Pod Insights The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week Marie Antoinette Wearing Braces, Secret Immortal Cells, Chasing the Tooth Worm About this episode Hari Kondabolu and Priyanka Wali join the show to talk about cells taken secretly and unethically... but ended up changing human health forever. Then, Rachel divulges a plethora of facts about dental care of yesteryear, from how Marie Antoinette wore braces (yes, seriously), to how Neanderthals drilled for cavities.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
0:33 Rachel Feltman? At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman.
0:54 Speaker 02 I'm Hari Kandavolu.
0:56 Speaker 03 And I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali.
0:59 Rachel Feltman? Welcome to the show. It's so great to have both of you on.
1:02 Speaker 02 It's a pleasure to be here. Yes.
1:05 Rachel Feltman? I really love the new show you guys have. I definitely want you to tell our listeners all about it. And I also have to say, it's like required by law, that I've been a fan of Hari's work since seeing him perform in my weird tiny college's student union.
1:21 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:26 Rachel Feltman? All the alums of Simon's Rock have, I think, take great personal pride in your career success because we're like, yeah, we knew that guy was funny.
1:36 Speaker 02 I was there like every year for a stretch.
1:39 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, for a little bit, yeah.
1:40 Speaker 02 And you had those weird beanbag chairs in the union.
1:43 Rachel Feltman? We did.
1:45 Speaker 02 It was so, it was weird. You were all a bunch of baby geniuses. And it was, they were all like, if I remember right, you were all like, like 15, 16, 17, but you were in college.
1:59 Rachel Feltman? Yes.
2:00 Speaker 02 I remember thinking that was so like... Ridiculous and amazing that that was even possible.
2:06 Rachel Feltman? It was very silly. It was very silly. And we loved your show.
2:12 Speaker 02 Oh, I loved being there. I also, I loved being that young. I remember that also quite vividly.
2:18 Rachel Feltman? Ah, what a time, what a time. Well, thank you both for coming on. And would you tell our listeners, those of them who, you know, were not introduced to some of your work, you know, in like, gosh, 2011?
2:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:31 Rachel Feltman? Could you tell them a little bit about who you guys are and what you do?
2:35 Speaker 02 Sure, Priyanka, do you want to go first?
2:36 Speaker 03 No, no, no, you go, you go. That's such a, just roll into that intro.
2:42 Speaker 02 I'm Hari Kondabolu. I'm a stand-up comedian, writer, and podcaster. The co-host of the show Health Stuff with my friend Priyanka Chopra. Oh, I already screwed that up. I already screwed that. I don't know how Priyanka Chopra came out of my mind. Priyanka Wali, that's Freudian.
2:59 Speaker 03 Are you, are you friends with Priyanka Chopra?
3:01 Speaker 02 I met her once and it was awkward.
3:05 Speaker 03 Oh, interesting. Well, I want to hear about that later.
3:10 Speaker 02 I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I got you. I got your last name wrong. Clearly, you know, comedians usually wake up around 2:00 PM Eastern, so this is clearly early for me.
3:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, I've been, you know, historically, I've toured all over the world, colleges and comedy clubs and rock clubs and all that. And this year, I'm focused on writing a book, which will hopefully come out in a year-plus time. But yeah, it's been really fun doing this podcast with Priyanka Wali, my friend Priyanka Wali, Priyanka Wali.
3:47 Speaker 03 And I'll roll into that. So yeah, I'm Priyanka Wali, definitely not Priyanka Chopra.
3:54 Speaker 03 I'm a internal medicine physician by trade. I'm also board certified in obesity medicine. And came into the podcasting world by segue through stand-up comedy, which I was performing for many years before the pandemic. And yeah, so we have this fun podcast that we do called Health Stuff. And it's where Hari and I just kind of talk about the health questions that really keep people up at night. And we bring in medical experts and curiosity and a lot of humanity. And we tell medical stories and sometimes they're historical stories. Sometimes they're surprising stories and we'll bring on experts to talk about just like everyday topics like sleep, hair loss, sexual health.
4:38 Speaker 02 Earwax.
4:39 Speaker 03 Earwax. And we try and do it in a way that's actually makes sense for lots of people.
4:48 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, we love that. Listeners, if you don't check out Health Stuff already, I highly recommend it. But for today, we are here on the weirdest thing I learned this week. So let's jump right into it. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up some kind of tease about a fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, WebMDing, et cetera. Does anybody use WebMD anymore? I guess now it's people sitting up asking ChatGPT about rashes or whatever, but you know, same as it ever was. We decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first.
