The Invention of Hydration

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2021

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

To say that hydration is an invention is only a slight exaggeration. Back in the 1970’s and ‘80s, no one carried bottled water with them, but by the ‘90s it was a genuine status object. How did bottled water transform itself from a small, European luxury item to the single largest beverage category in America? It took both technological innovation, but even more importantly it took savvy marketing from brands like Gatorade and Perrier to turn the concept of hydration, and dehydration into problem they could solve via their wares. Today, hydration has branched out from athletics to wellness to skincare, but the actual science behind all of it is pretty sketchy. If you love the show and want to support us, consider joining Slate Plus. With Slate Plus you can binge the whole season of Decoder Ring right now, plus ad free podcasts, bonus episodes, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can you tell me about your fight about this?
0:07.8	Oh my God.
0:09.3	We were on.
0:10.8	Christina Kauderucci is a senior writer at Slate
0:13.2	and the host of the Slate podcast, Outward and the Waves.
0:16.5	I actually remember this very vividly,
0:18.9	because it actually turned into a fight.
0:21.6	One of probably like the top 10 times we were annoyed
0:26.1	with each other that year.
0:27.7	One of us started like needling the other
0:30.0	about their water consumption.
0:32.1	She and her wife were in the middle of a long car ride,
0:34.4	somewhere in New Jersey.
0:36.0	I forget whether my wife, Deb,
0:39.0	was making fun of me for being so concerned
0:42.8	with whether we would have enough water
0:44.5	for the rest of our car ride,
0:46.0	or whether I was saying to her like,
0:47.8	huts, weird that on this four-hour car ride,
0:49.8	you haven't drunk any of our water bottle,
0:53.4	and I've like drained the whole thing.
0:56.0	Christina is rarely found without a glass of water
	...

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