0:01

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from

0:03

house stuff Works dot com.

0:11

Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh

0:13

Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

0:16

Jerry, Jerome Rolling, and

0:19

Frank the Chair. Oh Frank,

0:22

he's been here the whole time. He just keeps quiet mostly

0:24

mostly. Yeah. I don't have my hat on today

0:26

though, so I know what

0:28

gives I don't know. You know,

0:30

I'm growing the hair out, so I thought i'd just let it flow.

0:33

I noticed it looks good. Why

0:37

are you growing it out? I don't know.

0:39

It just sort of started happening. Then I was

0:41

like, my brother's got good hair, is

0:44

longer. Yeah, I'm always trying to be more

0:46

like him. Plus

0:49

I can't have a butt cut with short hair. Yeah.

0:51

Plus I mean I've had the same short,

0:53

spiky hair for like fifteen years.

0:56

Time to mix it up, I know, man. When I started

0:58

growing my note, I was like, what am I doing? What's

1:01

with this? Cube? All? Crap? I'm so tired

1:03

of all this. Let me just see what

1:05

what it looks like, you know, with a what's

1:08

that quarterback's name? Joe

1:11

Eisman No, no,

1:15

Terry Bradshaw, No, you

1:17

know the one Randall Cunningham. No,

1:20

tom Brady, tom Brady, despite

1:23

your harassment, I still figured it out. What

1:26

about tom Brady? He want his hair? I

1:28

have his hair, buddy, I don't know

1:30

about that. I do me

1:33

and tom Brady? Now, uh

1:36

chuck. Yes, did you grow

1:38

up on TV dinners at all? No?

1:41

Really no. My mom

1:44

is was and is a great cook, so

1:46

she wouldn't have that. I see, I see.

1:49

Wow, Well I did. I

1:51

grew up on TV dinners, and usually when

1:54

a TV dinner appeared,

1:56

Seriously, you did miss out. They were pretty amazing

1:59

when you're like six, seven years old. I've

2:01

had them when you were six

2:03

or seven. No, I had them like in

2:05

college. Okay, so so okay,

2:08

so you understand the magic of a TV dinner,

2:10

right, sure? Alright? Imagine

2:12

that as like a six year old. It

2:15

was magical. All of your foods in like

2:17

a different little compartment, Brownie just

2:19

staring at you, waiting like just just wait,

2:21

just wait, buddy. Um

2:24

when you're six, it's just even better. And when I

2:26

was six, if I would get a TV dinner,

2:28

it meant that my parents were like going to

2:30

do something right, they were going to play bridge or

2:32

something like that. So it was like a special

2:35

night, like I probably exactly,

2:38

I'd probably get to stay up late, or

2:41

there'd be some babysitter or whatever.

2:44

Um, it was always just kind of a special

2:46

thing when TV dinners made an

2:48

appearance. My parents never did anything

2:50

together. They

2:52

never like, they never played cards or no.

2:54

Man, I rarely had babysitters.

2:58

I really I don't remember having baby sitters. There

3:01

was always one of them there. Yeah,

3:04

maybe they didn't trust you, they

3:07

didn't like each other. They

3:11

may have really enjoyed key parties well plus

3:13

yeah you never know, Um I had

3:15

Uh. I have a sister that's

3:17

six years older though, so Yeah.

3:22

But they still didn't do a lot of I think I remember.

3:24

I can literally just think of a few times. They like went to

3:27

an Olivia Newton John concert once. Uh,

3:31

they've got a pretty good track record so far, and my

3:33

mom went and saw Elvis, but not with

3:35

my dad. Wow. On

3:38

that last tour two man, the

3:41

uh, I think they call that the jumpsuit

3:43

Integrity Tour. They hold

3:45

on, let me catch my breath.

3:48

Yeah,

3:50

they didn't put

3:53

an undignified ending. Yeah they

3:55

didn't. They didn't do much stuff together, so I didn't

3:57

get a lot of TV dinners. I didn't get a lot of

3:59

Hey, there's just throw it in and warm it

4:01

up. My mom was kind of yeah, always

4:04

cooking for us. Yeah, yeah, no, my mom

4:06

cooked a lot too. But now that I'm older and

4:08

look back, I'm like us pretty

4:10

convenient meal. Like you know, she

4:13

was an e R nurse for PiZZ sake, weird

4:15

hours and stuff. Um, but

4:18

she was a great mom. She raised me very well, as

4:20

everybody knows. It's

4:22

a well known fact. So with

4:25

TV dinners in particular, though, I have a certain amount

4:27

of nostalgia forum, but apparently

4:30

like America as a whole has

4:32

a bit of nostalgia for TV dinners.

4:34

There's a TV dinner in the Smithsonian,

4:37

for peze sake, and that's like America's

4:39

greatest repository of nostalgia for

4:42

you know. Yeah,

4:45

So I think we should take people on a delightful tour

4:47

of the history of this wonder of

4:49

TV dinners. You

4:52

sound like you're I'm not so

4:54

sure. No, no, no, I am sure. I was just joking

4:56

around, trying to set it up as some you know, magical

4:59

experien everyone's about to have, But

5:02

I feel like that's ingrained in it. So

5:04

as the story goes, uh,

5:07

Swanson ce A Swanson and Sons was

5:10

and is a leader in the

5:12

frozen food industry, and

5:14

um, whether or not this is legend,

5:17

who knows, but it's a great story. Was

5:19

that uh one Thanksgiving

5:22

they had too much

5:24

turkey on their hands

5:26

post Thanksgiving to the

5:28

tune of something like two fifty tons

5:30

of turkey that they didn't sell they which

5:33

is so sad, you know,

5:36

yeah for those Uh

5:40

yeah, like we so wanted to give our life as

5:42

a meal. Now

5:45

we're just on a train. Well, yeah, that's

5:47

what they did. So the story goes, they had about they

5:49

loaded it, they couldn't store it. They didn't none of room

5:52

and no freezer room to

5:54

store all this turkey. So they put it on

5:56

a frozen train

5:59

or a refriger rated train car as

6:01

a polar express it's called in the industry.

