Invention: The Turnspit Dog

lives and the development of our species. And you know there's a reason we're doing this today is because we checked in with the machine and it turns out there are some of you that listen to this show but have not gone to check out Invention yet. What's wrong with you? No, no, we know everybody's time is precious. There's a lot of shows to listen to. We put out a lot of shows. Some of you just haven't gotten around to it yet. But hey, here you are.

You're already listening to an episode of Inventions. Time to just tuck in and keep going. Don't worry. This one's a pretty weird one, that's right. We thought it would be great for the Stuff to blew your mind, crowd, because this is an episode about dog based cooking technology, not not cooking dogs, not cooking dogs to eat, but using dogs in order to power the technology that cooks your food. Yes, dog powered machines that help you cook

you know, other animals, not dogs. We can't stress that enough. No dogs are going to be eaten in this episode. So obviously we hope you enjoyed this episode of Invention. We also really hope you go over to check out the separate Invention feed. The podcast is called Invention. If you don't already listen, hit the subscribe button, and then if you really want to do us a favor, if you're like, oh, Robert and Joe bring me these episodes every week, I really enjoy them. I want to help

them out. You know what you can do. It's quite easy. Just download like every episode of Invention, get them all, listen to all of them, set our numbers on fire, and you benefit in the process. Yeah. I mean we we did a several different episodes over the holidays about toys, and each episode is kind of a grab bag of

different toys. So we discussed Legos for instance, and one of them talk about the history of Lego Blocks, how those Lego bricks came together, and sort of a brief history of that company, as well as other inventions like the Yo Yo, and we mentioned the Chinese Yo Yo and one of those episodes the Uh the Apola and I got to use one just last weekend and at a Chinese New Year celebration they had some on hand.

There was somebody there to to show me how to use one, and I have to say they are hypnotic. Do you want to be hypnotized with knowledge and fascination of the technology of ages past? If so, check out Invention. Subscribe, download like every episode you can find, get on it, help us, help yourself. We think you're gonna love it. All right, let's jump right in. Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Invention. My

name is Robert Land and I'm Joe Cormick. And today we're continuing our trek through human techno history, and we're

going to begin with The flint Stones. Okay, Uh. If you've ever watched The flint Stones, the Old Uh in nineteen sixties American cartoon, you're probably familiar with their over the top cartoon world in which you know, you have, you have these cavemen, but they're also it's also like a commentary to a limited extent on nineteen sixties American culture, and they live alongside dinosaurs and they utilize them to power pretty much every aspect of their society. Is the

satirical element there. If I've only seen the Flint Stones Viva Rock Vegas, probably yeah, I think so, because they, if I remember correctly, those live action adaptations did put a lot of emphasis on the dinosaur and prehistoric creature based technology. Oh yeah, clearly. That's the big draw of the series, is the curiosity what kind of dinosaur is going to be playing the role of a toilet today? Yeah, because well, they didn't use dinos to power everything for it.

They did insist on footing their own ridiculous stone cars around town. I love that they had a typewriter that was a mere stone machine, kind of like a cross between a typewriter and a stone xylophone or something. But they also used of course that would be what is it a lithophone. Actually it's not a there is a name for a stone xylophone, but but it was of course more complicated, ridiculously complicated uh, in the flint stones. But then they also used, just to name a few inventions,

the following uh. And let let's go back and forth on these jokes. A sauropod powered construction crane device, a stegosaur based fire truck, theropod based mobile stairs like the airport. Yeah, okay, a small dinosaur that they used as a can opener. Yeah, this one's really famous. And I know they used this one in the live action film. A garbage disposal dinosaur that just lives underneath the counter. I remember this. Actually they were like the garbage disposals acting up and he

opens up the abnets and like yells at it. But they've also got a record player that's a turtle and hummingbird. Yeah, it's like the hummingbird is the needle, of course, and the turtle was somehow spinning the record. Wait a minute, where they're hummingbirds? And wait a minute. This is because they were definitely not humans coexisting with dinosaurs. Uh. They had a mammoth based uh system of running water, didn't They also have a tiny mammoth that was like the

vacuum cleaner. They used it to be as the hose or maybe it's young. I don't know how this worked. There was also a I'm not sure it was a bird or terra saar based camera, So like you hold up the camera to take the picture and the small winged creature uses its beak to then a chisel the image into a piece of stone. That's funny that it's some kind of bird as a dishwasher, it was like a pelican. Yeah, it looked a lot like a pelican. And then, of course, if you need a kitchen knife,

what are you gonna do? Use a sawfish? Why not a rock? Why not a like a flint stone. It's it's there in the name flint hilarious. If it is an actual sword of fish, I guess, but that defeats the purpose. I mean why you would use an animal in place of a machine is that an animal is complex and has moving parts and can generate motive power. If you just need a knife or something that seems like real stone age technology would work just as well.

Oh absolutely, um. And then of course there's the added fact that they have a pet dinosaur named Dino who is just there for companionship. Now all of this is ridiculous, and even today we watch it and we laugh at it because it's a ridiculous exaggeration of animal labor. Each dinosaur,

prehistar creature is highly specialized. So you know, either the humans of the flint Stones just found the right animals to perform these very specific functions, or like us real life humans, they bred them to encourage certain traits, traits that would make them ideal for highly specific specialized tasks such as living under your sink and eating all of

your wraps. That's right. And to explore this concept further, today we're going to look at a real historical example, uh, certainly not the only example of an animal bread for a certain job within the house of providing some kind of motive power. Of course, we know farm animals, draft animals, pack animals have been doing this kind of thing for millennia. But today we're gonna be looking at a very strange

specific case from history. The turnspit dog, a breed of domestic dog that is bred to run around a small wheel to power e rotisserie. Yes, and this is this is this is amazing. I was I had not heard of this before, so this was like suddenly, It's like suddenly realizing the flint Stones were real to a certain extent. But but this is gonna be a great episode as well, because it's not just going to be about this dog.

It's going to be about sort of two or three additional technologies that factor in to this period in time in which dog labor was used to help cook big chunks of meat. Right, So I guess first we always asked the question here what came before this invention? So obviously we should look at the dog itself, and the dog in a way, if you sort, if you sort of squint, it is sort of a human invention. I mean,

obviously it's a product of nature. So we like, we didn't create you know, canines generally, but the domestic dog and the domestic dog breeds that exist have in many ways been guided by human hands to greater and lesser extents. Yeah, I mean it's not you know, it's not necessary a situation where a prehistoric h you know, number of human society said that is a good wolf creature out there. I have a few pointers for what we might change in it, but that is essentially the process that ends

up taking place. So yes, before you can have a dog powered meat spinning grill machine, you have to have a domestic dog, and in brief, the domestic dog dates back an estimated twelve thousand years to the Near East, before the cat, before the sheep, before a goat, and before the horse. The dog maybe man's best friend, and it is certainly one of his oldest non human friends.

