Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lam.

And I'm Jim Ormic.

And today we're going to be talking about an invention.

Rob, I think this will be in the tradition of our episode on chopsticks that we did a

while back. Why is it that you so often suggest discussing the invention of a device with

no moving parts that is used to eat?

I don't know. Like part of it may lead, like in this case, I was looking at another topic

and I kind of hit a wall on it and I was like, oh man, I'm just not excited about this

topic anymore. And then I don't know, you kind of like you think to yourself, well what's

something smaller? What's something that couldn't possibly hurt me? And you realize the

spoon, it's right there, it's in the drawer. I love spoons or in previous case chopsticks.

And I know they've got to be a fascinating history. It's like one of some of these inventions

that are so ancient, we're not going to pick out the individual that invented these things

or anything like that. But it is fascinating how they move through human civilizations.

Oh, so I understand the spoon was your stay puffed marshmallow man. You were trying to

think of something so innocent and good that it could never hurt anyone. Right.

And this is where we came to. But I was surprised, as I always am, because I think we found

some pretty interesting stuff about the invention of the spoon.

Yeah, like if you think you know the spoon, if you think spoons are boring, well then stay

tuned because there's some cool stuff. And also, you know, when you really stop to think

...