I was part of a pretty small cohort studying business data analysis in college, and for two years, in every class, there was this one group that connected their semester-long project to beer any way they could. I don't even drink, and I heard so much about the best locations to open craft breweries, the systemic effects of different alcohol laws around the US, and ingredients likely to make a popular brew, just to reference a few of the things they analyzed. It was kind of awesome
Ha, yes, this is the best/worst part of academia, in my very limited experience. If you look at something closely enough, it becomes very easy to see the entire world connected to that thing. That can yield great, specific research and fascinating insights, and it can also lead to myopic understandings of the world. Sounds like the beer-loving business cohort leaned more towards the former, and good on you for taking interest even if you don't actually care about beer, per se.
@@mad_max21 not intentionally. It's not like he ordered to starve people. The telegram is how they communicated orders and there was a Japanese invasion on British territory
So it's totally a weird thing, I get it, but Fort Mackinac... That's pronounced Mack-i-naw, which is something you'd see reading the very first sentence of the Wikipedia article on it. Hearing Mack-i-nack made me physically cringe.
When I was a kid, I would occasionally pull some oat grains off of wild plants. Inside the grain was soft and chewy. We kids would do this from time to time. We weren't going hungry, it was just something to do.
guess he never had to listen to the visitor's center broadcast that you can get in your car as you're going over the bridge "is it really pronounced 'mack-in-aw'? it looks like it should be pronounced mack-in-ack." (640 on your am dial, dontcha know)
My favorite theory of the rise of "sedentism", was the development of "plumbing", (sort of). People lived in one spot until it became fairly nasty, then moved on. Learning how to get rid of waste meant you could stay in one place, which facilitated the rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals, (rather than chasing them all over the countryside) as well as specialization of labor. True or not, I don't know, but it makes too much sense for me to discount out-of-hand.
In Barney Miller, Sgt Dietrich told a story about the origins of sugar in India. He concluded with the statement that the unknown person was the original Sugar Daddy. At this point, Wojo realized that the joke was on him.
St. Martin did have one encumbrance from his injury; Dr. Beaumont. Beaumont kept at his experimentation for years to the point that St. Martin got sick of it. Visit Ft. Mackinac on Mackinac Island for more information on Dr. Beaumont and his history. It is well worth the trip, if you like that kind of thing. Also Mackinac Island is famous for fudge!
PBR was given the blue ribbon at a county fair, where each other participant was also given the same ribbon There is a German Purity law that has been adhered to for hundreds of years (and the drinking age is 16 in Germany) InBev has a commanding marketshare, owning most craft breweries Only 1% of brewers are black or brown people (NPR) Hard seltzer is the fastest growing market segment of carbonated alcohol A budweiser keg with a higher alcohol content is cheaper than bud light (thank you college) The character portrayed on Sam Adams, has marginal resemblances of the titular man, at best Shower beer. During prohibition, the US government poisoned beer and alcohol supplies, killing many And finally, Alagash White from Portland, Maine is the best beer (I would implore your team to try it, I'd even donate if you were able to find it)
My guess is that a whole lot of what makes us 'us' is the result of a combination of a myriad of small selective pressures/opportunities that happened to reinforce each other in a relatively consistent way until our brains and culture had evolved enough that we changed the selection pressures/opportunities we have.
I would argue any food preparation is still a point to Wrangham's theory. You are still cresting a separate location to prepare ant eat food stuffs which are easier to steal.
I think he definitely acknowledges that other food preparation methods could play important roles in human development, but we did specifically ask whether or not he believes fire deserves a unique place in our understanding, and he was pretty clear that he believes it does, separate from mechanical processing. The most illustrative line from our interview that we cut for time was about how even using blenders to process meat-which would obviously not have been an option for homo habilis-does not show nearly the same potential for pre-consumption "digestion" as cooking-with-heat. I'm not sure from your comment if you've read his book or not, but I would definitely recommend it. He obviously has a much more wholistic understanding of his argument than we can put forth within the constraints of yt video (even a yt video as unwieldy as this one!).
if you talk about pepper and the spice trade then you could talk about salt and its purpose of making foods last longer. this made traveling longer distances (especially by ship) for more then a few days possible or in other words everything from european colonization and their discovery of the americas and also it made surviving winters way more easy. i would argue salt made establishing long trade routes possible. and just because you can't tell one compelling story about a food dosn't mean its not super important if anything it probably just shows its importance even better. and just because you can't make out the one pivotal change is also not a good argument in my opinion. it played a major role in several changes and developments.
fun beer fact, in the ancient world beer brewing was a woman's domain. Ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Maya civilisations, Zulu, Ainu, all credit godesses with the invention of beer.
