The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 375: Chuck Klausmeyer & NEW STORY—Nasty Little Instruments

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Another brief mystery for the curious mind with a short attention span, followed by a deeper dive into the story's reveal with Mike and Chuck. WARNING: Careful where you listen with headphones, as it may result in alternating facial contortions of disgust and hilarity. The title is Nasty Little Instruments, after all.

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That's netseweet.com. NetSuite. I got a story to tell every word of it true, except for the parts I made up for you. Just some history that has been reworded into a mystery called the way I heard it. Well, you know what that song means, my friends? That means I got a story to tell in every word of it's true except for the parts I made up for you. A short story for The Curious Mind with a short attention span is episode number 375. Specifically, it's called nasty little instruments because these things are disgusting.

The story is short. The conversation that follows will be between Chuck and myself. And he'll ask me whatever he wants to ask me. And I'll answer as best I can. I can't make any guarantees about how that's going to go. Although studies show they're a lot of fun. The story itself, you know the job. You get to listen intently and try and figure out who or what I'm talking about.

But this is the only clue you're going to get. It's disgusting. Nasty, nasty little instruments. This is episode number 375, and it begins forthwith. After securing the patent that gave him the exclusive right to mass produce his product, Charles went all in. First, he built a factory and all the necessary machinery. Then he experimented until he had a prototype that satisfied him.

Then he purchased enough raw material to manufacture a product for every man, woman, and child in Massachusetts. And then, with zero orders on the books, Charles went into production. He was so confident in the success of his product, he manufactured over a million pieces before attempting to secure a single order. And that was ambitious. And the first store he visited, the owner burst out laughing. Are you serious? I couldn't give these things away. No, thank you.

But, sir, said Charles, they're very popular in Europe and South America. I'm quite sure they will be popular here in Boston. I'm quite sure you're mistaken, said the owner. Good day. Undeterred, Charles visited another shop and got an even stronger objection. These things are disgusting, the proprietor said. Please, take your nasty little instruments and peddle them somewhere else. Nasty little instruments.

Charles knew his device came with certain stigmas and preconceived assumptions, but he was surprised by this level of resistance. Over the next week, Charles proceeded to visit every general store in Boston, along with a dozen different novelty shops. And everywhere he went, he heard the same thing, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no. With a million pieces stacked up in his warehouse, Charles could not afford to become discouraged, but he was beginning to wonder if he had made a colossal miscalculation. One day, after another morning of chronic rejection, Charles stopped by the Union Oyster House for lunch. There, in Boston's most popular restaurant, Charles presented his product to the manager and the chef.

Like a season pro on the home shopping channel, he talked about his personal experience with the product, its popularity in other parts of the world, and his unique ability to mass produce it in the United States. He even demonstrated it for them. Well, said Charles, what do you think? We'll get back to you, said the manager. When, said Charles, when hell freezes over, said the chef, before bursting into laughter. Winter was just around the corner, but Charles didn't have time to wait for hell to freeze over. He thanked the men for their time, pocketed his nasty little instruments, and left the Union Oyster House, and headed.

over to Harvard, where the brightest minds in the country were studying hard to become brighter still. In a nearby pub, he found a group of graduate students blowing off some steam. Charles bought them a round of drinks. He removed a piece of paper from his jacket pocket and laid it on the bar. On the paper was a list of stores in and around Boston. Alongside the paper, he placed his product. Then he made the students a proper. position. I want you all to visit this list of stores over the next two weeks and ask for this product. When the clerk tells you they don't carry it, ask to speak with the manager. When the manager says they don't carry it, ask him why. And then what? asked the student. Fane incredulity, said Charles.

What, said another student? Act surprised, said Charles. Act disappointed. and then ask if he knows where you can get one. And then what? asked another student. Then, said Charles. Then come back here, and I'll pay you. One dollar for every store you visit. One dollar in 1870 was a lot of money, and graduate students back then were as strapped for cash as they are today.

So, over the next two weeks, the brightest minds at Harvard visited all of the students. of the shops that Charles had visited and asked for a product they knew wasn't there. And some of them made quite a show of it. What do you mean you've never heard of them? They're all over Paris. They're all over Lisbon. They're all over Buenos Aires.

When will you have them here? A few days later, Charles returned to the stores and offered the owners a second chance to stock his product. To his delight, many of them did. The following week, Charles gave his students more money and instructed them to return to the same stores to purchase his product. Buy every box, he told them. Make sure there's nothing left on the shelves. A few days after that, when he knew that all of the shelves were empty,

Charles sent in a new batch of students to buy even more product, all of whom feigned incredulity when they learned the stores were sold out. Only then did Charles return to the stores to see how sales were going. He began with the first shop he'd visited a month before and found the owner, most delighted to see him. Good day, said Charles. I was just checking in to see, I'll take another five cases, please. It was the same everywhere Charles went. Twenty more cases, please. Thirty more cases, please. How many more cases can I get?

