Endless Egg

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Kollyani Saksena, producer of the show Endless Thread, inside of which we are right now. Yeah. Yes. The show Endless Thread. We're inside, we're in the main frame. We're in the mainframe of Endless Thread. Uh and today we're talking about one of the most recognizable shaped items. Uh-huh. Of food? What's to say about it? Ovular? Ovular, yes, round Kinda bouncy? No, I would not describe depending on what stage we're talking about. What state it's in? What state it's set.

Okay, we're talking about eggs. Are you an egg woman? I I really do need to disclose that I'm not an egg lover. OK But I'm not an egg hater. If an egg tastes too much like an egg, and some people who are listening to this are gonna know immediately what I'm talking about, it's done. Like I'm not into it. I understand that perspective. I don't share it but I understand

So we got an email from a listener named Scott. Have you been following the U slash as in user heavy tech eighty six pickle saga on r slash pickling. This dude's pickled eggs and sausage recipe has taken off, and lots of folks are making it and posting. Might be a rabbit hole to investigate, Let's start with Heavy Tech eighty six. As near as I can tell by creeping on his Reddit posts, his Reddit history.

His username may give you a hint of this, Heavy Tech, right? So he works in some level of like industrial work. So I know he talks about concrete slurry in some of his posts. He makes something called cowboy candy with his hot peppers from his garden. Huh. Um, which is I believe pickled peppers. All right. So this is what Heavy Tech 86 is into. Just, you know, regular chill stuff.

about his life until you get to about a month ago from when we are taping this. And it's not actually that interesting. L like it's not when you see this post that went viral. It's not like, oh my God, of course this went viral. So let me just I'm gonna copy the post that went viral. I'm gonna send it to you. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just pop in it and I have to say that's not when I think of virality, I wouldn't have thought of this. But Yeah. Right?

If you want me to describe it. Yeah. It's it's like one of those really tall mason jars. Um there's a bunch of eggs uh in some sort of liquid, I'm presuming vinegar or some kind of brine. Uh a bunch of like orangey carrot things and like a few peppers. But there's sausage in there too. Oh. I see the sausage now. I thought those were Potatoes. Slices of sausage. So we're talking about we're talking about pickled sausage and egg. Mm.

Which again, that's like doubly bold. That's a lot of animal protein inside of something that's not gonna be cold necessarily. But what's crazy is when you look l I'm just like look in the Pickling subreddit for a minute. I know. Everybody is making it, dude. And they're still making it. We started talking about this weeks ago and people are still making it. This is basically this this is now a sausage and pickled eggs subreddit. It's not just... Just a coupling subreddit, right?

It's not a hostile takeover, but it is a takeover. Everyone is making heavy techs A. Some of these jars actually look beautiful. Oh, I was just looking at one that I was like, Okay, Instagram. It's beautiful. It's kind of art of its own thing. It really is. And and now of course like the memes are popping up. Dad, why is my sister's name Rose? Because your mother loves roses. Thanks, Dad. No problem, heavy check.

I don't know, it's just kind of fun and interesting how this this one random dude's heavy tech eighty six, his pickled eggs recipe blew up. And now has like changed the face of the pickling subreddit, and everybody seems to be having a good, good old, grand old time with it. Yeah, and what's interesting to me as well is like

For some people it's all they can think about. I mean, our editor, Meg Kramer, when we were talking about this story, said she hasn't been able to stop thinking about these pickled eggs since we first got that listener email. She just saw like the original picture and she couldn't stop thinking about it. And like I can't say that that has been my experience, but I think that there's something really I don't know. So much of the internet is so

heavy and the algorithm often like really favors content that elicits either like strong anger or like mostly strong anger. And so it's kind of cool to see this uh subreddit be taken over by an idea for something delicious that everybody is enjoy I'm assuming delicious that everybody's enjoying and everybody's having fun with it. And I I don't know, I think that's that's kind of great. It's it's nice.

Has um Heavy Tech responded or like come to rule their new kingdom? Like w where is Heavy Tech in this? Heavy tech's around. Heavy tech's poking around. Um, but heavy tech's not. Like I think it went viral enough and heavy tech is like a working human who A benevolent rule. Yeah. Yeah, he made his pickled eggs. He's he's doing his thing. No big deal. I did reach out to him, I have not heard back. Mm.

