March 11, 2025 • 28 mins
In the words of Homer Simpson: "Donuts... is there anything they can't do?" From curing scurvy, to bringing religions together, to explaining the universe, Will and Mango dig into 9 incredible donut facts... plus, Emily Post gives us a workaround for dunking your donuts the polite way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So you know what I think is completely underrated, like
criminally underrated, is Intimen's Donuts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh heck, yeah, I'm with John.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I mean, when I was a kid, I loved Intimate
so much, and today I feel like you only see
occasional references to them. You know, you might see him
on Seinfeld or sometimes on thirty Rock episodes where Tina
fags them a shoutout. But as a kid, I loved
anytime my mom brought home those powdered donuts or or
even the chocolate covered ones as a tree. And you know,
I just thought mister and missus Edemon must have been
(00:45):
like the luckiest person in the world because they could
just snag donuts whenever they wanted. But it turns out
there actually was an actual mister Entemen and a whole
family of Entemens. They started with a bakery in Brooklyn
and then they moved out to Breezy Bay, Shore Long Island,
and they were kind of a big deal. Like they
used to sell cakes to franksin Natra. Did you know
(01:06):
that I did not know this. No, yeah, it's pretty amazing.
And then eventually they started selling straight to grocery stores
across the country. But I actually had no idea how
big their operation was. They ran a fourteen acre pastream
factory turning out delicious donuts along with crumbcakes and other
treats that I'm sure everyone knows about. But that's like
(01:26):
twelve football fields lined up just for delicious doughnuts.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And that would have been a dream as a kid,
you know. And I throw in as a kid so
as not tap to embarrass myself by saying, it's actually
a dream now to just be able to go stand
around that many donuts. That's wild, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
But when the longest serving entimen, Charles, died a couple
of years ago at the healthy age of ninety two,
do you know what his sun revealed?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
What's that that he.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Never ate the treats? His son said, he just wasn't
a dessert guy. Is that insane?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That is ridiculous and one of the saddest things I've
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I know, But it's just one of nine facts you
absolutely have to know about donuts.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to
(02:28):
Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and on
the other side of the soundproof glass. Oh, this is
an interesting one, Mango. Dylan has this big sign and
it says no donut left behind. Yeah, he's looking really
serious about this, and he's got a whole bunch of
pastries out on the table. I think he's got some Zeppees,
(02:48):
some Cruilers, some Munchkins, the whole variety here. I think
there's actually some Berliners in there. So apparently he wants
to shed some light on the varieties of donuts without
holes and give them their due. You know, Dylan is
just so considerate, he really is. That's our friend and
producer of course, and Fagan. So, Mango, are you a
big donut guy? I mean I like donuts. I find
(03:09):
them delightful with coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
We've got a donut plant nearros so we go out
to donuts occasionally, but they're not generally something I crave
these days. You know, when I'm around them, I definitely
eat too many. But weirdly, my biggest memory with donuts
is from when I was a kid. Our pediatric dentist
was right next to a Dunkin Donuts, and every time
I was done with an appointment, we would go get
a donut.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And it just feels so.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I get a sugar retreat after, you know, take care
of your teeth and get fluoride on them or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That makes me like your parents that much more. Mango,
that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And my dentist was also awesome. So like, the whole
experience was wonderful. But are you a donutut?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I love donuts, Mango, and I actually you were talking
about Intemen's earlier. So there's another variety called donuts. I
don't know if you call them donuts or donuts what
I'm really sure they come in the little bags. And
so you know this. There's a g people that I
get together every year. We go to a different place
around the country and we make up our own race
somewhere in the woods. And every year, and I'm not
(04:08):
making this up, we always bring bags of chocolate and
white powdered donuts and everybody gets one and you hold
it up in the air for a photo and then
you eat it because it gives you that TurboPower to
run the race. I don't know where the science is
behind that, but we do that every year. But there's
a lot of signs behind that, so much science behind
it. It helps you run super great in the woods. It's
(04:28):
specifically the woods. A donut helps you run. But anyway,
we should eventually get into this episode, So why don't
you start by giving us just a little bit of
donut background on why we're doing this show on donuts.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. So one of the interesting things about donuts is
that they're just about every culture in some form, Like
the Smithsonian says that there are fossils of fried dough
on ancient indigenous settlements in the Southwest, And of course
you can still eat like incredibly yummy fried dough and
fry bread and soapapias from indigenous bakers there today. And
(05:00):
I don't think you can overstate just how much donuts
actually tie the world together. At least three of the
world's major religions have traditions of fried dough for key celebrations,
including Hanukkah, Ramadan and Bennet's for like Fat Tuesday and Carnival.