In this way, Charles spent the next six months, selling his product to local vendors and buying it back over and over again. Even the shop owner, who called them nasty little instruments, got wind of their sudden popularity and stocked a few cases, which quickly sold out. Obviously, this was not a sustainable business model, but along the way, the shop owners began to talk up his product to, to actual customers. And those actual customers began buying the product for themselves and using it. Finally, Charles also sent his students

to the Union Oyster House in Boston where the manager and chef had laughed in his face just a few months before. He gave the students money to purchase a proper meal and some drinks. And then, when the meal was over, he instructed the students

to request his product and feign incredulity when it failed to appear. What do you mean you've never heard of them? They're all over the city. They're in all the general stores. They're in all the novelty shops. Why don't you have them here? That was the day hell froze over in the Union Oyster House.

The manager ordered 50 packages, and soon thereafter, restaurants all over Boston wanted what Charles was selling. Never mind the million pieces he'd already. manufactured. Those were gone in no time. By 1899, Charles was shipping over 500 million boxes to retailers and restaurateurs all over the country. That's over three billion pieces for a country with just 75 million people. Such was the unparalleled popularity of the simplest tool ever designed, a tool comprised of a single part, made from a single material. and designed for a single purpose, a tool that nobody wanted,

until a marketing genius named Charles Forster created the demand, an insatiable demand for the nasty little instruments we've all used, more times than we can count. The toothpick. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page

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If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time, then watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing fast network for just 3499 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way,

as well as the MicroWorks Foundation and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $3499 a month at puretalk.com. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. So I suppose I could have invited Henry Petroski on he wrote a book called The Toothpick, which I read a couple of years ago and had been fascinated ever since.

It would be fun to pick his enormous brain. I see what you did there. But instead, I went with Chuck, who's heard the story a couple of times now, I suppose, since you put it together originally. But you have been given a long lead, my friend. I'm going to let you steer this conversation, however you'd like. you'll assume the role of the, let's call them the curious listener, whose curiosity may have been piqued by what you just heard, perhaps to the point where you'd like to dig a little deeper.

Yes, Mike, thank you. I will gladly take the reins at this moment and see how long I can keep them. Good luck. Good luck, indeed. So, first of all, people have been using toothpicks almost as long as there have been people, as long as people have been eating, particularly meat. First one, they go back to like the Pleistocene era, Neanderthals. They have...

Neanderthals, right. Yeah. Yeah, they were using like teeth from animals to pick their own teeth. Yeah, which seems odd, yeah. And other bones and whatnot, you know. But if you've ever had a piece of meat caught in between the molars, it's quite annoying. Quick digression, no, not merely quite annoying. I've had stuff like everybody else stuck in my teeth from time.

to time. And the reason I wrote the story really had to do, it had to do with a number of things, but the first time I really felt something large and awful wedged in what felt like an irretrievable place, which had just opened up. It was on my, my back molar up top and the one next to it, and some sort of cavity, and I don't mean a typical cavity. I mean like a literal hole had formed in there between the two. Not the, tooth, but in the gum. And I had never felt, it was like a BB was up there, and I couldn't get it out. And when I finally did, I had to take a piece of floss, and I nodded it. Have you ever done that? No. And you pulled it from one side to the other? That's how you, that's the only way to get it out.

That's the only way I could get it out, because the floss kept breaking, and there was no room up there. and it was starting to make my eye twitch, just this awful feeling. And when I finally yanked the floss through, something came out. It looked like it had its own circulatory system. It was just awful, and it stuck to the mirror, and it just made me gasp. And I went straight to the dentist. He was like, yeah, yeah, that's a problem. Thank God you got floss.

And then we had this whole conversation on the toothpick, and then it was just in my mind ever since then. Yeah. You know, your teeth float around. They don't stay in the same place all the time. I know when I got my wisdom teeth taken out, because before I could barely get a piece of floss in between. The contacts were so tight.

I had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was in my like mid to late 30s, which is not advisable. A lot more pain than was necessary, I think, because of my age. I remember. Yeah. But, yeah, then everything opened up. And suddenly you could land a plane in between my back teeth. We talked a lot about this on the podcast with James Nestor a couple years ago, right?

The guy that wrote the book, Breath. And, you know, our teeth from the species, we had great teeth over the years. I mean, hundreds of years ago, if you look at the skulls, people's teeth were neatly placed. There wasn't a lot of overcrowding. They were larger than they are today. and, you know, there were a lot of reasons for that. You know, he argued that our breath impacted that a lot, changed the way our upper palate developed and so forth.