And if I do, I will report back. But that's my story about pickled eggs. But you got a story about pickled eggs of some kind, right? I have a story about eggs in liquid. Does that qualify as pickling or brazing? Find out after the process. Yeah, why not? Why not? You're no longer young people. You're just people. And people are your or dead weight. It's my first day of work and I need to make a big impression. Were you just checking me out? No. It's too bad. Workers? Don't take me seriously.

It's not a human. It's just a piece of meat. Someone bring a gurney. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at B.U. Questrum's School of Business. Ships move the vast majority of the world's goods, and it's cheaper and safer compared to trucks or planes. So the shipping was there. centuries and it will remain there in the future. So how does an industry this essential think about sustainability?

Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode about what it will take for ocean freight shipping to reach net zero emissions. Business leaders listen. Over half tune into podcasts daily. Reach them with Cityspace Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships team. Cityspace Productions crafts custom podcasts for businesses that showcase expertise.

deepen connections, and drive engagement. Turn your vision into a podcast. Visit wbr.org slash creative studio. Alright, we're back and we're ready to dive in to some more excellent content. Nice. Okay, I promise that's my only egg related punt for the rest of this episode. I know. I that's true. It's more just like a failure in creativity. That's all I've got. Excellent is all I've got. It's just'cause you're a shell of your former self.

That's good. That was fast too. I'm proud I'm proud of you for that one. Um so your your episode. To scramble a little bit, you know what I mean? Am I gonna be able to tell this story without laughing? Alright. Alright. Alright. Oh my god. Alright, that is your last one. Alright, I'll stop.

Okay, so your egg story came from Reddit. Mine comes from TikTok. And I have been seeing these particular eggs on TikTok for years. They are boiled eggs. They're marinated in soy sauce. And then there's some other ingredients in that little marinade. You got green onions, sesame seeds. other onions and then once you marinate them in that little mixture, when you eat them over rice, they look really jammy and pretty, scrumly unp. Nice.

So people have referred to these eggs by different names on TikTok in the years that I've been seeing this. Jammy eggs, soy marinated eggs, and that sort of naming thing is kind of at the crux of the story, which we'll get to that in a minute. Um, but they've actually got a specific name. They're called uh mayak eggs and they're Korean marinated eggs. They're sometimes referred to as Korean drug eggs because they're so addictive.

And, you know, the origin of this dish is suspected to be from China but Many other Asian countries have their own version of marinated eggs. Uh Japan has a soy marinated egg that is used in ramen. Um and Taiwan and Vietnam also have their own version. So this is something that has been around on the internet for a while, but also like just in general culture for like hundreds of years.

But the reason I wanted to talk about these eggs is that even though they've been showing up on my For You page for years, I noticed a pickup in um just like the volume of videos about these Mayak eggs. Late last year. And they started with videos from an influencer and content creator named Courtney. Okay, these are some of my um marinated eggs. These are like the Korean Mayak eggs. I need to figure out um how to pronounce that. I have some Japanese mayo. Oh my gosh!

exactly what I need. Um and some French fried onions. It was just so darn delicious. So Courtney is chomping on these eggs in the morning before for her breakfast. Um, she she films a lot of videos of her just like she takes a bite out of the top of the egg, puts a little bit of crunchy onions, um, and then sort of dives in. And um people they love these videos from Courtney and they start making their own version of the Maya. Only there's one problem. They're calling the eggs Courtney Cook.

We're making Courtney cooks. eggs. Come with me to try Courtney's soy eggs. Or what do you eat? I'm eating marinated eggs, soy sauce marinated eggs with a little dollop of mayo dipped in crispy onions. Where who's this from? And I mean, is that it's not it's probably not Courtney's fault necessarily. I'm not saying she's completely innocent either, but

Yeah, and th and we're gonna get into some opinions because I I think it's kind of it is a little bit of a murky uh picture but there was a lot of Asian American creators who were really unhappy about this because Here they are seeing this egg. And yeah, like it's been called different things online before, like jammy eggs, soy marinated eggs. But what's happening right now is that this recipe from their heritage is being attributed to a white creator. Courtney.

Uh like Courtney, this is her invention, this is her creation. Here's one creator who goes by the username at Kayla Wongton. She's responding to a video of a white woman who posted a video making the eggs with the tech. Quote, so chronically online I'm putting my hard boiled eggs in a soy sauce bath. And then the caption of that video says, quote, in Courtney Wheat Truck. What do you mean you're chronically online so now you're making soy marinated? Eggs.

