Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know.
That's right, Popcorn the snack a dish, And I want to shout out listener Sean O'shullman.
He came up with this idea, send it along.
And I'm trying to get better about crediting people when they send great ideas that we use.
Oh that's that's a great New Year's resolution, Chuck.
Yeah, which reminds me I need to do a pickup for Cliff's notes because I did not credit Mike D of Overland Park, Kansas. Or maybe that'll suffice.
Yeah, it might. Well I have to ask Mike D.
Okay, and he'll you know what he'll say.
He'll say the mic stance for money and the D is for dime.
That's right.
Was that exactly what you were going to say?
No? But that's that was better? So okay.
So yeah, we're talking Popcorn Day and Chuck, there's a lot a lot to talk about with popcorn. Who helped us with this?
Was it?
Anna?
This is Anna Green?
Very nice? So if you don't know what popcorn is, We'll wait a second. You go ahead and google popcorn and then come back. I'm pretty sure most people know what popcorn is because it's a global sensation. But I have to say I'm quite proud that popcorn is through and through American, and not just the United States version of American, Mexico, Central America, South America, Canada will include Canada. Sure they love it American in that sense. That is
popcorn through and through. Even still today, most of the popcorn in the world comes from the Americas.
That's right.
And we should talk a little bit about corn because popcorn is just a variety of corn. There are all kinds of varieties of corn, and popcorn is the everta variety. And if you are corn, you have three main things.
You have a hull.
Maybe they might call it a pair of carp or maybe even the brand. I like calling it the brand the brand, and inside that hole you've got the germ and the endosperm and popcorn specific hull, that outer shell that has that stuff inside of it. That is the
main thing that makes it poppable corn. And that's what makes it different than other kinds of corn because popcorn has a really hard, hard outer shell, much harder than other varieties of corn, and inside that hull there's a much higher ratio of hard starch to soft starch.
And all that sounds well and good.
But a little tidbit I never ever knew until this episode was like, what is making that stuff pop?
And it's very simple, right it is.
It's awesome. It's a little tiny bit of water. Yeah, Apparently anything less than thirteen percent water inside the popcorn kernel is not good enough.
I think you mean the hull, yes, you're right, sorry, or the brand as you like to see the bran.
Yeah, brand to me is like mast It's like one of those homey words. I love it. It's the sweet spot is between thirteen and twenty percent water content inside the brand. And when you heat that, because the brand is non porous, that that steam that gets generated gets trapped inside. Well, as we all know, when steam expands, it really expands, and it expands so much that it blows. It blows the popcorn inside out.
Yeah, and that what you're eating, the white styrofoamy deliciousness that you're eating, that is the starch while you're eating that kernel up, I'm sorry, that hole. I guess it's a kernel too, and that water is turning into steam and expanding, the consistency of that starch is changing, becoming more pliable of aka edible, and you're eating that interior starch and you can still you know that that little thing that gets stuck in your teeth, that's the last
bit of that hole that has exploded. And like you said, anything, like when you get that unpopped stuff at the bottom and you're like, what was your problem? Why didn't you do what you were told?
They said, all right, less than thirteen percent.
More exactly, that's probably the case. It also could be the case where that hole was fractured or something was wrong with that hole.
Yeah, something's wrong with that. It ain't right. Yeah, And so you're like, okay, well, why doesn't rice pop suckers? Why doesn't Why isn't wheat pop smart guys? Well, it turns out it's because they have porous holes, so steam will come out of them. It won't build up pressure inside like it does popcorns. So popcorn is a very unique, darling, peculiar little thing that everybody loves. Yeah, no, don't don't even come at us like you don't love popcorn. Everyone loves popcorn.
Sorry, agreed, And we're going to get some some young yuckers that are gonna say they hate popcorn.
I just don't get it. I don't get it either.
There's a guy named Andrew Smith and he's a popcorn aficionado and in popped culture. Pretty great name for something on the internet. He has gone through and shared popcorn varieties that were sold in the early I guess twentieth century, between nineteen oh one and nineteen oh two. He said, some of these may be different names, you know, like the same thing that was named different by whoever was growing it. But they had some pretty fun names like
tom thumb popcorn or tattooed Yankee. But popcorn wasn't sold commercially at scale like that. Maybe a couple of varieties were, but there seemed to be a lot more sort of local varieties that people could grow and just sell kind of locally. But again, it's not branded or anything at this point. You're just buying it by like the scoop or the bag.