6:03

And the trick to this thing is is in

6:06

order for that train to stay refrigerator, it's gotta

6:08

keep moving. And so

6:10

they basically we're just running this turkey all

6:12

over the country to keep it frozen

6:15

and cold. Right, It's like

6:17

that one movie UM set

6:19

in the future with Tilda Switten

6:22

where like the train never stops

6:24

societies on the train. Yeah,

6:26

that's like that, but with frozen turkeys.

6:28

That's a good movie. So it's like

6:31

that cross between that and Speed.

6:33

Yes, like so if the train ever stops,

6:36

it's gonna lose refrigeration, the

6:38

losers refrigeration, the turkeys all go bad.

6:40

So there's this remember that Simpsons which

6:43

one when Homer is trying to describe or

6:46

think of the name of the movie Speed. He's

6:49

like, it's about a about a bus

6:51

if it's speed goes down and it can't

6:53

speed up. And he says it like that many

6:55

times, and he goes, I think it's called

6:58

the bus that wouldn't slow down or

7:00

that couldn't slow down. Yeah, I remember

7:02

that one very funny line. Um,

7:05

but this is real life, Chuck. This

7:07

wasn't a cartoon or a joke. Half

7:10

a million pounds of turkey on a train and

7:13

if if it's topped it would

7:15

spoil. No,

7:18

the idea that this actually happened,

7:22

it's so insane to me. So apparently

7:24

the Swanson brothers Clark and um,

7:28

what was the other brothers, Gilbert Gilbert.

7:30

I wanted to say Clark and Gable, but

7:33

Clark from Gilbert Swanson said all

7:35

right, employees, we need you to

7:37

put your heads together and come up with an idea.

7:40

So they had, again this is

7:42

the legend, they had an employee contest

7:44

where, um, whoever

7:47

could come up with what to do

7:49

with all this turkey I guess

7:51

would just be the employee of the month or

7:53

something like that. Um. And all

7:55

the while this contest is going on in the

7:57

Swanson company, there's a training

7:59

out there are in the United States of America,

8:02

just circling endlessly because

8:05

it can't stop or else the turkeys will

8:07

go bad until this Winton wins.

8:10

Yeah. Yeah. So there was a salesman named

8:12

Jerry Thomas g E r

8:15

R Y, not like our own

8:18

j E R I right, which

8:20

no one ever gets. Right, Um,

8:23

this is the party I don't get. He traveled from Nebraska

8:27

to Pittsburgh

8:29

to where Pan American Airways

8:31

had their kitchens because

8:33

they were testing uh single compartment

8:36

uh foil tray meals

8:39

that they would serve to people. And I guess he couldn't

8:42

envision what that might look like unless

8:44

he went there in person, right and steal

8:47

one. Well yeah, so that

8:49

yeah, and it was a single compartment

8:51

right, So basically it was just a trade that you put

8:55

a bunch of food on. There were like different

8:57

compartments in the trade, and he's like, I gotta

8:59

get my hands on one of the right. This is innovation.

9:02

Yeah, I don't understand that either, which is why his

9:04

story smells a little fishy to me. Um.

9:07

But this, this guy, Jerry Thomas,

9:10

is the He's he's known

9:12

as the inventor

9:14

basically of the TV dinner. Right. So

9:17

he comes back to the Swanson brothers and says,

9:20

I got it. I've I've driven from

9:22

Pittsburgh back home, uh

9:24

to wherever the Swanson company is located?

9:27

Where am I? He famously said, Um,

9:30

And he said, and I've added

9:33

two more compartments

9:35

into this trade. So now it's a three compartment trade.

9:37

And I through two lines and

9:40

then I know what to do with the

9:42

turkey. Now we're gonna basically sell

9:44

it as a frozen Thanksgiving dinner. And

9:47

they said your employee of the month, Jerry.

9:49

Yeah. They say, look, you got your your potatoes

9:51

and gravy here, you get your peas here, you

9:53

got your turkey here. None of it touches each

9:56

other. I'm a genius. I'm

9:58

Jerry Thomas. So this

10:01

coalesced with the another

10:03

uh craze, which

10:05

was television, and in

10:08

nineteen fifty three there were

10:10

thirty three million households with televisions,

10:13

and um, it was really I

10:15

mean, there have been other people that

10:17

had been doing this before. Quaker State Foods

10:20

UH in nineteen forty nine had

10:23

something in the supermarket of frozen meal called

10:26

under Geez the most

10:29

the most one of the I don't want to say the

10:31

most one of the most offensive brand names

10:33

ever. Yeah, the one eyed Eskimo label.

10:37

Um, yeah, that's that's

10:39

terrible. So they were stelling those in supermarkets.

10:41

And then in previous to that, even UH

10:45

the Strato plates

10:48

from Maxim were being served on airplanes,

10:50

but not as a retail food, so

10:53

it had been done before. So the creation of the

10:55

TV dinner well wait, don't don't don't

10:57

leave out Jack Fisher, who Jack?

11:00

Sure? Oh all right? What was that one called

11:02

frigid dinners? Yes, but they're

11:04

the most depressing meal ever because

11:06

they were served in bars. Yeah, they're serving

11:08

in a bar, so you didn't have to leave

11:11

to go home to eat dinner. You could just stay

11:13

and keep drinking. Oh man. There were some

11:15

bars in l A and Los Felis when I lived

11:17

there that around

11:19

two am, the Tomali

11:22

guy would come around, So okay,

11:24

that's different. Oh dude. It was the best. They

11:26

were legit handmade to Molly's and at

11:29

one was the perfect time

11:31

to be dropping into the drawing room,

11:33

you know. Anyway,

11:36

the creation of the TV dinner was not so much

11:38

that it was a brand new thing, but it was. It

11:41

was a marketing success

11:44

story because the TV they

11:46

thought, if we can build a sing around the television,

11:49

then we've got something in our hands. That

11:51

was the key the TV

11:53

making it a TV dinner, right, because all of a sudden

11:56

it was like, hey, everybody loves TV.

11:59

Plus, this is something I didn't realize.