We love his style, too! Justin is 1 of our 2 video producers and (Shameless plug in 3, 2...) also the host of our reboot of Misconceptions and our live trivia show, Tub Trivia (new ep tomorrow night). If you poke around the channel you'll see a lot of him.
There was a documentary about beer, something like "how beer saved the world" that argued that a large population was saved by beer because that was the only time they boiled water, all before our knowledge of tiny things that make us sick.
I've often wondered, is that true? I find beer repellant, bitter, and undrinkable in any form. I feel the same way for all alcohol - it is utterly disgusting to me. This is not a moral judgement about whether drinking is good or nice or healthy, I'm just talking pure taste. I always thought people who like to drink just enjoyed the effects of alcohol, so they taught themselves to get over how gross it is. I'd like to see some kind of study about whether some of us have different taste buds or something, that makes a substance delicious to some and repulsive to others.
Mackinac Island This is an easy one. If you're a native Michigander, you know that this popular Northern Michigan destination is correctly pronounced “MACK-in-awe Island”. I'm not even from MI
Good video. Thanks especially for mentioning the sugar-chocolate-slavery connection. My first response, before I watched the video, was going to be the potato. So America-centric of me. And that's another reason I appreciate the way you divided the possible candidates into categories that nearly all regions of the world would have. So, "tubers" instead of just one type. As far as diseases, CGP Grey has an excellent video on the origin of some major diseases and how it's related to agriculture: ruclips.net/video/JEYh5WACqEk/видео.html
I haven't watched the video, but the answer is grain. Whether it be wheat or rye or barley. Not only can you make bread which is the most primitive, yet essential food staple across the world, but you can also make beer. If you take a group of humans and strand them far from civilization, one of the first things they will do is figure out how to make alcohol. And if you don't think beer changed the world, you don't know anything about the stuff. It is more influential to human civilization than even bread, plagues, or war.
I've heard true IPAs are supposed to be translucent Barack Obama was the first president to brew his own beer in the white house Vermont has the most breweries per capita while California has the most breweries at over 900 Monks were some of the founders of beer brewing, making open air fermented warm beer for all of early Europe. A practice that in many places persists. Colonist used to drink a lot more alcohol than us. We now drink about 2+ galleons of alcohol per capita a year while in the colonist days they would drink upwards of 30 gallons of beer/cider, 5 gallons of spirits, and a gallon of wine Marquette MI has some of the best beer I've ever had; Black Rocks Brewery and Ore Dock represent!
Yeah, I think that's honestly the answer, but it's not quite as fun as crowning a "winner." Hopefully we had enough (if not way too many?) caveats and disclaimers to make it clear that it's a bit hard to ID one food, when many foods were critically influential at different times/places. But for my $ meat/grains are #1 and #2 in some order.
I don't get why you would be so certain fire only goes back so far when in the time since it was propose its been found to go much farther back. But I guess with anything like this its a lot of guessing and you are never going to be 100%
We definitely didn't mean to suggest any certainty, if we did that's our error. We just wanted to point out that the theory, as persuasive as it is, still faces some roadblocks to becoming universally accepted.
5:01 You can clearly tell that this man has never been camping. Try to sleep on a tree .. just try since you think it is so easy to keep balance while sleeping. Go on old man! Why don't you also prove us that apes used to make a fire everyday. Come one, clever man. You think starting a fire is so easy. Show us how YOU start a fire with stones. The Dunning-Kruger effect in old people is surprising.
I got distracted and barely listened and lost track while watching, but I heard tuber, sugar and wheat. Potatoes are tubers. So I guessed right, I guess?
Let's give a shout out to the first person to mix *anything* with an egg and cook it.
I was part of a pretty small cohort studying business data analysis in college, and for two years, in every class, there was this one group that connected their semester-long project to beer any way they could. I don't even drink, and I heard so much about the best locations to open craft breweries, the systemic effects of different alcohol laws around the US, and ingredients likely to make a popular brew, just to reference a few of the things they analyzed. It was kind of awesome
Ha, yes, this is the best/worst part of academia, in my very limited experience. If you look at something closely enough, it becomes very easy to see the entire world connected to that thing. That can yield great, specific research and fascinating insights, and it can also lead to myopic understandings of the world. Sounds like the beer-loving business cohort leaned more towards the former, and good on you for taking interest even if you don't actually care about beer, per se.