5:26 Rachel Feltman? Then once we've had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Except not really. We had too many three-way ties, so now it's just sort of whatever, but we have fun. So guys, what's your tease?
5:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, so there's a really, really weird story that we've come across over doing the show. And what's crazy is that it's at the center of modern medicine. And it's almost impossible if you haven't heard it before. Do you want to say the one liner, Hari?
6:03 Speaker 02 Sure.
6:05 Speaker 02 A woman goes to the hospital for cancer treatment. Doctors take her cells without her knowledge and those cells end up changing science forever.
6:17 Speaker 02 Dun dun.
6:20 Speaker 03 Right?
6:21 Rachel Feltman? It's, it's a good story and one that I've sort of, I know way less about this story than by rights I should. So I'm excited, even though I know what you're going to talk about, I'm excited to hear you get into it. My tease is that I'm going to talk about Marie Antoinette's braces and also a recently discovered medieval grill. And I will go first because today I'm doing kind of a double-barreled fact. So I can do a little bit before you guys and a little bit after, listeners. I know it's a little different from our usual format, but don't worry, you're safe. You'll be okay. So I'm going to roll right into it. So yes, Marie Antoinette's braces, I'm curious, folks, including Jess, you know, what does that?
7:05 Rachel Feltman? What do you think when you hear the phrase Marie Antoinette's braces?
7:09 Speaker 03 Well, I can't tell if you're talking about her teeth braces or her leg braces. That's where I'm trying to decide.
7:16 Rachel Feltman? Teeth.
7:16 Speaker 03 Okay, teeth braces. Okay. I did not know Marie Antoinette had braces.
7:23 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah. Jess is, you know, confused face Jess.
7:28 Speaker 04 I'm, yeah, I'm, it's thunderstorming like crazy. That's why I'm staying muted. I don't know if you can hear it, but yeah, I don't know. I, I, I assumed like a leg brace. I didn't think she would have a tooth.
7:39 Rachel Feltman? That's really fair. I came across a, a random clip from a show about Marie Antoinette where she was getting old fashioned braces, like strapped onto her face. And there's been a lot of great sort of like women's beauty related body horror in, in media right now. There's this horror movie that came out recently called The Ugly Stepsister that also does a lot of like period cosmetology as extremely high horror. But this was not, this was like a period drama show and I was like, did that happen? I don't know. Seems kind of fake. Certainly I've never heard of it. Turns out it probably did actually happen.
8:22 Rachel Feltman? Modern dentistry as we know it was pretty much invented in France in the early 1700s, which is not to say people in other parts of the world or before this time didn't take care of their teeth. I will get into that in part two.
8:38 Rachel Feltman? But before the 18th century, you generally either had like hydine measures, you know, things that you swished or chewed, you know, to varying degrees of effect. Some could be really actually helpful. Some were actively harmful and in retrospect make us go gross. But, you know, kind of the same as probably a lot of what's on the market today. Your results may vary. And then you had, you know, people who would yank bad teeth out, often badly. And that was sort of the whole of it. There wasn't much meeting in the middle in terms of like surgical dental care or, you know, really invasive treatment of tooth-related problems. And that really changed with this guy Pierre Fouchard.
9:24 Rachel Feltman? He's often called the father of dentistry and he laid out a lot of the groundwork for the care of teeth being like a true medical and surgical profession. And often when we say that, we're, you know, sort of actually talking about folk practitioners being shunted away while doctors, you know, try to silo what they're doing. But in the case of dentistry, that, especially in France, that really wasn't what was happening. They were saying, maybe you should stop yanking teeth out of people so bad that it can like kill them. You know, we do love that dentistry became actually like a medicalized thing. And he came up with some like pretty revolutionary ideas.
10:08 Rachel Feltman? For example, that using brick dust to scrub your teeth clean might hurt them, maybe. Yeah. He also was like, we really have to stop entertaining the tooth worm, which was this idea that you see going back into antiquity and was still kind of pervasive in some circles in Europe, that cavities might be caused by worms, which kind of makes sense if you like, look at what's inside a tooth, you know, you have these like nerve roots. But still, he was like, listen, it's, it's the 1700s. We're, we're smart grownups. We, we know there aren't worms in there.
