September 26, 2025 • 14 mins
Which apple could also be a hair metal band? Why is New York City the Big Apple and not the New Orange? And how did Japanese farmers figure out the secret to the biggest, sweetest apples in the world? Grab a flannel shirt and a bag of fresh cider doughnuts, because today Will and Mango are taking you apple-fact picking!
This episode originally aired on September 28, 2018.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Guess what mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (00:03):
Well, so I was reading this article in Mother Jones.
It's by Rowan Jacobson.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh yeah, I know that byline he writes all those
great food articles, like there was that one on a
cheese a while back.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I think, yeah, yeah, Well for this article he was
writing about apples, We're gonna go with a different food topic,
mango apples and apple trees specifically. And you know, until
I read this piece, I had no idea how long
an apple tree could live?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Did you know? I have no idea?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This isn't in your list of facts. Well, actually, I'm
just going to quote him here. It says, even when abandoned,
an apple tree can live more than two hundred years,
and like the giving tree in shel Silverstein's book, it
will wait patiently for the boy to return. There is
a bent old black Oxford tree and Hollowell, Maine that
is approximately two centuries old and still gives a crop
(00:46):
of midnight purple apples each fall.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I've actually never heard of midnight purple apples. We're learning
so many things today.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, apparently the US used to have thousands of different
varieties of apples in the eighteen hundreds and the styles
are really astonished. And since we're getting into fall and
apple picking season, we thought it'd be fun to do
a list of nine things all about apples. So let's
dig it. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:31):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind the soundproof
glass trying to stack apples three on top of each other.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
How long do you think he's been doing this? It's been.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I guess that's how tall as smurf is supposed to be.
Three apples, three apples. Our friend and producer Tristan McNeil
always up to something.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
What a weirdo, but we love him. So I'm actually
happy you picked apples as a topic because our cute
little neighbor Ben, who is the best dressed gentleman on
our block.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
About Ben Bowl in the podcaster here, I was like,
he's not that little or well dressed.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Actually he is well dressed. But our neighbor brought these
like little bag of apples over this morning because he'd
gotten apple picking this weekend, and in Georgia, I mean
it's late September here, but it is so warm, I
don't really think of it as apple picking season, and
seeing that was almost my first reminder that it was
fall now. But where do you want to start?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, hoy, don't we start with just the varieties of apples.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I know we mentioned just how many there used to
be here in the States, And I found this list
of eighteen apples with these incredible names that our friend
Erica Okrant did for mental flaws, and the names are
just so great. So we've got spartan dog, snout, Winterstein,
rusty Coat, cor de bouffe, which is one of my favorites,
which means heart of beef, and my favorite American mother.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So those are some tough sounding names and they almost
sound like uh punk rock fans or something.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Actually, it's funny you say that, because there is one
with an umlot that looks like a hair band.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's called Ootweiler spot lot. I think I'm sure I
said that right.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And it does not sound appealing the way you say that.
They're right, But you know, docs now isn't like an
apple I'm super keen to bite into. But I am curious, like,
in reading all these descriptions, are there any of these
rare varietals that you're actually eager to try.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I mean, there was actually something in that row in
jacobson piece. So, like we mentioned, in the mid eighteen hundreds,
there were thousands of different types of apples, and as
industrial agriculture came to the forefront, apple growers picked a
handful of varieties to promote, not often settling on the
ones that were the heartiest to transport for obvious reasons,
which is.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Why I red delicious are so popular, but you know,
not really the most tasty of apples.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
But one of the apples that Jacobson writes about is
called the Harrison apple, and as he puts it, quote,
it was the pride of Newark, New Jersey, renown in
the early eighteen hundreds for making a golden champagne like
cider that might have been the finest in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So did we just get rid of it because it
didn't transport?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Well no, I mean it was lost for a few
decades actually because of prohibition and there was no real
reason to keep growing them. But then in the late
nineteen seventies, this apple detective wouldn't this be a great job?
He was an apple detective and he found one old
tree in New Jersey. He grafted it and he started
growing them again. And I haven't tried the champagne sider,
but it's definitely on my to do list.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So that's really interesting that they grafted a branch to
make that happen. And I guess that's common for growing fruit.