As if like soy sauce and eggs was such a crazy combination to them. And then they're not even giving credit to like Asian people. They're giving credit to Courtney Cook, which I love Courtney Cook. Like I always watch your videos, but just calling it With the caption saying, thank you for sharing your delicious food with us. Oh my god! And then here's one more clip I want to play, uh a tick from a TikTok video by someone who goes by the username at Princess Paula.

And the problem w I have with Courtney Kirk also is that she kinda in comments and videos says that her food combinations are weird and that's what she says over and over. Yet your most popular videos are all the ones of you eating Asian food. And you wanna keep saying things are weird. There's another layer here too that, you know, many Asian Americans who grew up in this country grew up having their food made fun of, like Absolutely.

Oh, that smells. Oh, that stinks. I'm I am well versed in what that experience is like. So to sort of see that food now being celebrated is is great and is one thing, but I think that there's also a level of like pain and frustration seeing that food now that it's being celebrated attributed to someone who isn't part of that community. I mean, it's just it was not going over very well on.

There are some creators who who felt differently that that, you know, this is uh this is just kind of how food recipes are online. People appreciate food from other cuisines and they share videos of them. Making that recipe from that cuisine. This is one more person from TikTok. Their username is at Beefy Boy. Oh that's me. That's more. Um except this creator identified themselves as a Korean who was raised. Oh it's not me. No, it's not you. Sorry about that.

Why else are we in America? I'm talking to everybody. Do we need to learn the deep history behind every single thing we eat? No, we're we'll drive ourselves crazy researching everything before we eat it. But let's Have respect. Respect for one another. Let's have respect for one another. Why can't we do I have plenty of thoughts about this, but I I wanted to give you a chance if there's something that you're thinking about hearing all this.

i i it's this tricky thing where it's like you want people to be able to explore the world and to do that in a way that like they can feel safe doing that. Um and at the same time you want people to educate themselves about the world that they're in. And and and in some ways, like that's the first step of the process. Mm-hmm. I I love cooking. Uh I cook a lot of Asian food. I cook a lot of um Mexican food.

I make dumplings, I you know, like I do all those things and I think over time I I've tried to be conscious of like where I'm learning about that stuff. And who who I'm learning from. And in the beginning I wasn't learning from you know, I wasn't actually learning from the source.

if that makes sense. I was learning from these other places where where I experienced it as a you know, whatever, as a uh, you know, white dude living in Connecticut or whatever. You know what I mean? Like You're right. Start from a place of ignorance when you're exploring a culture that isn't yours, but hopefully.

part of your process is like leaning more into that and acknowledging and understanding um the culture better. Cause I think that's better for all of us achieving understanding amongst each other. Yeah, and I I there's so many like interesting parts of this. I I will say like I I did reach out to Courtney Cook for comment and I did hear back. Um and her team said that Courtney really believes it's important to give credit, avoid presenting these dishes as her own creations.

and to approach them with respect. Her team also acknowledged that food naturally moves between communities, particularly online, and that Courtney's intention is always to celebrate, amplify, and not take ownership of the cultures behind the food. О, стер респан. Here's what I think, and and here's what I've sort of picked up from how people have responded. Like I I think that

Courtney Cook is likely coming from that place of you were talking about, right? Like she she enjoys this food, she appreciates this food, she wants to share this food. And to a certain degree, like all of us, right? When we're trying recipes from other cultures, there is going to be a like, well, I don't know how to do this, but I'm gonna try it. and we all sort of adapt and cook recipes from other places all the time. But I think what makes this distinct and and the issue at hand is

Who gets to benefit when something from another culture becomes popular? You know, who gets the props for making something delicious? Who gets those potential cooking book deals or the followers, right? Like that is kind of to me where the line gets a little blurry around like who who is profiting and who who gets to kind of reap reap the reward of a genuinely wonderful delicious dish from a community of people.

There's another dish uh that Courtney Cook uh sort of came under fire for talking about. It's called Korean Army-based stew. She presented it as army-based stew. Some creators felt like she was erasing the history of that dish. Um because you know it

erase the Korean war uh history that was part of the creation of that Korean army based stew. And so now when she posts videos about that particular dish, and I've seen in the comments of multiple of those videos She has the same comment, you know, saying Um, my goal is appreciation, not ownership. This dish has a very difficult history. You should seek out Korean cooks for authentic recipes and read the history of this dish to better understand its origins and significance.