10:47 Rachel Feltman? He pulled out a microscope to prove it. But so. All of this is to say, Marie Antoinette was actually kind of living in a time and place where one might get an orthodontic appliance strapped onto their face. There doesn't seem to be much solid info on her specific experience with orthodontia. Most of what's out there is this like very recursive Google search optimization loop that's all just various orthodontic practices around the US, like with their article on how Marie Antoinette had braces. They're all citing each other. We have no idea where it goes
11:28 Rachel Feltman? back to. Everybody's just, everybody's got the factoids, nobody's got the facts. But I did find historians saying that her teeth were straightened as part of her preparation for her marriage to Louis. And we do know that the earliest appliance we'd recognize as sort of a precursor to braces did exist by then because Fochard talked about it in a book he wrote in 1723, which was almost half a century before Marie Antoinette's wedding. And it was called a bandollet or a bandeau. It was basically this like horseshoe shaped piece of metal with little perforations in it. So you would put that on the inside
12:09 Rachel Feltman? or outside of the teeth and then use silk or metal threads to attach it to individual teeth. So similar to modern braces, you know, applying force to loosen the teeth and get them to move. And then the idea being that you sort of hold them well enough in place while that some like bone regrowth happens that maybe they stay where you put them. And by the 1750s, the official dentist of the French king actually was writing about his improvements on this concept. So yeah, by the time Marie Antoinette was at court, if you wanted nice teeth, you would probably get kind of braces from a French dentist. And that brings me to the fact that France was in kind of a weird place when it came
12:54 Rachel Feltman? to teeth at this time in the late 1700s. So in 1787, there was this big kerfuffle in the art world because this artist, Madame Vigie Lebrun, I don't speak French, she painted a self portrait where she was holding her child and, get this, smiling.
13:17 Rachel Feltman? How dare, with teeth. Now, I looked up this portrait and like, she's like smizing. There's, there's like a little sliver of white between her lips. This is not like a full on toothy grin, but apparently it was super shocking to people's sensibilities. Because at that time, in the art world in Europe,
13:41 Rachel Feltman? showing open mouth smiles, that, that was a way of showing that your subject was like, obviously a plebe, or even like actively trying to make somebody look grotesque, or simple, or evil. Because for several hundred years, the mouth had not been a very pretty place in Europe. As I mentioned before, most available dental treatment had been pretty ineffectual, pretty barbaric. Plus, they were also eating a lot of sugar all of a sudden. In the 17th century, because of the Atlantic slave trade, there was suddenly just this massive export of sugar to Europe. So people were going sugar crazy.
14:22 Rachel Feltman? And by 1750, it was actually the most valuable commodity in the European trade. So basically, more and more people had access to sugar and they were eating a lot. And their teeth were rotting and that was not good.
14:37 Rachel Feltman? And so perhaps this has something to do with why dentistry became such a priority, something that the people in the medical profession were so interested in, something that the royals, you know, wanted perfected and done on them. So by the time that portrait was making a bunch of dudes mad, French mouths had changed radically because the invention of modern dentistry as a medical practice meant that now these people who had spent several decades having nasty, pitted teeth had...
15:13 Rachel Feltman? Often very straight, white teeth. And actually, there was kind of a reputation growing among other Europeans that the French were like smiley people with nice teeth.
15:26 Rachel Feltman? Plus, the rise of the bourgeoisie meant there were suddenly more non-royals who could afford to care about their appearances and pay people to make their teeth nice.
15:39 Rachel Feltman? I've also read a couple of historians saying that like even the pre-revolution cultural vibes may have helped make French smiles more of a priority. Obviously, this is a little squishy, but I kind of love this hot take that it became very cool to like sit around gabbing and having discourse and engaging deeply with your like fellow man and all that. And so smiling was kind of in vogue and like, people were gonna see into your mouth more if you weren't, you know, if you weren't headed for the guillotine, I guess. So yeah, that people were paying more attention, spending more money, having nicer teeth. And by the time this artist painted a portrait where she dared to have her mouth open,
16:24 Rachel Feltman? you know, it was actually quite, quite commonplace for, for a French person of, you know, modest to wealthy means to have a pretty mouth.
16:37 Rachel Feltman? A French dentist also invented around this time what he called incorruptible teeth. Those were just porcelain dentures. So, you know, a lot of people were going around in their like, too white veneer era probably, but compared to what was available before, I'm sure everyone thought they looked great. And so, yeah, all of this is to say that yes, Austrian teen getting a makeover to go to Versailles, she would almost certainly have had some gnarly dental work done. And am I disappointed that?
17:11 Rachel Feltman? The Coppola movie did not feature Kirsten Dunst and braces.
17:18 Rachel Feltman? Absolutely. But, you know, hindsight is 2020.
17:24 Speaker 03 It sure makes you feel, take for granted, you know, getting braces in the modern age. I had braces.
17:30 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
17:30 Speaker 03 And, you know, some of my friends had braces, you know, it was just sort of like part of growing up, I suppose, here in the US. And you just take it for granted. I mean, like, there was a whole, like, status symbol back in the day with, you know, French culture and
17:49 Rachel Feltman? Totally.
17:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, like a lot of judginess as well, I suppose. It's like really interesting.
17:56 Speaker 02 I was thinking about how like, English dentistry historically has been known as terrible. And meanwhile, right next door, you have French dentistry being amazing. Is it, they intentionally keep it from the British? Is that what they did? Or were they, were the British like, no, we're not gonna do what you do?
18:15 Rachel Feltman? Too French.
18:16 Speaker 02 Too French to have your teeth fixed.
18:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, the other idea is like, they, the reason the teeth got more crooked is because they colonized places and then extracted sugar and ate the sugar.
18:31 Speaker 02 Oh, that's good.
18:32 Speaker 03 It's like.
18:32 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, imperialism makes you ugly.
18:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, literally. Yeah. So it's like, maybe you shouldn't colonize human beings. And you didn't need to get your teeth fixed.
18:42 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's funny. I was thinking about England with this a lot too, because I didn't look into sort of, you know, what the cultural dynamics were, you know, with dentistry at the time. I would not be surprised if there was a lag where over in England, they were going like, those French people, they'll do anything fancy, like, like brushing their teeth. But I do, I, I have heard that, you know, sort of the reason that British people, you know, have this reputation for bad teeth is just because orthodontia became more of a widespread thing like one generation earlier in the
19:25 Rachel Feltman? US than a lot of other countries than in, in the UK. And I don't know how true that is. It might be kind of just like a, a thing people say, but, um, you know, it's, it's super interesting to me that things change so rapidly in France that a bunch of, a bunch of dudes from the art world were like, we're showing our teeth now. Everyone was like, yeah, I spent, I spent $10,000 on these teeth.
19:55 Rachel Feltman? But yeah, the history of dental appliances and dentistry goes back way, way further than this, which I will talk about in part two of my fact. But for now, we are going to take a quick break.
20:12 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
20:47 Rachel Feltman? Okay, we're back. And before I delve even deeper into tooth history, why don't you guys share your shocking medical history story?
20:58 Speaker 02 Sure. Our, our story is about a woman named Henrietta Lacks, who was a 34 year old black mother of five, living in Baltimore in the early 1950s. She went to Johns Hopkins Hospital with severe pelvic pain and bleeding and during her nine months of treatment for cervical cancer, before she died from the disease, doctors took samples of her cancerous tissue without asking her permission.
21:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, and then what happened next literally completely transformed medicine and medical research. Scientists realized that her cells behaved unlike anything they'd ever seen before. So normally, human cells, when you take them outside of the human body, they die pretty quickly. And at that time, in the 1950s, researchers, they couldn't figure out how to keep tissue and tissue cells alive in a laboratory environment for more than a few days. But Henrietta Lacks' cells, they actually kept reproducing over and over again.
22:06 Speaker 03 They were actually the first immortalized cells. And when I say immortal, I'm not saying that they were deliberately engineered to be immortal. The cells' immortality arose basically from a natural infection with HPV, human papillomavirus type number 18, which actually was the virus that caused Henrietta Lacks to develop cervical cancer. And so the HPV actually changed the normal cells' systems, control systems, and it turned
22:46 Speaker 03 off important tumor suppressor mechanisms, and it signaled the cells to keep growing.
22:52 Speaker 02 This is honestly one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century, and those cells became known as Haala cells, using the first two letters of her first and last name. And once scientists realized what they had, Haala cells were used everywhere. For example, when it comes to polio vaccine research, Haala cells were used as a host system to grow and quantify polio virus in the laboratory. They were used in cancer studies, genetics, IVF research, even work tied to the COVID vaccine decades later.
23:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, so how exactly did these scientists use the Haala cells to study cancer? So for example- Before Haileu cells existed, they couldn't easily study human cancer in a lab. But then when these Haileu cells came into existence, they could literally watch cancer cells grow, divide, spread under a microscope. And so this allowed them to understand what makes cancer cells different from normal, healthier cells.
23:55 Speaker 02 Testing cancer drugs. Scientists could add different medicines to dishes of Haileu cells to see which ones killed the cancer cells or slowed their growth. This was much faster, cheaper, and safer than testing drugs directly in people. If a drug worked against Haileu cells, it could then move forward to further testing.
24:14 Speaker 03 And specifically with Henrietta Lacks's case, Henrietta was infected with HPV. And by studying the DNA inside the Haileu cells, that's how scientists actually discovered the HPV virus. And they could see that it was actually inserting itself into the cells' DNA. And so this kind of proved the theory that certain viruses can cause cancer. And actually, that discovery eventually led to the development of the HPV vaccine, which we know now prevents cervical cancer in millions of people.
