is that smoke is even going through a filter.

So what little work the filter is doing, that side stream smoke is just going right into your lung. Yeah. And even your exhaled smoke contains a lot of toxins that are just getting right back out that are part of secondhand smoke too. So yes. Yeah, for sure. That definitely changed the calculus of how people viewed smoking. It wasn't like a you're killing yourself thing. It was a you're killing all of us thing now. And that definitely led to bands in restaurants, movie theaters, all over the place. I remember I was, I think I've said before, I was one of the last smokers on an international flight in the 90s on the way to the Netherlands.

That just seems bizarre to be now, too, especially that it was that recent. But finally, America came around and was like, you can't smoke indoors anymore in public places. And another thing simultaneously was people started banning. smoking in their own homes. That was simultaneous to government mandated smoking bans in public places. People were making that choice as well. So smirkers were getting pushed further and further out of the mainstream, essentially. Yeah, like literally outside.

Like you had to start telling people, like, I'm sorry, there's a non-smoking house. The idea of somebody walking into my house and lighting up a cigarette is so bizarre sounding. Like it seems like a hundred years ago that people were doing that, but we lived through it. Like, I remember all that. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I had a house that we smoked him and it was, man. It's crazy how much things have changed in just a couple of decades. Yeah, because now if somebody did that, it's like a hostile act.

Like, they're slapping you in the face. Like, they mean to be starting something, as Michael Jackson said. Yeah, I'm going to screw up your house right now. Yeah. What are you going to do about it? I'm going to smoke next to your cat. Poor cat. Although all bet cats smoke, if they could, they would.

You're probably right. The other thing that came in the early 90s when everyone said, or when all the health experts said, hey, you know, you need to quit smoking if you want to live, is all of a sudden there were nicotine patches and Nicorette gum and stuff like that, all kinds of quitting aids that hit the market that were also big money. Yeah, something else I found, and that stuff worked. And what also worked, I really wanted to do an episode just on this was that big tobacco settlement among the state's attorneys general in the U.S.

Yeah. That just crippled the tobacco industry and really helped lead to its downfall because they had to keep handing over all these documents they had that were so damning. And then the press would just run story after story about this stuff. And it really turned a lot of people off on tobacco. But I remember when vaping started to be a thing. And I was like, no, how did this happen? Like, we, like, the anti-tobacco forces won. They won.

They beat big tobacco. One of the most powerful groups in the world got beaten by the people who were like, no, we shouldn't be smoking. And then vaping came along. So Julia turned up the statistic that I found very heartening. She said that in 2019, 28% of high school students in the U.S. vaped cigarettes, essentially. three years later, it was 10%. So it was cut by two thirds. So I attribute that almost exclusively to our vaping app where we really came out against it.

Either way, whether that had anything to do with it or not, I was really happy to see that. I think Gen Z has been known so far for avoiding some of the trappings of these vices of previous generations. I've read that they're smoking less and they're drinking less. and that's great. They seem to be a little smarter. Yeah. There's another stat here that I thought was pretty interesting was when I was talking about percentage of smokers, in 1965, 42% smoked.

In 1980, it was 33%. But there were more cigarettes sold in the early 80s. In 1965, at 42% smoking, they sold 521 billion cigarettes. That dropped to 33% of the population smoking. but they sold $637 billion, so fewer people seemingly smoking more cigarettes. I would guess that in the interim, the tobacco companies figured out

how to make their product more addictive then. Yeah. That's when it would have happened. That'd be my guess. Yeah, probably so. Well, I can't wait to tee off on that tobacco settlement episode whenever we do it. But this is a good one.

I thought this is a good idea, Chuck. I'm glad you selected it. Thanks. I mean, they're not hurting. In 2023, Philip Morris, raked in 35, almost $36 billion. So they're doing okay. And people in different countries is different. I think Americans smoke less.

I mean, when I've traveled through Europe, a lot of people smoke. I know in Asian countries, there's a lot of smoking. Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. Right after I quit, we went to Japan. And they smoked during a funeral. Yeah. And I was sitting there like, I want one of those so bad.

Yeah. When we were in Vegas collecting our Lifetime Achievement Award a couple of years ago. Yes. I went to a dinner at a really nice Chinese restaurant in one of the casinos. Unfortunately, it was a smoking casino. And, you know, the restaurants aren't like walled off. It's just kind of part of the casino. There was a group of young Japanese men, probably in their late teens to early 20s, like 13 of them,

standing just on the other side of where our table was and just chain smoking. Wow. Over and over and over to the point where I was like, man, this is legitimately ruined this awesome meal. Yeah, that sucks. It definitely can. It can, just one person smoking can ruin a meal. I can't imagine 13. Yeah, but, oh boy, they were loving them.

They were pretty happy smoking those cigarettes. You got anything else? I got nothing else. All right. Well, that's it for cigarettes, everybody. Thanks for listening. And since I said, thanks for listening. And Chuck's got nothing else.

You put those two together, and we've just unlocked listener mail. Correction for Josh during our listener mail. This isn't a big one. Hey, guys, longtime listener, first-time writer. Reference to the listener mail in the USAID episode, Josh mentioned Red Tail or Red Hawk beer and said it was from Edesto, but the beer is Mendocino. Yeah, I remember now.

Given the seminary and those names, it's easy to confuse these very different California towns. I can personally confirm Mendocino Brewing Company was and now still is a great brewery. They seized operation in 2018, but were purchased and are now back in production in Hopland, which is in Mendocino County. Thanks for everything you do, you guys. That's from Devon in California. Very nice, Devin. Thank you for that. And, yeah, it's still a good beer, even if it is from Mendocino rather than much.

just so. Yeah, we just want to shout out the right town. Yeah, but thank you for being gentle. I appreciate it and not calling me a dipstick or anything like that. No, that's not dipstick worthy. Who was it again? I know it just said their name. That's Devin. Devin. Thanks a lot, Devin. If you want to be like Devin, you can send us an email to send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm and even just reading the comments. That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart Gloucester on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Every season is a chance to grow. And the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford, and each week we dive into real conversations that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear?

I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at soundedouttogether.org. That's sounded outtogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. This is an IHeart podcast.

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