It is the oldest recognizably domestic animal. And we know they were used some eleven thousand years ago in post glacial Europe by hunter gatherers, and they were almost certainly

used in hunting. Interestingly enough, it's sometimes questioned why humans didn't actually domesticate the dogs sooner than this, and one idea is that there was even more incentive to domesticate these, you know, the wild wolf like creatures into the domesticated dog in the post glacial world, because you increasingly then had to track wounded animals that you've wounded during the

you know, the hunt through wooded regions. Increasingly wooded regions is the forest return and a dog's superior sense of smell could make a huge difference in that task. So the dog was a pre farming domestic species, and that's something that's really essential to note because the at I think we've touched on this before. If not an invention, then unstuff to blow your mind. You know, the cat comes about as an investigated species in the post farming

world because of the post farming surplus of food. Right, So in the in the post farming world, you might have say stores of grain or other foods in a settled location that you're not moving around from, and those might attract to say rats or something like that that would get into your grain, And then the cat can follow the rats. Right. And then these areas other species, many of them of course our food species that we domesticated so so as to uh control them and not

have to hunt them anymore. They live with us, and we kill them when we desire to kill them. But of course, as great as dogs can be and continue to be, and in the in aiding the hunt, we know that they can be bred to specialize in a number of key tasks. And I have a short list here that I thought we might go back and forth on again, much like we did with the dinosaurs of the Flintstones. So you can of course breed a dog

of many generations to fetch felled foul. That's kind of a tongue twister, but yeah, you can see maybe you shoot down a bird, you don't know exactly where it went, but the dog can find it. Essentially, the dog is still aiding in the hunt, but it's a more specialized version of aiding in the hunt. Now, the other thing would be playing more of a role we think of with cats these days, are ridding the home area or the food storage areas of rats and other vermin. Right.

Another one is to aid in fishing specifically, and this is one of the breeds you see this with is the Newfoundland dog, which is a you know, a kin to the Labrador retriever. The Labrador retriever fetches felled foul, but the traditionally but the Newfoundland dog is there to retrieve floats and ropes from dangerous icy waters. Now, of course we see lots of shepherd ng dogs in world traditions that they can help control the movements and direction

of flocks. Right, Um, a big scary dog with a loud bark has long been used and uh and and is still used to as as protects and either to protect an individual or to protect property. Yeah, and I guess this would be part of a bigger thing. Is just sort of like using dogs for violence or the threat of violence. So dogs used in war or fighting, or in in in combat dogs. Unfortunately, sometimes dogs you used to fight each other purely for sport, which is terrible,

or in other equally egregious kinds of bear baiting. Yeah.

Another area, though that is not dark, or not not intrinsically dark, is tracking, because dogs made dogs could be used to track somebody or something for nefarious reasons, certainly, but dogs can be used to track people, to say, to find uh say, fine individuals who have been buried in an avalanche, that sort of thing, right, And then of course you've got the final version, the version that many of us today probably know the best, which is

just pure companionship. Dogs are a good friend, they're a good buddy. And this is where we get the final form of the dog, the pug. Right. But while we offer think of other animals like horses, donkeys, cattle and stuff like this clearly as draft animals, animals that are used to pull loads, or as pack animals, animals that are used to carry loads, animals that are there to provide motive power, we don't often think of the dog

this way. And yet nevertheless, the dog has been used for these purposes in many ways around the world all throughout history. And one of those ways is what we're going to talk about today, pairing dogs for motive power with a specific type of cooking technology, which is the turnspit, the practice of using a dog to turn a wheel like a hamster wheel to turn a rotisserie in a kitchen. Right.

I mean, but before we really started researching this, the only example that would have come to mind would be sled dogs, where the dog is used for locomotion to pull a sled across snow. Yeah. I mean, there are plenty of examples of people using dogs to uh, to pull carts and things like that. Uh and there carry a pack, yes, us exactly. But later in the episode we'll also talk about other types of more treadmill based

motive power that come from dogs. Another important thing to note when we're talking about all these different things that dogs have been bred for, and and this is kind of this is one of those sort of overstatements of the obvious, but the role changes the form of the dog. So like when we're talking about these dogs that are that were bred to, you know, to catch rats and to chase vermin, we're often dealing with dogs that are that are small in stature that can chase the rat

into its hiding places. Likewise, the dogs that are used for tracking and in many cases involving the hunt as well, are often some of the absolute best smellers and are just you know, ideal for tracking and and in all of this too we get into the problem of the modern world sometimes where someone will have a pure bred dog, a dog that has been whose evolution has been hijacked, uh to you know, for the specific function, and then it signs itself as a pet without a without necessarily

having an avenue for that special power that it has been given through selective breeding. I mean a lot of times it's funny that people will have a dog for a pet and they don't even realize what the that dog breed that their pet is was was originally bred for. And so they may notice behavioral characteristics of the dogs that come through without knowing why that dog is like so attuned to chasing after my certain moving objects, or

why that dog has to sniff everything. Yeah, I've I've heard though of specific cases where especially urban dogs um have you know, their owners will make an effort to find outlets like find a place where they can herd a single sheep around and use that energy, or these groups that will go through I think it's New York.

I heard a radio I think it's an NPR story about this, where people with traditionally vermin hunting dogs will get together and basically to go on a big rat chase the streets, you know, because that's that's what the dog wants. Right. So we've bred plenty of breeds for different tasks, but I guess we should turn to the other half of the equation here, leading to the turnspit dog,

which is the rotisseriy. Yes, the rotissory. So if you've been to the supermarket, I think you know the basic idea here because you've probably seen rotisserie chickens, right, but this this, uh, it's a chicken on a spit, and usually they're like multiple spits creating this whole carousel of rotisserie chickens. And they're moving under some sort of heat source, you know, being a lamp or some sort of actual

you know, heating element. But you've probably also seen it if you've ever seen like the spit for donor kebab or for euros. These are traditionally done where there's a heat element on one side and there's a bunch of you know, seasoned meat that's on a spit that constantly rotates. And the idea what the constant rotation is to provide even heat right meat is skewered and emplaced over or adjacent to a heat source. But then what happens if

you don't turn it. You're gonna get one side of the meat that's hideously burned and one side of the meat that is perhaps undercooked even you, but it's not what you want. You want uniform heating around the meat and within the meat. And this method actually still works. One of their Robert, do you ever encounter steak world? You know, this whole world world wisdom and false wisdom about what you're supposed to do or not do with steaks.