Legit one of the most cohesive and enthralling videos I’ve seen on the web. Thanks for constantly giving us great content like this!
Aw thank you! We put a lot of time into it, so it was a bit of a downer when it didn't do much traffic, but kind words like this mean a lot!
@@MentalFloss I was confused looking at the view count as well! But know that your efforts are far from unappreciated!!!
Excellent, thank you for including subtitles :)
"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."
― Winston Churchill
That's why he caused famine in India. Can't get uppity against the colonial masters while starving.
What, the quote didnt originate from trump?
That would be a little ironic considering churchhill's physique.
@@mad_max21 not intentionally. It's not like he ordered to starve people.
The telegram is how they communicated orders and there was a Japanese invasion on British territory
So it's totally a weird thing, I get it, but Fort Mackinac... That's pronounced Mack-i-naw, which is something you'd see reading the very first sentence of the Wikipedia article on it. Hearing Mack-i-nack made me physically cringe.
I didn't know.
Coming from a Michigander, thank you for that correction. I cringed as well! 😂
When I was a kid, I would occasionally pull some oat grains off of wild plants. Inside the grain was soft and chewy. We kids would do this from time to time. We weren't going hungry, it was just something to do.
Mackinack? My guy, it's famously pronounced "Mack-in-Naw"
guess he never had to listen to the visitor's center broadcast that you can get in your car as you're going over the bridge "is it really pronounced 'mack-in-aw'? it looks like it should be pronounced mack-in-ack." (640 on your am dial, dontcha know)
How to have someone pause the video 7 seconds in just to check the comments section for this very thing.
Thank you. Even this non Michigander recoiled at that pronunciation.
www.mackinawcity.com/quick-guide-spelling-pronunciation-straits-area/
Bjorn Olson what is your point? It’s pronounced aw wether it’s spelled with a w or a c
You should do a video on the history of distilling, medicine and alchemy and alcohol.
My favorite theory of the rise of "sedentism", was the development of "plumbing", (sort of). People lived in one spot until it became fairly nasty, then moved on. Learning how to get rid of waste meant you could stay in one place, which facilitated the rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals, (rather than chasing them all over the countryside) as well as specialization of labor. True or not, I don't know, but it makes too much sense for me to discount out-of-hand.
The History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage offers a fabulous insight on the history and impact of beer. I highly recommend it
An excellent and fascinating read! I was going to mention this.
In Barney Miller, Sgt Dietrich told a story about the origins of sugar in India. He concluded with the statement that the unknown person was the original Sugar Daddy. At this point, Wojo realized that the joke was on him.
Thank you for the human edited captioning.
St. Martin did have one encumbrance from his injury; Dr. Beaumont. Beaumont kept at his experimentation for years to the point that St. Martin got sick of it. Visit Ft. Mackinac on Mackinac Island for more information on Dr. Beaumont and his history. It is well worth the trip, if you like that kind of thing. Also Mackinac Island is famous for fudge!
Can you include some info on 'non-alcoholic' beers in that beer episode
Yes Richard Wrangham! That book is so good
Right?! Loved reading that book, like discovering a great new band (if you're a big nerd, like me).
Mental Floss I was introduced to that, and The Selfish Gene in my anthropology class...completely opened up the world of science reading to me
PBR was given the blue ribbon at a county fair, where each other participant was also given the same ribbon
There is a German Purity law that has been adhered to for hundreds of years (and the drinking age is 16 in Germany)
InBev has a commanding marketshare, owning most craft breweries
Only 1% of brewers are black or brown people (NPR)
Hard seltzer is the fastest growing market segment of carbonated alcohol
A budweiser keg with a higher alcohol content is cheaper than bud light (thank you college)
The character portrayed on Sam Adams, has marginal resemblances of the titular man, at best
Shower beer.
During prohibition, the US government poisoned beer and alcohol supplies, killing many
And finally, Alagash White from Portland, Maine is the best beer (I would implore your team to try it, I'd even donate if you were able to find it)
of all of them... shower beers blew me away
Salt w/out a doubt. It has(& still does) effected every other item on the list & was used as money. Nothing else come close.
My guess is that a whole lot of what makes us 'us' is the result of a combination of a myriad of small selective pressures/opportunities that happened to reinforce each other in a relatively consistent way until our brains and culture had evolved enough that we changed the selection pressures/opportunities we have.
I would argue any food preparation is still a point to Wrangham's theory. You are still cresting a separate location to prepare ant eat food stuffs which are easier to steal.