12:01

It added a certain amount of like cashe

12:04

to the TV dinner because

12:07

if you had a TV dinner, it meant

12:09

that you had a TV. And if you

12:11

had a TV, you were probably upper middle

12:13

class at the time, right,

12:15

So the idea of having a TV

12:18

or a dinner to go with your TV

12:21

really appealed to Americans,

12:23

And even to this day it was such

12:25

a great marketing coup.

12:28

I guess that um people

12:31

still call these and like almost any frozen

12:33

entree or frozen meal, a TV dinner,

12:36

even though it was nineteen six two

12:38

when Swanson stopped calling their products

12:41

that they still made the products, they just stopped calling

12:43

them TV dinners. Every everybody else

12:45

kept calling them TV dinner. You were eating these in

12:47

the eighties, like twenty years after they

12:49

that brand went away, still calling the TV

12:52

dinners and eating them on TV

12:54

trades. This is another thing you pissed out on,

12:56

Chuck did you have? So

12:59

that was the whole the whole point of a TV tray

13:01

was it was a foldable individual

13:04

table that you would

13:06

open up in front of yourself and

13:08

eat your TV dinner on while you're sitting

13:10

on the couch, so you could watch TV most

13:12

efficiently while you were eating dinner.

13:15

And now they call that the coffee table. You just stoop

13:17

over a little bit, right, or the sink?

13:20

What eating over

13:22

the sink? I don't know what that is.

13:25

That's a depressing way to eat. So

13:28

these are actually called that was the brand, Swanson's

13:30

TV brand, frozen Dinner. And there they're

13:33

big concept with the box. If you look it up

13:35

on on the internet. Was

13:37

it looked like it was designed like old television?

13:39

The box was it the t The dinner

13:42

itself was like the screen on the screen

13:44

and then it had the little dials on the bottom

13:46

left and right corner, and uh, you

13:48

know, it look like a little TV. It

13:51

was ninety eight cents in n and

13:54

they sold a ton of them, yeah, they

13:56

apparently. Um So again,

13:58

remember all this came from a bunch of turkey

14:01

that was about to spoil. So Swanson ordered

14:04

start to an industry. Swanson

14:06

ordered like five thousand of them initially

14:09

to be made, and they hired a

14:11

small battalion of of um ladies

14:14

in aprons and

14:16

ice cream scoops and spatchel is to assemble

14:18

these things, right, and they just had them

14:21

go right down the assembly line, and

14:23

they sold five thousand just almost

14:25

immediately. And apparently in the first

14:28

year um that they

14:30

were sold, they sold like ten

14:33

million of them. So they came out with

14:35

them in nineteen fifty four and by

14:37

the the end of the first full

14:39

year of production, which I guess would be nineteen fifty

14:41

five, they'd sold ten million

14:43

of them. So they went from initially ordering

14:46

five thousand of them to selling ten million

14:48

of them in a year. So they it just hit America

14:50

just right, you know. Well, yeah, and it was at

14:52

a time where women were starting

14:55

to u kind of re enter the workforce,

14:58

gave them time that they could still

15:00

get that hot meal on the table, because that was their

15:02

job back then, right right. It gave

15:04

women a really great opportunity to

15:06

provide a stark contrast to the

15:09

your husband's mother. Yeah.

15:11

Yeah, Apparently there were a bunch

15:13

of men who were like, this isn't good enough. I want

15:15

my wife to cook from scratch like my mom. Dr

15:17

Freud, And if they could be like my mom

15:19

in a lot of other ways, that'd be awesome. Would

15:23

it killer to wear a hairnet? Yeah?

15:26

So apparently it didn't delight all men because

15:29

they weren't on board. But would killer

15:31

to just me up in a diaper? We

15:34

should do an episode on that sometime.

15:36

That's a thing. Oh, I'll talk you about

15:38

san Freud, but on men

15:41

wearing diapers as adults. Yeah,

15:44

it's for like I think it's called diaper

15:46

play for sex play, but

15:48

but it's it's diaper centric. Yeah,

15:50

we should do a podcast on that just

15:53

that. Well, if we can include it in like

15:55

maybe a fetish one, how about that? All right? Okay,

15:58

Wow, that's a weird turn all

16:00

of the time. Really did uh

16:03

geez, you got anything else on TV Dinners. That's a good

16:05

way to end it. I think, nope. Uh,

16:08

should we take a break? Yep, all right,

16:10

I'm gonna go change my diaper. We'll

16:12

talk about gelatin right after this. So,

16:33

Chuck, you were saying that um in the last

16:35

one, that uh, that

16:39

the TV dinner hit just right and

16:41

struck struck America in

16:43

part because women were starting to enter the workforce,

16:46

right, and that

16:48

was partially the result of World War Two.

16:51

World War two also

16:53

changed things as far as food and

16:55

food consumption and food packaging goes,

16:58

and that apparently at the end

17:00

of World War Two there were a lot of

17:02

companies that had gone all in

17:05

into supplying the troops

17:07

food and we're making pretty great

17:09

money, but apparently we're basically

17:11

caught with a large amount of supply

17:14

um when the war

17:17

ended, and they said, well, if we don't

17:19

figure out a way to get non wartime

17:21

America, the regular American consumer

17:24

to buy this stuff, we're going to go out

17:26

of business. Were over extended,

17:28

basically, And so food companies,

17:31

I guess, individually and on

17:33

the whole, taught America

17:36

to basically eat what

17:38

had prior to that point

17:40

been considered field rations. Like

17:43

spam if you remember that podcast that kind

17:45

of was where that whole movement was born. Yep,

17:47

spam, condensed soup, um,

17:50

dehydrated stuff, freeze dried

17:52

stuff. Like all of this came out of basically

17:55

an overstock of World War two food

17:57

supplies that were intended for troops and we're

18:00

kind of repackaged and rearranged to

18:02

be served to the American consumer. And

18:05

part of that also was that same

18:07

thing that TV Dinner struck, which which was

18:09

convenient. You know, like, hey, your

18:11

your husband still wants a meal and your

18:13

your family still expects you to be the one

18:15

to to cook for him.