It can be it can be a treacherous pass So used to when I when I still ate beef, and I would grill sometimes I had I had, I would look in a grill book and there would be a lot of wisdom there about how to do it. And then you go on the line and the would might be, you know, wisdom that set the opposite. Yeah, exactly. There's also a lot of like you know, dad wisdom kind of stuff that about this. One of the one of the steak myths that people often say is you should

only turn your steak once. You know, you put it on the grill one side, let it go halfway on that side. Flip it once and let it go halfway on that side. Uh. That is not good wisdom. You can turn a steak as many times as you want if you're grilling it, and that actually helps the steak cook more evenly. Um. You know, by constantly turning it, you are not letting the heat build up too much

on one side and overcook that side. Okay, Well, like a similar thing I do when I do grill, I tend to do veggie grilling, and so I'll do like a grill basket and I'll just make sure I I stir it up. Yea. And the same principles actually, I think would apply pretty well to vegetables. Probably the more you stir them, the more evenly cooked they're going to be. But in this case, we're continuing to talk about big hunks of meat. The bigger the better on a spit turning. Uh,

So as to have that uniform cooking. But here's the thing. You've got to turn that spit, and the most basic way to do that is to turn it by hand. Now, of course, later it's no spoiler to say that eventually machines are going to come into play and do it, because again, you've been to the grocery store, you've seen

machines turning rotisserie chickens. You know that that is coming. Um. However, the tissory, you know, it was very much in vogue in the medieval world, and we see plenty of illustrations of their use, both both in you know, their terrestrial setting depictions of everyday medieval humans engaging in rotisserie cooking.

But then you also see lots of these imagined realms of hell, to where if you see a big, elaborate depiction of eternal damnation, there's almost certainly going to be some individual spitted on a on a long skewer and then turned over a fire. Right, the culinary traditions of the time come through in our imaginations of torment. Right.

And now the word rotissori. The rotisserie concept itself, of course is not too complicated, but the word comes goes back to France in around fourteen fifty years so, which is ironic because while there were versions of turnspit roasting or rotisserie all over Europe from the medieval period and probably some earlier than that, but especially beginning in the medieval period, I've read that it is most common in Great that is where spit roasting was an extremely popular

form of cooking. That like in the European continent and elsewhere in the world, people would be more likely to use like ovens enclosures to cook inside if they were going to do a roast of meat at all or anything like that. Apparently, for some reason, English culture was just not into the ovens for roasting. They liked the open flame and the constantly turning spit. Yeah, yeah, absolutely both. I think the main sources we turn to in this, Yeah,

they center almost exclusively on England. Uh, that's where we look at the documentation of the of the spit and all of these additional details about how the practice changes. Well, I think that's for two reasons. Number One, spit roasting in general seems a more popular form of cooking in Great Britain, and then beyond that, where spit roasting is done, it seems like the dog was a more popular way

of doing it in Great Britain than it was elsewhere. Now, one of the sources that I I used in in my research here is an excellent book by one B. Wilson called Consider the Fork, a History of how We Eat and uh. And you know, one thing that's important is, even though we have this cartoony and perhaps even flint Stonian idea of meat spitted above a fire and roast in turned, I think this is how the Ewoks were attempting to to to consume the heroes in Star Wars,

right maybe. I mean they've got them hanging from a stick. It would be kind of awkward actually spitted. I guess they weren't spitted. There would be a lot of like tumbling and falling around the ropes they were hanging from. So I'm not sure how well that would work for somebody I thought they were going to eat somebody I thought that they were going to eat them. Yeah, I just don't know if they would have turned to them. I think they probably would have just burned them on

one side and then they do all right. Well, Well, one thing that that B. Wilson points out is that the spit was typically located next to a fire and not over it for most of the cooking. You would only position it more over the fire towards the end to toast it, sort of like in an oven. Now you uh, you know, you might bake something and then broil it to the last you know, few minutes to

get it a little crispy on top. Right, then that makes sense putting it next to the fire, I think you could get gentle er, more even heat throughout right, And a lot of times in England we're talking about open hearth cooking too, so that just makes more sense. Right the fire is in the fireplace and then your

eu rotisserie is positioned in front of the fireplace. But for open hearth cooking, you have to understand that this means the kitchen, especially near the fireplace, is going to be a sweltering environment and somebody's got to turn that spit. And according to B. Wilson, before we put the spit dogs to work turning the spit, we used turnspit boys. Yes, it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's hilarious and at the same time it is so disturbing. So only only

during the sixteenth and seventeen centuries. Did the dogs take over the work? Really? Uh? And they took over the work from human children. She includes a quote from biography John Aubrey, who said, quote in olden times, the poor boys did turn the spits and licked the dripping pans. Oh boy, the drippings. Yeah, and Be describes this as perhaps the worst of the many quotes soul destroying jobs

in the rich medieval kitchen. Here's a passage from their book quote by the reign of Henry the Eighth, The king's household had whole battalions of turnspits, charring their faces and tiring their arms to satisfy the royal appetite for roast capin's and ducks, venison and beef crammed in cubby holes to the side of the fireplace. The boys must have been near roasted themselves as they labored to roast

the meats. Until the year fifteen thirty, the kitchen staff at Hampton Court worked either naked or in scanty, grimy garments. Henry the Eighth addressed the situation not by relieving the turnspits of their duties, but by providing the master cooks with a clothing allowance with which to keep the junior staff decently closed and therefore even hotter. It's horrible. I mean this, this lines up with everything I've read that the turnspit role was essentially the lowest rank in the kitchen.