So she's like putting that comment under tons of videos about that same dish. And this is a a question that I I think about when I was researching this episode, which is. I think part of the problem here is the algorithm. Like I think the algorithm is pushing videos that get lots of views. And I think the algorithm in general doesn't

It doesn't usually favor context. So, like even if Courtney Cook maybe left a comment of attribution on one of her other videos, maybe you get a video where she didn't. It raises a lot of it, it raises a lot of questions for me about how does the issue of credit work on a platform where the algorithm is going to continue to push videos from big creators.

Yeah, it's really man, it's tough. It's it's one of those things. It's tough to tell it's tough for me to tell if this is like an internet thing or a thing that's always existed. That's just getting sort of amplified, right? Um Yeah, I think it's both. Yeah, I think it's both maybe. The creators that I feel like I've really come to follow closely and I I I follow a lot of creators on YouTube who make food. Like that is specifically how I use YouTube the most is like repairs and food.

they're pretty good at being like either either I'm like following like souped up recipes who's like a Chinese woman who's making Chinese food, right? Or it's like somebody who's saying, I I went and studied this and have br and now I'm showing it to you. As opposed to being like, I like these eggs. They're kind of tasty this way. I don't I'm not sure what they're called. I think they're called this, but I'm not sure.

And I like it this way. Like that that's to me, there's like a difference in a level of like research that you're doing before you're going into the world with the thing. Um Like a level of responsibility. Yeah, which seems important for that kind of, you know, creation. Yeah. And I will say like what you were talking about with the is this an internet issue or is this a like societal issue? I think obviously it to me at least they they feel like intertwined because

The question of like appropriation versus appreciation is age old. We're always thinking about it and we should always be interrogating that. And the same patterns that play out in society, I think are gonna play out online and the algorithm is just gonna accelerate them. That's how I see it.

Sounds not excellent. Yeah. Sunk. It's an episode about tough cultural issues. Yeah. Well, you know, I I just hope that people continue to like learn about other parts of the world and that they're like safe to do that and also that they do it with respect and with an interest in like learning. Stay curious, stay hungry. I think that's the takeaway for this. Koliani Saksana, thank you very much for um going down this egg rabbit hole. Thanks for letting me explore. Oh no. To me.

If you have a recipe that you love from another culture that you would like to send us, we would love to read it. If you have a folk recipe that you discovered in the Pickling subreddit, Um that you would like to send us, please do. And also like if you have like an egg pun that you wanna toss our way. If you want to egg toss it our way, you know what I'm saying? Come on, I'm not sure. Uh don't be shy'cause you know I'll be reading those.

No, I will be, I will be. I'll be groaning as I do it, but I will be seated and You can send those to um you can send those to endless threads. org you look for. And one more thing before we go, endless eggers. Um, we need your help. More than three billion people around the world use WhatsApp. So there's a good chance you're one of them.

We want to hear from more of you about how you use it. Is it where you find your pickled eggs recipes? Or have you stumbled into any sort of unexpected WhatsApp communities? How has WhatsApp changed your life? off of your phone. And how has it changed the way that you talk to your friends and your family and other people? You can email us or even better, send us a voice memo to endlesthread at wbr.org. All right.

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Grace Tatter, was co-hosted by Kolyani Sexena and Ben Brock Johnson. We also reported and brought the stories. It was edited by Meg Kramer and Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikis. The rest of our team is Amory Siebertson, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producers, Summit Josh.

Endless Thread is a podcast about the blurred lines between online communities and uh pickled versus braised eggs. If you have an online mystery, an untold history, or another wild story. Internet, you know what to do again. Email us at endless thread at WBUR. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?

A podcast about the Morotra Institute at B.U. Questrum's School of Business. Follow is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Valerie Thomas. Professor of Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech on whether the ocean freight shipping industry can reach net zero emissions by 2050. Is technically feasible. That's a very simple question. Will we get there w will it all be deployed?

We're gonna see. I just wanna add in there that, yeah, we've talked a lot about the difficulties for shipping in getting to net zero. This is not the only thing that's gonna be going on. Aviation is seeking to do the same thing, maybe even faster, and the other uses of petroleum are all transitioning You may think and in some ways that makes the problem even bigger

There are other ways that it makes it easier. Some of the fuels that are used for shipping are very similar to those used for aviation. So as the infrastructure gets built out, shipping can benefit. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at IBMS.bu.edu.