24:52 Speaker 02 Basically, modern medicine was built in part by using these cells. Pharmaceutical companies, research institutions, biomedical labs, everybody wanted access to them. And that's where the story becomes complicated. Because while Henrietta Lacks's cells were helping generate major scientific breakthroughs and enormous profits, her family had no idea this was happening for years.
25:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, so her family wasn't compensated, they weren't consulted. And let's, you know, let's go back to the beginning. Henrietta herself was never consented to do any of this. In fact, her family didn't even know her cells were being used until decades later in 1973, more than 20 years after her death. And the only reason they found out was because researchers contacted her children asking for blood samples. And the family was like, what? And that's when they began to realize that actually their mom's cells were not only
25:59 Speaker 03 being used without their awareness, but had also become one of the most important tools in modern medicine.
26:04 Rachel Feltman? Right.
26:05 Speaker 02 And even after learning the truth, the Lacks family spent years fighting for recognition and control over how Henrietta's cells and genetic data were being used. Eventually, the family reached an agreement that gave researchers access to Haala's cell genome data only with the family's involvement and consent.
26:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, so by 2023, then finally, the family reached a settlement with a pharmaceutical company that had directly profited from the Haala cells for decades. And this marked one of the first major legal acknowledgements of the exploitation at the center of Henrietta Lacks' story.
26:47 Speaker 02 But her story still raises huge questions about consent, ownership, race, profit, and who benefits from medical innovation. And honestly, that's why Henrietta Lacks' story continues to matter. It's not just medical history. It's a conversation about ethics, power, and who gets protected by the systems we trust with our bodies.
27:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know, again, the weirdest thing you learn. I mean, this is like an extremely weird thing to do to another human being.
27:17 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
27:18 Speaker 03 You don't just take people's body parts and then exploit and use them for decades. It's crazy because this story, I mean, it forces us to hold like these two truths, right? Like, there has been incredible medical progress contributed.
27:36 Speaker 03 Thanks to Henrietta Laccelles and the foundation of that progress was on exploitation.
27:46 Speaker 02 And it's important to understand that this isn't just one isolated story, which it never is an isolated story, right? It exists within a much larger history of Black Americans being experimented on, denied informed consent, or mistreated by medical institutions.
28:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know, the, I think it's important to to name that, right? Because there's, there is medical mistrust. You know, this is why a lot of people push back, you know, and there have been like actual entire communities that, you know, have experienced deep betrayal by the medical community. And and that mistrust is like a very real response to very real history.
28:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's it's not irrational.
28:31 Rachel Feltman? Right.
28:32 Speaker 02 Some people call it institutional untrustworthiness, the idea that trust has to be earned through transparency, accountability, and ethical treatment, especially when institutions have violated that trust before.
28:45 Speaker 03 So, you know, when I went to medical school, nobody taught me or told me that, hey, the textbooks that are teaching you about these cells are literally because of the exploitation of another human being. And I think it's really important that not only do all medical providers know that, but I think all non-medical providers, just people, like, we should know that all of the research and advancements that we've had, like, came at the expense of another human being. And and that person deserves due credit.
29:21 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, to to your point earlier,
29:28 Rachel Feltman? This is such a bizarre and literally tangible example, like this woman's cells are being kept and used in perpetuity. But it's a great reminder of all of the instances of medical exploitation, you know, much of it, very racially motivated, class motivated, that are slightly less tangible, you know, might not be as easy to convey as they literally stole this person's cells and use them for everything forever and ever. Yeah, like you said, systemically, there are so many stories like this. So to ask a question that's,
30:13 Rachel Feltman? you know, not why this story is important, but still, I think a lot of people wonder about, do we have any idea what made her cells like so magnificent and unique?
30:27 Speaker 03 Um, well, it came down to the fact that she was infected with the HPV, the high-risk HPV number 18. And I did, I kind of gently brushed on, on the science behind it. But basically HPV 18, virus number 18, it can change the cells' normal control systems that kind of keep things in balance to not grow and become cancerous. So it basically, HPV 18 turns off important tumor suppressor genes in those cells. And then it also activates
31:06 Speaker 03 telomerase, which is an enzyme that rebuilds telomeres, which help keep the cells alive. So essentially, it turns off the tumor suppressors and it turns on the things that like allow the cells to keep dividing again and again. And that increases signals to tell the cells to keep growing. So HPV 18 is gnarly in that sense because it just will mutate your cell into this like hyper reproducing cell.