But one thing I didn't know until you know, we
talked about this topic was that you can't actually grow
a great apple tree from just planning a seed of
any apple. And this is actually how BuzzFeed puts it. Quote,
if you ate a macintosh apple and planted the seed,
the tree it grew would produce apples that looked and
(04:38):
tasted nothing like macintoshes. So instead of planning seeds, growers
attach a cutting from the genetically desirable tree onto an
existing branch or sapling called a rootstock, so that the
grafted bit produces apples genetically identical did those on the tree.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
It was cut from.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I mean, obviously I knew a little bit about grafting,
but I don't know why it was so surprising to me.
I think just because I had this like romantic old
idea of like Johnny Apple seeds, scattering seeds, and these
beautiful tasty apples growing from them. But you know that's
almost never how you get great apples.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You know, One thing I realized as I was reading
up on this was how little I knew about apple production.
Like farmers at apple orchards actually rent thousands of bees
and hives from beekeepers each season just to pollinate their trees.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Did you know this?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I did not realize there was a rental market for bees.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, but a good one.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I know. In New York, some of our neighbors used
to rent a cat to come to their place just
to run around and lead the scent to keep away mice,
which is equally weird to me.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Weird and now scary. All of a sudden, you get
one more place to be scared of. Well, yeah, so
what happens is you rent bees for a couple of
weeks and then the beekeeper comes back and takes the
hive to another orchard. At least I think that's how
it works. But I was reading about this Georgia farmer
who was saying he doesn't need to rent bees because
there are just so many types around, just naturally. And
this was from a story reported on by Wabe. But
(05:52):
the scientist from a local college came by and he
referred to this one orchard as the bee Eden, and
so here's his quote about it. The first time I
came here during bloom was eye opening for me. It
looked like almost the entire orchard was kind of on fire,
was smoking like this black mist. Get up in there
and you actually realize it's not smoke. It's just thousands
(06:13):
and thousands and thousands of bees and they're all native.
So what's crazy is that he found more than one
hundred and fifty species of bees at this.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
One apple orchard of crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, including a type of bee that mines under the
trees and has an underground city in the dirt.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, that's amazing. Well, I have one last apple growing
factor and then we can talk about other things. But
apparently Japan created some of the largest and most beautiful
apples in the world. And if you've read about the
giant single package strawberries they give for Valentine's Day, or
like the square watermelon they produce, you know that the
culture around cultivating this beautiful produce is very real, and
(06:49):
apples are no exception. So I found this article on
the University of Cincinnati magazine from this professor who was
writing about her experience in Japan. And apparently farmers will
climb ladders and pluck the four outer blooms on an apple,
leaving only the center one because it creates an apple
that's thirty percent larger than the standard American apple. And
this is all done by hand. And then early in
(07:10):
the season, when the apples are still just an inch big,
they actually discard all the imperfect ones, like they know
at that young like that they're not going to be beautiful, yeah,
And then they take all the promising ones and they
put these special wax paper bags on them. And not
only does this paper bag system keep out the pest,
but it supposedly extends the like storage life and the
flavor of the fruits. And then they also put different
(07:32):
wax colored paper on because it triggers the color jeans
of the apples, and it's kind of crazy. They leave
on to work. They leave them on for ten to
fourteen days, and then they remove the bags, and then
they give the apples pure sunlight because that's what gives
them sweetness. But to make sure the apples get even
sweetness everywhere, they actually rotate the apples on the on
the branches by hand.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
They rotate them on the brand that they wouldn't be
pulled off by doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
No, they carefully rotate them. They take away any leaves
that are causing shades. They even put these like white
reflective mats underneath so that the bottom of the apples
get a perfect tan. It's crazy. And then for the
biggest apples, which are obviously going to be sold as gifts,
they put on these stickers to create tattoos on the
apples that say things like best wishes for a long
life or or this one Japanese pop star put images
(08:20):
of his face on it to.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Get out to fans.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
It's just kind of amazing. But the professor ended the
article by saying, quote, this intensive work results in apples
that are absolutely beautiful and flawless. Our apples look scruffy
in comparison. Yeah, I mean it so much work. All right,
So we've done about five facts. Now I think, what
do you say? We reel off some quick ones about
apples you don't want to hear more about Japanese apple
com That was pretty interesting. So here's what I found
(08:45):
about the nineteen oh four Olympic marathon race and a
truly bad apple. And of course reading about the old
Olympics reminds you of just how different the competition was
back then. Like in nineteen oh four, Felix Carbajal ran
the race in cutoff trousers and a beret for some reason.