And with over ten billion donuts made in the US
each year, Americans really can't get enough. So with today's episode,
(05:21):
we thought, you know, maybe we could bring the whole
world together with something delicious and celebrate the donuts many
gifts to modern mankind.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So what fact do you want to kick off with today?
I just got chill bumps with you, say, bit, that's
pretty great. Well, you know my fondness for maritime history,
so naturally my first fact comes from the sea. So
without a sailor and a bunch of queasy stomachs at sea,
we might not have the standard donut shape that we're
all super familiar with. And it goes back to about
(05:50):
eighteen forty seven. There was a sailor named Hanson Gregory
and he was making his way up the maritime corporate ladder.
He was actually only sixteen years old, which I guess
at that point that wasn't super young, but still that's impressive. Exactly, So,
Gregory was working on ships in the lime trade, and
this was off the coast of his native state of Maine.
So his mother, like any good mother, would pack donuts
(06:12):
to see with him. And these aren't just to send
him like a taste of home, but apparently also as
a way to word off scurvy.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Now I don't normally think of donuts as like a
way to ward off scurvy, So what was special about
these donuts?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I did not either, but miss Gregory might have because
she put lemon rind into her cakes. At that point
in time, in the early US, donuts were just big
lumps of dough that were fried in animal fat. Now,
on the upside, they were supposed to keep well, which
is why she prepared her spiced and lemon scented cake
that way. But on the downside, Hanson said that the
donuts were so greasy. In fact, the donuts would often
(06:48):
just sort of sit in his fellow sailors tummies and
it would give them aches and pains and just make
them pretty uncomfortable. So why is that Well, part of
the reason is that they often weren't cooked through completely.
But Gregory had a solution to this. So the way
he tells it, and this is actually reported in the
Washington Post back in nineteen sixteen, when Gregory was back
on land in the town of Quincy, Massachusetts, he took
(07:11):
a tin cap to a pepper jar and started cutting
out the oily undercook centers of these donuts. And then
later on one of his short leaves. He had a
tinsmith make him this cutter that would help make that
hole in the center, and he left it with his
mother to make new donuts with this hole taken out,
and she started selling them around home and they just
kind of took off. So fried dough without the greasy center,
(07:34):
what's not to like about this?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So, I mean, obviously, like you're taking out this disgusting
middle part that isn't cooked through, Like, does he end
up copyriting this ten like, you know, he's improved the
donut in a major way.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Now, Yeah, it's a really good question. So Hanson actually
told the Post, I don't suppose Perry could patent the
North Pole or Columbus could pat in America. Instead, he
let the world have his delicious innovation. But that didn't
keep him from bragging about what he brought to the
table here.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So I'm guessing he doesn't get a piece of like
this multi billion dollar donut industry.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
All of which really has him to think, Yeah, it's
really wild. If he knew what was eventually coming, he
might have wanted more of a piece of it, but
he certainly kept the bragging rights, and wildly enough, he
told the Post that story from a sailor's retirement home
in Quincy, Massachusetts, which is also the home of the
original Dunkin Donuts just thirty five years later. Anyway, I
(08:27):
thought that was pretty interesting. So what he got next
to mego?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So the next fact I have is that donuts were
named in the nineteen thirty four Chicago World's Fair, which
was referred to as the Century of Progress Fair, and
they were declared the food hit of the century. Now,
oddly enough, donuts were supposed to be a vision of
the future, and the reason kind of goes back to
the same issue Henson Gregory was trying to solve for.