18:18

Um, but now you have to work.

18:20

So what are you gonna do? Well, we have

18:23

we have something helpful for you, and it's

18:25

called convenience food. And one of the

18:27

big convenience foods that came out

18:29

of the post war era. But really

18:31

it started to gather steam before that was gelatine.

18:34

Yeah, specifically Jello as

18:36

the name brand, but uh, gelatine,

18:39

the word is from Latin gelatas,

18:42

meaning jellied froze, and

18:44

uh it was first used in Egypt,

18:47

but it was really first used in cooking

18:49

in France, and um,

18:52

you know I think most people know this by

18:55

now, but if you don't, Um,

18:57

gelatine is as a protein

19:00

and it's uh it's produced

19:02

from collagen from boiling

19:04

animal bones, yeah or

19:06

hoofs. Yeah. Yeah.

19:08

Yeah. So it's a it's

19:11

glutinous basically, and it can go one

19:13

of two ways, I think, depending on what you do

19:15

with it. You can turn it into glue or

19:17

you can turn it into food. That's

19:19

never a good start, no, it really you

19:22

know. Yeah, And a guy

19:24

from the I think the seventeenth century

19:27

in France, what was his name, Peppin

19:30

someone Peppin, Dennis Poppin right,

19:33

who may or may not be related to Jacques

19:35

Pepin. It was great and

19:37

French. He's also a cook. Um.

19:40

He was the first person to mention it in

19:42

writing, I believe, uh.

19:45

And then it just kind of sat there for a while until

19:47

the nineteenth century, when

19:50

I guess people were aware of gelatine

19:52

and that you could use it as a food, but

19:55

it was extraordinarily gourmet,

19:58

like the average person was not making

20:01

jello at home. It was very time consuming.

20:03

You you had to start from scratch

20:05

and boil animal bones to start the

20:08

process of gelatine. It was the exact

20:10

opposite of how we think of gelatine today, which

20:12

is instantaneous.

20:15

Yeah. So in the nineteenth

20:17

century, um, there

20:19

there this guy named Peter Cooper

20:22

uh figured out a way to turn gelatine

20:24

into a powder form, a

20:27

dehydrated gelatine powder.

20:29

Um, and it went absolutely nowhere

20:31

for fifty years. And I was surprised

20:33

to find this out. I knew gelatine

20:36

was pretty old, but it's it's

20:38

interesting how it's just kind of moved

20:40

along in these very slow little fits

20:42

and starts, like no one would give up on it,

20:46

which is weird because it's really disgusting

20:48

if you think about it. It should have been given

20:50

up on. Yeah, and it never was.

20:53

It's a very bizarre in vention. It almost

20:55

makes you feel like there was some sort of divine

20:57

hand guiding gelatine along in its progress.

21:00

Yeah. So, later on in eight got

21:02

named Charles Knox uh kind of revolutionized

21:05

things when he found came up with a process

21:08

that resulted in a dried sheet of

21:10

gelatine, and he

21:13

hired salesman to go door to door to show women

21:16

like, hey, you can add liquid to these sheets, you

21:18

can make desserts, you can make aspects,

21:21

which is a really gross word. I

21:24

think it is. It's not

21:27

it's pretty. It's a gross thing. It's a savory

21:29

gelatine. Yeah, which we'll get to that. But

21:32

uh. A couple of years later, Rose

21:34

Knox, which was that his wife, I guess, yes,

21:37

published a book called Dainty Desserts, which

21:40

is a book of recipes, and

21:42

uh, things were kind of moving along a little bit. Um.

21:45

Then in there was a

21:47

cough syrup company in New York called

21:49

Pearl H Pearl

21:51

B wait

21:54

is that what it's called? Pearl okay?

21:57

W W A I T. But

22:00

they weren't selling much cough syrups, and he said, all right, let's get

22:02

into the food business. And uh,

22:05

the wife, whose name was May,

22:08

said, you know, let me add some fruit syrups

22:10

to this stuff. And actually she's

22:13

the one who named it jello. She came up with that

22:15

name. But they didn't succeed

22:17

either, and sold that to their

22:19

neighbor. Uh Francis

22:21

is that the whole name, or to Francis Woodward,

22:24

Yes, for four hundred and fifty bucks.

22:27

Uh. This person purchased the name

22:29

and name brand Jello, right,

22:32

and he almost fell victim to the

22:34

curse of Jello as well. Right, he

22:36

could do nothing with it either. Um.

22:39

Despite some early attempts. He apparently

22:41

tried to sell it to his supervisor

22:44

at work for thirty five bucks even though

22:46

he paid four hundred and fifty to it for

22:48

it. So at some point I guess

22:50

he decided to give it another go, and

22:53

he hired a bunch of traveling

22:55

salesman sent them out to fairs,

22:58

community gatherings, that kind of uff,

23:00

and said, teach

23:02

the people how to make the jello.

23:05

And this time it started to stick. Actually,

23:07

Jello Jello kind of um

23:10

hit at just the right time. Finally,

23:13

I should say, the world was finally ready

23:15

for jello. Part of it had to do with um,

23:17

refrigeration, Yeah,

23:19

for sure, once you know, refrigeration is key for

23:21

jello, as we all know, right, And once

23:24

those technologies were developed, it kind of uh

23:27

well it formed literally

23:30

it all congealed and figuratively.

23:33

Uh. And then once advertising started

23:35

taking over, like in the mid nineteen thirties,

23:38

Uh, General Foods UM

23:40

had a very famous radio ad from Jack

23:42

Binny, uh the j E L l

23:44

O tag, which

23:47

really kind of helped push things along as well. Yeah,

23:49

and I noticed that at some point they

23:51

started dabbling with with other flavors.

23:53

I think originally they tried strawberry, raspberry,

23:56

orange, and lemon, right um,

23:58

And then they tried chocolate it and

24:00

they they apparently chocolate didn't go over

24:03

very well, so they were no.

24:05

First they just released it as chocolate jello.