But in this book, The Toothpick by Henry What's his name, Petroski, he talks a lot about the Egyptians' teeth and early civilizations and how obsessed they were with the early toothpick. You know, they weren't made of wood back then. It was always bone, I think. There were teeth from other animals and things like that. It was crazy. Yeah. I think also they used like pieces of stone as well and carved them into decorated them. I've seen some pictures of things that look, you know, really amazing. I mean, it looks like a nasty little instrument, but a beautiful piece of art as well. Well, I mean, it got to the point. There were silver and gold toothpicks that people wore.

Women wore them as jewelry around their neck. Well, that is real handy, too. You just pick it up and give it a little once over, you know? Well, this is the other thing about the toothpick that's so interesting. It's so simple. And what Forrester did, I really want to get into because just the balls on that guy, man, the nerve. As an entrepreneur and a salesman, he must have been incredible. But I'm also really interested in the way some social behavior goes from elevated and virtuous

to the very definition of taboo and good. Gosh. I don't want to drag poor Rico through the mud, but since he's been on the podcast, tell me that story real quick, because I guarantee people are listening right now going, they are nasty little instruments, and it's disgusting to pick your teeth. And I'm simply trying to say that a lot of people didn't get that memo. And to this day, I see people flossing in restaurants. I sat next to a guy the other day on the plane who was doing exactly what I was doing when I was trying to remove that BB. and he was just not a care in the world, had his tray down, was up there flossing and sawing and grunting and stuff was flying out of his mouth and sticking. Was he two-hand flossing or was he using one of the floss sticks? No, the stick, you can be fairly serptitious, you know.

Yes. You can, right? You can hold up one hand. Yeah. Exactly. And by the way, the other end, of course, is a toothpick. Is a toothpick, yeah. Yeah.

So, no, no, this guy. he brought out an industrial size, like the size of a deck of cards, reach floss. And he unraveled it like he was going fishing and wrapped it around his index fingers and got in there with his thumb. And I was just sitting there next to him going. So anyway, isn't it interesting how some people just simply don't associate any stigma at all with cleaning their teeth in public?

Yes. I think about five minutes ago you mentioned RICO. And the story that you're referring to is the first time that I ever saw Rico floss's teeth, which sadly happened on my couch downstairs right here. And he was, you know, just floss in his teeth. And I didn't think anything of it because I will do that as well with one of the picks. But he was using actually, you know, floss, just like your next door neighbor on the flight. Yeah.

But what he was doing that was so interesting is, as he would pull out a piece, he would just flick the floss, sending whatever particle happened that he just pulled out from between his teeth across my living room and onto the carpet. And when I first saw this, you know, and it had been going on for a while, but I didn't realize it. And when I first noticed what he was doing, I leapt to my feet and, like, was so appalled. I didn't know whether to throw up or to smack him.

So I just threw up on him and made him smack himself. And I said, don't, you get your coat and you don't say goodnight to nobody. Well, again, look, this is what's complicated. Rico, Rico Colin Tony, by the way, famous actor, lovely guy. Go ahead, Google him. He won't care. Here's the thing about Rico. He is a nice, thoughtful, considerate man.

He is well-mannered. He's very attuned to the people around him. He always knows the temperature in. the room. He's courteous, right? Yep. But in this area, there's just nothing associated. Like, there's no stigma. It reminds me of Ben Franklin's book, Fart Proudly. Right? It's like, there are people walking around, right? There are probably people listening to this who just at some point decided, you know something? What's the point in holding it in? What's the point in letting one slip out as quietly as possible? What's the point in hiding it? Right.

And maybe, who knows, maybe they're right. Maybe mental health is dramatically improved by the complete lack of regard or the complete absence of shame that would follow ripping one on a plane or during dinner. But that's the thing. If you didn't get the memo, you didn't get it. And it's left for the rest of us to figure it out. And let me just say that, for the record, I'll take the farts all day long. You can rip one straight up your back.

I'm fine with that, but honest to God, pulling the floss out and flicking it across the room like a little tiny, you know, what you call that? A slingshot or whatever. It's just sickening. I was just, I was so poised. Are you familiar with the Continental? I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is. I don't remember. Talk about a nasty behavior.

I've heard two terms for the process where you block one. nostril and then evacuate whatever's in the other one. That's a snot rocket. Snot rocket, I've heard, but I also heard another verb for it that I really liked. And it doesn't have anything to do with with any of the words you would assume. But it was just called a Jake, a J-A-K-E. It's like, yeah, it's a Jake, right? That's how I was like, okay, you know. So you're alone. You're out for a jog. And you want to clear your nose. And a normal person would look around. and see no one, no one's observing you, and then maybe you would plug up a nostril

and evacuate the other one. Maybe you would do that. Maybe you would commit a Jake. I was having this conversation once with my, I think was Jill Brown, who told me. She goes, oh, no, no, that's not a Jake. That's called the Continental. Which just sounds so impossibly elegant.

