Chopsticks > Forks

we don't know all the details yet. To just bear with us while we try and figure this out. Right, and in the meantime, you can get in touch with the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall and the Chance Center Box offices to figure out what's what. Yeah, they'll probably have good at phone. But we really apologize for any inconvenience and we will eventually see you, guys, we promise. In the meantime, stay well, wash those hands and don't panic. Welcome just to you should know a production of five

Heart Radios. How stuff works? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you should know all about the song chopsticks. I wonder if you're going to make a joke about that. Jerry beat me to it when she was like, what are we recording today? And I told her She's like the song dent Dent, Dent, dent, Dent. No, it's dent dent, didn't sticks? Are there two chopsticks? Now

I'm just teasing. That's heart and soul. Oh okay, So so what I said from big that was chopsticks right, totally? Yeah, Robert Robert Loggia, Yeah, man, I should have continued rolling and said, James Con, Wow, that is a very James con like role though, isn't it. Totally? I think he played that role and Blanket and uh well he was a crime boss and bottle rockingly yeah, sort of good. We watched Misery the other day. It still holds up. Oh man, I remember seeing that for the first time

in Athens when I was in college. So great. Cathy Bates can do no wrong. She did great. But if you watch James Con he did really well too, like his whole kind of trepidacious manner toward her was really well done and not overdone at all, and like he did a great job as well, and he had to lay there in a bed for weeks and weeks and act.

Yeah it sounds like a dream. Yeah, And if he if he balked at it, they would attach to Catherine to him and make him pete in his own mouth as punishment, like a little known fact about that movie. Oh so chopsticks, right, we should point out here that, uh, in researching this chopsticks and customs and etiquette, if we covered all the countries and all that stuff that use chopsticks, we'd be here all day. So there's kind of a

focus here on on Japan. They seem to be a little uh the most um sensitive to transgressions with chopsticks out of all of the Asian cultures. I think they have the most rules against him at the very least. Yeah, but when you read them, it's they could all be summed up as just don't be a dumb American, yeah, or don't have any fun whatsoever with your chopsticks is another way to You're like, what's wrong with making them antennas in a restaurant and going right I'm a walrus, now,

why can't I be a walrus? Right? Um? But we are talking chopsticks, not the song. Sorry to disappoint you everybody, but I saw that that that song is actually called chopsticks because it was originally called the Celebrated chop Waltz Okay, written by a sixteen year old school girl from England. It seems about right, sure, so um, but we're talking

about the the utensils. And like when you think chopsticks, obviously you think like Asia and you don't think that there was ever anything but chopsticks in the history of Asia. And while chopsticks are actually surprisingly old, I think they go back about seven thousand years. Also saw five thousand years. I'm going with seven. I think they're they're actually about as ancient as that. They weren't like the go to utensil for Asia until this millennium. Yeah, the the spoon

was kind of the go to the word chopstick. They think maybe pigeon English Chinese pigeon English meaning chop chop or quickly right. But you know, this is one of these etymologies. It's sort of tough to pin down. It looks like, but that's the English word for it, and all of the chopstick using cultures they have their own word, like in Japan it's hashi, it's kua easy in China. Nice. I'm not sure if I said that right at all. Um geo garrok in Korean, al right, not as not

as nice, and dett detta in Vietnamese. I'm sorry half of the world's population. I love that you started strong in Japan though, because you feel pretty confident in your Japanese pronunciations. That's a good way to go. Yes, I have a great tutor, that's right. So, uh, five to

seven thousand years ago. They were used initially for cooking, and we'll get more into the ins and outs of the history, but they were made from twigs probably, and it was much much later, like you said that they were table utensils, and it was all very much like, uh, practicality based, yeah, because initially they figured out pretty early on these, Um, the Chinese from five thousand and seven thousand years ago, that's a really bad idea to stick your hand into a pot of boiling water to get

something out it, say, like a bone or a piece of meat or something like that. It's way better to use a twig, and it's even better to use two twigs, as if they were kind of a pair of detached tweezers. That's apparently where they initially started to come into use was during cooking and food preparation, not the actual eating process. That's right. Um, there was a big population boom in China at one point, some might say there continues to be.

Someone said, and resources became a little more scarce. They started cutting their food up into little tiny pieces. Um, for reasons of like helps it to cook faster. Um. I wonder I didn't see anything about this, but I wonder if that also just made it more share able among a larger family. I could see that. That's a great point too. And isn't it fascinating though, the idea that a population boom led to widespread use of the chopstick? Yeah,

it's interesting. And then Confucius also was a vegetarian and noted knife hater. He has a quote about knives. The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughter house and the kitchen, and he allows no knives on his table. And I think that was a little more because the knive was equated with eating meat right less than like it's a garbage tool. You don't need You don't need a knife to eat a plant. Basically. Yeah, I might argue you might want to cut a piece

of bruccoli maybe, but you don't have to. I just summed up Confucius. That's the level of arrogance that I'm operating at now. Uh. And I think some of the early and you know, it started in in China, and then you know, pretty soon Korea, Vietnam, Japan, we're all using them. But I think that Chinese chopsticks, uh, we're joined at what they are? Now what do they call now? What they're joined? And you gotta split them apart? Oh warabashi.

