Corn Flakes | The Brothers of Battle Creek | S19-E1
American Innovations
Audible
4.6 • 4.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2019
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
For the first 150 years of American history, American citizens were plagued by gastrointestinal issues. Diarrhea, gastritis and dysentery were pretty much a way of life. Indigestion was such an immense problem, the poet Walt Whitman called it “the Great American Evil.”
All these stomach issues were thanks, in part, to breakfast—which looked very different than it does today. Roast pork, pickled vegetables and thick gruel were common staples on the American breakfast table. That is, until two brothers — John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg — invented a ready-to-eat dry cereal that changed American commerce, medicine, and the way we eat even as it locked the brothers in a vitriolic battle that would last their entire lives.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to an episode of a Wondery Plus exclusive series. |
| 0:03.6 | To continue listening, join Wondery Plus and enjoy Ad Free Listening to over 40,000 episodes, |
| 0:08.9 | early access to your favorite podcasts and more. |
| 0:11.6 | Find Wondery Plus in the Wunderie app or on Apple Podcasts. September 1941, Battle Creek, Michigan. |
| 0:27.4 | In a modest office inside the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg is sitting at his desk, writing. |
| 0:37.0 | John is 89 years old. He's run this famous health resort for 65 of those years, treating everyone from anti-slavery |
| 0:45.6 | campaigner Sojourner Truth to U.S. President Warren Harding. |
| 0:50.8 | But today he's focused on a more urgent task, writing a letter to his younger brother, Will. |
| 0:57.6 | Will lives nearby, but the brothers haven't spoken in years. |
| 1:01.8 | Now John's reaching out in an act of desperation. His sanitarium is |
| 1:06.9 | heading towards bankruptcy and the small part of the sanitarium he still owns |
| 1:11.4 | is slipping from his grasp. He needs help. But John mentions |
| 1:17.0 | none of this in his letter. Instead, he lists all the wrongs he's done his brother and offers apology after apology. |
| 1:26.7 | John's convinced himself that he means them all, but the truth is he's writing the letter |
| 1:31.5 | because Will is the only person who can save the sanitarium |
| 1:35.3 | from closure. |
| 1:38.0 | John finishes writing the letter and hands it to his secretary to mail. But the letter never gets sent. Instead, John's |
| 1:46.0 | secretary files it away in a cabinet where it will remain undiscovered for |
| 1:50.9 | years. |
| 1:52.7 | As John waits for will to reply to the letter that was never sent, his clinic's finances |
| 1:58.1 | grow more and more dire. |
| 2:01.0 | Months pass, and John's situation looks increasingly hopeless. |
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