But you just made me think of it. Which should be performed after telling the joke called The Aristocrats. The Aristocrats. No, I don't think we're going to do that, folks. Let the kids stay in the room. But I'm telling you, this was one of the most mortifying moments of my life. I was living in New York.

And back in the days when I would get up every morning and run, and it was raining, but I went out anyway. And I was running down West Side Highway. And I was about six miles in. I had made the turn, and I was coming back. And it was raining. I was alone, and it was foggy, and I was fighting a cold. So I performed a continental, right?

I just blocked up and I turned slightly and I just garfed it up, you know. Sure. I don't know where he came from, Chuck, this man who was out there running. He was running about twice as fast as me. He came out of nowhere and he passed me on the left right on West Side Highway, right there on the Hudson. And the Continental hit his chest and his shoulder. And, you know, I was so horrified. I slowed down and just yelled, I'm sorry.

And he didn't even slow down. He just kind of waved. In fact, I think he sped up a little bit. So the point isn't, you know, do we pick our teeth? Do we, like, people left alone when they think they're not being observed do all sorts of horrible things. But it's fascinating when you find an otherwise well-mannered person who just simply doesn't think there's any share. and picking your teeth or farting or performing a Continental or a Jake or any of these things when they're being watched. But they're out there. And I don't understand them. I'll tell you,

I'm a big fan of floss in the teeth. For 20 years now, I've got these gaps. And so if I have any kind of meat at all, I got to get it out or it's just going to be uncomfortable, really. It's just an uncomfortable feeling. Should have it in there. So I have those little toothpick, you know, the plastic ones, the little tiny ones, the handheld. I have bags of those everywhere. They're in the bathroom up here. They're in the... They're in your car.

They're in my car. They're all over your car. I fit in your car. Yeah, you know, and it's like they come in handy. That's my favorite place to do it is in the car. That's the best, quite refreshing. What are your thoughts on Q-tips then? And like, what's the proper Q-tip etiquette?

I'm thinking about the ear, right? I mean, have you ever had an itch? near your ear drum. You can't get it with your finger. You don't want to stick a pencil in there. That's crazy. You need a toothpick. Not a toothpick. A cue tip. Folks, don't put the toothpick in your ear. No, you need a cue tip. But like, do you do that in public? Is there any stigma attached with putting a cue tip in your ear? Good luck finding a cue tip in public. That's not the kind of thing that I keep in the car or at the office. So, no, that doesn't happen. I mean, if I have something deep in Maybe there's one in your MRS or something.

Maybe, maybe assume you have one or access to one. Is it okay to do it in public? Yeah. Yeah. Is it okay to get the ear wax out of your ear with a Q-tip in public? To scratch an itch, I would allow it. But, you know, to pull the wax out and make a candle, no. Oh, God, no, I'm not going to do that.

No one's making a candle. But you're not going to get the itch and then pull out a pristine Q-tip. Like if the guy next to me on the plane was his busy, with his inner ear as he was with his teeth, I think I would have been less appalled. Not by a lot. Had he picked his nose and wiped it on the underside of the tray, that's another level. All of these things, they're adjacent. They're disgusting, but they, like the toothpick, have gone in and out of favor over the years. Can you hear it?

Yeah, here's something. What is it, a plane? It's the leaf blower. Unbelievable. Yeah. Anyway, if we have any listeners left listening who aren't just totally grossed out by everything that has preceded this, I would like to sort of bring things back to, you know, the history of it. That's really loud. I wouldn't worry about it, honestly.

Like you say, there's nobody listening. Okay. But it just sounds like it. getting closer. Why don't you run out with a toothpick and stab them in the eye? No, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go out on my balcony and I'm going to floss my teeth and flick it at him like Rico does.

That'll learn him. That'll learn them real quick. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company. he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches

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but it's now raining. There's like rain hitting the window. So this guy is leaf blowing, employing the leaf blower in a rainstorm, and it's coming down. If that's not a title for this episode, it's certainly a title for a song at some point. Leaf blowing in the rain?

Leaf blowing in the rain. I mean... Yes, let's write a song. Leaf blowing in the rain. a monument of futility. I love it. Anyway, look. I ain't going to complain.

Just gonna blow my leaf in the rain. Or something like that. No need to get married to the melody just yet. Let me just tell you briefly one story that rivals your Jake on the fast runner. We had an intern working for us about three, four years ago. It was pre-COVID. It's just going to get me serious. Is this really the...