It was the last job you'd want to have, because it's like, it's not only sweltering hot, hard work, it's also incredibly dull and repetitive. You know, you're not getting much variety. You're just standing there by a really hot fire, turning a crank at a steady pace for hours and hours at a time. It's kind of it's like Conan the Barbarian, you know, running the mill exactly. Yeah, because it's very important that the crank had to be turned

at a steady rate. You couldn't have the person turning the crank take a break for a few minutes and go do something else, because then the meat would burn on that side, so you had to keep it turning. Yeah. So it's yeah, it's it's grueling, just monotonous manual labor here and uh and even though it's not even just the big kingly houses, even lesser houses used them, and they were they were actually seen as acceptable well into the eighteenth century in England, and uh and uh also

in Scotland. B rights that Scottish highlander John McDonald born seventeen forty one. He was an orphan and at the age of five he worked the spit in a household. Yeah, and I think this comes through in common expressions within the English language of the period, Like there was the expression turn spit to like refer insulting lee to someone. It was essentially you would call somebody a turnspit to suggest they were like lowly and not worth your time,

that they were wretched in some way. But around the Tutor area, which was roughly like the sixteenth century, you know, late fourteen hundreds through the end of the fifteen hundreds, uh, technology changed the picture somewhat. For this is when kitchens in in England started using the rotisserie spit powered by belt and dog wheel. So maybe we should take a quick break and then when we come back we can

discuss more about the turnspit dog. All right, So here's where we're gonna look at the turnspit dog and the wheel itself. So I guess I should mention a couple of sources that I used for This one is a book by Jan Bondison called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of

Canine Curiosities from Amberley Publishing, two thousand eleven. And another is a book by Brian D. Cummins, who is a cultural anthropologist who's focused on the relationships between humans and dogs, and this book is called Our Debt to the Dog, How the Domestic Dog Helped Shape Human Societies from Caroline

Academic Press. So, according to Cummins, the first published mention of turnspit dogs in history comes from a treatise published in fifteen seventy six written by an author named Johannes or John Caius, who was quote Doctor of physic a in the University of Cambridge. And this is sometimes claimed to be the first English book written about dogs. I think he actually wrote it in Latin, but it was

quickly translated by an assistant into English. Um and Cummins points out that right from the beginning, Kaius identifies the turnspit dog or what he spells the turns pete dog as a breed, which Cummins thinks is probably incorrect, and we'll come back to that more later. Whether the turnspit dog was a distinct breed of dog or not. But John Chias appears to have gotten a lot of things wrong about dogs in his book about dogs. He apparently didn't know much about dogs. But he's like, I'll write

a book anyway. Um. But this, this being the first mentioned in literary history, I guess we should take a

look at what he says. And so the text reads of the dog called turnspeed in Latin vuver sater, there is comprehended, under the curs of the coarsest kind, a certain dog in kitchen service, excellent for when any meat is to be roasted, go into a wheel, which they turning round about with the weight of their bodies, so diligently looked to their business, that no drudge nor scullion can do the feet more cunningly whom the popular sort here upon call turns beats. Now that is that is interesting.

Even if there is we'll discuss there maybe problems with it, because it does imply that this is not just you didn't just grab a random animal and throw it in and just see what it did in the wheel. Now that the dog seems to have been trained to to to proceed on the wheel at a regular pace, so as to properly cook the meat right. KaiA says that it's not just that the dog can turn the wheels.

The dog turns the wheel and the spit at a better rate than the human cooks in the kitchen do which I think a lot of people can probably relate to the idea of a dog being more reliable than a human um. But but the premise here, I think, is that a dog runs inside a wheel like a hamster wheel, in order to turn a belt that turns a spit to ensure the even cooking on all sides

of the roast. So beginning a few centuries later in the seventeen hundreds, more records of turnspit dogs show up in the literature, including a formal breed categorization by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scholar who established a lot of important conventions of taxonomy and nomenclature in zoology and botany. And so again, I think Linnaeus here is identifying the turnspit dog is

a distinct breed of dog. Bondison points out that Linnaeus's name for the breed is Canus vertigious or dizzy dog, a name used in several English sources is the verna pat cur So here's bondison on on Linnaeus's description here quote small, long bodied, and bandy legged. Most had drooping ears, but some had ears standing up. Some turnspit dogs had gray and white fur, often with a white blaze down the face. Others were black or reddish brown. There may

as well have been seven all other colors. Brian Cummin says that the most common characteristics of the dog identified as a breed are small size, short legs, muscular especially for their size and weight estimates are kind of all over the place. They range from like fourteen to thirty five pounds, good cardiovascular conditioning for obvious reasons, and generally

being terrier like. And that makes sense because a terrier would already be a breed that is, uh would be we're talking with breeds that are are small in stature. Why you utilize mainly as vermin um uh chasers, I don't actually know, but that sounds right. I know, there's like the rat terrier, yeah, uh so. Charles Darwin even made reference to the turnspit dog in On the Origin of Species. I had forgotten about this, but so, of course.

One of Darwin's main arguments for his theory of evolution by natural selection was the artificial breeding of animals such as cattle and dogs. Showing the descent with modification was possible by the guidance of human breeders, and thus it could also be possible by the guidance of the natural environment.

That was the point of comparison he was trying to make, And so Darwin writes that in domesticated strains of animals we constantly see examples of adaptation quote, not indeed to the animals or plants own good, but to man's use or fancy. Some variations useful to him have probably arisen suddenly or by one step. So it has probably been

with the turnspit dog. So we know that in the middle of the eighteen hundreds, when Darwin's writing about this, it would have been a common enough, like a well known enough phenomenon to have a turnspit dog working in a kitchen that he could just make casual reference to it and people would know what he was talking about. Oh, yes, that dog that is so well adapted to turning a wheel in kitchens. So but the question kind of becomes

is the turnspit dog like a dog? Are these dogs bred for this work, or are you merely selecting dogs to fulfill the role of the turnspit dog? Right? And I think it's possible that it's some combination of the two. Right, that dogs with initial bits of characteristics were selected for the job early on, and then maybe they were bred to bring out certain characteristics that made them especially good

wheel turners. Right. And and this would be the same process that you would get, say, a good rat chasing dog. You can imagine like early on, people saying I need some dogs to go catch those rats. Give me some short legged dogs, and then you know, the breeding commences and you get increasingly breeds of short legged dogs that have a real tenacity for chasing rats. Right. If you've got a batch of them, maybe the two that catch the most rats, you breed them together and that makes

the next generation. At the time, an author named J. G. Wood mentions the turnspit dog in his Illustrated Natural History in eighteen fifty three, but he writes that by his time the dog had become rare, and while it had previously been very common and then existed only in isolated regions, but in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, turnspit dogs were

extremely common in Great Britain. Bondison writes that they were especially common in the west of England and particularly in the city of Bristol, and in Wales, especially South Wales. Bondison writes, quote in sixt thirty nine, when the cornishman Peter Mundy visited Bristol, he was amazed that there was quote scarce a house that hath not a dog to turn the spit in a little wooden wheel. So he's not just talking about palaces or like ends with big

