You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what mango was that? Well, today we're doing a show on cheese crimes. I've been excited for this one, So I've got a question for you to kick things off. So what's the first thing that comes to mind when I say cheese crime? Because there's so many things that could come to mind. What comes to mind for you?
I know there was gonna be a pop quiz. Yeah, I guess someone committing a crime with cheese, like maybe blusheoning someone with like a huge wheel of parmesan and then eating that parmesan. So there's a murder weapon.
Oh, that would be like the perfect crime.
Yeah, or maybe just using cheese whiz in the sandwich, which is kind of a cheese crime.
I feel like, out, I look the way you just quickly planned to murder around a wheel of cheese, and then you dissed the giant part of Philadelphia culture. This is all in the first minute of the show. But the thing is, cheese is reportedly the most shoplift did food in the world. Plus it's the target of all sorts of craziness from stealing and grifting, to tyst and even smuggling.
So this whole episode is kind of just a bad setup for a nacho cheese joke.
That's the whole reason. That's why I'm excited for this. All right, let's dive in. Welcome back to part time Genius. I'm Will and as always, I'm here with my good friend Mango, and somewhere behind that big booth is our pal Dylan, who has a giant can of easy cheese and a plate full of crackers that actually Mango, I think he's preparing for us.
The guy's just so generous. I love that he made us a snack. I guess he didn't want us to be angry.
Now.
But speaking of cheese crimes, I know this is a little off topic, but can you retell that story about that time you stopped at a gas station and was so.
I didn't think we were going to go there, but uh yeah, So. I was in a hurry to a meeting one day, and for whatever reason, it had been an ongoing joke about grabbing a hot dog from a gas station with a group of friends. I truly was in a rush, was filling up with gas, and I was like, you know what I'm going to do it. I'm going to get a gas station hot dog because I was angry, and so I grabbed one. I go out to the car, finished, you know, filling up the tank.
I take a bite of This is going to sound a bit like terrible. I took a bite of the hot dog and suddenly I feel something like hot, like squirt the back of my throat, which I hate to even say those words. And I looked and the hot dog had been cheese injected. And I had heard of these before, and I know that they exist. I have no interest in them, but I also just I want to heads up when my hot dog is going to
have cheese in it. And I didn't know, and so, needless to say, I did not finish the hot dog. It is the last time I've had a gas station hot dog. So yeah, that's the story.
It's a good warning to all our listeners to check out the label on the hot.
You always find out whether it's cheese injected. Yeah, so let's get started. I know the reason we chose this episode is that we both heard that shoplifting fact about cheese, like that's the most shoplifted food and.
I'd also heard about this parmesan mafia, so I was curious what the real story was there. But why don't we start with just a quick list of how expensive cheese can be. So here's a quick top three of expensive cheeses I found on a site called Chef's Pencil. So number one is Pool, which is a donkey cheese. Talked about this before, but just to get a sense
of how expensive it is. For comparison, grocery store cheddars can go for about six dollars a pound, Mozzarella might go for like eight dollars a pound, but pool goes for six hundred dollars.
Oh my god.
And the reason is it's mostly made of donkey milk. Right, It's sixty percent donkey milk forty percent goat milk, So donkeys are doing the heavy lifting there. And apparently, unlike goats, donkeys are stingy milk givers, like you have to milk them three times a day. They only give milk six months of the year, so production is really tricky. Plus there's only one farm that makes pool, and it's in
the donkey reserve in Serbia, right right. You know, for whatever reason, I have not seen this six hundred dollars pound cheese in the Pickley Wiggly in Alabama.
But my question is is it any good?
Yeah? I mean I love that you're asking me like I have like caviar and pool breath this tacos in morning. But so if you do a quick internet search, it's supposedly nutty and earthy, and it tastes like manchigo. It doesn't sound like that special. But I actually read this review from this cheese blogger, Missed cheesemonger who's a cheese connoisseur from San Francisco, and it immediately made me want to try some. So this is what she says. Quote. Once I took a bite, I understood what made this
cheese special. There were so many layers a flavor, from demi cell butter at the foundation to the middle flavors of sweet grasses to the extremely heady floral notes that lingered in a ridiculously long finish. This was no ordinary fresh cheese. It was aromatic to the extreme. I might as well have been inhaling the scent of milk on a Serbian hillside. Texture Wise, it is not so unusual. Oh, but that lingering, longing aftertaste, it was like nothing I had ever tasted.