24:09

That's pretty awful. And then they thought, oh, maybe we should

24:11

add milk instead of water, and that's when they

24:13

came up with jello pudding, and they re released

24:15

chocolate and that that spurred

24:18

like a whole pudding line, including something

24:20

I grew up on, which was butterscotch jello

24:22

pudding. Oh yeah, man, that was so

24:25

good, except you you couldn't.

24:27

You had to get the skin off. The skin

24:29

was no good, But everything under the skin was great.

24:32

What's the skin? It was just like a on

24:34

top. It was a very it

24:37

was the tougher layer on top.

24:39

Yeah, but if you just scraped it off,

24:41

you had some nice pudding underneath. Emily

24:44

still loves the the

24:46

brown, the chocolate jello pudding. Yeah

24:49

it's good. Yeah. She'll make a parfait like

24:51

you know, a little a

24:53

little putting, a little whipped cream, a little pudding, little

24:55

whipped cream. She knows how to live she

24:57

does. It's a special night they

24:59

have is about three times a year, and I'm like, oh boy,

25:01

it's time. Uh So

25:04

in the nineteen fifties, uh, supposedly

25:06

the jello shot with alcohol

25:09

was invented by uh, this

25:11

really interesting guy named Tom Lair who

25:13

Um he's a mathematician and

25:15

a singer songwriter who

25:18

I looked into him. He did song parodies

25:20

about math and chemistry. I guess he was like the

25:23

Jonathan Colton of his day as

25:25

far as I can tell. And he was also in the army

25:28

and to get around alcohol restrictions. As

25:30

the story goes, he claims he invented

25:32

the jello shot, which I've never had.

25:35

Uh what, I've

25:38

never had a jello shot? Wow, well you're not

25:40

missing much of the pretty gross well jello.

25:42

I can't stand jello. Well,

25:44

even if you do, even if you like or

25:47

or ambivalent to jello, it's it's just

25:49

gross. Does it taste like, yeah, it's

25:51

tequila jello or whatever. It's a very

25:53

obnoxious taste. You're supposed to use

25:55

like I think you're a place half of the water

25:58

with whatever liquor you're

26:00

using. Usually people use vodka. It

26:03

really just stands out in a in a noxious

26:05

way. By the way, Tom Larra

26:07

I thought that name sounded familiar. He um,

26:10

he is pretty great. He wrote this one

26:12

um song called the Old Dope Peddler and

26:16

two Chains Actually, um, you

26:18

know the rapper two Chains from Atlanta? Yes

26:21

you do? Oh wait was he our guy? Was

26:24

he the guy that judged that? No?

26:26

No? Oh, man,

26:28

who was that guy? That was young Jock? Right?

26:31

No? Two Chains is he's huge man. Um.

26:35

He did a song where he sampled

26:37

the Old Dope Peddler and he, I guess wrote

26:39

to Tom Laird to ask for permission

26:41

to sample, and Tom Lair had this awesome famous

26:44

response. So just read up on

26:46

that. What was did he let him use it?

26:48

Yes? Oh great. So he's the opposite of Don

26:50

Henley and probably

26:53

every single way yeah yeah,

26:56

uh but jello

26:58

shots, jello shots are

27:00

gross. So jello is

27:03

speeding along. It's uh, it's

27:05

taking over America. Um.

27:07

And then they decided to come out with these

27:10

savory lines and it became

27:13

uh and this was this post World War two thing that

27:15

you were talking about when um,

27:18

I guess they did what. There was this

27:20

great article you sent Making and Eating the nineteen

27:22

fifties most nauseating jello soaked recipes.

27:26

Yeah, Hunter Hunter Oatman Stanford

27:28

and uh, they did this interview

27:31

and um with Ruth Clark.

27:33

Yeah, Ruth Clark. Basically it's

27:36

a really good interview and she talks about

27:39

kind of this savory movement

27:41

that took over, and not

27:43

only with Jello, but the fact that it was a

27:46

time in America where and if

27:48

you look back, it's so great to look back at these old

27:50

ads and these old recipe books that it

27:53

was a time where you would the

27:55

goal was to have a dinner party with this big,

27:59

flashy, uh, experimental

28:01

and unique centerpiece food

28:04

centerpiece made of jello. Well,

28:07

all kinds of things. We're talking about the hot dog tree

28:09

right yeah, there and there there. It could

28:12

be a lot of different stuff, And I think that's what Ruth

28:14

Clark does. She recreates this stuff

28:16

right, and her poor husband has to eat

28:18

it. Um. But a lot of those

28:20

things were Jello molds. And

28:23

a lot of the reason why jello molds were

28:25

so weird and so popular

28:27

is because Jello put

28:30

so much time and effort into publishing cookbooks.

28:32

And the whole point was all of these food

28:34

companies wanted, like all of their

28:36

products to to be your entire

28:39

meal. So they were putting these

28:42

these random parts like products that the

28:44

food company made into some really

28:46

weird configurations, and they came up

28:48

with some very odd jello molds in the fifties

28:51

or sixties. Such a sad culinary

28:53

time it was. But the

28:56

Ruth Clark makes a good point that that to the

28:58

people at that time, like

29:00

a really well thought out, fancy

29:03

jello mold was as a centerpiece

29:05

of your table was like the pinnacle

29:08

of classiness. Yeah, but we're talking about

29:10

like a shaped mold with like

29:14

uh lamb shank and asparagus

29:18

inside of jello. A

29:20

savory jello that's like celery flavored.

29:23

You're lucky if it was savory. The lime

29:25

jello was one of the most abused jello

29:27

flavors of all time. People would put

29:30

tuna and stuff in with the lime

29:32

jello. There's one called Perfection

29:34

salad that's cold slaw inside

29:38

of lime jello. And

29:40

what Ruth Clark pointed out was that gelatin

29:42

apparently preserves

29:44

food really well, and

29:47

and that cole slaw that would have otherwise been

29:49

inedible and running after day three was

29:51

still like crunchy after day five. When it

29:53

was put inside of a jello mold. Still

29:55

gross. Yeah. There's actually a great

29:57

BuzzFeed article, um if you want

30:00

to get an idea of what people were doing in the

30:02

fifties, sixties, and seventies with jello molds.