kitchens there. He's saying scarcely a house. So that's where it was apparently most common, but that was less common. There are still records that there were turnspit dogs outside of Great Britain, in places like France, where they were shin tourn A Broches, or in Switzerland and Germany and Holland, and in North America. There even references to turn spit dogs in Ben Franklin's own Pennsylvania Gazette. But I mean

we should recognize that something. So Cummins characterizes the turnspit dogs work as often quite wretched for the dog, so they they'd be having to power a wheel by walking essentially inside the wheel for hours at a time. These roasts take a long time to cook. Uh, And they were near the heat of the fire, which meant that their work was sweltering, and they were often dehydrated. And they can't take breaks because the wheel has to keep going. Well, they can in some cases. I'll get to that in

a second. Generally the dog wheel was hung suspended from the ceiling next to the fireplace. Yeah. I believe their woodcuts that kind of show this as well, Like it almost looks like something you would see on a cracker barrel wall, right, you know, exactly, Yeah, except it has a living dog and it turning a crank um. Yeah.

This is one of the things that's so interesting about this is all these other categories we've looked at or at least you know, disgusting in passing, in which we have reread a dog to to fulfill a specific task. Those tasks are exclusively i think in the wild, though, you know, like it's some version of the thing they would do, be it hunting a rat, or fetching a bird that's been shot out of the sky with with bow or or buckshot, you know, or or even swimming

after fishing lures or or even pulling a sled. At least it is it is out in an environment. It is running across the countryside in this kind of artificially uh constructed pack structure. Well, yeah, you know, I would say even for more indoor dogs, like companion dogs that sit on your lap and cuddle with you, I mean that does seem more analogous to some kind of natural behaviors,

you know, like din snuggling behaviors. Uh, this sort of like being trapped in a kitchen in a wheel turning the wheel does seem more estranged from the natural habitat and behaviors of a dog in the wild than any of these other uses I can think of. It is at best almost animal cruelty and probably just animal cruelty.

Oh yeah, I mean in many cases surely. I mean it's hard to know because on one hand, like a lot of dogs do seem to kind of like enjoy having a task to do, But this seems like it's really hard work that is sustained for a long time. That like, there are lots of stories of the dogs not wanting to do it, like they would try to flee like they would because dogs are intelligent, yeah, and so One of the details I was reading is that you would have the turnspit dog that I get. I mean,

it's not in the wheel all the time. One presumes that it's just sort of either hanging out in the kitchen or around the house. And then if the dog begins to observe the telltale signs of a roast being prepared, uh, if we'll run off and hide because there's no it

knows what's coming. Yeah, and there are explicit tales of cruelty in some cases, at least, like where authors at the time right that some cruel cooks if a dog didn't keep the wheel turning at a satisfactory rate, that mean cook would put a hot coal into the wheel with the dog, so the dog would be made to run to escape the coal, which continually tumbled in the wheel after it was Obviously it's horrible. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like it was always equally bad everywhere.

Like some luckier dogs worked in pairs, trading off in shift so that one could rest while the other worked. Maybe maybe they would have a rest today while the other worked for a day, or they could trade off, you know, and I don't know by the hour or something like that. Right, so there is there there is

the possibility for a less cruel model of it. And at the same time, as we discussed later, there there were individuals who who who specifically pointed out the practice as cruelty, yes, and as as one rare piece of good news in this story. In the seventeen fifty six Sinographia, Carl Linnaeus, again the Swedish scholar, wrote the when he was writing about turnspit dogs that as a reward for their hard work, turnspit dogs would often get to eat a piece of the steak. That's good, you know, I

guess well. I doubt that the cook who's putting the hot coal in there with them is also giving them a taste of the roast. But I imagine kitchen to kitchen, it would vary. To give a bit of flavor about what this was like to see in person from from people who were there witnessing it firsthand. I want to read one often cited passage that comes from a work called Anecdotes of Dog by Edward Jesse from the nineteenth century. Uh So, here's what Jesse writes, How well do I

recollect in the days of my youth? Watching the operations of a turnspit at the house of a worthy old Welsh clergyman in Worcestershire. As he had several borders as well as day scholars, his two turnspits had plenty to do. They were long bodied, crooked legged, and ugly dogs with a suspicious, unhappy look about them, as if they were weary of the task they had to do and expected

every moment to be seized upon to perform it. Cooks in those days were very cross, and if the poor animal, wearied with having a larger joint than usual to turn, stopped for a moment, the voice of the cook might be heard rating him in no very gentle terms. When we consider that a large solid piece of beef would take at least three hours before it was properly roasted, we may form some idea of the task a dog

has to perform in turning a wheel. During that time, a pointer has pleasure in finding game, The terrier worries rats would consider durable glee. The greyhound pursues hairs with eagerness and delight, and the bulldog even attacks bulls with the greatest of energy. While the poor turnspit performs his task by compulsion, like a culprit on a treadwheel, subject

to scolding or beating. If he stops a moment to rest his weary limbs and then kicked about the kitchen when his task is over, that has some stark condemnation. And and of course, and totally it does. It does bring to mind all of the popular chef TV reality shows in which the chef is is just nasty to humans. Uh, you know, one can imagine how nasty a chef could be. Uh of this stereotypical TV chef could be to the poor,

the four spit dog. I wonder why is that such a common stereotype of the angry, yelling chef who's meaned all the cooks working for them? Is that? Is that just an accident a cultural contingency? Or does is does that grow naturally out of the kind of work that happens in kitchens, with the heat and the rapid pace of work and everything. I don't know. It'd be interesting to hear from people, because I know it, and I've

heard shows where people were talking about like regional differences. Um, goodness me, I'm terrible remembering what podcast I've listened to before? What what radio shows. But I specifically remember listening to

a show. No it was a documentary, it was it was visual about I believe it was a British couple that had moved to Thailand to open a Thai restaurant and they're using Thai chefs, and I believe it was the wife was was Thai and the husband was was British and so he was used to the more British kitchen culture. And when they when they were setting up a shop in Thailand, like she advised him, look, you can't yell at the staff like you you did back

in Britain. It's a different culture here. If you yell at them, they just won't come back to work the next day. So that anecdote in that show would lead

me to believe that it does gonna. It is gonna vary greatly for culture to culture, and maybe what we see on TV is is largely a product of sort of the you know, the big city high cuisine and um you know, major metropolitan parts of Europe and the United States, or maybe even something specifically about like angry British food cuisine culture, because almost all the angry chefs

I can think of, or like British guys. Yeah, I want to see one of the gentle chef, but maybe it just takes forever for the for the food to come out. Well, I mean, you never really know what they were like actually in their work. But I mean, as far as TV personas come along, there are some gentle chefs. I think of Paul Prudom, you know he he always seemed like such a lovely, gentle soul. But I wanted to turn back to Turnspit dogs for a

second here. Uh So, there's a fact about them that cited in multiple sources that I thought was interesting, which is that apparently it was a well known custom on Sundays to take turnspit dogs out of the kitchen and bring them to church with you. Uh not just to have his companions at church, but specifically to be used quote as foot warmers. Footwarmers, I guess, so you put your feet on the dog and the dog is warm.