Yeah, it was all popcorn. It was just a generic term for popcorn. It's all called popcorn. But I think in the mid nineteenth century. Later nineteenth century, the company started to come along and basically branded their own version. And there was even a mascot in the eighteen seventies called Kernel Pop Love that one. I couldn't find a picture of them, could you.
No, But that's because I did not look.
The same here. And there's actually a popcorn company from not too far after Colonel Pop was developed nineteen fourteen, called the American Popcorn Company. And they're the people who make jolly Time popcorn. And if you've never made jolly Time popcorn, you should just do it. Just go buy one of those little foil things that has all the stuff you need to pop the corn in it. And as it pops, like the foil expands. It's just such a great little thing. Word of advice, though I learned
this the hard way. Don't do it on a ceramic cook top. It's really really bad for the ceramic cook top. Oh wait, I'm talking about Jiffy pop. Jolly Time comes.
In the bangs. Yeah, yeah, still you should try and Jiffy pop I get.
I mean, before we go further, I'm curious of how you how do you pop your popcorn?
You know, I don't very much. We have like a stir crazy I don't remember who makes it, but it's like the the big like black, heavy bottom with like a thing that spins around slowly on it so that it stirs your your popcorn apparently in a crazy way, and then it pop pop pops, but transparent. Well there's
a hamster that runs the whole thing. I guess technically it's mechanical energy, but there's like a transparent yellow bowl that keeps it from popping out, and then you just turn it upside down, okay, yeah, and then you have your bowl of popcorn right there.
So you got the old school sort of can't you plug it in and it turns the little stirring thing.
Yeah, But weirdly we got it in the last few years. We tried air popping for a while.
And that's just like punishment garbage.
I use a whirlypop that is the stovetop thing that you put, you know, on your stove. I have a gas stove, so it's cooking with gas and you hand crank that thing and it stirs it around.
You need a hamster, I do.
Those are like seventy bucks, so you know, not cheap but not expensive. There's also more expensive brands like that that are like a couple of hundred bucks, like the Popsmith. But the whole point is you're cooking it on your stovetop and you're turning it yourself, right, And that's how I like to do it. As the the you know that yellow oil that's got the butter flavor in it, and I just do a little bit of that popcorn
salt because I love salt. But that stuff is super salty and goes a long way I saw.
Yeah, for sure. There's a specific kind called Flavacall and that's what the movie theaters use, and it's designed to dissolve in oil and get in every part of a popcorn pop popcorn. I can't remember, I ah the name for what? Oh flake, that's what a pop popcorn is called. Did you know that?
Yeah?
I did not know that. Well at any rate. It's meant to get in every crevice and nook and cranny of a popped flake, and yeah, I would guess it doesn't take very much of that stuff.
Yeah, and we don't pop popcorn a lot, like we should do it for every single family movie night because there's really no reason not to. But uh, you know, Ruby loves it, the family loves it. So I'm gonna start popping more popcorn. But let's go back.
Wait, I'm not quite done. I should say, like, more often than not, it's microwave popcorn that.
We Sorry, I'm judging you.
Yeah, it's all right. I can take it.
I just don't like it.
What about smart food? I like that stuff too.
Yeah. Bag popcorn that's a whole other game, but a huge industry.
Yeah.
Remember it used to be on our what do they call it, a rider?
Yeah, like you had to give us smart pop popcorn backstage at our shows.
Yeah. It's good snack, calorie filling for sure, and cheesy, pleasing to the tongue.
Let's go back a little bit though, and talk about cultivation, because if you look at you know, indigenous Americans before Europeans came along and wrecked everything, they were farming popcorn in South and Central America, mainly in North America where it was farmed it was in the southwest of the United States and Mexico, or I guess most of that
was Mexico at the time. But when non indigenous Americans, you know, white Europeans, came here, they started farming popcorn in New England was a surprise.
Yeah.
Through most of the nineteenth century that was sort of the center of popcorn, I guess, growing and manufacturing, until eventually it moved to the Midwest in Chicago became the hub of popcorn.
Yes, which explains why Chicago is a caramel corn town. And despite the fact that people in Chicago won't admit it, Chicago is a caramel corn town.
But most of the popcorn these days that comes for the United States, well not most, but twenty five percent of the popcorn popped in the US is grown in Nebraska, it should be no surprise, but also grown in places like Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa.
Yeah apparently also Brazil and Argentina grow a lot of it too.
Yeah.
Okay, so chuck. A big question is whether popcorn is healthy, and the answer is the resounding yes. If you just air pop popcorn and only eat popcorn undressed in anything and not cooked in oil.
That's right. But what kind of serial killer does that? Yeah, it is.