I think he definitely acknowledges that other food preparation methods could play important roles in human development, but we did specifically ask whether or not he believes fire deserves a unique place in our understanding, and he was pretty clear that he believes it does, separate from mechanical processing. The most illustrative line from our interview that we cut for time was about how even using blenders to process meat-which would obviously not have been an option for homo habilis-does not show nearly the same potential for pre-consumption "digestion" as cooking-with-heat.
I'm not sure from your comment if you've read his book or not, but I would definitely recommend it. He obviously has a much more wholistic understanding of his argument than we can put forth within the constraints of yt video (even a yt video as unwieldy as this one!).
Funny thing about beer, it’s the closest beverage to food. It is possible to fast and drink beer. It’s liquid bread, as it were
if you talk about pepper and the spice trade then you could talk about salt and its purpose of making foods last longer. this made traveling longer distances (especially by ship) for more then a few days possible or in other words everything from european colonization and their discovery of the americas and also it made surviving winters way more easy. i would argue salt made establishing long trade routes possible.
and just because you can't tell one compelling story about a food dosn't mean its not super important if anything it probably just shows its importance even better. and just because you can't make out the one pivotal change is also not a good argument in my opinion. it played a major role in several changes and developments.
fun beer fact, in the ancient world beer brewing was a woman's domain. Ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Maya civilisations, Zulu, Ainu, all credit godesses with the invention of beer.
Whore of Babylon (biblical references) ... Kirke/Circe.... potions and pharmakeia (guess where Pharmacy comes from)... basically drugs and witchcraft.
Loving those candles! ❤️😍
Kinda wasn't expecting a treatise on statehood and slavery but hey here we are and I did a learnt today.
Read SALT and COD, both by Mark Kurlansky. Also A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN SIX GLASSES by Tom Standage.
Yes salt and cod were very interesting
Who is this dude? I find I love his style. Like. Dam.
We love his style, too! Justin is 1 of our 2 video producers and (Shameless plug in 3, 2...) also the host of our reboot of Misconceptions and our live trivia show, Tub Trivia (new ep tomorrow night). If you poke around the channel you'll see a lot of him.
I agree. He's usually pretty interesting and funny.
Thank you so much for the caption ♡
awesomee video! Question> What would be a Survival list? Easy mode? Congrats
Wow, the history of sugar is anything but sweet.
Wow
At first glance I read this as "which food disappointed humanity the most"
European Trappist monks drank beer as their main sustenance during lent. Now their monasteries are known for their great beer
Good work sir
There was a documentary about beer, something like "how beer saved the world" that argued that a large population was saved by beer because that was the only time they boiled water, all before our knowledge of tiny things that make us sick.
Fun fact:Latvia had more beer breweries than USA per capita
Fun fact about beer: I find many of them quite tasty
I've often wondered, is that true? I find beer repellant, bitter, and undrinkable in any form. I feel the same way for all alcohol - it is utterly disgusting to me. This is not a moral judgement about whether drinking is good or nice or healthy, I'm just talking pure taste. I always thought people who like to drink just enjoyed the effects of alcohol, so they taught themselves to get over how gross it is.
I'd like to see some kind of study about whether some of us have different taste buds or something, that makes a substance delicious to some and repulsive to others.
Fort Macki-what??
No mention of salt?
Mackinac Island
This is an easy one. If you're a native Michigander, you know that this popular Northern Michigan destination is correctly pronounced “MACK-in-awe Island”. I'm not even from MI
www.mackinawcity.com/quick-guide-spelling-pronunciation-straits-area/
Got the next episode explain the lack of laws while drinking white claws.
Legal scholars will be trying to unpack the intricacies of this statute for centuries.
Cool fact about beer is my father would drink too much of it and beat us
I knew it! Mr. Rogers WAS indeed to good to be true!
Good video. Thanks especially for mentioning the sugar-chocolate-slavery connection.
My first response, before I watched the video, was going to be the potato. So America-centric of me. And that's another reason I appreciate the way you divided the possible candidates into categories that nearly all regions of the world would have. So, "tubers" instead of just one type.
As far as diseases, CGP Grey has an excellent video on the origin of some major diseases and how it's related to agriculture: ruclips.net/video/JEYh5WACqEk/видео.html
If you're a nomad, one illness or a sick or injured family member and suddenly you're sedentary.