And according to Smithsonian, he saw someone eating peaches along
the way and snatched one or two and ate them.
(09:06):
But he was still hungry for fruit, so he stopped
in an orchard along the way and ate a bunch
of apples, and then a few miles later he realized
they were bad apples and he got the stomach cramp,
so he laid down, took a nap, and when he
woke up, he kept running.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
He was a butterfly. I thought you were telling the
story of like that's kind of what He was still hungry.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Then he took a nap, but he took a nap,
started running again, and he finished in fourth place.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Wow, in his fancy shorts. That's pretty great. Yeah, oh,
that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, here's something I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
It It comes from the New York Times, and they
were actually talking to this curator at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art and discussing how artists spends so many hours
just trying to represent a real fruit on canvas, you know,
trying to get the color and the shape just completely accurate.
Now partially because they're inspired by Seyson. But what's funny
is that Sezon was a very slow painter. And as
(10:00):
he puts it, he says that Seisan used artificial fruit
partially because he didn't want it rotting in the time
that he was trying to capture.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I doubt that that's really true, but it gives you
an idea of just how slow you was.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
That is interesting. Well, kind of like how Audubon used
to paint birds by killing them and fixing them the
wires on branches and like that. It's so grim, But
we've got two more apple facts to go, so let's
get to those right after a break. So have I
(10:40):
told you that Ruby is obsessed with making fruit salads
and just forcing them on people lately?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
You have not, although given her weird obsessions, this doesn't Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So I walked in the house the other day and
she said, who things, I make a great fruit salad.
Raise your hand, dad, wis in your hand?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Raised you gotta be honest with that's pretty good. Now,
are they any good?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I mean, it's surprising how good it is for a
five year old to me at least. But she's so
cocky about it. Like we went to this Korean restaurant
last week and she looked at the food that came
out and then she just kind of like turned to
the waiter and said, I make a great fruit salad.
If you want, I can come back and show you how,
Like it's a secret or something. It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Pretty great, all right, So we're talking apples and the
pressure is on. I'd love this talk about Ruby. In fact,
I think her obsessions deserve a night at some point.
But what's your last factor of the day?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Mango?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Maybe Why New York is called a big Apple?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh yeah, a good one.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So New York City does produce a lot of apples,
but according to history dot com, the nickname doesn't have
to do with the fruit production. Apparently the name comes
from this newspaper writer in the twenties who overheard these
New Orleans stable hens talking about traveling to these big
races in New York and they called it the Big
Apple because it was considered this like big time venue.
But he liked it so much he just kept using it,
(11:56):
and it caught on with jazz musicians in the thirties.
But apparently the city she forgot the name for about
forty years, and then it was revived in the seventies
for a tourism campaign and that's when it really stuck.
But you know, what's interesting to me is that New
York hasn't always been partial to apples. In the sixteen hundreds,
the Dutch actually called the city New Orange for a
brief period in honor of William of Orange.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Oh wow, all right, Well, I'm going to end this
one on Isaac Newton. It just felt like the right
thing to do in a story I found on him
from our friends at Nita Rama. So everybody's heard the
legend that Newton quote discovered gravity when an apple fell
on his head, And well, the story isn't exactly true.
There was an apple involved in the discovery. Apparently Newton
(12:36):
wrote about it himself and describe witnessing this falling apple
while staring out of a window at his house in Woolsthorpe, Manor.
Now what's interesting, though, is that there are a number
of places that claim they have the tree, and one
place called the King's School says that they paid to
uproot the tree and put it in their headmaster's garden. Meanwhile,
Trinity College and Cambridge claims that they have the lone
(12:58):
descendant of the original old tree outside the room where
Newton studied. What's funny is that they all get pretty
specific about the tree too. So here's how Nitaama explains it.
That the apple is a green cooking apple called the
flower of Kent, and it's this pear shaped, mealy and
actually generally unappetizing apple that changed the course of signs.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I like that we're giving this pear shaped, mediocre apple
some glorious I do think you have to get the
prize for this.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Well, thanks so much. And if you look, actually he
has stacked four apples. He's just showing off over there. Tristan.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's right, well them, Tristan, mango and meat. Thanks so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
(13:52):
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We couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
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Speaker 2 (14:02):
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Speaker 1 (14:18):
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Speaker 2 (14:19):
Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Jason who
Guess what mango?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
What's that?