I actually just ordered some on Amazon while you were talking about it. It sounded so appealing.
So she points out there are only about one hundred jennies or female donkeys that can produce the milk for the special cheese, and the fresh cheese is often best eaten the day it's made, which I'm sure also drives up that price.
And actually that's the cheese that Djokovic was supposedly trying to corner the market on.
Right, Yeah, and you know I heard so much about that. It was basically this drummed up story that the producers at the farm and a poorly sourced Daily Mail article made up. But Djokovic apparently has no interest in a monopoly on donkey cheese.
Okay, mainly tennis y okay, got it's all right? So that's number one. What's number two on your list?
Moose cheese, okay, which feels like it could use better branding than just moose cheese. But it goes for five hundred dollars a pound, and again.
For steel compared with some donkey cheese's.
Pretty laborious because you're trying to milk a twelve hundred pound moose. Here. It's made from a place called the Elkhouse in Sweden, and according to Chef's pencil, all the moose cheese comes from three moose named Goulan, Juna, and Helga.
Okay, Helga's cheese is my favorite, obviously, yeah, of course, of course, wow that is that's fascinating. I do want to try both of those. And I feel like all these cheeses are expensive because they're not goat or cow cheeses. So I'm I'm predicting number three is going to be elephant cheese.
Am I right? Well, no elephant cheese on my list. But I do feel like the next few cheeses that are listed across the internet as the most expensive cheeses are kind of frauds. Like there's Stilt and Gold, which is flecked with this edible gold leaf, which I don't feel like it should count because it's almost like saying, like, I mean you the world's most expensive burger, and I put truffles under a big matt something right, Like, it's not really expensive on its own. But I'm going to
say number three is Wyke Farm Cheddar. It's supposedly this incredibly tasty cheddar. It sells for two hundred dollars a pound, and the family that makes it has kept the recipe of secret since eighteen sixty one.
Okay, all right, So at two hundred dollars a pound, if you're stealing one of these giant wheels of cheddar, you could make a lot of money off of that. But doesn't it feel like stealing one of these super expensive cheeses is almost like stealing a Picasso off the wall of a museum, Like it's worth a lot more. But also someone is going to be looking for you.
Yeah, and there's some cheese detectives out there who specialize in cheese thefts, which is pretty amazing.
I love that as a job. All Right, I do want to hear about that, But before we do, let's talk about cheese's origins. So just a quick primer on this. While we don't know the first instance of humans making cheese, we do know that cheesemaking is related to the domestication of milk producing animals. No surprise there, now, that goes back about eight to ten thousand years ago. You can also find cheesemaking in Greek mythology, which is pretty interesting
to see. And there's evidence of cheese and cheesemaking that's been found on Egyptian two murals. These date back probably four thousands incredible. Yeah, it's a long time ago. But the truth is cheese was probably discovered accidentally.
So I actually remember that bit because we did a show about craft singles and we talked about how cheese, penicillin, and the slinky were like the greatest accidental.
Distoperes easy, easy, top three, all equally important. But there are a few different theories of how we got cheese. It could have been the practice of storing milk and containers made from stomachs of animals. We've talked about that a little bit which naturally contained this enzyme called rennet, and that would cause the milk to coagulate. It separates
into curds and whey. Now, another possibility is the practice of salting curdled milk for preservation, or the addition of fruit juices to milk, which would result in the curdling of the milk.
It's kind of like how my kids accidentally make cheese when they leave a carton of milk in the back of the fridge. Tea long, but I can't imagine eating that now.
It's not the type of thing Dylan I think would serve on a ritz cracker. I don't see it on the plate back there. But if you dump some salt on that glop, you basically have early cheese. The Roman Empire produced and traded hundreds of varieties of cheese, so it was certainly an industry back then, and trade with Europe could explain how the cheese got to Asia. But there could have been parallel thinking at work here too, the Tibetans, the Mongolians, They've also got this long history
of producing cheeses. And of course, cheese has been produced in America since the early seventeenth century, when the English Puritans brought their knowledge of dairy farming and cheesemaking from the Old World over to the colonies.
