0:02

Hey Science Rules fans, this is Dan Paschman.

0:04

I host a food podcast called The Sporkful

0:07

and I'm dropping in here to share a recent episode of The

0:09

Sporkful that features your favorite science guy

0:11

and mine, Bill Nye. Let

0:13

me ask you something, what's the best way to layer

0:16

the components of a PB&J? Peanut

0:18

butter on the bottom or jelly on the bottom? Or

0:20

is there a third way? Bill and

0:22

I will discuss and debate. Plus we'll

0:24

nerd out when you add salt to pasta

0:26

water. Does it make the water boil faster? Bill

0:29

will tell us. Plus, he's going to share his thoughts on

0:31

GMOs and much more. I hope you

0:33

enjoy the conversation, and if you do, please connect

0:36

with The Sporkful in your podcasting app. Just

0:38

find our show page and click on like or favorite

0:40

or follow or subscribe, whatever the thing is, and

0:43

check out more of our episodes. We just did one

0:45

about an Iranian-American woman who's brewing

0:47

Persian-style beer in America, and

0:49

we looked into the science and economics of lab-grown

0:52

meat. So check out The Sporkful podcast

0:54

and enjoy my conversation with Bill Nye and

0:56

Corey S. Powell.

0:59

Your mom was a code breaker in

1:02

World War Two? So it is said. And

1:04

like what? So she was, this was some top secret

1:06

level stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So she was

1:09

recruited apparently because she was good

1:11

at puzzles

1:13

and math and science. She was very,

1:15

something my parents would do to socialize was

1:17

to write limericks. Sit around

1:20

and write limericks the way you do.

1:24

This is the sporkful. It's not for foodies,

1:26

it's for eaters. I'm Dan Paschman. Each

1:28

week on our show we obsess about food to

1:30

learn more about people. Today on the show

1:33

I sit down with the one and only Bill

1:35

Nye. Bill's a goofball nerd

1:38

to the core, just like his limerick loving

1:40

parents before him. And like them he

1:42

has an intense passion for science. When

1:45

he came out of college he wanted to be an astronaut.

1:47

NASA rejected him four times. He

1:50

found his way to stand up comedy using science

1:52

in his act. He did a bit about what

1:54

happens when you eat a marshmallow that's been dunked

1:56

in liquid nitrogen. He went on to host

1:58

Bill Nye the Science Guy

2:00

PBS in the 90s,

2:03

then the Netflix show Bill Nye Saves

2:05

the World. In 2019, he launched

2:07

the podcast Science Rules, and now

2:09

he hosts the show The End is Nye, about epic

2:12

global disasters on peacock. When

2:14

Bill first came into the studio, I was

2:16

curious to see how his sciencey, analytical

2:19

approach to the world translates to

2:21

food and eating. I read that he's a big peanut

2:23

butter fan, so that's where we began.

2:27

I enjoy the peanut butter and jelly, but

2:29

I really was raised on peanut butter and

2:31

honey. Okay.

2:33

So there's not going to have the fruit going on, but I

2:35

will choke down peanut butter and jelly. Don't

2:38

get me wrong. But peanut butter on an apple,

2:40

that's what I'm talking about. Crunchy

2:42

or smooth peanut butter? So I'm crunchy,

2:45

but I will choke down the smooth. Right. I'm

2:48

not, like, if you want smooth, knock your smooth

2:50

self out. When you build a peanut butter

2:52

and honey sandwich,

2:54

tell me about the layering. Tell me about the structure.

2:58

Ideally, you start with toast. That really

3:00

takes it up a notch for me. Why? For

3:03

the mouth feel, the crisp. Oh, so you're a big crunch guy.

3:05

You want toast, you want the crunch of the apple, the crunch

3:07

of the peanut butter. The triple

3:10

threat. So,

3:13

put the peanut butter first, honey on top, the

3:15

bread on top of that.

3:16

That's not controversial. Peanut

3:18

butter and jelly is one of my all time favorites. I

3:21

like to layer it though, because layering into peanut

3:23

butter and jelly is complicated. What I

3:25

like to do is to do a thin layer

3:27

of jelly on the top and bottom.

3:30

Interesting. And then peanut butter in the middle. That gets

3:32

a little jelly on top for the roof of your mouth. Plus

3:34

jelly on the bottom closer to your tongue accentuate

3:37

sweetness. But mechanically. Okay, please.