Speaker 3 (00:03):
Well, so I was reading this article in Mother Jones.
It's by Rowan Jacobson.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Oh yeah, I know that byline he writes all those
great food articles, like there was that one on a
cheese a while back.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I think, yeah, yeah, Well for this article he was
writing about apples, We're gonna go with a different food topic,
mango apples and apple trees specifically. And you know, until
I read this piece, I had no idea how long
an apple tree could live?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Did you know? I have no idea?
Speaker 3 (00:25):
This isn't in your list of facts. Well, actually, I'm
just going to quote him here. It says, even when abandoned,
an apple tree can live more than two hundred years,
and like the giving tree in shel Silverstein's book, it
will wait patiently for the boy to return. There is
a bent old black Oxford tree and Hollowell, Maine that
is approximately two centuries old and still gives a crop
(00:46):
of midnight purple apples each fall.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I've actually never heard of midnight purple apples. We're learning
so many things today.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Well, apparently the US used to have thousands of different
varieties of apples in the eighteen hundreds and the styles
are really astonished. And since we're getting into fall and
apple picking season, we thought it'd be fun to do
a list of nine things all about apples. So let's
dig it. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.
(01:31):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and sitting behind the soundproof
glass trying to stack apples three on top of each other.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
How long do you think he's been doing this? It's been.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I guess that's how tall as smurf is supposed to be.
Three apples, three apples. Our friend and producer Tristan McNeil
always up to something.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
What a weirdo, but we love him. So I'm actually
happy you picked apples as a topic because our cute
little neighbor Ben, who is the best dressed gentleman on
our block.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
About Ben Bowl in the podcaster here, I was like,
he's not that little or well dressed.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Actually he is well dressed. But our neighbor brought these
like little bag of apples over this morning because he'd
gotten apple picking this weekend, and in Georgia, I mean
it's late September here, but it is so warm, I
don't really think of it as apple picking season, and
seeing that was almost my first reminder that it was
fall now. But where do you want to start?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well, hoy, don't we start with just the varieties of apples.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I know we mentioned just how many there used to
be here in the States, And I found this list
of eighteen apples with these incredible names that our friend
Erica Okrant did for mental flaws, and the names are
just so great. So we've got spartan dog, snout, Winterstein,
rusty Coat, cor de bouffe, which is one of my favorites,
which means heart of beef, and my favorite American mother.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So those are some tough sounding names and they almost
sound like uh punk rock fans or something.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Actually, it's funny you say that, because there is one
with an umlot that looks like a hair band.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
It's called Ootweiler spot lot. I think I'm sure I
said that right.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
And it does not sound appealing the way you say that.
They're right, But you know, docs now isn't like an
apple I'm super keen to bite into. But I am curious, like,
in reading all these descriptions, are there any of these
rare varietals that you're actually eager to try.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I mean, there was actually something in that row in
jacobson piece. So, like we mentioned, in the mid eighteen hundreds,
there were thousands of different types of apples, and as
industrial agriculture came to the forefront, apple growers picked a
handful of varieties to promote, not often settling on the
ones that were the heartiest to transport for obvious reasons,
which is.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Why I red delicious are so popular, but you know,
not really the most tasty of apples.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
But one of the apples that Jacobson writes about is
called the Harrison apple, and as he puts it, quote,
it was the pride of Newark, New Jersey, renown in
the early eighteen hundreds for making a golden champagne like
cider that might have been the finest in the world.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So did we just get rid of it because it
didn't transport?
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Well no, I mean it was lost for a few
decades actually because of prohibition and there was no real
reason to keep growing them. But then in the late
nineteen seventies, this apple detective wouldn't this be a great job?
He was an apple detective and he found one old
tree in New Jersey. He grafted it and he started
growing them again. And I haven't tried the champagne sider,
but it's definitely on my to do list.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So that's really interesting that they grafted a branch to
make that happen. And I guess that's common for growing fruit.
But one thing I didn't know until you know, we
talked about this topic was that you can't actually grow
a great apple tree from just planning a seed of
any apple. And this is actually how BuzzFeed puts it. Quote,
if you ate a macintosh apple and planted the seed,
the tree it grew would produce apples that looked and
(04:38):
tasted nothing like macintoshes. So instead of planning seeds, growers
attach a cutting from the genetically desirable tree onto an
existing branch or sapling called a rootstock, so that the
grafted bit produces apples genetically identical did those on the tree.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
It was cut from.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I mean, obviously I knew a little bit about grafting,
but I don't know why it was so surprising to me.
I think just because I had this like romantic old
idea of like Johnny Apple seeds, scattering seeds, and these
beautiful tasty apples growing from them. But you know that's
almost never how you get great apples.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
You know, One thing I realized as I was reading
up on this was how little I knew about apple production.
Like farmers at apple orchards actually rent thousands of bees
and hives from beekeepers each season just to pollinate their trees.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Did you know this?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I did not realize there was a rental market for bees.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yeah, but a good one.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I know. In New York, some of our neighbors used
to rent a cat to come to their place just
to run around and lead the scent to keep away mice,
which is equally weird to me.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Weird and now scary. All of a sudden, you get
one more place to be scared of. Well, yeah, so
what happens is you rent bees for a couple of
weeks and then the beekeeper comes back and takes the
hive to another orchard. At least I think that's how
it works. But I was reading about this Georgia farmer
who was saying he doesn't need to rent bees because
there are just so many types around, just naturally. And
this was from a story reported on by Wabe. But
(05:52):
the scientist from a local college came by and he
referred to this one orchard as the bee Eden, and
so here's his quote about it. The first time I
came here during bloom was eye opening for me. It
looked like almost the entire orchard was kind of on fire,
was smoking like this black mist. Get up in there
and you actually realize it's not smoke. It's just thousands
(06:13):
and thousands and thousands of bees and they're all native.
So what's crazy is that he found more than one
hundred and fifty species of bees at this.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
One apple orchard of crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, including a type of bee that mines under the
trees and has an underground city in the dirt.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, that's amazing. Well, I have one last apple growing
factor and then we can talk about other things. But
apparently Japan created some of the largest and most beautiful
apples in the world. And if you've read about the
giant single package strawberries they give for Valentine's Day, or
like the square watermelon they produce, you know that the
culture around cultivating this beautiful produce is very real, and
(06:49):
apples are no exception. So I found this article on
the University of Cincinnati magazine from this professor who was
writing about her experience in Japan. And apparently farmers will
climb ladders and pluck the four outer blooms on an apple,
leaving only the center one because it creates an apple
that's thirty percent larger than the standard American apple. And
this is all done by hand. And then early in
(07:10):
the season, when the apples are still just an inch big,
they actually discard all the imperfect ones, like they know
at that young like that they're not going to be beautiful, yeah,
And then they take all the promising ones and they
put these special wax paper bags on them. And not
only does this paper bag system keep out the pest,
but it supposedly extends the like storage life and the
flavor of the fruits. And then they also put different
(07:32):
wax colored paper on because it triggers the color jeans
of the apples, and it's kind of crazy. They leave
on to work. They leave them on for ten to
fourteen days, and then they remove the bags, and then
they give the apples pure sunlight because that's what gives
them sweetness. But to make sure the apples get even
sweetness everywhere, they actually rotate the apples on the on
the branches by hand.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
They rotate them on the brand that they wouldn't be
pulled off by doing that.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
No, they carefully rotate them. They take away any leaves
that are causing shades. They even put these like white
reflective mats underneath so that the bottom of the apples
get a perfect tan. It's crazy. And then for the
biggest apples, which are obviously going to be sold as gifts,
they put on these stickers to create tattoos on the
apples that say things like best wishes for a long
life or or this one Japanese pop star put images
(08:20):
of his face on it to.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Get out to fans.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
It's just kind of amazing. But the professor ended the
article by saying, quote, this intensive work results in apples
that are absolutely beautiful and flawless. Our apples look scruffy
in comparison. Yeah, I mean it so much work. All right,
So we've done about five facts. Now I think, what
do you say? We reel off some quick ones about
apples you don't want to hear more about Japanese apple
com That was pretty interesting. So here's what I found
(08:45):
about the nineteen oh four Olympic marathon race and a
truly bad apple. And of course reading about the old
Olympics reminds you of just how different the competition was
back then. Like in nineteen oh four, Felix Carbajal ran
the race in cutoff trousers and a beret for some reason.
And according to Smithsonian, he saw someone eating peaches along
the way and snatched one or two and ate them.