(08:50):
So donuts cooked in vats of lard were super, super greasy.
In fact, the original Dutch name for that kind of
donut that became really popular in New York and up
and down the Eastern Seaboard was oily cake, which you know,
doesn't sound so appetizing.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It's not great branding.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But more than that, doughnuts were also really really stinky,
Like they had this foul smell that theatergoers in New
York City actually like complained about because these stale oily
aromas were just waffed through the air. And so there
was this theater in New York. There's a Russian Jewish
immigrant named Adolph Levitt, and he was frying up donuts
the traditional way. But then he comes up with something
(09:27):
in genius and he invents a way to keep all
that funk and closed with a donut machine.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well that's a brilliant move. So how did he do that?
Was it maybe a little less hog fat or what? Yeah,
I mean that's part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
But it took him from nineteen twenty when he had
this idea to nineteen thirty one when he debuted this
spectacular machine in the window of his Mayflower Donuts in Harlem,
New York. It was the same machine he took to
the nineteen thirty four World Spare and that he sold
through catalogs to bakeries around the country. The machine used
forty percent less oil than traditional methods, but even better
(10:00):
than all of that, he used blowers to get rid
of the smell, and I enclosed the whole process and
glass which you kept in the odor. But most importantly,
donuts became entertainment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Oh wow, that long ago. So when I think of
this whole thing, like watching donuts go across the conveyor belt.
That whole bit. I associate that with Krispy Kreme, like
my kids used to love going to those stores. In
two hundreds pro sets the belt that forever and ever.
Is this the precursor to that?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Or what?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah? Totally is.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So his machine drew crowds to the windows. In fact,
the New Yorker covered it for Talk of the Town
and they wrote, quote, doughnuts float dreamily through a grease
canal and a glass enclosed machine, walk dreamily up a
moving ramp, and tumble dreamily into an outgoing basket.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It is.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And for all of that dreaminess, it was an efficient machine.
It actually cranked out twelve hundred doughnuts every hour. And
that meant that not only could he draw people in
with the excitement of watching this automated process, which felt
like watching the future, but he could all also sell
them fresh. People could get hot doughnuts by the dozens,
and it no longer bothered neighbors because the problem with
(11:06):
the smell was completely dealt with. So mister Levitt that
first year he cleared twenty five million dollars, which is
about a half billion dollars today. And Levitt's business partner
made it sound like God's work. He said that the
machine quote has taken the donut out of the mire
of prejudice that surrounded the heavy, grease soaked product of
(11:26):
the old oaken bucket and made it into a light,
puffy product of a machine. It's so amazing that all
of this is documented. But one last thing about Levitt
and his machine. Arthur Levitt was an avowed optimist, and
all around his Mayflower Donuts he had printed quote, as
you go through life, make this your goal.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Wash the donut, not the hole. That's pretty awesome. I mean,
I don't know exactly what it means, but it has
no meaning, but it's also pretty great. I love it,
and I can only imagine that kind of optimism is
what got Fred the Baker into the donut business. Do
you remember Fred the Baker? Mango, of course, time to
make the donuts. Yes, he sounded a little weary and
didn't sound super optimistic about it, but he's the subject
(12:06):
of our next fact. So for younger listeners, Fred the
Baker was an iconic character in the Duncan Donuts ads
from nineteen eighty one all the way up till nineteen
ninety seven. So you'd see him clocking at the store
before dawn, heading back to make the donuts. And the
whole idea was to show that these donuts were always
being made fresh right there at Duncan, unlike supermarkets, which
I guess is where everybody else was buying donuts. Anyway.
(12:29):
It was played by a character actor and named Michael Vale,
who had a poor man's Tom Selleck stash about him,
and the ad campaign was this huge hit. People loved
Fred the Baker. But after about fifteen years, Duncan was
ready to move on to a new campaign. Sure, but
they worried what might happen given just how much everybody
loved Fred. So Duncan decided to do their due diligence
(12:50):
and they asked customers what they would think if Fred
the Baker just kind of stopped showing up in commercials,
maybe moved off to a farm somewhere. And guess what
they said. I mean, I'd expect people to argue for
his job. Almost they actually argued for him to get retirement.