3:39

How am I spreading peanut butter on jelly?

3:41

Is it only creamy peanut butter? Do

3:44

you warm it up? How do you get it? That's a challenge,

3:46

that's fair. I mean, it's a thin layer of jelly. So

3:48

most of it will go into the crevices of the bread and it

3:50

will kind of like adhere to the bread. You

3:52

know, you're gonna get a little bit of mixing the layers.

3:54

A little bit. So what happens to the

3:57

knife? Well

3:58

that's what your tongue is for. No, no.

6:00

But the pashmans have to be

6:02

wary, people. Yeah. If you're invited

6:04

to dinner at the pashmans, you may be dealing

6:06

with some pre-licked peanut butter

6:09

serving tools. I make no promises. What

6:11

about the five-second rule? What's your take on that? Well, the

6:13

five-second rule is very

6:15

reasonable. Here's what happens. When stuff's on

6:18

the floor,

6:19

trouble starts. It's not so

6:21

much about germs. Just people

6:24

step on the Oreo.

6:25

step on the dollop

6:27

of peanut butter and then it goes all over the house. That's

6:30

the real issue.

6:31

So why is it bad luck to walk under

6:33

a ladder? Because you get paint dripped

6:36

on you, somebody's up there working, or

6:38

the thing pops loose and lands on your head. Why

6:40

is it bad luck to leave a hat on the bed?

6:43

Because you're going to sit on it. Okay,

6:46

so why is it bad luck to go 30 seconds

6:48

with an Oreo on the floor because somebody's going to step

6:51

on it? But you think, in terms of like germ,

6:53

that's the concern a lot of people have, it falls on the floor, it's

6:55

going to get dirty, that it's not clean to eat. Well,

6:58

there's got to be something to that

7:00

in certain situations. But

7:02

in most, I think, U.S.

7:04

households, you can literally

7:07

lick the floor and live through it. Look

7:09

at me, I'm fine. Can

7:12

you explain cotton candy to me? I

7:14

guess you get the cotton really hot

7:17

and it turns, you can draw it into a wine.

7:19

It's sugar? Is it just sugar? Is

7:21

it heated in a certain way? Sugar often in the coloring, yeah.

7:24

I think it's amazing. It is cool

7:26

and so good for you. It's

7:29

just, it's sugar with some,

7:31

experimented with food coloring that

7:33

can tolerate the heat. It's amazing.

7:36

I mean, it's just, when you're a kid, what is more intriguing

7:39

than cotton candy? Right. And

7:41

now are you, when you consume

7:43

your cotton candy, do you go at it with your mouth

7:45

or do you pick it off? I pick it off my hands. And

7:47

why do you do that? Because I don't like it getting

7:50

all over my face. All over the face, you're very reasonable. the

7:52

pizza lips. Yeah, you don't want that.

7:54

Yeah. But then your fingers have to

7:56

be clean enough going in when you're okay with it. You're

7:59

a guy that puts his.

8:00

saliva-full peanut butter knife back

8:02

in the jar. This germaphobic

8:04

concern is not yours.

8:08

Clearly,

8:08

everything Bill comes across is

8:10

an opportunity to nerd out, to learn something

8:12

about science. But it's not all

8:15

just a joke. Bill is the CEO

8:17

of the Planetary Society. It's a nonprofit

8:20

founded by Carl Sagan and others to promote

8:22

space education and exploration. For

8:24

years, he's been an outspoken global warming

8:27

activist. Back in 2019, he appeared

8:29

on John Oliver's show last week tonight with

8:31

a blowtorch and a globe to offer a

8:33

lesson on the issue. Here, I've got

8:35

an experiment for you. Safety glasses

8:38

on.

8:38

By the end of this century, if emissions

8:40

keep rising, the average temperature on Earth

8:43

could go up another four to eight degrees.

8:45

What I'm saying is, the planet's on f***ing

8:48

fire. There are a lot of

8:50

things we could do to put it out. Are any of them

8:52

free? No, of course not. Nothing's

8:54

free, you idiots. Grow the f*** up. You're

8:56

not children anymore. I didn't mind explaining

8:59

photosynthesis to you when you were 12, but

9:01

you're adults now and this is an actual

9:04

crisis. Got it? Safety

9:06

glasses off, motherf******ers.

