People tossing words out into the world impulsively to ignite and burn over decades. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.Prologue: Host Ira Glass plays a strange voicemail left by a 96-year-old surgeon about a letter that was written five decades ago. (6 minutes)Act One: Producer Lilly Sullivan reports out that voicemail. (13 minutes)Act Two: On his deathbed, a wealthy man in Toronto decides to make some trouble. Hundreds of babies are involved. Stephanie Foo tells the story. (25 minutes)Act Three: Cyclist Mike Friedman said something to cyclist Ian Dille in the middle of a race that ate at both of them for years. Jared Marcelle tells the story. (12 minutes)Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.orgThis American Life privacy policy.Learn more about sponsor message choices.
Chapter 1: What inspired the MSG myth about Chinese food?
A few years ago, Jennifer LeMessurier was watching this PBS cooking show. And this chef, David Chang, started talking about MSG.
Monosodium glutamate.
Of course, lots of people believe MSG is bad for you. It gives you headaches, a food hangover. That idea's been around for decades. I grew up hearing this. Maybe you did, too. But Jennifer knows this is a myth. In fact, the very next segment on the show is science and food writer Harold McGee saying just that.
And he just had this sort of throwaway line that, yeah, this myth of MSG being harmful can be traced back to one letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine.
And I was just sort of sitting there going, huh, one letter. It was like, oh, it's an origin story.
At the time, Jennifer was a Ph.D. student, very interested in the way people talk about race and Asian Americans. So to hear that there was once this letter that led Americans to freak out about the dangers of an ingredient commonly used in Chinese food, an ingredient that was later proven totally harmless, Jennifer wanted to see that letter.
So she went into the stacks, found this old journal from the 60s. And there it was, a letter to the editor from a doctor titled Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
So the letter reads, for several years since I have been in this country, I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I have eaten the first dish, lasts for about two hours without any hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck.
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Chapter 2: Who was Dr. Howard Steele and what was his role in the MSG story?
I started like coasting and then we were kind of just like coasting and he would look back and the group would be like getting closer to catching us. And and he said, you can win. You can win. Three words. I knew instantly what it meant. He means if I stop attacking him and let him stay with me and let him sit in my draft, then when we get to the finish line, he won't sprint me.
He'll let me win the bike race.
Now, in cycling, this type of gentleman's agreement happens all the time. Competitors will temporarily agree to a truce so they can conserve energy and stay ahead of the pack. It's a strategy. Sometimes this happens at the end, which could end up deciding who wins. Like, hey, there's two of us here at the top. I won't sprint on you if you take on the win resistance for me.
We can beat everyone else. Ian went for it.
I just put my head down and went as hard as I could. I mean, I felt like I was just going so fast and we had... We had like a motorcycle referee that would follow the race and they come up and give you time splits on a... They'll either just tell you or sometimes they'll have like a whiteboard that they'll write the gap between you and the chasers.
And so they kept coming up and it would be, you know, you have 20 seconds and then it was like 30 seconds and then 40 seconds and... Like the gap just kept going out and out and out. I mean, I remember with like one lap to go and just like feeling so happy. Like I'd already won the race.
And then so we go around and then we're coming towards the finish line and we're getting ready to take kind of the final left-hand turn to the finish. And I turned to him and I was like, yeah, you remember our deal, right? And then Mike just started sprinting.
And I just remember watching him come by on my left, and my legs started cramping as we went up that hill, and I was just like, I can't believe this is happening. It felt like this dream just all of a sudden kind of turned into a nightmare, and I didn't win the bike race. Mike did.
Mike won.
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