Right and now Americans are so obsessed with cheese that we feel comfortable wearing like giant cheese hats on our heads to sports games.
I love those cheeseheats. I've alway thought about getting one. I never have. But interestingly, Wisconsin didn't start out in the cheese business really this date was actually a leading wheat supplier before the Civil War, but as crop eels started to fail, Wisconsin farmers knew they needed to pivot to something, and they pivoted to dairy. Now. At the same time, settlers from New England and Ohio and New York and other places in that region they started moving west,
as did the Europeans. So all of these folks start bringing this interest in cheese and knowledge of cheese production to the area. So the result is today that Wisconsin produces more than a quarter of all domestic cheese in the US.
I had no idea about that.
Yeah, cheese is of course a huge business, part of why we're talking about it here. But the US cheese retail market is growing and it's slated to reach twenty seven point eight billion dollars by twenty twenty eight.
Wow.
The retail cheese sales in the UK are expected to reach five point two billion euros by twenty twenty eight.
So obviously a huge amounts of money, and it makes sense. That's why cheese crime is a thing.
Yeah, and as far as commodities that are worth stealing, cheese is ripe. But yeah, you like what I did there, But think about it compared to the other dairy products. It's durable, and it's easy to transport. It doesn't melt like ice cream or spill or leak or spoil as fast as milk. And it's ubiquitous like it's in cuisines around the world. People everywhere love cheese, which makes it
easier to sell. Plus, unlike guns or drugs, cheese is mostly legal, which is a good segue into some cheese jackings. This was a big thing in Italy back in two thousand and six. Apparently gangs would lie in wait at service stations on the Milan Bologna Motorway and as soon as a truck driver would stop for coffee, they'd ambush them. Yeah, it kind of makes driving a cheese truck seem pretty dangerous.
Yeah. And in one instance, a driver was threatened by four armed men and then tied up while his van carrying three hundred wheels of cheese was driven away. The cheese wheels were then taken to this industrial estate. They were cut up and sold in stores, and this happened for quite a while with different bands of criminals. In twenty fifteen, a group of criminals were arrested in modern Enough for stealing roughly nine hundred thousand dollars worth of
parmesan cheese. Yeah, and according to the Italian news site Al Soul twenty four, the criminals were so savvy that they stole over twenty thirty nine wheels of parmesan reggiano cheese over the course of roughly two years.
It feels so weird that there's basically this like Ocean's eleven of cheese and I don't know, there's something fascinating about it, but in general, it must be so hard to catch a cheese thief because it's not like you can track these like using GPS or anything like that.
Yeah, So producers and the Italian farmers union, which is called Clodaretti, are experimenting with microchips and they're hidden in the crusts of the cheese, which means they are actually more identifiable. They also have markings burnt on the crust so that you can help police track the stolen cheese. But it's still a huge problem. A survey by Coldoretti found that parmesan is the most shoplifted item in Italy.
Oh wow, it's a little different than here where it's mostly like I would guess, batteries and deodorant or something like that.
Yeah, but you know, we might need that deodorant because we're also hard at work stealing cheese. It's not just Italy. In twenty sixteen, seventy thousand pounds of cheese were stolen from a cheese store in Germantown, Wisconsin and later recovered in Milwaukee. Apparently the thieves i'mdoing was trying to sell the cheese on the cheap, like they tried to hawk
their contraband cheese for just a dollar a pound. And as you well know, no self respecting Wisconsin retailer would expect to pay so total, and nor would they buy the cheese without knowing its prominence. But you know, these thefts they make the Wisconsin cheese community really really upset. There's this guy, Tyson Wormheister, the co owner of Mars Cheese Castle, and he said, a cheese like that not available for use.
It saddens me. I feel like I need to know what Mars Cheese Castle is.
It's a castle shaped restaurant specializing in cheese.