31:36 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
31:37 Speaker 03 Which is also a good PSA for people with services to go get screened because you can test for HPV, especially the high-risk ones, including HPV 18.
31:48 Rachel Feltman? Absolutely. Okay, we're gonna take one more quick break and then we'll be back with just a few more teeth-related facts.
32:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
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32:50 Rachel Feltman? Okay, we're back and I promised a medieval gold grill, tooth grill, not meat grill. So while French dentists in the 1700s may have done the first known work using metal to like force teeth to move, those weren't the first metal dental appliances per se. Researchers have actually found lots of dental bridges that were almost certainly mostly just cosmetic or maybe, you know, served to hold a tooth in place if you bit very, very gently. But yeah, there was recently a study on a 20 karat gold wire attached to the jaw of
33:34 Rachel Feltman? a middle aged Scottish man who he lived between 1460 and 1670, somewhere in there in Aberdeen. And so basically you can, you can see pictures of this online. I'll definitely post some at a popside.com/ weird when this episode goes live. But basically in this jaw, in the lower front teeth, you can see this wire sort of drawn to wrap around some teeth and there's a spot where it seems like it's meant to Secure, maybe a loose incisor or a false tooth. And you know, this was well before dentistry emerged as a profession.
34:18 Rachel Feltman? But this does show, you know, some amount of of skill. So researchers think this would have been maybe a jeweler or a barber or somebody who sort of made dentures for folks. And this guy was probably pretty wealthy. I'll get into some of the reasons why it seems unlikely that this was common in Aberdeen at the time. But yeah, it seems like, you know, things were probably largely cosmetic. You know, maybe there was some hope of maintaining oral function. But when you look at these like little wires wrapped around some wiggly little teeth, you know, nobody was like eating a steak with with these dental bridges. And we see these dental bridges dating back at least to around the 7th century B.C.
35:03 Rachel Feltman? Etruscans seemed to really like them. They were popular with well to do ladies, at least until Roman influence put them out of fashion. I guess Romans did not like wrapping gold around your teeth. But basically, there were these bands of gold. And they were designed to like wrap around some stable teeth and then hold others in place, whether that was a tooth that had fallen out or a loose tooth or a false tooth, either from another person or from an animal. Apparently, they would do that sometimes. What's interesting is that nearly all of the bridges we find from this period replaced central or lateral incisors, which archaeologists say were usually the last ones for people to lose, just sort of naturally.
35:46 Rachel Feltman? So some scholars have suggested that ladies actually had teeth extracted just so they could like bedazzle them. They were being like, take out some of these teeth, wrap them in gold, pop them back in. But other than this trend among rich ladies for gold teeth, A lot of examples from, you know, this sort of pre-dental era seem to have likely been post-mortem. It was about like completing the body before burial. We see a lot of this in ancient Egypt. You can tell the difference because someone's actually wearing this habitually for a while while they're alive. It's, the wire is going to form a groove in the tooth and, or at least otherwise show signs of wear against the tooth. And for a lot of
36:31 Rachel Feltman? this, these like old school examples of metal in mouth, it's very clearly something that was put on and then never used. But we do see, including with the Scottish guy, evidence that people were, you know, probably not with very much success, but they were biting stuff while wearing these teeth. That sort of functional orthodontic work probably ties back to the Arab physician Al-Zahraabi, who did most of his work around the year 1000. Incredible medical pioneer, lots of surgical devices that he designed. He also figured out hemophilia was a familial disease, many other accomplishments. Often referred to in texts, if you've ever seen the name Al-Bukasis, a Latinization of Abu al-Qasim, which is
37:14 Rachel Feltman? like one-fifth of his name. And that, that was the nickname given to him by, you know, many of his European colleagues, I suppose. And-
37:24 Speaker 03 Wow. So he was really, wait, he discovered hemophilia was, was familial too?
37:30 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah. And I mean, granted, you know, because of where we were in medical history, you know, how much did we know about the mechanics of hemophilia? Limited, probably. But yeah, he, he did put together that this was something that they were, you were seeing in families and that it was, that it had some relationship to somebody's family tree.
37:52 Speaker 03 Wow. He had like a lot of, he had a lot of time on his hands. Like he did a lot.
37:57 Rachel Feltman? He did a lot. He really did. And then people didn't even use his real name. You know, that's, this is how it goes. But yeah, a few hundred years later, they were giving him credit for the idea of tying a loose or replacement tooth to the one next to it with a fine gold chain. So yeah, this, this guy in Scotland had essentially one of his dental appliances several hundred years down the road.
