Super Food Science Excellence Trivia Blow Out! with Science Friday

You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Hey there, podcast listeners, it's Mango here and today we're doing something a little bit different.

It is a trivia game.

It is a collaboration with my good power Flora Lickman, host of the wonderful show Science Friday, and it's called the Super Food Science Excellent Trivia Blowout aka as our super producer show Shawna calls it the s F S e t BO, So remember that. Make sure that's how you reference it from here on. But Flora, thank you so much for doing this. I know we've been talking about a collaboration forever. I'm just so psyched to have you on the show.

I am. I'm so thrilled to be here. This is the highlight of twenty twenty five for me.

And it's been a long year and we're almost.

At the end. So a lot already happened.

So are you good at trivia?

I'm terrible at trivia. My mind is like a sieve. Like even though I get to learn things, you know, new things every single week on the show, every single day on the show, I don't know. I can't I have difficulty retaining my kids, or maybe I just freeze up. I don't know.

I am so so at trivia and as a kid, I was so so at sports. But those things then diagram really nicely. When you go to the Science Olympics pentathlon.

Did you did you do that?

Did?

Were you there competing?

We went to nationals and I'm from Delaware, so it's a very small state, and so there's only one heat to get there.

But if you're he just said, if you're from California, you have to go through like five rounds.

And so like the kids who get there are really good at science, but they cannot throw a frisbee. They can't throw like a basketball into a hoop. And so we I think we came in fourth in nationals and pentathalon, not because we were good at science trivia, but because we could do the physical challenges.

Is amazing you this story took a complete right turn. You were like, we were complete underdogs, were you're a tiny state, And then you're like, and then we won a fourth.

Is not winning?

Although I do remember this is how cocky we were as like eighth graders or whatever, is that our group was the only one that won like medals at nationals. And so when we were walking through the metal detector at the UH at the airport, we wore our metals underneath and then it bothers there.

You're like, oh, I'm so sorry. It must have been this.

Excuse me, I'm an Olympian. We'll take the pat down.

But I'm so excited to do this episode today, so we should get started.

Let's do it. Okay, So let's get started. We reached out to Science Friday listeners, many of you threw your name in the ring, and we have a very special contestant today to play the game with us. Emily is a medical student based in Indianapolis. We have her on the line. Hey Emily, Hi Emily, are you a trivia game veteran?

Oh? I have to reach kind of far back to establish cred. But I talked to my twin sister last night. She reminded me that she and I were both not only state trivia champions in high school, but also in middle school. So from age ten to eighteen, we ran the state of Indiana.

That's incredible.

You're gonna crush today.

Today's theme is food science, and I don't think your medical training is gonna help you, but we do have some pretty fun prizes.

Emily, are you ready.

I'm so ready hit me with your food questions.

So number one, pandas are unable to detect which basic taste? Is it a sweet, b sour, c bitter, or d umami?

Well, all I can picture is panda's eating green leaves, so they must not care a lot about sugar. I'm going to guess sweet.

Oh sweet is very very close, but it is actually ooh mommy.

Panda ancestors were carnivores, and now, after millions of years on a bamboo based diet, the panda's taste receptors can no longer recognize umami, the savory flavor associated with proteins like meat.

All right, so starting stone here.

While we're here, can I hit you all with an additional panda fun food fact. Yes I did not know this, but pandas spend up to twelve hours a day eating bamboo, which is like me with seaweed snack. But twelve hours a day of bamboo, we are talking like eighty to one hundred pounds of bamboo a day, according to the National Zoo.

Yeah, but like when you think of caloric density, and how much food they actually have to get in their body if you're only eating bamboo, like I'd have t eat for twelve hours a day.

Also, that's exactly it. I love having a medical professional on the line because they only yeah, they only digest a fraction of it, like seventeen percent or something like that.

I know.

I feel like you came up with the rationale for that very very quickly, which is brilliant. I'm so glad you're on. So why don't we continue Number two? What happens when a food experiences a MYR reaction?

I know this.

Does it a go bad, B, turn brown, C it loses half its nutritional value? Or D it gets really really into John Mayer.

I hope it's not D. It's B. It becomes brown and delicious.

That is incredible.

Yeah, absolutely, it turns brown. It is named for the French chemist who first described it, and this chemical reaction is responsible for the brown color and the complex flavor of everything from like baked bread, cooked meat, and even dark roast ca my favorite.

You know, we talked about this on Science Friday with a food scientist Ariel Johnson, and apparently, if you want to kick the myor reaction off a notch. She gave us some tips, so here she is.