9:13

So

9:13

Bill's still using humor to teach and

9:15

he's still learning. A few years back,

9:18

he made news when he reversed his position on

9:20

GMOs, genetically modified crops.

9:23

Now he's in favor of them. I

9:25

asked him what changed his mind.

9:27

I wasn't really opposed

9:29

scientifically to modifying

9:32

genes. In other words,

9:35

modifying genes didn't strike me as inherently

9:37

bad for the plant, for the crop.

9:40

My concern was for the ecosystem because

9:44

of the unknowns, the unintended effects,

9:46

and people have adopted, in the US English

9:48

have adopted a rugby term, the knock-on

9:50

effects. Like

9:53

you couldn't tell what you were going to do to the ecosystem

9:55

when you modified a a corn plant or a cotton

9:58

plant or whatever it was. But

10:00

that would be 25, even 30 years ago. Now,

10:03

I am satisfied now that modern

10:06

researchers can modify crops

10:10

and really know what genes

10:12

are gonna be produced, what chromosomes are gonna do

10:14

what and what interactions gonna happen. And furthermore,

10:16

this happens in nature all the time.

10:19

And the medium,

10:21

the carrier, the thing that induces these genetic

10:24

changes are viruses.

10:27

So the classic example, everybody,

10:29

If you've ever seen a

10:31

tree with a

10:33

big growth on the side, mushroom-shaped

10:37

growth, that's

10:39

where a virus has gotten into the

10:41

tree and not just infected

10:43

it, but changed the tree's genes.

10:47

It happens in nature all the time, so

10:49

I am no longer opposed to GMOs. Furthermore,

10:52

I think the future of humankind is going

10:54

to require them.

10:55

Farming is not natural. If

10:58

you stop farming, the land

11:00

goes back to whatever the heck it was or is going

11:02

to be. And so you just have to keep that

11:04

in mind and just...

11:06

I mean... It's inherently a

11:09

man-made process. Yeah, or human-made. Human-made.

11:12

So, the agricultural business people

11:14

brought on their own problems,

11:16

but I think there's nothing inherently

11:19

wrong with genetically modified organisms.

11:22

Not inherently.

11:26

Bill, we got some calls lined up from listeners.

11:28

A lot of food science questions people want to ask.

11:30

Will you stick around and answer any questions? Some F.S. Qs, yes,

11:33

because you know, I'm an expert on all

11:35

things food science. There you go. I'll

11:38

take a shot. All right, great.

11:39

I'll do my best.

11:41

Also coming up, I'll ask Bill a question

11:44

about bananas that I have asked two other

11:46

science people before. They haven't been

11:48

able to give me an answer. bill,

11:51

stick around.

12:01

Time to cook up some advertisements.

12:09

Welcome

12:12

back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Paschman. On

12:14

last week's show I talked with Sam Sanders, Saeed

12:16

Jones and Zach Stafford, hosts of the podcast

12:19

Vibe Check. These guys are close friends and the

12:21

show's basically like their group chat come

12:23

to life. And they all have strong opinions

12:25

about food. food like when Zach explained his

12:27

thoughts about grocery shopping with your partner. Grocery

12:30

shopping can be some of the most intimate things you

12:32

do with someone else, like to walk through a store and

12:35

see what they pull for their week to eat

12:37

when they're happy, to eat when they're sad.

12:39

Tell me something you learned about Craig

12:41

that you didn't know about him by going grocery

12:43

shopping with. Can chicken. That's what

12:45

I learned about Craig. I did not know. Yes, chicken?

12:49

Yes, canned chicken. Saeed looks

12:51

so confused. It's

12:54

wet. It can stay around forever

12:56

and ever and ever. Yeah, canned chicken was

12:58

a big aha when we moved in together.

13:01

Wow. And where are you at with canned

13:03

chicken in your relationship today? We don't really cook

13:05

with canned chicken anymore. OK. OK. OK.

13:10

We also help some of our listeners with their food-related

13:13

relationship issues. That episode's

13:15

up now. It's a lot of fun. Check it out. Okay,

13:18

back to the show. I'm joined again by Bill Nye,

13:20

and we also have your co-host on the podcast, Science

13:22

Rules, the science writer, Corey Powell.

13:25

Hi, Corey. Hey, great to be here. So

13:27

we are gonna do what you guys do on Science Rules,

13:29

which is we're gonna take some calls from people

13:32

about science, food science in this case,

13:34

and we're gonna try to answer some questions. Can we do

13:37

that? Yes, why not? Okay.

13:39

We can dream. All

13:40

right, first off, I wanna ask you guys a

13:42

food science question. This has been plaguing

13:44

me, and I wanna see- Yes, plaguing

13:47

me. So I make

13:49

a dish for my kids sometimes that I call banana pudding.

13:52

All I do is take a banana, mash it up with a fork,

13:54

keep mashing and mashing until it becomes a consistency

13:57

of pudding and I add a little splash of cinnamon.

13:59

I don't. sugar. But I have

14:01

found that the mashing of the banana

14:04

somehow, even if it was a not

14:07

especially ripe, not especially sweet banana

14:09

to begin with,

14:10

the mashing turns it

14:12

sweeter. And by the time I've made

14:14

my banana pudding, it tastes like candy.

14:17

What's happening? Well, I gotta say one word

14:19

to you. Amylase. Amylase. Yeah,

14:21

that's really the word to say is amylase.

14:24

Okay. So there's a there's an enzyme

14:26

in bananas

14:28

that when you fork it up,

14:30

this enzyme busts out of the

14:32

cells

14:33

and it affects our taste buds and it thinks

14:36

banana tastes sweeter. People also report,

14:38

I'm sure of it, after you freeze a

14:40

banana,

14:41

the spicules,

14:43

the ice crystals in the banana will pierce

14:46

the cells and also release this amylase.

14:48

So it is not your imagination.

14:51

It is a true fact, not a false

14:53

fact. So I think there's probably

14:55

a great business here, because everyone wants

14:58

things to taste sweet without adding sugar. Well, so here's

15:00

the cool thing about amylase. So amylase is an

15:02

enzyme that's involved in the ripening of fruit. It

15:04

breaks down starches into sugars. So

15:06

what you're doing is you're essentially, by mashing the banana,

15:09

it's like you're making it ripen all at once. You're

15:11

destroying all those cell walls, so you're releasing

15:14

all the starch, and you're mixing

15:16

it all together with the amylase, so you're turning the starches

15:18

to sugar. So it's like you're doing a

15:20

week worth

15:21

of ripening in a

15:23

minute when you're mashing it. So I

15:25

was thinking, this is an old thing,

15:28

starch and sugar, just expressed

15:31

briefly, starch is a polysaccharide,

15:35

sugar is a disaccharide. So

15:37

you're taking the poly, the mini, and

15:40

smashing it down into the two. And

15:42

so that's why we love

15:44

them. And so on the Science Guy

15:46

Show, talking again briefly about me,

15:50

The joke was a banana milkshake.

15:53

Is anything as good as a banana milkshake?

15:55

and

15:56

the charm of a banana milkshake, This

15:58

doesn't need any sugar.

16:00

You blend that banana, you

16:02

chop up that banana, it releases the

16:05

amylase and the poly becomes

16:07

the dye, the starch becomes the

16:10

sugar and it's a joy. It's a joy.

16:12

Oh my God. That is if you have the mutant gene

16:14

that enables you to enjoy dairy products. Right,

16:16

yes. Which my European ancestors had and

16:19

here I am.

16:19

At this point I do wanna make a little confession

16:22

to our listeners. I actually

16:24

told your producer in advance, Bill,

16:27

that I was gonna ask this question. because

16:29

I have asked two other food science

16:31

people this exact question and they've had nothing

16:33

for me. So I wanted to give you like some advanced

16:36

notice and maybe you could do a little research ahead

16:38

of time. And what I love, Bill,

16:40

is that despite the fact that you are a very

16:43

busy guy, you conducted

16:45

an experiment with bananas in your house

16:47

last night.

16:48

Yes, I took a banana and cut

16:50

it in thirds. Now, I'm the first to admit I

16:52

cut it what I would call latitudinally, across

16:56

the banana, maybe looking back, I

16:58

could have gone longitudinally, the long way.

17:01

But it's hard to cut a banana in thirds the long way.

17:04

Well, it could be done. Right, right. So

17:06

I did raw

17:08

banana or banana off the shelf,

17:11

frozen banana and mashed with a

17:13

fork per your anecdote.

17:16

Right, and you have a photo of this. I have a photo

17:18

of the mashed banana, the frozen banana, off

17:21

the shelf banana. Per Dan's

17:23

story, I did it with a fork.

17:26

I did the mashing of a banana with a fork.

17:28

And it's quite noticeable, you

17:30

guys. You don't have to take my word for it. And

17:33

I did, I imagine in a food processor

17:35

or blender, the effect would be

17:38

stronger. I just love that you're the

17:40

kind of guy who will actually be like, I'm gonna run an experiment

17:42

in my free time. This is what makes

17:44

me crazy. So you

17:46

think the world, you think the earth is flat.

17:49

Go to the edge and take a picture. There's

17:52

no edge, no picture, is there? What

17:54

about that? Is it true? Hey

17:56

Bill, is it true that hot water freezes

17:58

faster than cold water? Well,

18:00

why don't you try it? Most people have

18:02

access to hot and cold water. In our

18:04

society, they do. Most people have access to

18:06

bananas. Yes. So

18:10

amylase, the enzyme in bananas that

18:12

breaks down and makes a mashed banana sweet,

18:15

is also an enzyme that's in your saliva that helps break

18:17

down your food. Well, you know what's especially interesting

18:19

about this, because I have taken flack on this show, from my

18:21

opinion, that when my kids were younger,

18:24

you know, they were like one,

18:26

two years old, You let them just sort of like

18:28

nibble on a graham cracker and it keeps

18:30

them busy for a while, it tastes good. And

18:33

you know, I always end up when you're

18:35

a parent like scrounging your kids crummy leftovers.

18:38

And I felt that the graham crackers

18:40

that had been gummed by my little kids

18:43

tasted better than

18:44

graham crackers straight out of the package. And people said,

18:46

that's gross. How can you eat graham crackers that have been in your

18:49

kid's mouth? I thought it's partly because I think

18:51

they're a little bit softer. They're not so dry and brittle,

18:53

which I like a little chewiness. But now you're

18:55

telling me that probably also I liked it that way because

18:57

they're sweeter. Your kids are little

18:59

enzyme preparation machines. I'm

19:02

just gonna have them pre-chew all my food now. You

19:04

should. The M-P-P-2000, enzyme prep 2000. It's

19:10

like the mama bird, regurgitating the

19:12

food for the baby bird. Yes, it's like a spider. Only it's going the other

19:14

way.

19:14

Your babies were gurgitating

19:17

on behalf of the parent. And semantically preparing the food

19:19

for you. It's the circle of life. It's the circle

19:21

of life. Team, team, it's, there's no

19:24

I in team. All right, should we go to the phones and take

19:26

food science questions from listeners? Please.

19:29

We have

19:30

Nicole, who has a question.

19:33

I'm quite excited to hear about talking about

19:36

salt and boiling water. I wonder what that's about.

19:38

Hi. So this question

19:40

came up last year when I was teaching marine

19:42

science and we were talking about cold,

19:46

dense, salty sea water. And

19:48

somehow it led to a teacher

19:51

who taught near me, who

19:52

liked to be the smartest person in the room

19:55

saying

19:55

that the reason why people salt their

19:57

pasta water is to lower

19:59

the...

20:00

boiling point so that it will

20:01

boil faster and I have learned

20:04

since then that a lot of people think this.

20:06

So

20:08

I don't know where that came from. Do you think

20:10

that salting the water has any effect on

20:12

flavor or temperature? So

20:14

Nicole, this

20:16

is as Corey pointed out, this is a fabulous

20:19

question I think near and dear to all pasta

20:21

enjoyers. Yes. Dan among which

20:23

you are whom if I may construct it? Big

20:26

enjoyer, big enjoyer, yes. And so why

20:28

do you feel, because I got strong opinions

20:30

here on physics, but why do you feel we

20:32

salt the pasta water? Well, in terms of the science,

20:35

I'll defer to you, Bill.