38:27 Rachel Feltman? Now, as for, you know, whether this was a typical thing in Aberdeen in like around the 14, 1500s, no, accounts from Aberdeen indicate that one local treatment for tooth pain was cow dung poultice. Oh, God. So, yeah, really, this guy was really seeking out some concierge medicine. But, and yeah, there's also, it's like, you know, the gold would have been expensive. Uh, like I said before, even though nobody was like specialized in orthodontia at this time, it, someone specialized in metalworking and/or teeth would have need to put this in for him.
39:10 Rachel Feltman? Some kind of smith would have needed to, you know, make this very pure gold. So, all this is to say, like, this guy probably traveled to get this done. He was probably the richest man in Aberdeen and he really wanted that tooth to stain his mouth for cosmetic reasons.
39:31 Speaker 03 Can we just talk about, can we back up and talk about cow dung poultice as a pain treatment for tooth pain? Is that correct?
39:41 Rachel Feltman? Yep.
39:42 Speaker 03 So, what it, so what, you just put the poultice, like, how does that work? I, I need to understand, how do you treat pain with a cow dung poultice? Is that you expose the person to cow dung and then they're in so much pain from the cow dung poultice that they forget about their tooth pain?
40:00 Rachel Feltman? It's a great question. Um, I, and I, I can't say I know, but one imagines that if somebody like held a cow paddy up to the side of your face, it would distract you a lot, probably. And also maybe be kind of warm, I don't know, maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but that's, that's sort of the, the main potential mechanism I can see is warmth and being so horrible that you want to tell the lady putting it on your face that you actually feel so much better and that it worked really well.
40:37 Speaker 03 So you're assuming it's fresh? It's not dried hard cow dung?
40:42 Rachel Feltman? Well, and that's true, it could totally be dry hard cow dung and, you know, then you, it's possible it was like mixed in and packed into a tooth, also totally possible. Um, which-
40:56 Rachel Feltman? You know, I don't think would go well, sort of from a microbial standpoint.
41:01 Speaker 03 But I would go well from a like, keeping the dentist in business standpoint, because you're basically like reinfecting your patient with the bacteria so you can like, take more teeth out.
41:12 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah. Well, and I'm, I'm grossly paraphrasing, but the, the research paper that I was reading that, you know, talked about what other people were doing for teeth in Aberdeen was basically like, when you had tooth pain in Aberdeen, you went to the local old lady who knew kind of witchy stuff, and she slapped some stuff on your tooth. And so, you know, I think it really speaks to the, the respect we once had for community elders and, and their wisdom, that, that people were like, the tooth lady says we need to put cow poop on it. I don't know. That's what we're doing.
41:55 Speaker 03 Yet again, another example of like, how grateful I am to live in like, modern times, with like, sterility techniques and, you know, just like, yeah, infection control.
42:06 Rachel Feltman? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's nice to, to be reminded that despite the horrors, there are many, many things we are able to simply not do because we're alive today, like getting cow dung put on our, on our teeth. So, and yeah, there's, as for more basic oral hygiene, there's, there's loads of interesting stuff, you know, of that variety, if you go way back. So there are a bunch of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian texts in, in cuneiform. There, there's one collection from 700 B.C., but it seems like a lot of those are copies of earlier work. So some of this stuff was likely being used earlier.
42:45 Rachel Feltman? Like 100 prescriptions for various tooth ailments are, are in this cuneiform. And a lot of it was sort of botanical and, and mineral based. They, they cared a lot about alleviating bad breath. There were various mouthwashes. They, you know,
43:05 Rachel Feltman? Had advice on how to clean your teeth. There's also a book of the Book of Classic Internal Medicine, which was a Chinese text that's generally thought to be from around 2,700 B.C. Has a lot of stuff about toothache and periodontal disease. Similarly, there are Sanskrit texts from around 1,500 B.C. That talk about treating oral hygiene issues, chewing things that we now know have antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties.
43:39 Speaker 03 You've talked about that, Hari, like, right? Your parents are the stick, something about-
43:44 Speaker 02 No, no, I was talking about tongue cleaners.
43:47 Speaker 03 Oh, oh, tongue cleaners, okay. So that's not an ancient Sanskrit technique.
43:54 Rachel Feltman? They did definitely, they, they were very concerned about, about tongue hygiene as well. And that was also true in, in China. And because, you know, that is a great way to make sure your breath is not smelly.
44:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, we talked about it on our show. I can't remember what the consensus was, but tongue cleaners, I can't remember, but we, we talk about it on the show about like, do they actually help with-
44:19 Speaker 02 Bad breath.
44:20 Speaker 03 Bad breath.