Apparently they said Fred could leave if he were treated
like an honored friend and employee. So Duncan Donuts gave
(13:13):
him a big retirement party including a parade in Boston
and free donuts to over six million customers on his
retirement day. This was September twenty second, nineteen ninety seven,
and it's a sad little coda. Four years later, actor
Michael Vale actually died about the same exact time that
Duncan stopped making their donuts in store. No more Fred
(13:34):
Baker in all the senses. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know, I kind of want to see that survey
because it feels like, you know, if the options are
Firefred or give him a big retirement party including a parade,
like of course.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
People are going to choose that. Yeah, yeah, which which
ones of these would you choose?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So? Yeah, okay, Well, the s fifth fact is about
a man named Ted Nagoy and he's actually the reason
that four out of five donut shops in southern California
are owned by Cambodian refugees and their families.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I've actually always thought that was fascinating. So how did
Cambodians get so involved in US donut culture?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So Ted came to the US in nineteen seventy five.
This was with a wave of nearly half a million
refugees from Cambodia, where at the time the dictator Polpod
and the Khmer Rouge had taken over, and those immigrants
by and large came to the US through Camp Pendleton,
which is south of Orange County.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Eventually, Ted got a job as a janitor in a
church in the OC and another job as a gas
station attendant overnight. And while he was working at this
gas station, he saw what a great business the donut
shop next door was. Eventually he was tempted to go
over to try a donut on one of his breaks,
and he found out that donuts were not only delicious,
it actually felt kind of familiar. So numb Kong is
(14:52):
this treat from Cambodia that was fried dough made in
a ring shape, you know, just like donuts, except numb
kong were made out of rice flour. And he really
loved these donuts. He became a regular and he thought
about selling them himself. So he asked a woman at
the counter, was there any hope for him to own
a shop like this, and they actually suggested he applied
(15:13):
to the management program for their donut chain, which was Winchel's. Now,
he convinced the pastor at his church where he was
janitor to sponsor him, and the pastor obliged, and he
became the first Southeast Asian to go through this program. Now,
of course, he made a big change when he started
managing his own shop. He put his wife, Sangatini and
his kids to work. He barely slept. But you know,
(15:36):
in actually not that long, he had enough to buy
a local donut shop called Christie's. Now, what's interesting about
Ted is he didn't change the name or the donuts
they sold. He just made them around the clock, like
these really fresh and really tasty donuts. Thanks to his
and his family's tirelessness, within a year, he bought three
more shops. By nineteen eighty, just five years after arriving
(15:57):
in the US, he owned twenty shops, and even crazier,
he didn't change the names in any way or show
that they were connected. He really wasn't building a brand.
He was just keeping these mom and pop donut shops going.
And as he went he brought his community with him.
So workers, managers, shop owners themselves all came from his
friends and family, and in fact, my friend Vana's family
(16:19):
had a shop around that area too. But in addition
to the reason why, like Cambodians owned donut shops in
southern California. He's also responsible for why donut shops use
pink boxes.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Oh wow, so why is that?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So? When Ted was sourcing boxes for his donut shops,
he experienced, you know, serious sticker shock when he was
looking at the white boxes that bakeries were using, and
he asked like, did they have anything cheaper? And apparently
there was a bunch of leftover pink card stock from
this other client. It was much much cheaper. Also, it
was kind of reminiscent of the color red, which is
(16:53):
so important to Asian cultures and businesses and particularly ethnically
Chinese people like his own. Anyway, before four long, donut
shops around the country had picked up on this iconic
box color. And you look at things like Voodoo Donuts
today from Portland, their logo and boxes are pink. And
it's all thanks to this money saving venture from this
(17:13):
immigrant on the hustle. Actually, though, there's one last fact.