It's it's low in calorie. Like I said, it's a really good source of fiber. It's one hundred percent whole grain, and if you eat one serving as three cups of poppedcorn. If you eat three cups of popcorn, that's about fifteen percent of your daily recommended fiber intake. So if you double that, you're getting thirty percent.
I saw so I was like, there's got to be something wrong with popcorn. I searched Dark side of popcorn, and the best I could come up with is that it's there's enough fiber in it that if you have irritable bowel syndrome, you need to be careful of your popcorn intake. That's the worst thing anyone has to say about popcorn.
Yeah, you can also get about three grams of protein preserving eighteen grams of carbs, one gram of fat. You can get vitamin B six, a e K riboflavon, buyme nicene folate, So.
It's pretty good for you.
The nutritional values are going to shift some when you cook it in oil and add toppings and butter flavored stuff, but it's not like it destroys the nutritional value.
The fiber's still in there right.
Yeah, for sure, it just makes it less healthy. You know, you've got all the problems that you have for eating butter, and not just eating butter, but liquid butter. Wow, you want to talk about where popcorn came from?
Because I do, yes.
So, like I said, popcorn is indigenous to the Americas, and that's because corn is indigenous to the Americas. As far as we can tell, especially if you've read fourteen ninety two, corn was domesticated from the wild Taosenti plant as far back as nine thousand years ago. And the whole thing began in Mexico, and it was such a good idea that it spread throughout Central and South America. Right. Yes, popcorn itself is not that much younger, maybe about twenty five hundred years or so.
Yeah, I mean sixty seven hundred years ago there was popcorn. We just you know, don't know exactly when people started eating it.
Right, but we do have archaeological evidence. I think people have found popcorn buried with people in like South America, and I think there was one burial in per maybe where the burial was one thousand years old, but the popcorn was still viable, like you could have popped it. Imagine eating thousand year old funeral burial popcorn. That would really be something.
Yeah, It's probably in some fancy menu somewhere in a fancy restaurant.
Yeah, one of those underground restaurants for richies where they eat people.
Yeah, where they eat ancient foods and people, yeah, disguised as tasty. There is written documentation. I believe the first written documentation of popcorn comes from when the Europeans came over again to the Americas. There was a missionary in the sixteenth century name Bernardino the Sahagun. He was not Italian really, and he claimed Aztecs were wearing popcorn garlands, so it was already being used as sort of a decorative.
And they called it momo cheetle okay.
And there was a seventeenth century missionary rename I'm not even gonna try. His last name was Kobo, I can say that one. And he saw Pruvian's toasting a quote, a certain kind of corn until it burst, clearly popcorn.
Yeah. They called it pens and cola.
Cool, that's all I got, good stuff?
Uh Yeah, so yes, they were. They were. These guys were witnessing popcorn, and you would think like, oh, okay, well it would immediately become a big deal everywhere. That's not necessarily the case. Despite there being a legend that popcorn was introduced to the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, that seems to have been a nineteenth century invention, which is actually about the time that popcorn became a favored American snack in the United States.
Yeah, we should probably take a break and come back and talk about what happened from there.
Huh.
I think that's a great idea, Joe, all right, we'll be right back.
I want to learn about a terror sort and call it red actel. How to take a berg fractal gink is Khan.
That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers and all run on sport up Jerry.
So euro Americans knew of popcorn long before they started eating it. It was just associated with Native Americans. There was a Native American thing. They love their popcorn. But in the nineteenth century, as far back as the eighteen twenties, people selling seeds started selling popcorn. Seeds kind of slowly but surely started to gain traction. Thurreau was a fan. He called popcorn a perfect winter flower, which seems like
a miss to me. And in eighteen forty eight popcorn showed up in the debut edition of the Dictionary of Americanisms, and I was looking through that. Chuck and keep a stiff upper lip was in there too, which I associate one with the UK. But apparently that's American.
Oh. I never really thought about where that might have come from.
I always thought it was the UK, but I was wrong.
Well, as far as popcorn goes, they used to make it in all kinds of crazy ways early on. Sometimes they would just throw it in a fire and wait for it to pop out, I guess, and eat it with a little little ash on it. Sometimes they would put like an iron like an iron plank on a fire, like you might do steamed oysters or something. If you're sitting by the beach these days and you've got some oysters and you throw a wet towel over those oysters.
With popcorn, you could just throw those kernels on that hot plate, storm around just like it was on your stovetop, and wait for it to pop.
What's the towel for.
The towel is for the oysters to steam them?
Oh, so you cover the oysters with the towel and it keeps the steam inside.
Yeah. Yeah, with a wet to gotcha.
Guy, Yeah, and creates that steam. So, but that's oysters just neither here there.
Okay.
So a frying pan obviously is one way you could have popped it early on, but those things were really really heavy to work with. They still are very heavy you work with as far as like holding one and shaking it over a hot fire. And before they had gas s doves, you know, you got to nail the popcorn heating temperature or else you're gonna scorch it and it's not gonna taste great or it's never going to pop. So until gas stoves came along, it was just harder.
Yeah, so it wasn't quite as popular, you know. Yeah, although you can imagine there were some country women who had like a much bigger, stronger right arm from popping popcorn iron skillet, yeah, dead give away that they were a popcorn fan. Yeah. Finally, in eighteen sixty six, the first patent was issued for a popcorn popper, and it was essentially just like you know those old timey toast makers. There's like a it's like an iron rod and it ends in like a mesh basket that you'd put the
bread in and toast it. Yeah, something like that. But the mesh was thin enough that the popcorn brand wouldn't fall out when you're popping it, and it would just go pop pop, pop pop. My feet can't stop.
They still make those for camping, you know, you can still get those.
Okay, that makes sense. Well, that is the first patented popcorn popper that came on the market, and it was I mean still hard to do, but it was much lighter than holding an iron skillet over the fire until your popcorn popped.
Yeah, at the very least is lighter and had a much longer handle.
Right, So people were like, okay, I can kind of get into this, and that's when it just started to take off.
Yeah, So that was eighteen sixty six. Like you said, so in the eighteen seventies, if there was a public event, you were going to be able to buy popcorn there. Anything that had a concession stand was going to be selling popcorn by that time. And in the eighteen nineties that was a guy named Charles cr Etrs Creditors, I
guess in eighteen ninety three. He was a confectionery shop owner in Ohio and he patented, I guess the first sort of mobile portable popcorn machine that he adapted from a peanut roaster of his own design, and all of a sudden you could have like a popcorn stand on a sidewalk, and that became like a thing.
People were buying popcorn because it was always pretty cheap.
Yeah. I looked at a picture. This is glorious. It's super got like the big old penny farthing wheels on it. It's just I would love to.
Buy popcorn from it, you know.
I penny Thuring farthing is called that, no, because one wheel was relatively the size of a penny to the size of the farthing.
Oh wow, it's neat.
Is that kind of like that thing? Where like if Earth was the size of a pinhead, the sun would be the size of a basketball exactly. So this is the nineteenth century. I think we made it through right, Yeah, yeah, okay, So by the twentieth century, Oh no, we haven't quite made it either, because I think we would be remiss to not mention cracker jacks.
Yeah.
I mean, people in the late nineteenth century were into pop like sweet popcorn balls and making popcorn sweet and delicious.
So it was a dirty lie when you said that we made it out of the nineteenth.
Century, so dirty. I mean this was eighteen ninety six. We were so close.
So they were eating sweet popcorn in the eighteen forties. I think cracker Jack came along in ninety six.
Yes, so another thing that people put popcorn to use for. Again, people are starting to get pretty crazy with this. Remember our live episode on the Kellogg Brothers at the bat Battle Creek Sanitarium. Before they started serving cereal there, John Harvey Kellogg's wife Ella Kellogg, introduced popcorn as a cereal, a breakfast cereal with milk and a sweetener, and it was essentially the predecessor to the corn flakes and the
brand flakes and everything that came after that. And in my opinion, it was the direct indirect predecessor of corn pops, which are still around today. But they came out in nineteen fifty and we're one of my all time favorite cereals.
Oh okay, I was like, what is corn pops? Yeah? Yeah, corn pops? Yeah.
She called it popcorn pudding. And there's a historian named Andrew Smith that was basically like, popcorn may have been what cereal became if it hadn't have been for other grain manufacturers really getting super aggressive with the breakfast cereal companies being like no, no, no, you want to use brand or.
Oat or whatever.
Yeah, don't be stupid.
Another thing you could use it for back then that I have recently used it for is for flour. You could grind popcorn into flour.
And I have had this pancake popcorn pancake mix in my house, which is pretty good and way better for you than pancakes.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's gluten free, right, yeah, and it is good. You're not just saying that it's pretty up some money on my god, you're gonna like.
I can't remember the name of the company, unfortunately, but you could. You can find that out pretty easily.
I saw a recipe for popcorn bread and I was like, wow, that sounds interesting. And if you look closely, there's like five other types of flour in it. It's popcorn is just part of it. Yeah, I'd still eat it if somebody else made it, you know.
Yeah.
So we finally made it to the twentieth century. And the reason the twentieth century became such a big deal as far as popcorn goes is because that is when movies started to come out At first they were silent movies, and then talkies and movie theaters started to open throughout the United States, and very quickly people were like, popcorn and movies go together really well. But it turns out the theater owners were the last ones to figure this out.
Yeah.
They were like, this stuff is a disaster of a mess. It's all over the floor, and it still is, but they deal with it because they make a ton of money selling it. It was the depression coming along where theater owners were like, hey, wait a minute, people don't have a lot of money right now. Popcorn is very,
very cheap. It's a very affordable snack. So the people were selling popcorn outside at theater that people could bring in, much like my mother did in the nineteen eighties and the first YEP, and they finally were like, hey, maybe we could lease lobby space these popcorn vendors and just have them sell it in here.
And then someone was like, wait a minute, we're what are we doing. We're doing this all wrong.
We need to pop and sell this popcorn because the markup is incredible and we're just losing money. So they started, you know, it became hand in hand with theaters making profits from the concessions largely popcorn.
Yes, I mean like a lot of money off of popcorn. There's a well trod story about a theater owner from during the depression name R. J. McKenna, who found that popcorn was basically keeping his theater afloat. During the depression, people didn't really have much money for a movie theater ticket, but if they did, they still had money enough for
popcorn because it was a cheap snack. So R. J. McKenna made the very wise is this decision of lowering his ticket prices below what he would have made a profit on because he made so much money off of popcorn in the concession stands. And I think they the number that's bandied about is two hundred thousand dollars from popcorn alone, which is more than four and a half million dollars today. If that's in nineteen thirty six, dollars.
From popcorn big big profits.
Yeah for sure. And he said a bit of a tradition, as we'll find out that popcorn still big.
Profits, Yeah, big time.
During World War Two, there were sugar shortages, so sweet treats were on the wigin I guess, and salty treats rose, and popcorn was right at the center of that. Apparently, Americans were eating three times more popcorn in the nineteen forties than they ever had before, and also in the know the connection to movie theater strengthened during the nineteen forties. In nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn people eating in the United States was in those movie theaters.
Yeah, and there's another really great I want to say it's an urban legend, but it actually happened a guy named James Vicari or Vickery, who we've talked about before, because he was basically the inventor of subliminal advertising, even
though subliminal advertising isn't really a thing. But the reason he ties into this is because he supposedly experimented on people showing frames interlaced within movies that popped up so quickly that you couldn't perceive them, you only perceived them subliminally, and they said things like go eat more popcorn, and popcorn sales like tripled. Supposedly, even though the whole thing was a total fraud and the guy made it up, it's still worth mentioning.
If you ask me, he didn't actually even do that, he said later that he made all of that up. He never even did the subliminal advertising.
Yeah.
I saw that too.
Yeah, so that was just a fraud from top to bottom. Prior to the thirties, most of the popcorn was white corn, but movie theaters moved to the yellow corn variety and it just looked better. It looked buttery, even though it wasn't, and people that just became the de facto popcorn that you mainly eat here in the United States, is that yellow corn. I think by nineteen ninety ten percent of commercially soul popcorn was whitecorn.
Let me ask you, do you get buttered popcorn at the movies?
I get popcorn, And the AMC that I go to here has the do your own butter. That's not butter, by the way, at all. It's buttered flavored oil and stuff. But I add, you know, when I was a kid, I would just drench it in that stuff.
Now I do not.
Now I do like that flavor, but I'll just do a pretty sparing couple of squirts and shakes.
Yeah. I never was into it, even as a kid. I'd hard to be and I just couldn't get into it for some reason. I think because it just it's the popcorn. And I don't like popcorn wet.
I love it, but it's just you can't have it drenched in that stuff. Like that's when it's really bad for you. It's when you're just like dumping all that oil on there. But a little bit I like, and I'll shake it up and you get you know, I get enough of that flavor just from a dab good.
I respect our differences.
Here's the thing though, with TV coming along, the popcorn industry was really really worried that like, oh no, like you know, all this popcorn is being eat in movie theaters like we're toast because people aren't gonna go to the movies anymore because of TV. A. That didn't really happen. People still went to the movies back then. But what they found out was people loved popping that popcorn at
home while they watched TV. And you can also have popcorn ads on TV, and so people with their televisions were eating more popcorn than ever in the nineteen fifties.
Yeah. Well, you know what stuck out to me from that that anecdote, Chuck, is like, that's a an example of early disruption, right yea, where people are like, oh, there's a change, there's a huge sea change in the way people do things, So this thing is going to totally go away forever, right, And just since the Internet age, we found that just doesn't really happen, Like everything from bookstores to paper to I don't know, seeing people in person,
we're all just destined to just go away because they've been replaced and it's just not how it goes, which I think is kind of neat to understand because it makes you a little less fearful of change or technology or progress in some ways, I agree, although anyone who's listened to the end of the world knows there's plenty of technology to be scared of. It's got to be selective.
Yeah, and you know there are dents and industries for sure, like you know, newspapers and magazines. Some have shuddered, but if you believed, you know what the scare tactics, everyone's gonna be like, you're never going to hold a newspaper again after a certain year.
Yeah, newspapers, So that one did take a pretty hard hit, but it wasn't necessarily because of the Internet. It was because of captains of industry essentially realizing that they could capture journalism if they if they defunded local news, and that's exactly what happened. And I don't remember what episode it was on. There's this there's a YouTube podcast that I love, if you mean introduced it to me or me to it, one of the two called doom Scroll.
It's hosted by a guy named Joshua Ciderella, and he has the most interesting guests on who are just they just think and talk about their thoughts, and I mean like it's it's all rooted in, you know, like academia or research or something. They're not just riffing or anything
like that. But one of them was talking about that that capture and what happened to it, and it's just so strange to think, like, yeah, local newspapers went away, but the effect that that had on democracy and on people being informed and just generally caring about stuff that was a huge, huge deal.
Allegedly, did he eat popcorn while they said this stuff?
No? I don't think he did. No, he drinks like Lacroix instead.
All right, well let's take our second break and we'll finish up with popcorn.
Right after this, I want to learn.
About a terrisort and call it fridactyl. How to take a pink is gone? That's a little hunt word up, Jerry.
All Right, So we talked a little bit about innovations and how to pop popcorn over the years. That is still evolving. I feel like every few years there's some new sort of weird gadget to pop popcorn with.
I did not know that, man.
Yeah, electricity coming along was a big deal obviously for electric popcorn poppers like you have, well, you and your electric hamster. That is, they had a drawback though, because they were dangerous. The early electric popcorn poppers were like fires waiting to happen, essentially. I think in the late sixties Consumer Bulletin examined all the most popular ones and one of them they determined did not post safety hazards.
Yeah, that's the one we have.
Yeah, from nineteen sixty eight.
Although the hamster that runs our popcorn popper did come with a little fire chiefs hat that he wears.
It's so cute.
So yeah, that's another interesting thing about popcorn. If you kind of track its trajectory, it just keeps evolving with new stuff. Like anytime something new comes along that you
can apply to popcorn. Whether it's movies or TVs or electricity, people apply it to popcorn like it's just this little thing lurking in the background that's been woven into our culture so thoroughly and for so long, you just look right past it and then it trips you as you walk by, and you suddenly recognize how important popcorn is.
Yeah. TV Time was another one.
We already mentioned jippy pop, but TV Time was it was just a packaging innovation where they had like sealed popcorn to keep it really fresh, and then also separate kind of like fun dip, separate compartments for seasonings and oil. So it was kind of an all in one thing. So just even little innovations that aren't mechanical, like packaging innovations like microwave popcorn. I guess we could get too, because that really changed the game.
Yeah, and we've talked about this guy plenty of times. He was kind of like the Hayflick limit for a while and early yeah stuff, you should know. He came up a lot. But a guy named Percy Spencer worked for the Raytheon Company and he was in charge of creating magnetrons. I can't remember what he was doing with them. I think they're for like radar or something. And he was standing next to one at some point and he
had a chocolate bar. I'm guessing mister goodbar, that's what I've always envisioned, Yeah, in his front pocket, like a total nerd, because obviously his shirt was also a short sleeve button down shirt, and the mister goodbar melted in his pocket and he thought, hmm, that's curious.
And I was saving this late exactly.
No, it's just oozy. And then he decided almost immediately to see what happens with popcorn, if you could do the same thing with popcorn, and he did it.
Yeah, And so like microwaves and popcorn, microwave popcorn grew in lockstep from.
The very beginning.
In fact, he even in his nineteen forty six patent for the microwave showed popcorn being popped, so it was always sort of tied together. The first commercial microwaves were very big and expensive and not really for the home.
They were more for restaurants.
So once they went to the house, microwave popcorn was right there along with it. In nineteen fifty one, a gentleman named Orville Redenbacher got to together with a guy named Charles Bowman and bought a corn plant in Indiana and experimented with different versions of popcorn varieties and landed on the Red Bow variety, and in nineteen sixty nine started selling Orvile Reddenbacher branded popcorn. And here's what I
didn't know. They sold that brand six years later. They sold it in nineteen seventy six, Wow, to hunt wessn Foods. But he was just the name and face of it, So he stayed the name and face of it.
Wow. Yeah. And I've read bow variety, you said, I wonder if they named it after his penchant for red bow ties, or he started wearing red bow ties because of the variety.
I don't think they named the variety, So I bet you he started wearing that thing because of that.
Thank you, CA. He also just said one more thing about Orvile Riddenbacher. His Eames lounge chair, you know, the one with the ottoman. Yeah, he had one in his office and I think Nebraska, Omaha or something, and it's still out there Orvile red Eames lounge chair from his offices out there somewhere in.
The world, like someone owns it.
Yes, I've coveted it ever since I first heard about that.
Not just a name chair you want Orvile Reddenbocker's Emes chair.
Yes, okay, and I still I don't know why. I've never really stepped back and asked myself, but it's it just got me for some reason.
I mean, you can't be a gen x er and not have a soft spot for Orvile Reddenbacker and the Bartles and James guys.
No, yeah, they were great. They were wonderful dudes. They were the predecessor of Penn and Teller.
I think, yeah, I think you're right.
So yeah, we talked about microwaves and how microwaves started coming to the home, and microwave popcorn came along quickly after that. I think nineteen eighty one was when you could start buying microwave popcorn. And like I said, it's like a global phenomenon. I think I said it. At the outset. Everybody knows popcorn, whether you love it or not.
You know about popcorn, you know where to buy it, and there's different tastes around the world, as you might i'd imagine, apparently in the United States, the favorite flavors of popcorn are salted, buttered, white cheddar, regular cheddar. So white Cheddar's finally overtaken regular cheddar. This is a big deal. And then kettle which is the sweet kind.
I like a kettle corn.
That's all right. I've never been crazy for it, but you know, if somebody put it in my mouth, I wouldn't just spit it out.
I'm gonna try that sometimes, he would have backstage at our next live show, I'm just gonna stuff some kettle corn in your mouth.
Do you remember when we were filming a We were filming some commercial, I think, and we were eating popcorn at the movies for this part of the commercial, and we did like one take and then chat. Our friend, the director directed the stuff. He's doing a TV show. He came over. He's like, just one note, don't mash a handful of popcorn into your mouth all at once. And he goes, that's a note for regular life too. Oh no, yeah, And so.
Are you supposed to eat it?
I don't know, Like I guess you hold it in one hand and then like daintily pluck a few out with the other hand. That's what I've seen people do in the movies. But I like that, Yeah, I just put my hand in a bag of popcorn or a bullet popcorn, just shove it into my face as best, like, Okay, it's not just me, but yeah, Chad made it seem like it.
Was just me.
Isn't it a little funny that you ever think about that we used to get way more opportunities to do that stuff very much earlier in our career.
Uh yeah. I think also that we've kind of mellowed out in our quest or our willingness to do stuff like that.
We kind of like we said, yeah, we're kind of like.
Hey, we're happy podcasting. We tried so many different things and it's always just come back to podcasting that I think we're just like, yeah, we're happy living this way.
I mean I am.
I'm kind of glad now that I'm older and have a you know, family at home that did not have to travel to do that stuff.
It just seems weird.
Like earlier on, I felt like TV shows were trying to get us on to be like talk show guests or like Toyota do Toyota commercials, Hey come on and talk about the housing crisis for the NBC and like just nobody asks anymore, and it's.
It's quite wonderful.
Yeah, it is nice.
Yeah, I love it.
Anyway, if you go around the country, you're gonna get some interesting flavors. In Japan, apparently there's a bagged popcorn company called Mike that Fred La owns, and they have of course, like Yuzu salt or.
Kishu plum popcorn.
So you're gonna get some some pretty exciting flavors when you travel around the world, depending what they like there.
Yeah, and I know for a fact it's not pronounced Mike, but I failed to ask you me how to pronounce it.
So now what is it?
Me? K, We'll go with Mike, but it's not Mike.
Well, of course it's not Mike. But I'm an American, so.
No, I'm with you. I just wish I knew how to say it, but you probably were right with me.
What else could it be? Me? K? Nike?
Kind of yeah, mikey? What else? Chuck? Is there anything else to say about popcorn? Oh? I know one? Apparently people have used popcorn as like a packaging like stuffer.