Okay, that sounds abye right. Well, I know we want to talk more about cheese crimes, and of course those cheese detectives that you teased earlier. But let's take a quick break first. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking cheese crimes. So there are obviously lots of these cheese stuff stories. There's this one from twenty thirteen where a guy showed up to a manufacturer in Wisconsin, forged a bunch of paperwork, then drove away with two
hundred thousand dollars worth of monster. There's a story from France in twenty fifteen where thieves broke into a dairy and stole one hundred wheels of specialty Conte cheese. They boosted four tons, four tons of cheese. And there's another of these high stories from a seller in France where seven hundred blocks of delicious Saint Nectar cheese were stolen. It's amazing, I mean, just how much cheese these bandits are taking off with. It's not a little bit of cheese.
Yeah, it's insane, which brings us to cheese detectives. This is great piece on the Today's Show site about this officer. His name's Inspector Georgia Cappovanni.
Which sounds right for a cheese detective.
And this is from two thousand and eight, so it's a little dated, but the agency actually still exists. But this is what the article says about him. Quote in the wild West of gastronomical ripoffs, men like Cappovanni are a kind of sheriff. They're sworn judicial officers who can demand admission to premises, examine documentation, and confiscate products at wholesalers, warehouses or supermarket aisles. And according to the article, they
can even tote weapons if they want. It talks about how Cappavanni and his men race around Europe protecting Italy's very special products like matrella from buffala is one hams from Parma or whatever. They'll go into what the article describes as cathedrals of ham these shops where the meat is just air drying and warehouses, and they'll poke the hem with this special needle made from the shin bone of a horse and that apparently releases these extraordinary aromas.
Then the inspector, who I guess is also a gormand will sniff the needle to make sure it has that special Parma proscudo scent. Apparently they see something like a thousand Parma ham knockoffs in one of these raids.
And then how do they catch these folks.
Apparently one of these ham counterfeiters had like twenty aliases and the Spanish police have been chasing them around for decades. But Capavani and his team have this whole network of salespeople who double as informants, and so they tip off the investigators whenever they sent something fishy. There are people out there doing much more interesting stuff.
Than we are, legal and illegal. But are they now doing this for cheese as well?
Yeah, and more than stopping the heist, this team is basically set up to chase ripoffs, right, Like the producers know that if people start thinking parmeham is a less quality ham and it's less sweet, then they'll start thinking like, what's the difference between that and some of those sort of like grocery knockoffs or whatever. Right, And it's the same for cheese. So there's this scene of Capavanni running his hand across a rind and pointing out why this
branding on a food is clearly counterfeit. Apparently there's a whole system of branding machines that the authenticated manufacturers use that makes slightly imperfect marks to thwart counterfeiters, and the machines are really closely monitored. They're switched out every three months, which you know feels insane, But Cappavanni takes pride and sniffing out the fakes, and in fact, he claims to have a museum of hundreds of fraudulent parmesans.
Yeah, I know, there's this whole world of fakes out there. This is one of the things that kept coming up as we were preparing for this episode. And you know, the old saying I think is something like if your cheese is fishy, it might be sawdust. I don't think.
I don't think I know that familiar with that one.
I think mamma had it cross stitched on a pillow point. But back in twenty sixteen, Time revealed a jaw dropping report on manufacturers like Castle Cheese not to be confused with the Mars cheese Castle that you talked about before, which produced quote parmesan that contains significant amounts of wood pulp as a filler.
It's like a cheese made for termites.
Yes, it's gross. And some experts believe about a fifth of the parmesan cheese bought at grocery stores is actually mislabeled, and representatives for the Emman Taylor cheesemakers, which we usually refer to as Swiss cheese, say that around ten percent of the Swiss cheese of the market is fake. It's true for all kinds of cheese Manchego, Camembert, but parmesan
is hit particularly hard. Sales of Parmigano regiano cheese are about two point four to four billion, according to Food and Wine, but fake parmesan takes an almost equal wedge of the wheel, with about two point oh eight billion dollars every single year. I didn't realize the size of the market. Yeah. Well, weirdly, cheese has been stuffed with
more sinister substances than just sawdust. And twenty twenty three customs officials encountered a pickup truck transporting four large wheels of cheese from Mexico into Texas, and they had hunch that something was off.
Here, which doesn't sound strange at all. I always load up my truck with the giant cheese wheels.
Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, actually an X ray scan of these cheese revealed quote anomalies there which upon further inspection, turned out to be seventeen point eight pounds of cocaine. So that feels like that's an anomaly. You know this? Yes, yeah, now this is fair. I have never I don't think I've eaten cheese with a bunch of cocaine. But it's
a good idea hiding stuff in cheese. Like if you wanted to propose, and you put a diamond ring and you know, deep in a wheel of cheese, there your you know your potential fiance would never go digging around in there. It's a great place to hide stuff.
Speaking of soft cheeses, do you know that Switzerland used to have a cartel that was responsible for the popular already a fun due.
Wait did you say a cartel? I mean it was more of a union, all right, So why did you say cartel? I'm curious.
I'm a Brooklyn dad, I need some excitement, and I guess more than a few articles online referred to it as a cartel because of the way they fixed prices and manipulated the market. Anyway, it was called the Association of Swiss Cheese Export Firms, better known as the Schweizer
kas Union okay, or Swiss Cheese Union. This was an organized monopoly designed to use cheese export revenue to offset and milk production costs because of World War One, and the SCU fixed prices and production limits, and most importantly, they restricted what types of cheese could be made in the country. So actually Switzerland used to make over one thousand different varietals and they reduced it to just seven or eight, and they favored Swiss cheese, you know, or
what we know is Swiss cheese. It was super effective. In nineteen twenty nine, a Wisconsin newspaper reported that consumption of Swiss cheese had increased in the US because of a three hundred thousand dollars ad campaign run by the Swiss Cheese Union, which it also copyrighted the cheese in the US, calling it Switzerland Cheese.
And so that's why when we say Swiss cheese, we mean Emma Taylor.
Yeah, And that was just the beginning. In the fifties and sixties, the SEU ramped up their promotions and they sent a young woman named Elizabeth Koenigsdorf to the US as the ambassad Dress of Switzerland Cheese.
It's a great title.
She was beautiful, multi lingual, and expert skier, just kind of like the perfect cliche of like a Swiss woman. And she would travel the us, giving these cooking lessons for dishes like kiche, lorraine and fondue, and also teaching Americans things like you're not supposed to freeze your cheese, which was apparently a thing we used to do regularly. Anyway, the SEU went really hard on fondue in the seventies, mainly because it's easy to make and it requires a
lot of cheese. So they really sort of like flooded the interesting and making fond and they ran these global ad campaigns featuring these beautiful Swiss people in ski sweaters, making it seem kind of healthy, healthy.
It does sound like they're marketing and almost like a sports drink in a way. You know.
Yeah, it's almost like everyone should sub out your Gatorade for a thermos of swisses.
Really appetizing manga.
But the SEU was everywhere. From nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety eight, they were the main sponsor of the Swiss national ski team. So the team's actually wore these yellow suits with cheesehole motifs. I mean, I just want to show you this picture that is amazing.
They look like the cheese, I know, and.
They actually had holes in their suit, which caused drag, which is kind of annoying to a skier.
I'm sure, yeah, I mean, I feel like you're representing your country in this huge athletic excellence performance and you've trained your whole life to wear the uniform and the cheese suit. It feels a little bit demeaning to me.
Yeah, I think so too. Anyway. By the nineteen nineties, the Swiss Center meant towards the SEU had changed. It was seen less as a protector of this like national industry, and more's a system of power abuse. Corruption scandals didn't help either. In nineteen ninety six, a former SCU executive was arrested for skimming at least three hundred and fifty thousand Swiss francs and a cheese export price scam, and in nineteen ninety nine the SEU was dissolved the Swiss
Museum rights quote. During the eighties and nineties, the Cheese Union came to be regarded principally as a cautionary tale of abuse of power in fondue.
The abuse of fondue. That's great, all right, but I feel like we should get back to your boring Brooklyn dad thing.
I don't think I said boring.