Maybe I assume it's cold in church, and that I don't know, lessens the pain of going to church somewhat, I guess, And it sounds like a step up for the dog, but not that that's saying much though. This actually led to a number of popular church jokes at the expense of the poor turnspit dogs. Bondison notes a couple of these. I'll read a quote from from jam

Bondison quote. According to an eighteenth century joke, the Bishop of Gloucester once preached to a church in Bath, uttering the line it was then that Ezekiel saw the wheels. This is the passage from the prophet ezekiels the wheels coming in the sky and uh, and Boniston continues at the mention of this dreaded word, all the turnspit dogs

ran for the door, their tails between their legs. And then Bondison mentions that another version of the story has the bishop talking about the horrors of hell, where there's roasting and turning on a spit, and again the mention of these words sends all the foot warmer dogs running to escape. And it's it's a clever joke, but it does get back to the idea that the dogs. Dogs are intelligent, and dogs would pick up on the cues. They might well pick up on the particular words like this.

But but even on I think even the smaller signs like they're just just little clues that everyone is preparing for a feast right now, Robert, I think you turned up some examples of other animals that were used in a similar fashion. Yeah. Yeah, So this is something that b brings up in their book because, like we've been touching on, the dog was awfully smart, perhaps too smart

for the work, and could run and hide. Uh. So there were some who said that the turnspit goose was the preferred method, uh that you would get you would get a goose in there, and it would perform better and longer, uh and would be less prone to outthink the chefs. So we have thus far we have turnspit children, turnspit dogs, and the turnspit goose. But of course there was like there was an arc of the turnspit dog.

The turnspit dog is a convention came and went. Jan Bondison writes that in seventeen fifty, uh, turnspit dogs would be found all over the place in Great Britain, extremely common. By eighteen fifty, people still knew about them. It was like a thing you could make reference to and and people knew what it was. But they'd become more scarce at that point, and by nineteen hundred they had almost completely vanished. There there were just a few here and

there left. Uh. And of course the main reason is the increasing availability of mechanical alternatives like clock jacks, which we will talk about more in a bit. But there

was also an accompanying shift in social norms. I think, not just against animal cruelty, which was a thing that changed somewhat in social conventions over time, but by the middle of the nineteenth century, when turnspit dogs were increasingly rare, error to be seen with a turnspit dog in your kitchen came to be interpreted as a sign of poverty, of sort of backwardness, or old fashioned nous, or just

of eccentricity. It was the kind of thing you might have, like you're saying at the at the cracker barrel wall, you know, people putting up weird stuff. You're having a strange attraction at their inn or restaurant. Uh, you could have a turnspit dog. Would be like, isn't that quaint? The old school turnspit dog? Like this would be even like today, of course, even more so, like this would be a moment in a horror film. Yeah, yeah, you know,

the cup of young cuck ball. There car breaks down and they're invited into the you know, the warm uh, you know, the living room of this eccentric individual, and they're on the wall is a turnspit dog running in its wheel to operate the rotissory. Right, it's a sign you should turn around and go back. Now we'll come back to the question of whether the turnspit dog was

actually a breed of dog or not. But Bondison argues that the disc use of the wheel turned spits over time, and you know again by the beginning of the twentieth century that almost completely vanished. That the disuse of this technology led to the extinction of the breed of dog known as the turnspit dog, since the looks and the temperament of the dog made them mostly unattractive as pets.

In fact, one of the extremely few records of turnspit dogs being kept as pets after the decline of their role in the kitchens is that Queen Victoria herself kept three quote turnspit tykes as personal pets at winds Or Castle. So whatever you think of Queen Victoria otherwise she she took in some turnspit tykes. Well, yeah, that was pretty decent.

And you know what, it also speaks we touched on the cleverness that would still be innate in the turn spit dog, but also like it also shows that the dogs other long standing ability uh could not be bred out of it its ability to bond with humans, to you know, to look up at humans with those uh, those eyes that seem almost you know, watery with devotion and emotion and and and enabling this bond to form and and indeed, a bond to form with the most

powerful individual insaid country, the bond between them and the lowest domesticated animal. Well, you know, you you could identify many of the great powers of the dog as a species. You know, they have an amazing sense of smell. You can you can see their determination and dedication and hard work in many cases to the tasks they set to.

But I think it could easily be argued that the ultimate superpower of the dog is their ability to form emotional connections with humans more so than any other After all, they've they've lived alongside us so long, longer again than any of the domesticated animals. Alright, on that note, we're going to take another break, and when we come back, we're gonna get into the legacy of the turnspit dog. Alright,

we're back, all right. I think we should talk a bit of out the legacy of the turnspit dog in English literature, because references to them show up in English literature roughly from like the fifteen hundreds, when the turnspit dog first became popular, uh, roughly to the eighteen hundreds. It kind of cuts off after in the twentieth century. And it makes sense, right because if, especially in in in Britain, if this was something that was to be found in pretty much every household or in a lot

of households anyway, it would be a common frame. There would be a common frame of reference. It would be a common even in perhaps a metaphor for expressing something about the human condition. And so it might not surprise you that, since it goes back to the hundreds, it

shows up in Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Dromeo of Syracuse says, I amazed ran from her as a witch, and I think, if my breast had not been made of faith, in my heart of steel, she had transformed me into a curtail dog and made me turn in

the wheel. So curtailed dog there refers, I think to the docking of tail and curtailed like cut off, and and that seems to have something to do with the social class or status or value of the dogs, like the uh, the more valuable breeds that would would have belonged to rich people. I think we're more likely to have the full tail, whereas the tail was curtailed in breeds that were maybe for working, like in the kitchen.