So, if you want more browning, you can think about adding more sugar. But if you can increase the amount of protein and amino acids you have, you'll get like much more browning. It's also very sensitive to pH to acidity and alkalinity. You get more browning under alkaline conditions and less browning under acidic conditions. So if it's going to brown, you can add some acid. If you want as much brown as possible, you can add, for example,

Emily, are you like, yeah, duh pronation duh.

Was imagining this structure of an amino acid in my head, and I was like, all the words she's saying bally makes sense. But together, I'm just gonna go with I like brown food.

That sounds great, So we're gonna progress to number three. I have a feeling you're gonna get this one too. So which American pharmacist developed a scale to measure the pungency or spiciness of chili peppers? Wilbur Scoville, Norville Rogers, John Pepperton, or doctor Pepper Scoville.

It's the Scoville heat index.

Right, Yeah, you got it.

Yeah. His scale measures the amount of dilution required before the burn of a chili can no longer be felt.

Are you a chili person a chili pepper person, Emily.

I'm not. My kid is. I have an eight year old who loves spicy foods. He ate with Sabby when he was like two years old.

Well, this is a fun fact just for your kid. When you all think about the source of heat in chili peppers, where do you think the heat is in the pepper?

I feel like I read recently that like we all think it's the seeds, but it's actually somewhere else.

And well, you know too much. Of course, when you have a stage champion trivia person that you already know the thing I'm going to tell you that is exactly right. Here's Paul Boslin, director of the Chili Pepper Institute and a professor at New Mexico State University.

It is the veins. It's the crosswall the chili that has the heat. The seeds have no heat, but being very close to those cross walls in the veins. You know, one would associate that with the heat, but the walls of a chili are not hot. And we always have a little joke here. We take someone to our teaching garden where we have one hundred and fifty different varieties of chilis, and I'll take a hallipenion and eat a

We say, I love that. And a breeder's joke is.

That sounds diabolical? That's not fair.

Well, here's question number four. Which of the falling foods is so rich in carbon that it can be made into a diamond. Is it a beef, b peanut butter, see green peppers, or d pop rocks.

Man, I'm going to go with the carbohydrate based food and say it's pop rocks. Please let it pop us.

Also, like you have a scientific rationale which I really love. I want it to be pop rocks too.

Unfortunately, it is peanut butter. During an experiment to reproduce the pressure conditions of Earth's lower mantle. The British scientist Daniel Frost successfully forged carbon rich peanut butter into microscopic diamonds. So I guess in this economy we should be yes stocking up on peanut butter.

It's a good investment.

Awesome. Okay, so this is the final question. I'm sure there's a lot of pressure on you, Emily. This is for all the marbles. The unique properties of honey make it one of the few foods that can never do what is it a expire, B freeze, C evaporate or D disappoint.

I go with expire and disappoint because honey is delightful.

I'm I'm on disappoint, never can disappoint.

Yes, you are right on both counts, so you got a bonus point.

But the answer we had here is expire.

So, due to its low moisture content, natural acidity, and the presence of hydrogen peroxide, honey doesn't foster the growth of spoilage organisms such as bacteria, and that is how archaeologists have been able to find three thousand year old pots of honey that are still perfickly edible.

Would you try that?

I think I would if someone told me it was safe. So Flora, you want to tell Emily what she's won.

I would love to. Emily, you have won an amazing assortment of Science Friday and Part Time Genius merch.

And as always, we're going to throw in an atomic fireball, which is the official sciencey candy of Part Time Genius.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

But that's not all. Because you did so well, we're also going to send you a bottle of Linna Weber's Hot Honey, which one just like you, the grand prize in this year's Scovie Awards and is made in your home state of Indiana.

All right, Indiana. Thanks guys, thank you, thank you for playing.

Emily.

We are so thrilled to crown you with the first super Food Science Excellent Trivia Blowout crown as well, So congrats on that.

It's delightful a happy science writer.

Oh Flora, thank you so much for being here and doing this. This colloud felt so much fun.

So much fun. This was my absolute pleasure and I can't wait to do it again.

I know we have to.

Give out so many more pickle tattoos. Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. It is hosted by my good pal Will Pearson, who I've known for almost three decades now.

That is insane to me.

I'm the utco host, Mangeshatikular aka Mango. Our producer is Mary Phillips Sandy. She's actually a super producer. I'm going to fix that in post. Our writer is Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade at this point, maybe more. Dylan Fagan is in the bo He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and always ready to hit record and then mix the show after he does a great job. I also want to shout out the executive producers from iHeart my good pals Katrina and