Well, you know when you were talking about cartels, and there have been these links between the cheese industry and the mafia. There's this story about al Capone, who owned this string of dairy farms near Fondu Lac, Wisconsin, forcing New York pizzerias to use this very like rubbery mob cheese. And as the story goes, the only places permitted to use good mozzarella where the old fashioned pizza parlers, you know, places like Lombardes, Patsy's, John's, which could continue doing so
only if they promised to never serve slices. So, according to the author Jonathan Quitney in his book Vicious Circles the Mafia in the Marketplace, this is why John's Pizzeria on Bleeker Street still has the warning no slices on its awning today. Apparently, neighborhood pizzerias that serve slices and refuse to use Capone's cheese would be firebombed. But according to historian Scott Wiener that we both know from Scott's pizza tours, the story is probably not true. It doesn't
really make any sense. He says. The reason that most of these places don't sell slices, is that they use these coal fired ovens which would just burn any slice that you were trying to reheat.
I love Scott so much. I remember the first time I met him and I heard he was pizza obsessed. His opening line was, so, what do you like about pizza?
Yeah?
Yeah, it was like the cross the cheese, and then you just like went on to, you know, give me this fascinating history of pizza. But I just assumed there's no slices. Places were trying to sell you more pizza.
Yeah, I mean they are. But the no slices might be a little bit of mafia lore, but the mob shaking down people over mozzarella is on the record. So Joseph Banano, a mafia godfather, partially owned Grande this cheese company based in Fondula, Wisconsin. That's where components handful of
dairy farms were two. So this March nineteen eighty report from the Pennsylvania Crime Commission states that Banano quote initiated a conspiracy to control the specialty cheese business in the United States in the early nineteen forties, and that he and his associates controlled the activities of the largest and most prosperous specialty cheese companies.
I love that they came out with that report in nineteen eighty.
Yeah, yeah, said I wanted to go ahead and take care of it. Yeah.
So we've got the mobs this potential to make a lot of money and they're putting a toll hold in the industry, which is, you know, pretty standard for the Mob. But I also kind of love the idea of al Capone having his own dairy farm and just like sweet right, I know, just like nuzzling every cow's nose before he puts them in the barn at night.
Yeah, it's a weird image. But since we're on the mob, the Italian mafia, or more specifically, the Camora is also pretty mixed up with buffalo mozzarella, which is made in Campania. Now, in the early aughts, the Camora controlled Italy's biggest buffalo mozzarella maker, the Magara Group. Now, obviously, mozzarella is hugely popular as a cheese, which meant buffalo milk was basically liquid gold for the most part, and that's what attracted
the interest of the Camara. So the Kamora started charging this protection money sure, and in early two thousand and one during one weekend, two well known cheese houses just went up in flames, Lapurla and Barlotdi, which helped them
make their case to the manufacturers. Of course, taking care of barns full of buffalo comes with its own problems, like apparently buffalo are very susceptible to infectious bacterial outbreaks like bruce iliosis, and controlling these farms suspected of bruceiliosis isn't easy and it requires you know, herd depopulation from time to time, and obviously that's not great for mozzarella production.
So often state veterinarians would show up to inspect the farm and instead of getting to do their work, they'd be met by the members of the kamora at gunpoint. Like sometimes the mobsters would within the herd by hiding a bunch of buffalo.
So state officials are there, they're inspecting the farm. Meanwhile, it's like one guy's job to hide a bunch of sick buffalo.
I guess, I mean, buffalo are huge, though, it's like trying to hide a pack of land rovers, you know, just starting to imagine this. But if that didn't work, they would just force sanitary officials to sign the certificate of good health despite the fact that the herd is clearly infected.
Yeah, seems like an easier plan. B Yeah.
Yeah, So the Kumora's involvement in Buffalo Mozzarella has actually threatened the ecosystem of the entire region. They got involved with waste management back in the nineteen eighties, and according to a mafia treasurer who testified about this in nineteen ninety seven, the Kumora had been illegally dumping and burning millions of tons of toxic waste in Campania, leading to reports of cancer clusters and other health issues.
That's awful. So obviously cheese can be involved in crime, but there's no such thing as illegal cheese, right.
Well, I mean, Danish feta is actually illegal. According to the EU, feta was awarded the appellation of being a designated Greek product, but Denmark was producing it and exporting it to non EU territories, and so in twenty nineteen, the European Commission took Denmark to the European Court of Justice. And of course there are really gross cheeses, like you know, Kasu marzu, so that's illegal too.