That's where we get the word curtail. Yes, oh my goodness, all right, I'm all sorts of discoveries are taking place with the stopping. Well, actually, I want to go back. I'm not sure that's where we get the word curtail. I mean, I think that means cut short. But like yeah, but let's just say that is where we get but by Brian Cummins account. Usually a curtail dog in Shakespearean

references is a reference to a turnspit dog. There's another quote in The Mary Wives of windsor quote Hope is a curtail dog in some affairs, and Cummins links this to the futility of hope in some cases, like to the futility of the work in the turnspit wheel that it just goes on and on. Another one is that some thirst have even alleged that the saying every dog has its day comes from the turnspit dog tradition. I think this is not proven. I can't find strong evidence

linking the saying to the roasting spit. But the idea is that since many kitchens would have two dogs, in some cases, they would trade off every other day, so you'd have a day where you work in the wheel and then you'd have a day of rest. And from what I can tell, this English expression does probably show up during the Tudor period in the fifteen hundreds, which is also the time when turnspit dog wheels became common in England, but again I can't prove that's where the

phrase comes from. Interesting, Yeah, and it's like there's this handy example of of of of cruelty in every household, and of course it makes its way into language or in this case potentially Yeah. Unfortunately, it's like every reference to it in English literature is to the fact that it is wretched work, that it's something you don't want to have to do, that it's hard, that it can

be cruel. In fact, even not just not just hard work and cruel but Sisyphean literally because Bondison also quotes a quote a rare collection of poems entitled Norfolk Drollery, And here's the quote. This I confess he goes around around a hundred times and never touches ground. And in the middle circle of the air he draws a circle like a conjurer with eagerness. He still does forward tend

like Sisyphus, whose journey has no ends? Of course, is the what the titan that is punished by having to push the rock up the hill and then it rolls back down. Yeah, I don't know if it's a titan. You're probably right about that. Yeah, but in Greek mythology, having to push the boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again every time, he's somebody who ticked off a guy. That's sure. But that's interesting because then why why a mythology is usually the handy

metaphor to turn to. It's like, for this period of time you had to replace Sisiphus. You'd replaced myth because you had the real life Sysiphus installed in your home. That's the epic struggle that everybody can relate to because they've seen one of these in the kitchen. Uh. And it turns out we mentioned this earlier, but there were other similar dog powered machines in human history. For some reason,

always especially in whales. I don't know why, but whales in western England seemed like the epicenter for dog powered machines. So you had dog powered butter turns, dog powered fruit presses, dog powered grain wheels, even water wheels to draw water up from a well. And then later I was reading about how in England and in the United States there were a few examples of dog powered printing presses. Wow, Like, I mean, it really sounds like we're almost getting into

the room of dog punk. I think, yeah, well, that could be a great like whole family plus dog halloween costumes, some kind of dog punk outfit actually, and that's someone should do this. You could have a scenario where it's like a dog punk world, but of course the dogs are heroes and they of course escape and rebel, so sort of like dog punk me eats Rats of nim basically rights itself. Yeah. Uh. So we we talked before about the question of whether the turnspit dog was actually

a breed of dog. There's been a lot of speculation about which dog breeds most resemble or are most closely related to, the turnspit dog. According to Bondison, the docks in and the Bassett hound have been proposed, but Boniston thinks these are bad candidates. Maybe better candidates for relations are the glen of Imal terrier, which greatly resembles historical reports of the turnspit dogs, though has a more terrier like head. And this was but this was also a

dog that was definitely used to hunt vermin. Yes, so we're getting into that area to where perhaps this is a dog that had a dual role, like we have these rat catcher dogs. I need something to turn this wheel. Go grab one of those rat catcher dogs and throw in the wheel. Yeah. I think that's highly plausible, especially early on, you know, and maybe they were bred more

for wheel duties as time went on. Another bit better candidate also is apparently the well corgy, which is ironic because of the famous Welsh corgy Corgis, who are royal companions at the castles of the British monarchy, which might sort of fit with the story of the nineteenth century Queen Victoria taking in turnspit dogs as pets. I mean because perhaps you end up with another selective breeding situation. The cutest of the turnspit dogs are taken in by

the queen, and you get you get Corgis. I can see it, though I don't know how far back Corgis go. Might that may not actually match up with the corgy lineage, and perhaps we'll hear from Corky breeders in that right. So Cummins ultimately argues that, given all of the disparate reports about size, appearance, coat, and so forth, that the turnspit dog, in his mind, probably was not a distinct breed of dog, but rather was any small dog that could be trained to turn the wheel, though he believes

they were mostly derived from terrier breeds. So we've got these different I think it's not fully settled whether the turnspit dog was a breed dog or was in in the large part, maybe sort of a breed of dog, or just was was a class of types of dogs. Yeah, like we might be in that area where it was on its way in some regions towards becoming a breed. But ultimately and thankfully the practice does go away. There is one known taxidermy turnspit dog at the Abergavenny Museum

in Wales. It's a named whiskey. I've included a picture for you to look at here, Robert. I mean it's a small dog with short kind of bent ter crooked legs, and it is a cute dog. I could see a dog like this, Uh, you know, earning its way out

of the wheel and into the hearts of a queen. Now, b rights that turnspit dogs were used in America into the nineteenth century, and uh, and that you had an early animal rights advocate by the name of Henry Berg who lobbied against their use, and he ultimately succeeded in

bringing some shame to the practice, but with limited consequences. Yeah, there were there were at least some cases where he, like I identified turnspit dogs that were being used in some cities as like as where there was obvious cruelty, and he like took the people who were who owned the dogs to court. Yeah, and he would make surprise visits and kitchens to catch the dogs and they're use and reportedly be rights. In some cases he found that

the dogs had been replaced by young black children. It's horrible. It commins rights about that too. That in some cases when the dogs were removed. Uh that human children were used in the role, especially black children, and that Berg tried to to advocate on behalf of the children who were put through this cruelty too in some cases, arguing that like, will children not be given the same rights

as an animal? Yeah, thankfully. However, you know, even though we started with children and then dogs into the picture, then geese into the picture, thankfully, going back to children is not the change that ultimately brought the end of the turnspit dog. Right, just as dogs replaced some human turnspits early on automotive power ultimately replace the majority of dogs.

And and it started not the majority, but it started somewhat as early as the sixteenth century and would just go on to replace dogs more and more for spit turning as time went on. So Bondison writes that Leonardo da Vinci, of course, invented an automatic spit turning device that was called a smoke jack, and it worked sort of on the principle of a windmill, except inside a chimney.