30:04

It's called seventeen Horrifying, lee

30:06

disgusting retro Gelatin

30:08

recipes and they are gross.

30:11

Man like cottage cheese and salmon mold.

30:14

Yeah, yeah, I

30:16

mean I hate jello oh man,

30:19

like you're waking nightmare. I didn't even look through it. You

30:21

sent it to me and that scrolled about halfway through and just

30:23

deleted through my computer out the window. The

30:25

best one I see is lime cheese

30:28

salad. It's it's lime jello

30:30

mixed with cottage cheese and

30:33

then into the center of the jello

30:35

mold you put a seafood salad. Oh

30:37

my god, sour kraut mold. It

30:40

just goes on and on. But it was a weird time

30:42

and again. Ruth Clark has a bunch of theories.

30:45

She said she can't really answer exactly why jello

30:47

molds were as big as they are, but

30:49

she posits that, uh,

30:51

part of it was this idea that there

30:54

were all these companies trying to

30:56

get you to use their products. And these

30:59

were just monstos cities that they came up with,

31:01

and people fell for it. Uh like

31:04

can salmon, can

31:06

tuna in jell o?

31:09

Right, Oh my god, so

31:12

that's jello olds Man. Uh,

31:14

where do you want to head next? Let's go to the crock

31:16

pot. All right, do

31:19

a little that

31:23

was a crock pot travel. So first

31:25

of all, I have a croc pot

31:28

the same here, and um,

31:30

it's yours. Actually croc Pot are using it as

31:32

a proprietary eponym. I

31:34

don't think it is a croc Pot brand pot.

31:37

Yeah, it's a slow cooker, um,

31:41

and I'd forget to use it a lot, but

31:43

when I remember, I'll go in a little

31:45

crock pot binge where I'll cook,

31:48

you know, a few meals over the course of a few

31:50

weeks in a croc pot and

31:53

they're still great if you know how to how

31:55

to use it and how to spice things up for sure.

31:57

You know. Apparently at first people

32:00

didn't know because if you're

32:02

cooking a recipe, say,

32:04

um, it's like simmering, say like a beef

32:08

stew on the stovetop,

32:11

that simmering action that it's going undergoing

32:15

it does something different to the recipe

32:18

than a croc pot does, even though

32:20

it's the exact same recipe. Um.

32:22

And so at first when croc pots came out,

32:24

it was first introduced by rival. Back in when

32:28

croc pots first came out, um,

32:30

they people were

32:32

like, this is this this dinner that

32:35

it's making is really gross. It doesn't taste

32:37

very good. It's bland, and

32:39

yet they still didn't stop

32:42

using or buying croc pots. Well, food

32:44

was more bland back then. Well

32:46

we're talking the seventies, so by the seventies,

32:49

I think it was the people were using more

32:51

spices than before. I think it was more bland,

32:53

and like the forties and maybe the fifties.

32:55

Yeah, but that one, yeah, you're probably right, But that one

32:58

article we read said, you know, like an

33:00

old recipe for chili would have like a

33:02

teaspoon of chili powder or something, and

33:05

it's like all the food just sucked because

33:08

they didn't realize like, no, man, you dump a bunch

33:10

of that junk in there. So well, you

33:12

were saying back in the forties

33:14

or fifties, when TV dinners really hit,

33:17

moms were starting to enter the work force.

33:19

In nine moms were

33:21

really into the workforce. And so

33:23

the idea of having a crock pot where you could make

33:25

this meal in a one pot in the

33:27

morning, throw it all in there, turn it on,

33:30

and then come home at the end of the day and

33:32

dinner was ready and you still

33:34

went to work and got everything

33:36

you needed to get done done was so attractive

33:40

that just that despite the fact that it made

33:42

these meals that did not taste like

33:44

they should, um, people

33:47

were still, like I said, they were still buying the crock

33:49

pots and instead they started to look

33:52

around to find tips for how to make these

33:54

things taste better. And actually

33:56

a woman named what was her name, Mabel,

33:59

Yeah, Mabel Hoffman, Mabel Hoffman, stepped

34:01

into the fray and said, piece piece,

34:04

children, I've got this covered. Listen

34:06

up. Yeah. She wrote a book called The Crockery

34:09

Cookery or Crockery Cookery

34:12

No the and uh it

34:14

was a huge, huge hit,

34:17

was the New York Times bestseller. I believe

34:19

she went on to sell about six million copies

34:21

of this thing. And um,

34:25

I don't even think we've said that, you know, we said we

34:27

you throw the food in there and cook it all day.

34:29

But the whole idea is that you put a

34:31

kind of a tight fitting lid on there and it

34:33

and it cooks at a very very low heat all day

34:36

long. Right, and then

34:38

when you when you get home from work eight hours

34:40

later or something like that, it will it will be

34:42

done, and you just serve and smile.

34:45

Yeah, And thanks to Crockery Cookery,

34:48

UM, the crock pot uh in nineteen

34:50

seventy one or two million bucks and

34:52

seventy two, ten million, seventy three, twenty

34:54

three million, and then eventually peeking

34:57

in nineteen seventy five at nine three

34:59

million dollar urs worth of croc

35:01

pots being sold. It was a genuine,

35:04

legit craze, food craze and

35:06

supposedly crock pot cookery.

35:08

The book was UM America's

35:11

sixth best selling cookbook ever.

35:13

Right, so this was like a legitimate craze.

35:15

Crock Pot cooking was a legitimate craze.

35:18

But again there was something compared

35:20

to the same recipes on the stovetop as compared

35:22

to a croc pot. Um, there was something.

35:25

It was the flavor was just disappointing.

35:27

So what Mabel Hoffman did was

35:30

on a very tight deadline UM

35:32

create from scratch a book,

35:35

I guess, the world's first cookbook of slow

35:38

cooker recipes, and she did it

35:40

in her own kitchen with like twenty croc

35:42

pots going all day every day. She

35:44

had to testing all this stuff, and she

35:47

figured out some of the keys to crock

35:49

pot cooking, which was, like, you want

35:51

to use way less liquid um

35:54

thing you would use like on the stovetop, because

35:56

you have a lot less um evaporation.