Yeah, the Sardinian cheese with maggots that jump out at you, which is pretty disgusting.
I'd say that that counts as disgusting. And there's a hairy cheese fermented in the stomach of a baby goat and left out in the open air. It's this delicacy, also from Sardinia called Soukalu, and people are apparently selling it from their cars. I guess that's what I read. It's according to this piece and the outline, but it's interesting. The outline rights that these illegal cheeses aren't just a
matter of unusual taste. There are also low stakes political statements of people telling the EU or whoever they can, that they can't dictate values on them.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't want any of that maggot cheese in my mouth, but I also support Sardinia's right to protect their culture.
It's good for you to take a stand, Mago. I'm usually it'll make political statements, but that's a pretty big one. And here's the mystery cheese you can definitely support. It's amazing how much cheese comes up in crime novels, right, seriously, Yeah, I mean, there's so many crime novels with cheese puns. In the title. There's just a few examples here up to no gouda to bree or not to bree final fondue that sounds dramatic, clabbered by camon Bear. I told
you there's so many of these. Shudder off deal, No, no, these are I swear, I am not making these up. These are all real titles of books that you can probably buy at the airport, I would guess.
Speaking of which, I know you've got a flight to catch, but how about we do a quick fact off before you fly out.
Let's do it all right, here's a quick one. Did you know cheese can get you high?
I mean, I've definitely shotgun to pizza before, so I think it tracks.
Yeah, that's fair well. According to a twenty fifteen study at Mount Sinai, there's a chemical in cheese called casin, and when you digested, it can trigger your brain's opioid receptors, which may be why we loved going out for late night cheese dip in college so much.
Yeah, we did. Do you know that eatam cheese never goes back, It just hardens, which is why it was often taken to sea. And I hadn't realized that it actually explains one of my favorite facts that eating cheese was used by a navy ship in Uruguay when it ran out of cannonballs, and it actually won to battle that way, which makes more sense why they had so much old cheese on board.
Now, okay, all right, well here's a fun one from Katkey. Did you know that in French pie charts are actually called les Camembert after the cheese or sometimes and I'm going to need Jess who's helping today pronounce this one. But is un diagram in fromage that is so far away from what it works. Okay, we're going to go with it, which is her way of saying it was so off that we're just going to have to ignore it a cheese diagram. So meanwhile, in Brazil, pie charts are known as pizza charts.
Which makes sense. Brazil is supposedly one of the places that has the best pizza in the world. Speaking of pizza, you remember stuff cruss pizza from Pizza Hut do I yeah, we'll ask.
For it sometimes and these commercials where they encouraged you to eat the pizza the wrong way crust first.
And weirdly, Donald Trump was the spokesperson okay, but Pizza had developed that in nineteen ninety five and sales of it were insane, apparently over three hundred million dollars of sales in the first year. And this is from an article in mash dot com. But the crazier thing is that foods that are stuffed with cheese, like the stuff pressed pizza or Taco Bell's casalupa, are guided by an organization called Dairy Management INK, and Bloomberg actually refers to them as the Illuminati of Cheese.
Wow.
Yeah, So this is from a Bloomberg article. For the past eight years, the group has been the hidden hand guiding most of fast foods dairy hits, including and especially the caesalupa. In twenty twelve, it embedded food scientists Lisam and Clintalk with the Taco Bell product development team to develop a cheese filling that would stretch like taffy when heated. Then they figured out how to mass produce it and
helped invent some proprietary machinery along the way. So apparently the group has a two hundred million dollar budget from cheese manufacturers to create cheese centric products to slip more cheese into our food isn't that incredible?
That is wild you You really saved the best for last and this whole thing. I don't think I can top an illuminati of cheese, especially in a cheese crime episode. So with that, I'm going to give you today's fact Off Trophy.
Fun and I'm going to dedicate this to my colleague Kate's dog, who I am certain is listening, always listens to our show. His name is Cheesy or Cheese for short.
I like that. I'm sure he'll appreciate that. All right, Well, that's it for this week's Part Time Genius. Thanks everybody for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaytiguler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.