(09:06):
But he was still hungry for fruit, so he stopped
in an orchard along the way and ate a bunch
of apples, and then a few miles later he realized
they were bad apples and he got the stomach cramp,
so he laid down, took a nap, and when he
woke up, he kept running.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
He was a butterfly. I thought you were telling the
story of like that's kind of what He was still hungry.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Then he took a nap, but he took a nap,
started running again, and he finished in fourth place.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Wow, in his fancy shorts. That's pretty great. Yeah, oh,
that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
All right.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Well, here's something I hadn't heard before.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
It It comes from the New York Times, and they
were actually talking to this curator at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art and discussing how artists spends so many hours
just trying to represent a real fruit on canvas, you know,
trying to get the color and the shape just completely accurate.
Now partially because they're inspired by Seyson. But what's funny
is that Sezon was a very slow painter. And as
(10:00):
he puts it, he says that Seisan used artificial fruit
partially because he didn't want it rotting in the time
that he was trying to capture.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I doubt that that's really true, but it gives you
an idea of just how slow you was.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
That is interesting. Well, kind of like how Audubon used
to paint birds by killing them and fixing them the
wires on branches and like that. It's so grim, But
we've got two more apple facts to go, so let's
get to those right after a break. So have I
(10:40):
told you that Ruby is obsessed with making fruit salads
and just forcing them on people lately?
Speaker 3 (10:45):
You have not, although given her weird obsessions, this doesn't Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So I walked in the house the other day and
she said, who things, I make a great fruit salad.
Raise your hand, dad, wis in your hand?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Raised you gotta be honest with that's pretty good. Now,
are they any good?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I mean, it's surprising how good it is for a
five year old to me at least. But she's so
cocky about it. Like we went to this Korean restaurant
last week and she looked at the food that came
out and then she just kind of like turned to
the waiter and said, I make a great fruit salad.
If you want, I can come back and show you how,
Like it's a secret or something. It's so ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Pretty great, all right, So we're talking apples and the
pressure is on. I'd love this talk about Ruby. In fact,
I think her obsessions deserve a night at some point.
But what's your last factor of the day?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Mango?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Maybe Why New York is called a big Apple?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Oh yeah, a good one.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
So New York City does produce a lot of apples,
but according to history dot com, the nickname doesn't have
to do with the fruit production. Apparently the name comes
from this newspaper writer in the twenties who overheard these
New Orleans stable hens talking about traveling to these big
races in New York and they called it the Big
Apple because it was considered this like big time venue.
But he liked it so much he just kept using it,
(11:56):
and it caught on with jazz musicians in the thirties.
But apparently the city she forgot the name for about
forty years, and then it was revived in the seventies
for a tourism campaign and that's when it really stuck.
But you know, what's interesting to me is that New
York hasn't always been partial to apples. In the sixteen hundreds,
the Dutch actually called the city New Orange for a
brief period in honor of William of Orange.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Oh wow, all right, Well, I'm going to end this
one on Isaac Newton. It just felt like the right
thing to do in a story I found on him
from our friends at Nita Rama. So everybody's heard the
legend that Newton quote discovered gravity when an apple fell
on his head, And well, the story isn't exactly true.
There was an apple involved in the discovery. Apparently Newton
(12:36):
wrote about it himself and describe witnessing this falling apple
while staring out of a window at his house in Woolsthorpe, Manor.
Now what's interesting, though, is that there are a number
of places that claim they have the tree, and one
place called the King's School says that they paid to
uproot the tree and put it in their headmaster's garden. Meanwhile,
Trinity College and Cambridge claims that they have the lone
(12:58):
descendant of the original old tree outside the room where
Newton studied. What's funny is that they all get pretty
specific about the tree too. So here's how Nitaama explains it.
That the apple is a green cooking apple called the
flower of Kent, and it's this pear shaped, mealy and
actually generally unappetizing apple that changed the course of signs.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I like that we're giving this pear shaped, mediocre apple
some glorious I do think you have to get the
prize for this.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Well, thanks so much. And if you look, actually he
has stacked four apples. He's just showing off over there. Tristan.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
That's right, well them, Tristan, mango and meat. Thanks so
much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
(13:52):
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things.
We couldn't even begin to understand.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Noel Bred made the theme song and does the mixy
mixy sound thing.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Jerry Roland does the exact producer thing.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eves.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Jeffcote gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Good review for us.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Do we forget Jason?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Jason who
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