That's Japanese. That's the term for disposable chopsticks. Okay, but I thought I thought the Chinese chopsticks were originally joined like that. Yes, No, it was Japanese. Okay. There was a single piece of bamboo that was like split kind of like giant tweezers. Okay, yeah, I'm reading this now. I had a sometimes I just now reading this, Well, No, I get sometimes and it's the dumbest thing, but I get confused between former and ladder. Oh yeah, it's not

that I get confused. I just have to go back and sort of picture it in my brain. It just takes an extra second, I think for everybody. That's right. It's definitely not intuitive, so don't feel bad. I also

thought this thing about food poisoning was interesting. Um was that in uh dynastic times in China, they would use and I guess people that are a little more well healed would use silver chopsticks um because they thought that if it came into contact with something that was poisonous, then the chopsticks would turn black and they would know not to eat it. M I mean, it just makes sense.

When you're rich and wealthy, more people want to kill you, So it's better to have something that shows if somebody's trying to poison you, like your chopsticks turning a color if you're being poisonous cyanide or something like that. The problem is that doesn't actually work, and I don't know why they didn't just think that through from the get go, like, oh well, let's get ourselves some cyanide and stick a silver chopstick in it and see what happens and see

that it doesn't work. But apparently does work in the presence of garlic or rotten eggs because they put out hydrogen sulfide so it will turn silver a different color. So I don't know how garlic ever made itself into a staple of Chinese cooking, but there we have it. Yeah. And the other thing I thought was interesting and we

should mention too. This came from a variety of places, uh Teagan Jones at Kissmoto, Lisa Brahmin from Smithsonian mag q Edward Wang from Cambridge blog, Huff Poe Believe it or Not, got in the Works, and some other places. But um, I thought that Q. Edward Wang's history was really interesting because um he mentions that wheat is kind of the first reason before rice, which really surprised me. It was very surprising. I think he knew all along that that was a big reveal, you know. But that's

what gave chopsticks a shot in the arm. Um. So first we have cutting um food into smaller pieces to to have a cook faster, so you use less firewood, right because there's a population boom. And then as wheat becomes kind of fashionable and widespread, um, you're starting to use chopsticks because you're making things like noodles and dumplings.

And prior to this, millet was the the go to green and millet's really small, It's much smaller than rice, and you certainly aren't going to turn it into like a noodle or a dumpling. You make a gruel out of it. And so for thousands of years, the go to utensil that people used to eat with in China was a spoon because they were eating gruel or porridge

or whatever. Everybody hated life. But when we came along and they started turning into noodles and dumplings, they said, oh, yeah, I remember those things that we use those twigs to to cook with. What have we made a smaller version of those to eat with two And that's where the chopstick got its first like real boost in in usage around Asia. Yeah. I mean, try to eat a big spoonful of noodles and just watch as they flop off and sling delicious sauce all over all over the place.

There is literally nothing more frustrating than trying to eat noodles with the spoon in the entire world. Yeah, and I mean, sure, you could chop them up into tiny little pieces so they rest in your spoon with some broth. Sure, but who who wants to do that? Like the person that cuts up there busketty at the table into tiny bits is a six year old yeah, or just thoroughly un American one of the two, maybe both, depending on

how sophisticated the six year old days. Uh. The other thing I thought was interesting too, uh from Mr Wang's article was he talked about stew, which is gang in Chinese. Uh. They ate a lot of stew back then, and chopsticks would be very useful for picking up things like the more solid objects in the stew, like the vegetables. Right, So you've got wheat coming into into vogue, you've got smaller pieces vegetables stew being eaten, chopsticks or like, come on,

we're gonna do what we gotta do this. We just need one more thing to get us over the hump and people are gonna know us everywhere around the world. And that one thing was a particular kind of Vietnamese rice that ripens early apparently, and it's a shorter grain or a medium grain, which means that it's easier to um it clumps more easily. Also has a lot of like starches to it. It's just kind of clumpy, sticky rice. And here in the West, we're not really used to

that kind of rice. So we're like, how are you going to use chopsticks to eat this stuff? Like, try eating some uncle bends with chopsticks. You can't do it. It's like trying to eat noodles with the spoon. Yeah, or you would just do that move. And this is what I didn't understand when I was growing up, because I was a little naive when I saw chopsticks, I would just think about scooping up the rice on top

of them very awkwardly. And it wasn't Since I was a little bit older and had good clumpy Chinese rice and Japanese rice, I was like, oh, it's very easy to eat with chopsticks. Yeah. And you're just like, oh, okay, I've got it because it's sticks together. It's like a nice little morsel of food and it sticks together just about the right size, and and it's it's it's totally different.