So smoke and hot air rising from the fireplace up into the chimney would rotate a turbine with several blades and then the turbine driven by the smoke and the rising gases would generate rotational energy that could be transferred by belt or chain to the roasting spit. Yeah, it's a clever, clever invention. It would later see some use. One of the drawbacks to it, of course, is that you do have to, uh, you have to feed a

lot of fuel to the fire. You have to keep the fire up, you have to keep that updraft powerful enough to turn it in machinery. Yeah, there were several problems with the smoke jack model. Uh. The it was improved upon incrementally in later decades after da Vinci's invention

of it. Bondiston notes that records indicate smoke jack's were in use in England during the time of Samuel Peeps, who was an English naval administrator and prolific diarists who whose journals give us a window into much about what English life was like at the time, which was like

sixteen thirty three to seventeen oh three. But even these later improved models of smoke jack's were still dirty, they were unreliable, and yeah, they required a very hot fire and a lot of you know, putting off, so a lot of fuel essentially to get them spinning at the right rate. But even with those limitations, they could do

the work of a lot of dogs, Bondison writes. Quote in the early nineteenth century, Lowther Castle near Penrith had a particularly advanced smoke jack drive, driving eight horizontal and four vertical spits, saving the labor of not less than twelve turnspit dogs. But another automated solution, and I think the one that ultimately really replaced turnspit dogs, was also in assistance by the sixteenth century, and this was the clock jack, sometimes called the meat jack, had other names

as well. Yeah. The clock jacks used a suspended weight or a spring that you would wind up at the beginning of the cooking process to store potential energy that would slowly be released with a steady rotation mechanism, and it worked much better than any of the other known methods. Yeah. Basically consisted of a weight suspended from a cord and wound around a cylinder. The weight slowly descended the power transferred through a series of cogs and pulleys and powered

one or even multiple spits. Uh. Sometimes there was even a bell included which would ring when it stopped when the food was done even uh So some commentators have likened it to a modern microwave in that respect. Oh that's interesting, But did it have a popcorn function? No? I didn't, I bet not, So you might be asking

the question, Wait a second. If clock jacks existed since the sixteenth century, as long as smoke jack's and almost as long as the turnspit dogs, like, why were inferior turnspit engines such as dogs or smoke jacks or whatever used at all? And the main answer here has cost. You know, clock jacks, especially early on, were expensive. They these were mechanisms that had intricate, you know, clockwork issue designs which were too expensive for standard homes and ends.

But I think as time went on, as they became cheaper to produce or mass produce, you could get them cheaper and more people would replace their turnspit dogs with an automatic system like a clock jack. And indeed Be points out that by around seventy eight, the meat jack was just highly praised as as a method to keep the meat turning. Uh. And you actually would find them in nearly half of English households. Uh. And that's of all households, not just the rich. Ones, but they just

all English households. Uh. You know these culinary robots as being caused them. Uh, they did the job. They did invoke even a tinge of shame. Uh. And it wouldn't run off and hide like a turnspit dog. And we know this. We know that it was in in pretty much half of all households based on probate inventories of the deceased, so this would be where you know they go.

They had records of what were in the households of people who had died, and so they knew like this house had had a head of clockjack, this house had a clockjack, and ultimately we can say like half of England had a clock jack in their house, thus driving

away the necessity of the turnspit dog. So you would hope that that what would have happened historically is that there was a great awakening of people, you know, turning away from animal cruelty and human cruelty for these these biologically powered spits and saying hey, there's a better way. But no, it sounds like probably it was more like technology and economics that played the main role in replacing dogs and humans to turn spits. Yeah, and so you

you had. You know, a number of these gadgets came into play, not only the clockwork jack, also the smoke jack, which who mentioned earlier had become the designs had become better. Uh. Still there were certain design problems with it, but you saw them implemented. Other English inventors experimented with steam water clock were various, like even more elaborate clockwork wonders. Uh spit. Roasting meat was just such a central part of the English way of life that it attracted the sort of

endless innovation that we see now, and things like coffee preparation. Yeah, like everybody's got to have their coffee, and so you see so many endless varieties of ways to make a cup of coffee and still continue to see new innovations in coffee percolation design, right. Uh. And then of course once electricity came along, I think that was a huge game changer, right because now rotisseries pretty much all of

them are going to be electrically powered. Right. And the other big factor to be points out is that, uh, you know, with with with all these jacks, we had an increasingly high tech invention based around rather old cooking method allogy the like open hearth cooking, cooking something in front of that big open fireplace. But then this went out of style during the mid nineteenth century, and so did the meat jack and its related meat turning robots.

Though of course this just spit roasting itself, of course, did not go away. Spit roasting itself lives on, as to do various mechanical rotisseries. You can you can buy them for your backyard grill. You can buy you can you know, certainly you can see them at the grocery store, the butcher shopper anywhere. Uh, chickens or other meats are are, you know, turning about and cooking their own juices. But thankfully you will not find dogs turning tiny wheels to

power them. I gotta say this one was interesting, but it tugged on my heart strings. Yeah, I mean, and they certainly. I mean in a way it's this is human techno history, right, you have you have to consider

the light in the dark. Yeah, but I mean also just seeing the way changes in technology and culture are constantly interacting with each other as time goes on, the way the technology influences what's culturally appropriate and acceptable and that and then then cultural values affecting what kind of

technologies in demand. Yeah, and then also I'm so interested in the fact that you had uh some very old technologies that were remaining the same, but this one aspect of the process kept getting altered, you know, like the cauldron and the spit itself. Uh, there's nothing modern about that that the hearth itself did not change for so long, but there was like a one pivot in the process that was where you saw all this innovation and then

ultimately everything else changes as well. Fortunately, now in the twenty one century, we can cook all of our food in the microwave. Yes, and hopefully I think the plan is so this November, of course, we are doing a lot of food based episodes that you know, we'll do food based episodes the rest of the year as well as well. We have already, but we wanted to really focus in on food given that this is a period

of feast uh traditionally and especially in America. So hopefully we're gonna get to the microwave this month as well. It'll melt your brain in the best way, all right. Uh, Well, I'm sure everybody has some thoughts on this. Uh, you know, whether you're a fan of spitted turning meat, or a fan of dogs, or like you know all of us, uh, you know someone who is you know, starkly offended by the prospect of putting children to work, five year olds to work in a in a in a kitchen, uh,

performing manual labor. Uh. We would love to hear from you. You can reach out to us a number of different ways. You can also find the podcast at invention pod dot com. That's where they all are, but you can also find the podcast everywhere you find podcasts these days, wherever it is. Just make sure you subscribe uh and check out the episodes,

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