When Ted's wife, Sangatini, became a US citizen, she actually
took the name Christie's after their first thoughbut shop.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So pretty sweet. That is a great story, all right, Well,
here's one thing that always bugged me. So you know
that famous speech by JFK at the Berlin Wall was
back in nineteen sixty three, and he says, I beIN
ein Berliner, right, And it's supposed to be this really
stirring moment where he's expressing solidarity with the people of
Berlin who now have a big wall between the Communists
(17:43):
and the Democratic sides. But then everyone there laughed at
it because in Germany that doesn't mean I'm a citizen
of Berlin. It means I am a jelly donut. Not
quite so stirring here, And as people know, there was
a bit of laughter in the audience, but the laughter
actually wasn't immediate. It came a minute later when Kennedy said,
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So clearly people there didn't take the Berliner line as
a joke. They were actually laughing at this later comment
by Kennedy. So how do we get the story about
the jelly donut.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Well, if you order a Berliner at a bakery and
the rest of Germany, you will get a jelly donut.
But Berliners themselves don't call jelly donuts after themselves they
call them fan Kuchen. Now, the story actually originates with
a British novelist, Lynn Dayton, who wrote a book with
an unreliable narrator who claims that ik ben ein Berliner
was a joke and that German cartoonist had a field
(18:35):
day with the gaff the next day, but none of
that was actually true. It was part of his fictional
character's unreliability. So the New York Times repeated the story
in their review, and then it got repeated in American
publications for years and years. But with the advent of Wikipedia,
the Germans finally put the myth to rest. So in
the German Wikipedia entry about the speech, it has a
(18:57):
heading labeled quote misconception of the English World. So anyway,
it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That's amazing. I feel like you hear that joke everywhere,
from like Eddie Izard to you know, mention that it's
just repeated. But uh, that's funny that that's a total misconception.
I actually have a great fact I can't wait to
tell you, but we've got to hit up some ads first,
so don't touch that dial.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Welcome back to Part time Genius. We're talking about one
of our favorite topics donuts? All right, mango, what do
you have next? Well?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Did you know that the phrase dollars to donuts like
I bet dollars to donuts before donuts was dollars to buttons,
which is just.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Such a super scus fun.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I mean, dollars to doughnuts also makes no sense, but
dollars buttons just sounds weaker. So I want to go
the fact in, but I actually have it. Another fact,
and is that did you know that dunking your donuts
in coffee is officially considered bad manners?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I did not know this.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I did not know this, And cops all over the
country are being problematic to people like Emily Post who
wrote this about them in nineteen forty one. So apparently,
in nineteen forty one, the Campfire Girls did this annual
fundraiser that was a donut drive, and I'm guessing the
girl Scouts had the market cornered on cookies. And anyway,
some young enterprising Campfire Girls wrote to Emily Post column
(20:32):
to get her endorsement of dunking donuts and coffee, and
she flat out refused, like she would not endorse it.
She wrote that as much as she would like to agree,
with such an upstanding group of young people. Quote, dipping
a great round object into a coffee or teacup and
then biting into the sopping object is about as bad
(20:53):
an example of table behavior as could be found. But
she did suggest a workaround.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
That will work. Emily Post always coming up with a solution.
So what was it?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So she says, you can break off a piece of
your donut, drop it into your coffee, and use a
spoon to scoop it out and eat it, and somehow
this is better. It does not sound better to be
like trying to fish out tiny pieces of donut from
your coffee with a spoon.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
That sounds terrible. Plus the coffee.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Gets all crumbly it anyway, I have a hard disagree
with this one. The founder of Dunkin Donuts, Bill Rosenberg,
actually tried to solve it as well, except he tried
a different thing. He invented a dunker, which was a
regular cake donut, but it had a handle coming off
the ring. Do you remember these donuts?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I don't know that I do. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
They were like misshaped donuts that you would dunk, but
apparently dunk and sold Dunkers at the chain for years,
but they had to be cut by hand, and everyone
agreed that they didn't really make the dunking any easier,
and so they discontinued it in two thousand and three.
All gone, Yeah, so will what do you have for
your last facts?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All right, mango? