Chew Chew

This week, an inside-the-bubble look at the sticky story of how gum conquered our planet — and why, today, it's fighting just to survive. 

• "It's just a really sticky dough." Edward Bradfield, founder of Real Good Gum, shows Chris how he makes chewing gum in his home kitchen.
• "We're just a very oral kind of species." Anthropologist Jennifer Mathews on why — and what — we've been chewing for thousands of years.
• "It was just a symbol of this other life that was inaccessible to us." Growing up in Soviet Russia, award-winning food writer Anya Von Bremzen was forbidden from chewing gum — and even warned that it would cause syphilis. But that only made it all the more tempting.
• "We call it cud." Chewing gum industry maven Douglas Fritz explains why your chewing gum does NOT lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight.
• "The problem with gum is that you don't know what to do with it when you're finished." Industry analyst Marcia Mogelonsky on why we're just not chewing like we used to — and what the gum industry is trying to do about it.