No, it's not going to get used. I'm not going to mention her name, but she was walking on the street and she was on her way back with her lunch. And there was a homeless person kind of meandering, walking slowly on the street. And so she went to walk around him just as this homeless person hocked up one and spit to his left, which happened to be right where she was. hit her right in the face. And she was so horrified when she got back to the office. And we were all like, what? It was like, do you need to take the day off?

Do you need to go home and shower? Because it was just, she was just horrified. And so too were we in hearing the story. This happens. Yes. It's an uncertain world. And ultimately, we're just a bag of bones. You know, we're just held together with this.

Just. We're just fluid. and air and wax and various just disappointing substances all looking for the nearest exit. Trying to get out. Everything's leaking, oozing. We're stuck, ironically, which brings us back to the toothpick. Everything, it's like the food is not just falling out of our teeth. That's the problem.

It's in there. And the more we masticate, the more we wedge it in. And, you know, fingernails aren't going to do it. This has been a problem that's plagued the species for time and memoriam. That's why I wrote the story for granted. Don't you care why I wrote the story? I do. I do. All right.

All right. But there are so many little tidbits of facts that I want to get to to talk about this because it's very fascinating. Let me just say this, that in the 16th century, this is where Charles Forster got his idea. He was visiting Portugal. I forget the name of the town. I can tell you one thing, he wasn't there in the 16th century. No, he wasn't. Sorry, he was in the 18th, the 19th century.

But in the 16th century, these nuns in Portugal at the convent, Mostero de Lorveo in Coimbra, Portugal, used toothpicks to clean this. They made this sugary candy, the nuns did, and it stuck to their teeth. And so they used to use toothpicks. But what they discovered was that, The candy was so sticky. They didn't like to pick it up with their hands. It made their hands sticky as well.

And they were the ones who figured out to turn the toothpick into a utensil. And they would pick up the sticky candy with the toothpick, put it in their mouth, chew it up, and then pick their teeth with the same toothpick. So they created the hors d'oeuvre toothpick. Okay. So like also the martini, right? That is correct. Yes. Okay.

I had no idea the nuns would have been behind that. That's amazing. Well, I don't think the nuns. did the martini, they did sugar. I like to think they were doing the, like a Gibson, gimlet, just a classic martini. No, were they cleaning their own

teeth with this, or were they cleaning each other's? No, no. It was like washing someone's feet. Yeah, you cleaned their teeth. No, come on. No, they didn't. They cleaned their own teeth. Well, why would you ask such a stupid question? Well, I... Point of clarity. I mean, for a moment, you had Charles Forster, who lived in the 1880s and

1890s, back in the 16th century with a bunch of Nuns, I just didn't tell it was possible. I want to say that was a good note you gave me there. Just a point of clarity. Because he was. No. Okay. So this area in Portugal eventually became renowned for the high quality toothpicks they produced.

And the toothpicks from the region were exported around Europe and the Americas. You know, in the 19th century, that's when Charles Forster visited, saw this and said, hmm, I think I'm going to bring this to, I'm going to mass produce this. Well, you know, the way I heard it, it. It was not Portugal that he visited. It was Brazil. He probably went to both. But I know when he came back from Brazil, he was haunted by the quality of the teeth in people's heads.

He just couldn't believe how straight they were. He just couldn't believe it. And everybody there had a toothpick. It was always in their mouth. And they weren't wood. Like we said, they were bone. they were made from teeth from animals oftentimes. You know, it was a real thing.

And there was no stigma. You could clean your teeth in the middle of a meal, after a meal. Whenever your teeth needed to be cleaned, you could do it. They just... RICO would have been right at home there. Thank you for bringing that back. I think Rico really is a man out of time. I think he's probably...

I think he's probably Brazilian. It is quite possible. Although the toothpick was designed for the... single purpose of cleaning one's teeth, it evolved into other things. A fashion statement to leave in one's mouth. It was kind of a sign of like, hey, I can afford to eat meat, right? And eating utensil for hors d'oeuvres. And there's one other, do you know what that is? One other use for a toothpick. Is it hygiene or... That's sort of off-label. You know what I mean? Like that is, that's not what the toothpick was designed to do. No, just tell me.

What is it? It's a cooking instrument for cakes and soufflays. You put the toothpick in, and if you can pull it out and there's nothing that's stuck to it, then it's cooked through. That it's done. Did you also know some of the better quality toothpicks that are still being made today? You got the pointy end, right, or the business end. But then on the other end, it's designed.

It's milled in some way, right? So there's a little circle around it, and then there's indentation in it. You know why that's there? Yes. No, why? It's designed to be broken off and then placed next to your plate. So after you're done using your toothpick, you can place it on that little nub. There's a little notch in there, and that's where the point goes.

So the part that goes into your mouth and between your teeth never touches the table. Exactly. Wow. Oh, yeah. Do you know what that reminds me of? Do you remember the boxes? I used to have these. I think you did, too.

boxes of like cinnamon toothpicks? That's a whole other conversation, but I love those things. Love those. Yes, they were great. And you know what they've got now? They've got like bourbon-soaked toothpicks and they have mint and they have all these different things. In fact, that's the other thing that sucked me into this story. I don't know if you want to take a digression, you know how these get. But I had a friend, Vince, who very much believed.

he could bring all of this toothpick manufacturing back into the United States. And I was fascinated by this mission because, as we learned in the story, you know, up and strong Maine, that's where Forster was doing most of the production, you know. And when it really blew up, when things really went crazy, he was moving his mills every couple of months because they ran out of trees. They were going through so much white birch, right? right? And it became an enormous industry for the country. And then sometime in the 1900s, it became so big that we just didn't do it anymore. We just started importing them. You know, it's the same old story. So my friend Vince thought he kind of laid it out in a really interesting way. He had people that were going to back the reintroduction of the equipment that was necessary to start making toothpicks again here in this country. It was incredibly complex. but by the same token, if we can't make a toothpick,

if we can't make a splinter out of a piece of wood, I mean, what hope does Detroit have, right? So I thought it was a really interesting challenge from a manufacturing standpoint, and it was Vince who gave me this book by Petroski that really made an impression. And what you just said, these flavored toothpicks, that was a big deal, like the idea of putting CBC into them, for instance,

or putting, high doses of caffeine combined with flavor. Like suddenly it becomes a delivery system for all sorts of tastes and other substances, right? So it's a giant idea that on the one hand is just a simple sliver of wood. And on the other hand has become this giant manufacturing challenge. Because seriously, why aren't we making our own toothpicks for God'sakes? You're sitting there with an American-made shirt on, and we've had this conversation a gazillion times. But if we can't make T-shirts and jeans here, if we can't make a toothpick here, that's part of the story, too.

For me, anyway, it gives us something to ruminate on for sure. But go ahead with more of your interesting facts. I'm sorry. I interrupted you with important observations. My mistake. It was a detour. That was delightful. I just want to say that you mentioned the union.

Oyster House in Boston. Have you ever been there? I have. It's very famous. The oldest continuous service restaurant in the U.S. opened its doors in 1826. Some of the patrons there, well, the most famous patron, I believe, was John F. Kennedy, and there's a booth there. And when I did go there, I actually had lunch or dinner in the booth that has a plaque. There's two plaques, one that says, you know, President John F. Kennedy's favorite table, like right on the back of the wooden bench that you sit on. Isn't that interesting? It's like a booth.

It's wouldn't. And then there's a plaque above it that tells you when it was dedicated, the previous plaque. So it's got two plaques in that booth. So how did that inform your meal? Did it guide the conversation? Was it just a passing thing? Or did you wind up having a totally different conversation than you would have had a wash and the knowledge that JFK had probably picked his teeth right where you were sitting?

Right there. This is why we went there. My sister and brother-in-law lived in Pembroke, Massachusetts at the time. and we would often, when I would visit them, we would go into Boston, you know, a lot. And one of the things, you know, we would do the Freedom Walk or whatever. Freedom Trail. You know, freedom trail. Thank you.

And they took me there and said, hey, this was John F. Kennedy's like favorite restaurant in Boston. And as fate would have it, we wound up sitting in the actual booth. I don't know if they made a reservation and asked for that or whatever, but somehow we wound up there. So we went there specifically because John F. Kennedy had been there. And that's the kind of stuff that I love. I know you like this too. It's why I love Gettysburg or any place where I know someone else walked. I mean, geez, oh, whiz. You know, I remember being in Bethlehem. Language. And cheese whiz. Or sorry, in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, thank you. And walking the streets and going, wow, who else walked here? Amazing.

Let me just say, it goes both ways. The last time we had one of these conversations, in fact, I was in Munich talking to you about. Right. Some other story. Well, I had just, the night before, I took a tour of the town and saw all sorts of fascinating things. And then that night, I went to get a bowl of pasta and some fish in this place called the Opera Cafe, right next to the famous opera house. And the matriette D said, well, we've got a couple of booths open and a couple of tables. Do you have a preference? I said, no, they all look great. Put me wherever you like. He goes, okay. And he takes me over and he sits me down and he takes my order. And I'm halfway through a glass of wine talking with the people I'm with. And a waiter comes over and says, oh, yeah, this was Adolf Hitler's favorite booth. What? Yeah, yeah. He ate here many, many times.

He loved dogs. Great painter. Could do an apartment in one day, two coats. But to your point, it's powerful. You know, famous people. It's one thing to, you know, you take a tour of their house. It's like, oh, this is where they slug. And this is where they ate.

And this is the barn where they kept their horses and so forth. But it's like, no, no, this is where he sat and chewed his food and picked his teeth and probably farted. Yeah, that's what was happening here. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure. But if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA, making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965,

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The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills, USA.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. skills, U.S. skills. USA See, that's the thing about history, real history.

I mean, I just wrote a little story about the way I imagined a moment when a guy named Charles Forster walked into the Union Oyster House to sell a toothpick. I wasn't there. I don't really know how all that happened. But I do know that the Second World War

was a heck of a thing and that Munich was the center of that. And I'll never forget that next day, I went to the Munich Museum. It's got nothing to do with toothpicks at all, but the Munich Museum is an amazing place. If you're ever over there, make sure you go because it walks you through every significant event

from right before the First World War to right after the second. And to take the museum in properly, you need about two and a half hours. And I had the time, so I did it. And at the end there, there's this giant panoply of all these amazing buildings

in Munich that have been there for three, four, five hundred years. And I had pictures in my phone of all of them that I took earlier that day. And then suddenly to be standing there and seeing the same buildings draped in swastikas. That's when you're like, oh, that was yesterday, man. That happened yesterday. And where I just ate, yeah, of course Hitler walked these streets. Of course he sat there. He probably used the same restroom I used. for crying out loud. So what's that have to do with toothpicks? Not much, really.

But if I was going to try and make some sort of connection, I would say that John F. Kennedy had to sell his ideas to these United States. And when he did it, he said, ask not what you can do for, what do you say? Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And Hitler had to sell his ideas to. And he did. I'm not going to quote him because heck with him.

But so did Charles Foster. Charles had to sell the toothpick, Chuck. He had to sell it. Well, that's what the story is. The story is a marketing story about how he created a need for a product that people didn't need because people were making their own toothpicks in America. People were whittling toothpicks all the time. It was a tough sell. Like the idea of a toothpick wasn't anethma, but the idea of buying one was crazy, especially in Boston and in Maine.

where Yankee ingenuity was alive and well and where everybody carried a knife. And after most meals, people would take out their knife and they would just whittle. Just grab any piece of wood, a twig, a match, whatever it is, and just whittle a point to it. And that's how they picked their teeth. Charles couldn't believe it,

but he thought he had an idea that would eliminate that onerous task from daily life. What he didn't quite understand was that these are Yankees, these are Americans. We're stubborn. We're hard-headed. We like it. We like carving our own toothpicks. So he had to overcome that. He had to overcome what at the time was a stigma in this country anyway. All that spit and slobber and unseemly fluids on a piece of wood that you pull out of your pocket and then put back in. What? It was a very, very tough cell. So in our remaining few minutes, that is why I wrote it. That's the only thing. I actually really truly understand. I read Petroski's book. I got my friend Vince's take on manufacturing. I love the nerve on this guy to spend all of his money on all the machines and start making a product before he even had a market for it. But it's really a story about making a

market where there is none. What a genius. Yeah. It's selling water and a rainstorm. So back to the Union Oyster house? Sure. Sorry. I forgot you out of plan. You have notes and everything. It's adorable. Yes. In addition to JFK, Daniel Webster was a regular there. And arguably, the second most famous one was King Louis Philippe of France, who in 1796 apparently lived in exile on the second floor. And he earned his living by teaching French to the young women of Boston.

I'll bet he did. But listen here. I have some questions. I've compiled some questions. I would like to see if you can ace them. These are questions that are all related to the subject at hand. I'm not sure we've paid homage, really, though, to the idea that this guy became his own shill. I mean, think about, you're broke. You've spent all your money on equipment and materials and inventory, inventory that nobody wants. You are like literally out of money. You have two young girls and a boy on the way. You've got a wife who's like, are you kidding me?

With the toothpicks, dude, really? This is what we're doing. And so he goes to Harvard, of all places, and he hires these guys to do this thing. It's all in the story we just heard. You're selling past the sale. I'm trying to make it relevant to today. Like, I bought a house, as you know, a few years ago.

When I came here, there were other people bidding on it. And I heard some things, Chuck. that made me think, what did you hear? I heard some things that made me wonder if these people were really interested. You're kidding me. I don't know this story. Well, I didn't tell you. I was working up to it, okay,

before you got all grabby about your precious notes and your dates. It's my stapler. These are my notes that I've stapled together with my stapler. I don't think it's legal in the real estate business. I'm not sure there's a law, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is.

But when you're bidding on a, it's the biggest purchase of your life. And if you think you're in a bidding war, well, you're going to go where you go. And maybe you're going to be coaxed to go further than you want to go. And how do you know you're actually bidding with people who really want the house? It happens with cars all the time, too. And I think people ought to be mindful of it. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I feel like, you know, is it crooked?