For packing peanuts.
Yeah, packing peanuts, but popcorn instead. Since like the nineteen fifties. But the problem is is if you use popcorn, it can get kind of gross, especially if you didn't think and you popped it in oil and covered it with butter before you put it in as a packaging material. It'll just get gross. It can attract pests and stuff
like that. So no one's quite figured it out, but I guess a few years back, twenty twenty one, there's some German researchers who are like hot on the trail of this, using scraps of corn that is like that you get off the floor of like a corn flake factory that they figured out how to pop and it's essentially styrofoam, but it's made of pop corn, And I'm like, hurry up with this because styrofoam is one of the worst things humans produce on this entire planet.
Yeah, totally, packing peanuts are a nightmare, they really are.
So yeah, maybe.
Popcorn could could help out with that, just a couple of things to finish on. It is an eight hundred and fifty million dollar industry. I guess in the United States alone that bag popcorn, like the smart popping, all that stuff combined is about one point five billion, So it is it is.
It's popping.
Yeah, it's pop it's popping.
And I'm glad that we held onto the stat because we kind of teased about movie theaters and how much the markup was and how much money they made. The popcorn markup in movie theaters is one two hundred and seventy five percent.
Totally buy that. That actually seems low.
Yeah, it's such a money maker because it's just so cheap to get and you get that machine that runs forever, maybe a little maintenance on it, and then the stuff goes with it, and then you sell it for a gazillion dollars for a bucket. Then you got that butter flavored liquid. This snow good.
If you do like.
Real butter on your popcorn at home, I encourage that because real butter is great. But you got to use clarified butter or ghee right because the water and the milk solids are removed in those and that's what's going to make the popcorn soggy. So if you're just melting butter and pouring on your popcorn, you're like, why is my popcorn soggy and gross? That's why I use clarified butter or clarify your own butter and pour it over your popcorn, and it is delicious and not soggy.
Very nice. I think that's it for popcorn.
Right, I've got nothing else on popcorn. Go forth and eat it. It's good and pretty good for you.
Yeah, and check out that book by Andrew Smith, pop Culture, because it's the definitive toe on popcorn.
That's right.
Well, since we talked about Andrew Smith, it's time obviously for listener mail.
This is from Cecilia S and it's about our music bumpers that we've said before, but it always bears repeating. They are made by stuff you should know, listeners. They always have been. Every single one of them are made by listeners and they send them in and it's a really cool, like interactive part of the show for the listenership guys. In terms of your music bumpers, I love how they relate.
To the episode subject.
If it's about an eerie subject, the song reflects that with an eerie tone, or if it's a somber, sad subject, the song reflects that. And there are many other examples. This brings to my father, who is a music director at the church we belong to growing up. He would sometimes fill in when the organist was unavailable, and before and after Mass he would softly play hymns but an
insert a bit of whimsy. For example, at the start of baseball season he'd play a little take Me out to the ballgame and the style of a hymn, or during football season the university fight song could be heard in the fashion of a solemn liturgical piece. Many other instances of his playfulness. He had a big band combo in college in the nineteen forties and into the seventies, and they could sometimes be heard in church.
Anyway, love the show.
You both display such curiosity and knowledge and with wonderful wit and sensitivity when needed.
Thank you to whoever is responsible for the music.
It's not often I would say that about a podcast, so Cecilia, like we said, those are from the listeners.
But Jerry, our esteemed third leg of our.
Stool, is who ties those so aptly to the subject matter with her own wit and whimsy.
Yeah, Jerry deserves way more credit for that too, because sometimes it's just like, man, you just knocked it out of the park with that pick.
Jerry, she does, and we're never like, uh, who Jerry this is a Halloween one, so make sure to use a scary bumper.
Yeah, we don't do that.
We leave it to Jerry, she does her thing.
Yeah. And also, huge, huge, heartfelt thanks. I think I just said thanks, but I really meant thanks to every single person who's ever sent in a music bumper, because that's just such a cool, just little subtle part of the show. Ye, all those different, great little pieces of music. Thank you to everybody who's ever done that. Thank you to everybody who's going to do it in the future, even too.
Yeah, twelve seconds or less.
I think we say sixteen. I thought it was twelve somewhere in that neighborhood. Between twelve and sixteen seconds, how about that.
Yeah, but if you send in one of those thirty second long ones, you'll hear from me saying this is great, but cut it down and we'll use it.
Yeah. That's a note for real life too.
That's right.
Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Cecilia, you can send us an email too. Send it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.