So when you eat Chinese rice or Japanese rice, or even viating Themese rights the stickier rice, then you understand, Okay, you can use this as a as you can use chopsticks for this. And the Chinese figure this out as well when rice became much more of a staple of the Asian diet, and all of a sudden, now you didn't need a spoon anymore because everybody's like to heck with millet. Who wants gruel? Nobody? So they threw their

spoons out the window. Um, and then they started just eating chopsticks for everything that you could use it for everything. Now that's all you needed for your meal. Yeah, and that all in one solution, I think was um. That happened in China and Japan and Vietnam for sure, and Korea I think was the one stand out because I believe in Korea the spoon and the chopstick still go hand in hand. Yeah. And this I believe it was Q Edward Lang who maybe wrote this, but he basically

said it. It seems to be a conscious decision, almost as if they were being contrary or something like that. Maybe they just want to do their own thing. Well, they eat a lot of very very hot stews and soups. Have you ever had boot aga? I don't think so. I'm not even sure I'm saying it correctly. Have you ever been to eat it like h mart or like an Asian food cord or something like that. If you go to a Korean place, they usually have I think

it's called boot. It's like hot dog soup basically, my lord, and it's like this kind of I'm not even sure. I guess it's a It's like a chilly paste broth with lots of great processed meat in it, and like ramen and like hallapenos. It's just so good. But that thing comes to you boiling, and you're supposed to like eat the chunky parts out with it with a chopstick. But I guess it always comes with a spoon tube, so I think you're supposed to actually eat the broth

with the spoon rather than sip. I'll tell you one thing I do love is the design of the um and I'm calling it the Chinese spoon. I don't know if it originated in China, but you know the soup spoon I'm talking about, Yeah, like the one you use for miso soup. Man, They're just the best. Yeah, they do. They because you can get a really big spoonful on there. You know, it's ergonomic. It just it's the way to it's the way to do it, unless you're just going to pick up the bowl and drink it, which is

great too. Up with the miso soup spoon. All right, let's take a break because I'm so hungry after he said, hot dogs stew when the stomach is growling. Uh, And we'll come back and we'll talk more about Chopsticksosh and shock. So I don't remember what episode it was, Chuck, but do you remember when our our stomachs growled insane with one another? That was very recently? It was. Yeah, you

can still reminisce about recent stuff. I say, I'm nostalgic for that thing that happened last week pretty much so apparently and this, uh, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but the four main kinds of chopsticks apparently, um, in China, the chopsticks are a little bit longer and a little more blunt on the ends. Yeah, And they think that might be a nod too, Confucius basically saying like, don't

have knives at your table. Don't even have vaguely sharpened chopsticks even like nothing stabby nothing, Don't you don't want to be stabbed at your table? I think in Japan, they're a little sharper and a little shorter, but you're still not supposed to be stabbing stuff. No, don't stab that piece of tuna. No, it's you can just tell if you've ever done that while you're doing it, that you're violating some unnatural law or something. It feels wrong,

doesn't it. Yeah? Uh, let me see here in Korea, apparently they are shorter as well, and they are also blunt, but they can be metallic. Yeah, that's one thing that we'll see because we're gonna talk about. As with everything in existence, there's some horrid environmental impact with chopsticks as well. Um, But the Japanese are like, give us cheap, disposable wooden

or bamboo chopsticks and basically nothing else. They're just crazy for it, where some of the other Asian cultures are like, no, we can use reusable ones, but the Japanese are like, no, we want nothing but disposable, cheap chopsticks. That wabashi. I assume that you and you me have your own chopsticks at home. Oh yeah, and do you bring those two restaurants? Oh no, no, no, never do. We should really should, But I usually think when I'm there, I'm like, man,

I should have brought my chopsticks. Well, you know, I mean like if you go to any Asian store, they have like cute little it looks almost like a pencil case, but it's you know, chopsticks inside, and it's meant for you to carry them around with you. But no one does that. You just don't. Even though hopefully in ten years when we're all like, Okay, this is out of control and this is really bad, everyone will be doing that.

You just don't do it. And yeah, we have some that like I could just put in my jeans pocket and walk around with if I wanted to, but I don't do it. Yeah, I take my straw now and I use it because I now keep it in my purse, your merse merse, which goes everywhere with me. So I need I need to throw some chopsticks in there. Sure, And it's a good feeling when you say no straw. I've got my own, and I would love to be able to say no, no, you keep those wooden chopsticks. Yeah,

take that straw and shove it where the sun don't shine. Wow, I'm not that aggressive. It's so funny depending on where you are in the country though, Like if they bring you a straw and you say no, no, straw please, they look at you like you're just a straight up democratic socialist hippie, you know, like you're trying to undermine

the government or something like that. It's kind of hilarious. Yeah, sure, But other places now are There's a couple of places in my neighborhood who have um postings on the wall when you walk in talking about the impact of straws, and that straws are upon request only, right, and if you've got a problem with that, you can take a straw and shove it where the sun does shine, right, or you you take that problem to the voting booth.

This fall right exactly. So are you prepared? Because I have a feeling you do a better job than me at this because you you so often have great, convoluted ways of describing visual things. I'm going to do a great job describing it to you because you can watch my hands. But I think for everybody listening it's going to be very problematic. All right, how do you use chopsticks? All right? Gonna get you back for this one, chuck. So I did it intuitively by the way, which is

what I suggest. Yeah, a thing watch some people. I think reading it and having it explained makes it way harder. I think it's just one of those things you have to watch somebody do in practice. I mean, it's just all practice. But essentially, there's a couple of things to remember. Is that both chopsticks are laying. Do you want Do you want to go step by step through it? No? I think I want the Josh method. Okay, well it's

the same it's the same method description. Okay. So in the valley between your thumb and your forefinger, Okay, the webbing right there, that's where the chopsticks rest, the thumb taint, the thumb taint, the chode your hand showed, Oh my god, handed it really is. Um wow. So the two chopsticks lay right there, Okay, Okay, one of them, the bottom one is basically meant to be immobile and stationary. It

just basically stays there. And it's the top one that you're you're you're moving, you're kind of holding with your forefinger, your index finger and your middle finger. That's that's what you're using to move this, this top one. And so it's really the bottom one that stays basically stationary, and the top one is the one that's moving and you're just using it to kind of pick up and tweeze

food or rice or um whatever with it. If you get really good, you can like pick your friend up with that right or catch a fly if you're sense a level with chopsticks, for sure. But that's essentially it, and the the you don't want to hold it too tightly. If you're if you're gripping it too tightly, your your muscles are too tense, you're not kind of be able to um to to to kind of make that tweezer motion very easily, or you're certainly not going to have

much control. It's kind of paradoxical that the looser you have your hand to a certain degree, the more control you have over the chopsticks and the tension that you're wrecting towards the end of the chopstick. So keep your keep your hand loose but in control, and just make sure you remember that the bottom one that's kind of resting all the way along your thumb the freezone. It's basically stationary, and the top one is the one you're

directing with your index finger. And middle finger. Yeah, I recommend halfway through your meal switch those two out because that bottom one is just along for the ride and it needs to do a little work, you know what I mean. So just switch them out and make that one the topper and uh give it, you know, make it do a little sweat, sweating. I think that's a pretty good chump, do a little sweat. I think we deserve a Peabody Award for describing how to use chopsticks

no visuals. You did talk about the environmental impact a little bit, but it is a real problem. I mean, you see these tiny little things and you think, what's the big woop? Like a tree can probably make a gazillion chopsticks, so they need like maybe tin trees in China to make all the chopsticks they need. Do you

do you remember that just one thing? Do you remember that cartoon It might have been a Simpsons or something like that, where they chopped down a tree and they show them processing one single tree into just an individual toothpick. That's pretty sure had to be the Simpsons, you know, But imagine if that's they're like, no, we we make one chopstick out of just a single tree. I didn't think about toothpicks. Man, How many toothpicks can you get

out of a tree? I don't even know their their problem there on the horizon, right, But when you think about the fact that China alone produces eighty billion disposable chopsticks every year, then you get a little bit more of a sense of exactly how many of these trees? And it says here there was I'm trying to find

out what year this is. It was It was fairly recently, um, but they've had like parliamentary meetings and stuff about this in China and they estimated that it takes about twenty million twenty year old trees to cover their annual rate of production. Yeah. A guy named by Jen I'm pretty

sure I said his last name correct. Um. He's like a representative from the Glen Forestry industry group and he really like rocked everybody at a parliamentary meeting where he basically said, hey, do you remember that old figure that everybody has been touting for years that we actually use fifty seven billion chopsticks a year, produced fifties seven billion

chopsticks a year. He said, that's way off. It's actually eighty billion and like you just said, we need twenty million twenty year old trees to meet that a year, and people said, wow, that's kind of a problem. And so around the around the world, like China. So of that eight billion, I think China, half of them stays in China. Of the other half I wondered about that goes to Japan. And Japan was actually the one um

that started all this. They came up with disposable chopsticks warribashi um all the way back in seventy eight, and I've just been crazy worm ever since. Like you can go there, like a pretty high end restaurant in Japan and they're going to have wooden chopsticks. Chopsticks yeah that you you would pull apart. They'll all There are also plenty of restaurants in Japan that have re usable ones, and they're much more elegant or whatever. But it's not like you wouldn't just walk in and be like, what

is this disposable chopsticks? Are you kidding? Because they're just such a part of Japanese culture. So they use seventy seven percent of the other half Korea uses twenty one and then two percent comes to the United States. I have to catch that. That That was two thousand and eleven figures, which is the latest I could find. Yeah, I'm kind

of surprised that. Um, I would think China and Japan, it would just seem like they would like everyone would have their own and it would be a very like prideful thing to take care of your chopsticks and to have something cool looking. It just kind of surprises me that they're so down with the disposable. It surprises a lot of people. Especially Japan is like really well known for being meticulous with recyclinging and reducing waste and stuff like that. Um yeah, it's just this one thing. They

really love their disposable chopsticks. Um, and they just throw them away. They're not being recycled or composted or anything like that. They're just being thrown in the trash. So some what I read is that some restaurants will offer um, you know, t uh for free if you bring your own chopsticks or maybe like a but um yeah, basically, but there's not like a lot of there's not a huge amount of movement in Japan where China and this is I think I read this in like a like

a New York Times Green blog or something like that. Um, China has made some some moves like like taxing disposable adding an extra tax to disposable chopsticks. I think, um, more regulation basically overall, I think, which is really saying something, you know. I mean, Um, there's there's like apparently a whole sub industry to the disposable chopsticks industry that is small enough that it escapes a lot of oversight, and they can be really problematic, like there can be a

lot of chemicals in these chopsticks. Um, they're just like an all around basic nightmare and it's just such low hanging through all and everybody has to do is just have their own chop sticks. But just people just won't do it. And I'm guilty too, like I said, I mean, we we have reusable ones at home, but we don't take them out of the house ever. Yeah. Plus the paper used to encase the said chopsticks. That's a lot of paper too, Yeah it is. And what do you

do with that stuff? You just rip it open and burn it at the table. So yeah, yeah, yeah it's true. Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll take another break and talk a little bit about etiquette. Right after this, because we're all doing it wrong to a certain degree. Shosh and shock. Okay, miss Manners, lay it on.

That's Dr Mrs Manners, PhD esquire. So this is mainly Japan that we're concentrating on with the etiquette, and like you said, I think they take it a little more seriously than some other Asian countries because it turns out that chopsticks can and have had an important part in

burial rights, yeah, and funeral rights, Buddhist funeral rights. Like a lot of the the taboos I guess you'd call them over chopsticks in Japan and in other Asian countries too, are kind of based on like, well, that's that's kind of something we do with funeral rights. And so that reminds us of that Japan is not crazy about being reminded of death or mortality or pain. All that stuff is very um unlucky, Like the number four is unlucky because the word for four, I think she also sounds

very much like the word for death. Right. I think I remember that that. So they don't have four elevator floors, is that right? Don't if they do or not, but let's just go with that. They don't because it sounds pretty great. So etiquette level one is how is how this is presented. There's a couple of levels here as far as like, you really shouldn't do these things, but if you really want to ramp it up, you shouldn't do these things as well. I felt these were kind

of willy nilly, didn't you. Well, I mean, this is one person's opinion, right, But um, the things that you really shouldn't do are the following. Um, do not if you like get up to go to the bathroom, don't stick your chopsticks sitting upright in your bowl of rice. No, And that has to do with the household Buddhist altar, because it is a bowl of rice is offered as

to a dead person's spirit. And this apparently is from a Baudhist Baudhist Buddhist funeral rites as well, because there's a photograph of a bowl of rice and to stick chopsticks in the middle of that would be for boating. Um, I think it's they'll have like a photograph of the deceased and they give them a bowl of uncooked rice, so they and they stick the chopsticks up in there. Oh okay, I read that it's reminiscent of that that okay, So that's so it's got that death thing going on,

the death angle. Yeah. And then the other thing I saw about that too is that they also is reminiscent of a like a bowl of sand within since sticking out of it that you would also put on a Buddhist shrine to the deceased. So they're like way too reminiscent of death for that to be Okay, Okay, that makes sense. Now there's another one that's very similar. Don't leave your chopsticks crossed, like resting on your bowl or

on your plate. Just don't cross your chopsticks. It's it's impolite basically for the exact same reason is sticking them out of the bowl. Right. And I think that one is when you see, like on food Instagram food posts a lot from Whitey saying, you know, like across the chopsticks because it looks cool or whatever. Look at how cool this looks? Not cool? Apparently we talked about spearing. Uh. The advice here is to treat them as if they are actually connected, even though they're not. It's a good

way to remember it, like pretend connecting. That's right, Yeah, and remember this is like that. I think that goes back to like Confucius Um, where it's like, don't don't have a knife at your table, don't use your chopsticks a spear food. That's right. Apparently it's bad luck or not bad luck, well maybe bad luck to use uh two different chopsticks. Yeah, um, you should have the same mommy and daddy. This person said that it's just unsightly

and that it's also reminiscent funeral rites. That one I couldn't. I couldn't figure that one out. There's there's another funeral one to a lot of funeral rights involved chopsticks, passing food from chopstick to chopstick. Like if you're like, hey, you gotta try a bite of this, that's just hold it up. It's it's but it's kind of it's a little bit showy if you can do it, but um, but when you know it's somebody grabs it with their chopstick.

That's how they pass bones from cremations during funeral rites too, And they're like, no, that reminds us of that as well. Yeah, and there are some of these that are just like I can't believe people do this. Do not wash your chopsticks off in your beverage. Yeah, that's gross. Someone do that. I don't know. Apparently somebody has the Other thing about this is so the fact that they have restrictions on this social restrictions means that people have done it before.

But they also go so far as like most of these things all have like individual words. That's how like I grow the Japanese are about this, this kind of etiquette. They have words for that, Like washing your chopsticks off in your drink is not just called washing your chopsticks off in your there's a name for it. Uh, let me see here. Do not treat them as toys. And we talked earlier about um, putting them in your mouth like their fangs or walrus tusks or antennas or drumsticks

just not a good look. Right. Here's another one that is um. This is a sort of one that I think happens a lot. Is you might see women American women maybe do their hair and put chopsticks in them. Those when you see that in Japan, those are not chopsticks. Right. It might look like chopsticks, but they're actually called kanzashi. Yeah, it would be kind of like sticking a fork in your hair. Right, if you're walking around Japan looking like that, they'd be like, why do you why do you have

that fork in your hair? Looks a little off, But yeah, that like they look just like those things, but there's a separate thing. What did you call them? Yeah? Nice? It's a beautiful word, right, I know. Um. Another one is you'll very frequently see people do this and and I've done it too, and it's apparently excess acceptable under

certain circumstances. But when you break your waabashi, your disposable cheap chopsticks apart at the end, um, if they're splinters or there's like a piece of wood sticking out, you can rub them together kind of soften the the wood or get the splinters off. But you're not supposed to do that. It's just like a matter of course, because

you're basically insulting the restaurant. You're saying, like, these are so cheap, these chopsticks that you're providing your gas that like I've got to rub them together, and you definitely don't want to like make eye contact with the owner while you're rubbing it together, Like this is what I think of your establishment? Um, and people do that all the time. I do. It's almost like habitual. It's habitual

for me. And I started doing it when I first started using chopsticks because I saw the person I was with did it and I was like, I guess that's what you do. You get those little splinters off. And now it's a total habit and uh my whole thing there. I don't think that one's a really big one, like, especially in America, it happened so much. I don't think anyone a restaurant owners like super insulted by seeing this. Sure, yeah, especially in America, but they are super cheap and they

do splinter right. Well in that case, yes, like that that that proprietor has brought it on himself for herself for providing everybody with such cheap chopsticks that they're splintery. I will always remember this now, I'll tell you that. Yeah, And this is so I agree with you. I think that this is probably not that big of an insul especially in America. It's probably falls in line with like how you're not supposed to, um, like put your with sabi,

put in the soy sauce or something like that. Well, if you want to just do it. You know, if you want to be remarkably polite, then you wouldn't do any of these things. Some are way worse than others, and I think that one probably falls into the lesser category, even though it's under this advancing. This is why I was saying this seems Willie Nils Yeah, and that we also covered some of this in our sushi episode. Um, because if I'm not mistaken, don't you eat sushi with

your fingers? Or am I wrong? You? Don't you eat with your fingers? Or do you not? No? I don't. I love showing off how great I am at chopsticks. I use them every turn, every coming, can't. Yeah, I eat millet gruel with chopsticks. That's how good I am. Yeah. Or you I've seen you just flip up a shrimp and catch it in the other one. What a show off. It's pretty great because you have chopsticks. You have four, you have two in each hand, yes, basically, and you

do a little side show there. It's really impressive. Edward scissor hands, Josh chopstick finger But no, you're supposed to eat sushi. It's specifically nagiri right with your hand that's how it was originally done, if I remember correctly from our sushi episode. Yeah, but yeah, we use chopsticks these days. Here's another no no is do not use chopstick as a rake, Like, don't lift up a bowl of rice and just sort of rake rice into your mouth. So

that's Japan. I saw in China that's perfectly accepted, really normal. Okay, yeah, yeah, it gets dicey with it's not the same and everywhere you know. Yeah, here's the thing. I don't know if we said this before. So in Thailand they don't use chopsticks almost as a rule. Um, in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, China, they're they're totally ubiquitous. Almost the only thing you're gonna find that you eat with um. And so that means that like even a bowl of soup like miso soup,

you're supposed to use your chopsticks for that. Like the little chunks of of um of um tofu. It took me a second. Um, you use your your chopsticks to eat those out of the bowl and then you slurp

the rest or sip the rest depending um. But with rice, you would hold the bowl up kind of close to your face, but not like up in your face, just under under your chin and out a little bit and then you, you know, eat the rice with your chopsticks from there, lifting the rice up to your mouth, not shoveling it into your mouth from the bowl, right, And I saw with soups and things. Also is if you really want to ramp up the etiquette, you should try

and drip into the bowl. Oh right, when you like, when you are picking up the tofu, you want to kind of shot shake the tofu off so it doesn't drip on you are on the table. If you really want to excel etiquette, you would just not eat anything. You just sit there quietly with your chopsticks side by side, still in their wrapper, just smiling politely at everyone. It didn't break any rules. And I'm really hungry, that's right. There's a couple of more here. Don't point with your chopsticks.

It's tough not to do. Do you point? I don't point at people you know or anything like that. Can you pass me that thing right there? And you just sort of give a little nod, like, hey, that that pot sticker over there? Yeah, because they're fun to hold and point with and like do stuff with I just I don't know, Maybe I'm still it's still novel enough to me that I have to remind myself not to to point, or Umi has to remind me not to

point with the chopsticks. Or when you're talking and you're expressing things with your hands and you're using your chopsticks, or if you want to just do a little Maestro routine, right, you know that's looked down upon. Or if you if you're using your hands for something else, you don't stick your chopsticks in your mouth and just hold them in there while you're like moving plates around or something like that. You set them down. And here's the other thing too.

If you go to a very nice restaurant in Japan um or in the States and it just happens to be a Japanese restaurant, how about that really prolonged this thought? Um, they're gonna give you a chopstick rest. Oh, shut your chopsticks on so they're kind of lifted off of the table the end that you put in your mouth. If you don't have that, you can take that paper wrapper and roll it up and make your own chopstick rest. That's right, because you're setting your chopsticks down on a table.

M there could be you know, have germs, right, and speaking of germs, also, chuck. You never ever use the chopsticks that you're eating with to serve yourself from a

communal plate or bowl, that's for sure. They should give you like a spoon or something like that to spoon it onto your plane, and then you use your chopsticks because that's just germy and diseasy, and apparently, um, there's a a like a supplement to that where if they don't give you a serving spoon, people flip their chopsticks over and use the thicker and shovel the food onto the plate, which is not necessarily anymore hygienic because that's

where your hands have been rather than your mouth. But that's the more socially acceptable thing to do then just using the business end of your chopsticks. Ye, I don't know why that's so funny to me. Um. But the ends though, I mean, if you're using them right, you're choked up a little bit, so they're not really being touched by your hands, you know, true, Like you don't stick the ends in your palm, that's right, that's true. You choke up on it like like a baseball bat. Yeah.

They say in Korea apparently that the the further down though you hold the chopsticks, the longer it's going to be before you get married. Well yeah, I mean we could talk about some of these kind of fun fun facts. Uh, let me see here. One is, if you are given an uneven pair, you will miss a boat or a plane. M hm. And this is came from Malaysia. I'm not sure if that's ubiquitous all over Asia. I think it's Chinese. Okay,

I think what else here? This is kind of fun. Um, if you use chopsticks, it involves over fifty muscles in the fingers and thirty joints and the um well overall in the fingers, arms, shoulders, and wrists. Yeah, pretty cool it is. I mean, how many use for a fork? Like to maybe give me a break? Um? I saw a couple of things. Um. One is that there was a study that found that eating popcorn with chopsticks makes eating popcorn much more enjoyable than eating it without chopsticks

with your fingers instead. And they even controlled for the amount of extra time it takes to eat popcorn with chopsticks. It's not just that you're eating slower, so you're rellishing it more. Because they had a control group using their fingers eat at a very slow pace too, And apparently they think it's just the fact that you're doing something differently makes you appreciate the thing that you're doing or

that you're eating that much more. Like, um, if you pour water out of like a separate, you know, water bottle, like at a restaurant, how they have like the little chilled water bottles they'll bring over, that water would taste better than water that, um, you just poured out of the tap, even if it was the exact same water, because it's being conveyed differently. Yeah, And that's also how you would get popcorn to last through the opening previews

of a movie. It's right because you're not just shoveling it into your mouth like I do. It's so bizarre, man, I do the same thing. I've tried to do the like a couple of kernels at a time, and you know, I do that for the first few and then before you know it, I've just got handfuls that I'm I'm pushing into my mouth right right, That's how you have to do. You have to use the palm in your hand to really shove the entire fistful in there. You can't just use your little finger tips. It doesn't work.

You'll choke on them. And I don't know if it's uh, um, sort of a subliminal desire for me not to be distracted during the movie. But the ideal, in the ideal world, I would just sit there in munch a couple of pieces at a time for two hours, like, just chew them a million times. No, no no, no, just eat a couple of kernels at a time and just really elongate the whole experience. Take put those chopsticks in your merse

and take those to the theater. People would be like, look at that guy, Hey, though you have to be careful though, yes, they yes, they would. You have to be careful though who you brandish those chopsticks around, because so you put this together. Kudos for that. Um. One of the facts you came up with is that there's something called consecutively lay a phobia. Consecutive a phobia, I think I said, which is literally a fear of chopsticks. Yeah,

there's a fear for everything. But but yes, but I was reading a blog post on it on some maybe psychnet I think, and they were saying, like, there's basically two categories of phobias, ones that are semi rational. They use the example of a fear of sharks. Well, if you did run into a shark, there's a chance you

could be killed by that sharks. So it's not just totally bonkers to be afraid of sharks, but the a phobia of sharks is in irrational fear, Like maybe if you live in Kansas, you've got no reason to have a fear of sharks. This this one, they said, this basically qualifies in in the bonkers category. Like there's virtually nothing that chopsticks can do to hurt you, So to be irrationally afraid of chopsticks, where you feel like heart pounding anxiety is is a genuine died in the wool phobia.

But some people do apparently experience this, although it's super rare. Yeah, that's interesting, But you'll like avoid entire types of restaurants because you can't be around chopsticks, and you'll get anxious just thinking about being around chopsticks. That's so sad because Asian food makes up a large portion of my diet. Well, luckily, for you. You don't have consecutively a phobia. No. I mean when I think about sushi, I think about fuh, I think about ramen. M I think about good old

fashioned Seesuan Chinese food. Oh yeah, think about Korean mhm. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could eat that. I could eat that all the time. Dude, you've got to get some booty j I'll take you to go get some. All right, you're gonna You're gonna love is so good. I can't wait. You got anything else? I got nothing else? Forty five minutes on chopsticks, baby bad. If you want to know more about chopsticks, go get yourself some that you can reuse and eat conscientiously with them.

And don't forget all of the manners. But just go eat some Asian food, because no matter where it's farm or what it is, it's probably pretty good. Agreed. Since I said that, it's time for listener mayo, I'm gonna call this too. For two. Hey, guys, I wrote a few years ago about Alan Alda. I thought i'd share a Sammy Davis Jr. Story. Uh, And this is from Andrew Limburgh and Ittsburg And he got his alan Aldawin read and when I told him this was coming on,

he wrote back to for two baby nice. Yeah, there's people out there who are like, oh for ten, I know, so I assume it's not like we're keeping track of people like that. Oh no, I haven't spa Oh you do, men, that's me, uh, he says. So in the eighties, Sammy would had been cleaned out by his ex wife and was selling barbecue sauce. He was in Pittsburgh to promote it, and my friend Larry, who had a local TV show

at the time, got a chance to interview him. When they arrived at the hotel, they were told they would get twenty minutes with Sammy, but when they talked to Sammy's manager, he said only ten minutes. So instead of having time to set up a two shot interview and for people that don't know the linko that means both

people are in the same camera frame. Uh, they kept the camera on Sammy and Larry would then go back and at his footage later, so he would, I guess, re ask the questions with a ghost Sammy just edit it together. At the end of the interview. They needed one, just one two shot of the two of them together so they could edit it realistically, and Sammy's manager said nope, and Larry looked at Sammy almost begging because they needed the two shot. Sammy took a long drag of a

cigarette and said, get your two shot, babe. The manager then said, oh, well, I guess I'm the a hole, to which Sammy said, as a matter of fact, Babe, you are an a hole. So this is how the story goes, apparently. Uh. And Then Andrew says he's been listening since oh eight and went to that live show in Pittsburgh. Please come back, and he says he is a podcast now called the Pittsburgh Oddcast, and he said we average about hundred listen to an episode, which is

pretty darn good. Andrew, Yeah, it is nice working for a self styled show that's not bad at all, especially a local one to Pittsburgh Oddcast. Yeah, so, Pittsburgh Ian's if you're from the Burg, check out the Pittsburgh Podcast, and Andrew, or even if you're interested in it, sure, Pittsburgh. You might live in Philadelphia and just be a burghead exactly. Uh. Well, that was a pretty great one. Thank you very much too.

For two that's pretty impressive, Andrew Um. And if you want to get Chuck to do any Sammy Davis Jr. Impressions, right in with your own Sammy Davis Jr. Story and see how it goes. Uh. And you can put that in an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.