44:21 Rachel Feltman? I'll have to check it out because as soon as I said it, I was like, do they? Is it a good way to keep your breath from being smelly? I don't know, but now I'll have to go listen to the episode.
44:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, just, yeah, just listen to the episode.
44:33 Rachel Feltman? And yeah, there's, okay, so my last tooth thing for the day is that there's this new study that's arguing that drilling cavities, you know, going after that tooth worm, might be so old that Neanderthals actually did it. So this is tough to study, not-
44:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:52 Rachel Feltman? For many reasons, including because Neanderthals eat very low carb diets. So they had very few cavities. You know, obviously we know that refined sugar is a big one when it comes to getting cavities, which is why the, the French, you know, were really, really having a bad time tooth wise, but- You know, before you get refined sugar, we see cavities start to emerge as dietary or carb heavy. So this 59,000 year old molar found in Siberia was very interesting to researchers because it had a very suspicious hole, looked like a pretty decayed tooth and had like a pretty round hole on the top. So they did like some microscopic analysis. They saw signs of severe tooth decay and signs that sort of where there had been tooth
45:37 Rachel Feltman? decay below the gun line, gum line, somebody had been kind of like picking at it. They also did experiments on three modern teeth with like different tools to try to figure out what sort of tools and movements could have made the hole they were seeing. And they, they've come out saying that the twisting motion of a small tool made out of Jasper, which would have been available locally at that time, you know, would have, would have made this hole. And so, you know, could it be that somebody, whether it was the individual themselves or a friend with a rock, you know, drilled at this tooth? We can't be sure. We do know that whatever made the hole, they persisted in using the tooth afterwards.
46:20 Rachel Feltman? There are basically chew marks on top of the grooves that indicate, you know, the cavity forming and being messed with. So scientists, of course, can't be sure that a stone dental drill was at play here. I saw some outside experts, you know, people who weren't involved in the study, but who study this kind of stuff, being very excited about it, some being more skeptical. And the truth is, we just can't know. We, we do see other things that look like people sort of drilling cavities, not this old, but around like 15,000 years ago. But we just don't have enough physical evidence to, you know, solidly make the case until
47:03 Rachel Feltman? we, we get closer to the modern era. It's really interesting to me though, because it makes me think of trepanation, which we know people were doing 10,000 years ago. So like literally drilling holes in the head to try to relieve headaches or for other reasons, you know, maybe they just thought it was fun. But we know that they did it and that people survived it. So to me, it like, isn't such a crazy stretch to think that if you felt like your tooth was going to explode, you might. You might make a hole in it. I don't know. So like I said, we can't be sure, but it doesn't seem so far fetched to me. And I
47:45 Rachel Feltman? think there are a lot of experts not involved in the study who who are sort of have the same vibe. We're like, yeah, we can't know for sure, but like, maybe, maybe. So, you know, some, some researchers are going to be on the lookout for more evidence of Neanderthal dentistry and I'll be, I'll be waiting eagerly to hear.
48:08 Speaker 03 I'm pretty sure there's a dentist down the street and his practice is called Neanderthal Dentistry.
48:16 Rachel Feltman? Oh, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, this guy seems to have done well with the tools available. He lived to chew another day, so.
48:25 Speaker 03 Just one other day and then he passed.
48:31 Rachel Feltman? Well, thank you guys so much for, for coming on.
48:33 Speaker 02 Oh, it was so great to be here.
48:34 Rachel Feltman? Super fun.
48:34 Speaker 03 Thank you.
48:35 Speaker 02 Thank you.
48:36 Rachel Feltman? Would you remind our listeners what your show is called? And then also maybe, you know, what, what are the episodes that you would recommend for folks jumping in for the first time?
48:46 Speaker 03 Sure. Yeah. So our show is called Health Stuff. We drop new episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. And I would say actually our most popular episode, as far as I can tell right now, is the one that just dropped this past week on sleep. And we had a sleep expert talk to us about insomnia and ways that you can sleep better and the things not to do in bed. So that's been really actually popular this week.
49:21 Speaker 02 Yeah. And we have an episode coming out about earwax, which I referenced earlier, which I think was a very useful episode. It was, because I feel, because we all, not we all, but many of us misuse our Q tips and it's really,
49:34 Rachel Feltman? That's true.
49:34 Speaker 02 It's really about that. So.
49:36 Rachel Feltman? Awesome. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.
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Previous We Did it Joe (Pilates), They Did Surgery on a Cocaine Hippo, Steinbeck Digs Deep (Literally) Next Creativity is Crumbling, Sarcophagus Juice Sourdough, Mycelium Mutual Aid Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated