The Weekly Podcast Pick: What Do You Think About Mastication

Usually, podcasts generate books. Think of Switched On Pop, Hidden Brain, The Last Podcast On The Left, and others. The Disappearing Spoon reverse engineered that process with a 2010 best-selling book by science writer Sam Kean.

 His podcast of the same name has already spawned several delightful episodes, including the link between Teflon and the A-Bomb, why our hunter-gatherer ancestors had perfect teeth, and the CIA's drug-fueled orgies.

This week's episode is about "The Great Masticator." Before you get all "judge-y," mastication means to chew your food. In the 18-minute episode, Kean regurgitates the tale of one Horace Fletcher, a food faddist who was enraptured by the idea that digestion occurs in the mouth, not your stomach.

Fletcher encouraged citizens to chew their food. Chew. And chew. And chew some more. Keep chewing. Until your food is almost liquified. Sounds delicious, huh?

So when your mom urged you to chew your food, she was indeed channeling Horace Fletcher. In the episode, Kean regales us of the lengths Fletcher would go to prove his point --even mailing his poop to a compatriot to prove that his maniacal chewing had turned his poop into a healthy ash-like substance.

Listen to the episode, and you'll hear Kean explain how Herbert Hoover became involved with Fletcher before he was president. And how the outcome of World War I was imperiled.

Check out the episode here.