20:37

But I do want to say that salt in water

20:39

for flavor absolutely makes

20:41

a difference. And when you're making pasta, you absolutely

20:44

should salt your water liberally. With

20:46

more salt than you think you need, it'll make your pasta

20:48

taste much better. Just because it's got that salt

20:51

mouth stimulating jolt of

20:54

sodium ions. Exactly. So,

20:56

Corey, you're a science reporter

20:59

with years of

21:00

behind the keyboard. A

21:03

veteran, one might say. So,

21:05

do you have a strong opinion

21:07

about the salt and the boiling? Because I do. Strong

21:10

opinion about salt and boiling. My,

21:13

so, I mean, salt does, you know, it

21:16

lowers the specific heat of the water,

21:18

which would make it boil a little more easily. But

21:22

also, salt, in

21:24

general, adding extra things to the water

21:27

raises the boiling point. The thing is, both

21:29

of those effects are very, very small. To

21:32

personally change the boiling point, you'd

21:34

have to add like 100, 200 grams of salt. It's

21:38

a lot of salt. To a liter? To one

21:40

liter of water. 10 or 20%

21:43

of the mass of the thing would be salt. Right.

21:46

You'd have to be really dumping salt in there to have a big impact on the

21:48

boiling point. I got to jump in here, because at this point, Bill

21:50

and Corey started getting into some really hardcore

21:52

science and I kind of got lost.

21:55

So I looked into it some more, talked with them some

21:57

more, And here's the deal.

21:59

You're not like... to add enough salt

22:01

to make your water boil faster.

22:03

The ocean is 3% salt. You would need

22:05

your water to be 10 or 20%. But

22:08

many of us have had that experience where the water

22:10

in the pot is close to boiling and you pour in

22:12

some salt and suddenly, boom,

22:14

it's boiling, right? Wrong.

22:17

That's actually sort of an illusion. So

22:20

what's really happening? Well, that turns out

22:22

to be kind of complicated. It could be

22:24

that the salt crystals are creating what are called

22:27

nucleation sites, which essentially

22:29

make the water fizz briefly, like champagne.

22:31

Or it could be that the temperature

22:34

contrast between the salt and the water causes

22:36

it to fizz up.

22:37

Either way, if you create that

22:39

fizz effect just as the water is

22:41

about to boil and then soon after it

22:44

starts boiling,

22:45

you could be tricked into thinking you made it boil

22:48

faster. But

22:49

the truth is, it would have boiled at

22:51

about that same exact moment even

22:53

without the salt. There is a second bottom

22:55

line, which Corey summed up well.

22:58

The most important thing I take away here is that salt

23:01

in your pasta water makes the pasta taste better.

23:05

Nicole, thank you so much. You're inspirational.

23:08

Thank you. Okay. Thank

23:10

you. What else we got on the big board, Corey? That's

23:12

a question from Julie. And here, Julie,

23:14

you're on the air. Go ahead and ask your question.

23:16

Well, hello. My question

23:19

is, why do we like

23:21

more food the older we get? happening

23:24

in our mouth.

23:25

Julie, thank you so much. I actually

23:27

have to ask one question. Do you have children? Is

23:29

that part of why you asked this question?

23:32

Well, I'm a school food service

23:34

director, so I have like 2,500 kids, and there's,

23:37

I

23:37

noticed there's

23:40

a big shift between like elementary

23:42

age kids and middle school age kids

23:44

with what they want to eat. You

23:47

know, the middle school age kids are all after

23:49

the, um, spicy, the buffalo,

23:51

the sriracha. And personally, yeah, I do have

23:53

kids myself. But, yeah,

23:56

there seems to be a giant shift when

23:59

in the teenage years.

24:00

or early teens where they will

24:02

be more adventurous. Wow. That's

24:05

a great question. Dan, you're the man for this. You have kids

24:07

and you're not a kid as much anymore

24:09

as you once were. I think the

24:11

short answer is exposure. I mean,

24:14

and there's a lot of research done on food aversions.

24:16

Why do people dislike certain foods? How can you

24:18

learn to like a food that you don't like? And

24:20

the short answer that sensory scientists will tell

24:22

you is exposure. Start

24:25

off by exposing yourself in small amounts. We

24:27

actually did an episode of the spork full about picky

24:29

eaters called in defense of picky eaters

24:31

We got in a lot of the science and picky eating one

24:34

of the things I learned is that it can take someone 30 or 40 tastes

24:37

of a food before they acquire a

24:39

liking for it and so I

24:41

think mostly what's happening in this case is just

24:43

that like The first 30 times you try to you didn't

24:45

really like it But then finally it's in

24:47

small doses It ends up in a few things that you eat

24:49

by accident or at a friend's house and then finally,

24:52

you know Your eyes are open to it I've acquired

24:54

a taste for a lot of foods in my 30s

24:56

and 40s that I never liked when I was a kid So

24:59

a great question. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I

25:01

love this next question as someone who is fascinated

25:03

by the future

25:04

I'm very fascinated by this by this next

25:06

caller who wants to know about lab-grown

25:09

meat. We have dub

25:11

Dub are you there? I am

25:13

here. Thanks for having me on guys.