I haven't watched the video, but the answer is grain. Whether it be wheat or rye or barley. Not only can you make bread which is the most primitive, yet essential food staple across the world, but you can also make beer. If you take a group of humans and strand them far from civilization, one of the first things they will do is figure out how to make alcohol. And if you don't think beer changed the world, you don't know anything about the stuff. It is more influential to human civilization than even bread, plagues, or war.
Got to be beer, wine and hard liquor.
Mack-in-ACK? Sorry to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced Mack-in-AWE.
www.mackinawcity.com/quick-guide-spelling-pronunciation-straits-area/
I live in Michigan, it's pronounced both ways in certain circumstances.
23:52 is a real mood when describing our current state of the US.
I mead a video on history of beekeeping and the beekeepers booze.
All I know about beer I read in “the history of the world in 6 glasses”
Rice: *Am I a joke to you?*
20:35
Rice "requires" a shitload of water...you clearly didn't watch the video.
@@Obiwancolenobi r/woooooosh
I am having some problem with bias reporting
So much info lol!
3:50 Aren't all anthropologists (and more generally all scientists) biological?
It’s a fact I love beer. Yes love ❤️ beer. Ahhhh
The one that wiped out all but 8.
Actually, most corn is not eaten by humans. Most of it is processed into corn syrup and animal feed. And for making alcohol.
Haven’t watched yet, my guess is corn
Beer is old but mead is older
You didn't mention Twinkies.
I've heard true IPAs are supposed to be translucent
Barack Obama was the first president to brew his own beer in the white house
Vermont has the most breweries per capita while California has the most breweries at over 900
Monks were some of the founders of beer brewing, making open air fermented warm beer for all of early Europe. A practice that in many places persists.
Colonist used to drink a lot more alcohol than us. We now drink about 2+ galleons of alcohol per capita a year while in the colonist days they would drink upwards of 30 gallons of beer/cider, 5 gallons of spirits, and a gallon of wine
Marquette MI has some of the best beer I've ever had; Black Rocks Brewery and Ore Dock represent!
Weird seeing this guy out of the tub.
We like to let him out every couple weeks. Otherwise he starts complaining about being "too pruny."
@@MentalFloss 🤣
My guess is meat, since without meat our brains wouldn't have enough caloric intake to support their evolutionary growth.
Initially I think definitely, but I’d think grains and other foods you can produce en mass are better once the population starts blowing up.
Yeah, I think that's honestly the answer, but it's not quite as fun as crowning a "winner." Hopefully we had enough (if not way too many?) caveats and disclaimers to make it clear that it's a bit hard to ID one food, when many foods were critically influential at different times/places. But for my $ meat/grains are #1 and #2 in some order.
@@MentalFloss Agreed! Even though it pains me to not see potatoes as equally valuable as meats or grains. Oh well.
It's actually cooking.
*doesn't watch* Bacon, of course.
Did you forget about psilocybin? Aka magic mushrooms...
They're poison, not food, lol.
Sugar or potato
steak (burnt chunk of meat)
All I got from this video is someone got a man crush on Keanu Reeves...
Or Did They?
Easy answer, mushrooms
I don't get why you would be so certain fire only goes back so far when in the time since it was propose its been found to go much farther back.
But I guess with anything like this its a lot of guessing and you are never going to be 100%
We definitely didn't mean to suggest any certainty, if we did that's our error. We just wanted to point out that the theory, as persuasive as it is, still faces some roadblocks to becoming universally accepted.
5:01 You can clearly tell that this man has never been camping.
Try to sleep on a tree .. just try since you think it is so easy to keep balance while sleeping. Go on old man!
Why don't you also prove us that apes used to make a fire everyday. Come one, clever man. You think starting a fire is so easy. Show us how YOU start a fire with stones.
The Dunning-Kruger effect in old people is surprising.
Can anyone show a tax free, Hunter-gatherer society that developed a system of writing?
Fun fact: I fear no 🍺😎
Beer was initially only made by women :D
I would hazard a guess at Cheese...
Body of Christ: having a communion will help humanity earn eternal life
Sugar, potatoes and wheat. Is what I'm guessing before watching the video...
I got distracted and barely listened and lost track while watching, but I heard tuber, sugar and wheat. Potatoes are tubers. So I guessed right, I guess?
Milk
Coffee
Why does every one of your videos always end up at race? Please stick the food in the future.
This video needs to be renamed to "How to disguise a video about social commentary instead of discussing what is in the title."
Naw
Amazing
Mental Floss Mag had a delicious irreverent attitude. This is....well, if I wanted PBS, I would watch PBS.
Beer before liquor, never sicker. Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear.
The New York Times sucks.