Is it dishonest? to buy your own inventory and keep selling it back to create a demand. I don't think so, but I wonder how often it happens in other areas where supply and demand. It happens with people with books who are selling books. All the time. Oftentimes, they'll buy a large quantity of them in the first week to try to get up the list. You didn't even tell me, did you like the story? Did you find it interesting? Yeah, I found it very interesting. And I remember the first time, you didn't tell me what the subject matter was. You wrote the first draft of this just on your own and didn't consult me. When you read it to me the first time, I remember, you know, what is this? I kept, you know,

and I was there right at the end, you know, for the reveal. And, you know, you keep me to the reveal. That's pretty good. Well, I'm just saying there weren't 300,000 people listening to that conversation. They're listening to this conversation. So in the future, you might want to flatter me up a little bit before we jump right into days and dates and so forth. Noted. Can I get to my quiz? All right. It's a quiz.

Hurry up. It's time. Okay. All right. So first question, what would our most toothpicks made from? That'd be white birch, typically and historically from Maine. Thank you. In what section of the grocery store are you most likely to find toothpicks?

Oh, that's a good question. Obviously, there's not a carpentry section or a wood section in a grocery store. So I'd probably go with, like, produce. Not produce? Thanks for playing. No. I gave you a very good hint earlier when I mentioned about it was used as a cooking instrument as one of the things. Well, yeah, produce.

Okay, so with the bakery. The baking section. It's in the baking section. Okay, good to know. There you go. Good to know. All right. Where did the cocktail toothpicks originate?

Like the ones with the little fancy stuff on the end? Like the color twirly thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. France. No, the Portugal nuns. Back to the nuns. They called them Pilitos Especiales, special sticks. Good for you.

the nuns and their special sticks. Good. Here's one more. The last one is what common household item was inspired by the toothpick? You have this item in your house. I have it in my house. It came up in the conversation. That's what makes it common. Common household item, is it related to, is it going to be the floss thing we talked about? No. Okay. Is it going to be chopsticks? No. I guess that's not too common. No. I hate this quiz. What's the answer?

Q-tips. Oh, for God. Young mothers would take cotton swabs and wrap them on Q-tips to clean their children's ears, which sounds- You mean toothpicks? What did I say? You said Q-tips. Yeah, that would be redundant. What you mean to say is the Q-tip was invented by young moms wrapping toothpicks with cotton Schwabs at the end.

Schwabbs? Swabs. Swabs. Yes, Swabs. Schwab does what theirs. does for a whole lot less. Schwab. Charles Schwab.

Anyway, I said, Croh. Not craw. Oh, dear. And do you know that two people have died from ingesting toothpicks? That's it? Well, probably more.

I would think so many more. One very famous person, a famous writer by the name of Sherwood Anderson. Oh, he is famous. Yeah. Yes. He died from a toothpick? Yes.

An ingested. toothpick that killed him. Pungured something inside. Now, why on earth he would eat up a toothpick? No idea. I've bit into them unawares. You know, people use them in their baked goods and various other things. You don't know it's in there. You find one. It's shocking. Shocking to feel a thing in your mouth. I have a friend that makes homemade chili riyanos, and she puts them in there, and she will bring me some from time to time. You know, it like holds the chili riano. You know, she stuffs it with cheese and then sticks the toothpick in to close it up. And then, wraps it in batter and fries it. And, you know, you don't see it. You just don't see it.

Now I'm hungry. Yeah. So let's get lunch. All right. Well, hey, I hope you liked it. That's it. We're out of time. That's the story of how the toothpick wound up everywhere. I'm sorry, we took some detours. Maybe we shared too much. I don't know. You'll let us know. You know, don't let me know. There's nothing I can do about it, but let Chuck know. He's desperate for feedback. You can drop him a note wherever you drop your notes to Chuck. How do people get a hold of you, by the way? Well, they can leave a five-star review and tell me something. Because I read all those.

I read every review. I read every review on Spotify. And yeah, you can send an email to info at and address it to Chuck. Infoatmicromarch. Do you really read every review? I do. Yeah. On Apple and Spotify.

How many we have now? It's like 33,000 or something? Uh, it's close to 40,000 on, uh, Apple. Yeah, no, that's something. All right, great. Crazy. All right, so no matter what you thought of the episode, leave us a five-star review and then, uh, leave Chuck a note. He'd appreciate it.

Anything else? Goodbye. I guess that's no. All right, goodbye. If you like what you heard. And even if you don't. Won't you please? Won't you please?

Won't you please? Pretty Bob's cry. I hate to plead, but please. Pretty. Please. San Bernardino County provides services that support you at every stage of life. Health services, housing assistance, job resources, permits, public safety, and more. Whether you're a resident or business owner, the information you need is just a click away.

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