25:15

Appreciate this. Thanks for taking the time. Doug

25:18

Lab-grown me. Thank you. Yeah Yes,

25:21

sir. So my question, really,

25:24

how far away are we from affordable

25:26

clean lab-produced meat? I

25:29

have a diet of a high protein,

25:31

high fat, seems to work really well

25:34

for me, and it really

25:36

works best when it's filled with animal protein, but just

25:38

kind of like, you know, the battle of the ethics

25:40

behind it or the guilt behind

25:43

where the meat comes from. So this

25:45

intrigues me quite a bit. So what researchers

25:48

have done is get the stem cells

25:50

of meat

25:51

and grow them in culture, and

25:53

they produced a hamburger that right

25:55

now would cost hundreds of

25:58

dollars per burger or a fraction

26:00

$200 per burger. That's right. Basically, you're

26:02

growing the muscle of the cow without the

26:04

rest of the cow. No baseball glove

26:06

leather, no intestines, no

26:09

cat gut for guitar

26:11

strings, none of this. So I

26:13

have on the electric TV machine,

26:16

I have tasted

26:17

lab-grown meat. And

26:20

it tastes exactly like meat. Furthermore,

26:23

recently I was with

26:25

my friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

26:28

And we visited this

26:31

lab where they have

26:33

found

26:34

a protein and a molecule

26:37

they refer to as the heme having

26:39

to do with hemoglobin and iron. And

26:42

so they found they can insert this

26:45

genetically, the genetic modification

26:47

of crops and get it to take, get it, for

26:49

example, a soy product to

26:52

taste like meat. So when

26:54

I think about the cost of this hamburger right

26:56

now, getting back to this one idea, thank

26:59

you for calling Dubb. When

27:00

you get back to the cost of the hamburger, it's a hundred dollars right

27:03

now,

27:03

but if you were making them on McDonald's

27:06

scales, you

27:07

got to think it would be cheaper, far

27:09

cheaper. I mean, pick a number, a hundredth of

27:12

the cost of raising a whole cow on

27:14

a giant farm. So I can

27:16

imagine as research continues,

27:18

Dubb, that this will become

27:21

affordable in one form or another, and

27:23

by that I mean either in a

27:25

derived vegetable form or

27:27

in a derived animal form. So,

27:29

Dub, stay tuned.

27:31

I am confident, I predict here

27:34

early in the 21st century that laboratory-style

27:39

or industrial-style satisfactory

27:42

meat products will be available at reasonable

27:44

cost. And, Dub, am I correct that that's

27:46

something that you're waiting for? You sound like you're

27:49

eager for the lab-grown burger rather

27:51

than creeped out by it. Is that true? Yeah,

27:53

absolutely. No creepiness factor

27:56

that at all.

28:03

Bill Nye, Corey S. Powell, it's been

28:05

so exciting having you both here. Thank you so much.

28:08

Thank you. Thank you. I

28:10

hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation as much

28:12

as I enjoyed having it. That was Bill Nye and Corey

28:15

S. Powell on my podcast, The Sporkful.

28:18

If you liked it, check out more of our episodes. Like

28:20

I said, we just did one about an Iranian American woman

28:22

who's brewing Persian style beer in America,

28:25

and we looked into the science and economics of lab

28:27

grown meat. It's one of the many recent episodes

28:29

of the Sporkful podcast that I hope you'll check

28:32

out. And when you're on our show page, please connect

28:34

with our show. Like, favorite, follow, subscribe,

28:36

whatever the thing is, please do it. Thank

28:40

you. This episode was originally produced by Ann Sani,

28:42

Go Fan, and Pujibwele, and me, producer

28:44

Andres O'Hara put together this update, and it was

28:46

mixed by Jared O'Connell. Music helped

28:48

from black label music. The Sporkful is a production

28:50

of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie

28:53

and Colin Anderson. Until next time,

28:55

I'm Dan Paschman.

28:56

And this is Larkin from Ithaca, New York, reminding

28:58

you to eat more, eat better, and eat

29:00

more better.