35:59

The crock pot keeps sit in there, which

36:01

is one reason why meat is so so tender,

36:04

and a croc pot or slow cooker

36:06

um because it just recirculates

36:08

the the moisture rather

36:11

than allowing it to just evaporate. Right.

36:13

And then another thing she came up with was that when

36:16

you um, when you use herbs

36:18

into the recipe, you want to reserve some of

36:20

them for right before the things finished

36:23

cooking, so you can add it like a pop

36:25

of fresh flavor. Yes. So

36:27

once she figured this out, crock pots

36:29

just took off even more. Yeah, so

36:31

she was they were selling a bunch of crock pots, she was

36:33

selling a bunch of cookbooks. Uh.

36:35

And eventually she would said, hey, I really

36:38

was onto something here. So she wrote Deep

36:40

Prye Cookery, Chocolate Cookery.

36:43

Uh, and these are seventy nine, um,

36:46

seventy seven, like kind of all in a row crape

36:48

cookery and then eventually uh

36:52

healthy, healthy crockery

36:54

cookery and um.

36:58

The person you who interviewed her

37:01

later in life said that she was just this really

37:04

great lady, very humble, and

37:06

was super upfront about the fact that she

37:09

like, hey, I hit something at the right time

37:12

with the right book, and it just sort of I kind

37:14

of fell into this and it's been just like a wonderful

37:16

thing for my life. Yeah, it's really neat.

37:18

Yeah, she sounds like a pretty cool person. So what's

37:20

your what's your crock pot

37:22

recipe? Oh? Jeez,

37:25

I don't know it's your favorite thing to cook, but

37:27

usually some sort of like beef. Yeah,

37:30

it just does such a such a good job, like

37:32

making a roast or something, you know. Um,

37:35

but yeah, I that's

37:37

usually what I'm cooking when I cook in a crock pot.

37:40

Is is beef? All right? Josh's

37:42

croc pot beef croc pot surprise

37:45

right with aspect? Uh,

37:49

you want to take a break, Yeah, let's take a

37:51

break and we'll finish up with a bit interesting

37:53

bit on oat brand

38:14

so chuck. Yes, we finally

38:16

arrived We're just gonna go forward a few years

38:18

Blue the

38:22

way Back Machine is in the shop. This

38:25

is why I'm having to do it to

38:27

the eighties man an oat

38:29

Brand. Yes, I

38:31

know that we differ on the interestingness

38:34

of this one. I'm just fascinated by

38:36

it. I really am, man, because it's

38:38

got it all. It's like, um,

38:41

it's got the eighties. Um.

38:43

Do you remember that snl the famous

38:46

snl um add colon for

38:48

colon blow that was based

38:50

on this came out of this this trend.

38:53

Um has to do with studies,

38:56

studies that contradict those studies. Um,

39:00

bad science reporting the whole thing. I

39:03

love it, oats oh

39:05

brand. It's very important.

39:09

So there was this huge trend in the eighties

39:11

where anything that had to do with

39:13

oprand you could sell a

39:16

million units of a minute. Yes,

39:19

um. So much so that there was a article

39:22

from Tulsa World that

39:24

UM said that there were no I'm sorry, the l

39:26

A Times article from said that

39:29

they were over like three different

39:31

items available in grocery stores

39:33

at the time that touted on its label

39:36

the fact that it had oprand and people were

39:38

nuts for it. Yes they were. And this

39:40

is uh largely due

39:42

to some studies that came out that said

39:44

that brand was kind

39:47

of a miracle food for lowering cholesterol,

39:49

right, And that was like back in the late seventies,

39:52

and and I guess Quaker Oats took notice

39:54

of those studies and they released a thing called

39:57

Mother's opran but they sent

39:59

it straight to the hippies

40:01

at the health food store and just and didn't

40:03

do anything about They just released a product and that

40:05

was that. And then Kellogg's

40:08

came along and said, hey, you know what,

40:10

what if we start telling people that are

40:13

food can basically prevent

40:15

cancer? Can we do that? And the lawyers

40:18

said no, And the president of Kelloggs

40:20

said, well, we're doing it anyway. Who's gonna

40:22

stop us, Reagan? And Reagan

40:24

said no, I'm not gonna stop you, Reagan,

40:27

thank you. And so

40:29

they said, um, okay, well you

40:31

eat our cereal and it will reduce cancer.

40:34

And nothing happened. There was no blowback,

40:36

despite the fact that this has been illegal for nearly

40:38

a century. And then Quaker Oats

40:40

partnered with Chicago's Northwestern

40:43

University and Linda Van horn

40:45

In because

40:47

they had a similar study about brand

40:50

cutting cholesterol. Right, so

40:52

they're starting to say, well, Kelleg didn't get in trouble.

40:54

Let's try this ourselves. And they went out and

40:57

they hired Wilfred Brimley. Remember

40:59

his ads. Yeah,

41:01

I think I told the story about working with him.

41:04

Oh yeah, it wasn't he like the antithesis

41:06

of what his his persona

41:08

was. Yeah, the word got around they were like this,

41:11

you know, just maybe a short day, because

41:13

that's how it goes with him sometimes

41:15

it's so funny. And I think it was. I think we

41:17

wrapped it about half day because he was just like, I'm

41:19

done, I'm cantankerous. But

41:21

in the meantime, when the cameras were rolling, he

41:23

he told everybody that eating quicker opra

41:26

and was the right thing to do and

41:28

it would cut your cholesterol, that's right. And

41:30

then this book came out, So things are starting to

41:32

build here for opra. And this book came out

41:34

called The Eight Week Cholesterol Cure by

41:36

a guy named Robert E. Kowalski, and

41:39

it chronicled his the decline

41:41

of his l d L, the bad cholesterol

41:44

um just from eating an opra and diet.

41:47

And that book became extraordinarily

41:50

popular, supposedly was the

41:52

the one of the greatest

41:54

selling self help

41:56

health books of all time. It

41:59

just took off. Yeah, and

42:01

then yet another thing happened, and this

42:03

was the thing. This is like where the peak

42:05

began the UM.

42:08

I think the Journal of the American Medical

42:10

Association April published

42:13

a study from the University of

42:15

Maryland where these researchers found

42:17

that, yeah, eating oprand

42:20

could really significantly lower your cholesterol,

42:22

and not only that, it does it for a

42:24

six of the price of the

42:27

expensive cholesterol lowering drugs.

42:30

That's right, and people ate even more

42:32

oat brand That's right. The

42:34

trend is developing, can you see it. I

42:36

think it's fully developed at this point. So

42:39

everybody's going opran crazy. And

42:41

one of the big things that UM

42:43

that they were doing was eating Oprand

42:46

muffins. But these opra and muffins

42:48

were like loaded with fat and butter and

42:51

eggs, and so they weren't actually

42:53

doing anything to lower their cholesterol

42:55

because the effects would be counteracted,

42:59

right, But in the in

43:01

the meantime, people were still having fun eating lots

43:03

of muffins and pretending they were really healthy.

43:05

And then this Harvard study came out and

43:08

it basically said, you know what, UM, you're

43:10

all fools, You're dummies. You know how it lowers

43:12

your cholesterol because it keeps you from eating

43:14

bacon and eggs. That's how you chumps.

43:17

Well yeah, and then that study itself was

43:20

attacked because they only studied twenty

43:22

people, um, which is

43:25

not much of a study. It isn't and the people

43:27

who were on the Opran diet were eating

43:30

more fat than the control group.

43:32

It was a terrible study, almost like they wanted to

43:34

take Oprand down a peg and

43:37

it worked really well. It's basically

43:39

the um science. Reporting

43:42

in major newspapers and the news

43:44

services reported that Oprand

43:46

was the greatest thing ever, and then they

43:48

suddenly turned on it and said Opran is

43:50

nothing, and everybody dropped

43:53

Opran and the if if

43:55

you read the stuff today, it's

43:57

true Oprand really does lower cholesterol.

44:00

Um, but he just got overhyped

44:03

because of the eighties. That's the eighties

44:05

for you. That's food fads.

44:07

Man, You got anything else? I got nothing else? All

44:10

right? Man? Well, if you want to know more

44:12

about food fans, you can type those

44:14

words into the search part how stuff works

44:17

dot com search bar. You're not gonna

44:19

get much, though, so you may

44:21

want to just look elsewhere. But still, uh,

44:24

since I said that it's time for a listener mail. I'm

44:29

gonna call this m S response, and

44:31

I would like to say that we got many, many,

44:34

oh great responses from our MS

44:36

episode. A lot of warm thoughts from

44:39

people about my friend

44:41

Billy and just uh it was just

44:43

really great people with MS, people

44:45

who had people in their family. We heard

44:47

from doctors and nurses, and

44:49

that's just ended up being a really good episode.

44:52

So we appreciate that feedback. But

44:54

this is from anonymous listener. Hey,

44:58

I've been listening to your show for a couple of years now. I want to thank

45:00

you for making my commute more engaging. Listened

45:03

to the show on MS AM I right home and like

45:05

to commend you for how well you handle the topic. I

45:07

was diagnosed a few years ago at nineteen uh.

45:10

Luckily my diagnosis was quick due

45:12

to the severity of my first relapse, and I feel

45:14

like your podcast would have helped me understanding cope with the diagnosis

45:17

in a more constructive manner than my initially trying

45:20

to self destruct. Since then,

45:22

I'm continually uh learning

45:24

about the latest research in history. I love that you

45:26

discussed uh Ledwina and

45:28

Augustus death Day as

45:30

a lot of the time, they don't come

45:32

up in the mainstream discourse of MS. Didn't

45:35

really know any history until I wrote an undergrad history

45:37

paper on MS last year and found

45:39

reading through bits of death Day's journal

45:42

to be the closest I've ever felt with

45:44

a historical person. You mentioned

45:46

that many tend to keep their diagnosis a secret.

45:49

I'll admit that with me, it's a need to know basis,

45:51

and I rarely openly talk about it outside

45:53

of family, friends, in the support system,

45:55

and my support system, mainly because

45:57

of the stigma of the disease and that the assumption

46:00

circulating MS tend

46:02

to negatively alter people's

46:04

perceptions of myself as an individual. Have

46:07

had people approach me when I start limping

46:09

thanks to fatigue and a permanently

46:11

numb foot, but I'll rush it off and tell them

46:13

there's nothing to worry about or it's an old injury.

46:15

However, I think with time it's getting easier to talk

46:18

about thanks to resources like your

46:20

podcasts that are well researched

46:22

and accurate. I cringe whenever someone

46:24

tells me there's an easy homeopathic

46:26

solution to my ailments, and sometimes

46:28

I struggle with discussing MS in an accessible

46:31

way that doesn't solely rely

46:33

on the clinical pathological understanding of it.

46:36

And I will be sure in the future to redirect people

46:38

to this episode. Thank you

46:40

so much for sharing. And uh,

46:43

we said we keep this anonymous because this

46:46

person. Yeah, this person said,

46:48

you know, that's great that you read it. But uh, if

46:51

if they're keeping it quiet for now, we don't want to

46:54

you know, broadcast the names. Yeah

46:58

nice, so okay anonymous?

47:00

Yeah, thanks anonymous. Uh.

47:03

If you want to get in touch with us, like anonymous

47:05

did, you can tweet

47:07

to us. Yeah, I guess i'd be

47:09

anonymous. Um, I'm at

47:11

josh um Clark and at s Y

47:13

s K podcast. You can hang out

47:15

with Chuck on Facebook dot com slash Stuff

47:18

you Should Know or at Charles W. Chuck

47:20

Bryant on Facebook. You can send us both

47:22

an email. Uh. We promised to

47:24

be confidential at Stuff

47:26

podcast, at how Stuff Works dot com and has

47:28

always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff

47:31

you Should Know dot com

47:36

For more on this and thousands of other topics,

47:39

is it how Stuff Works dot com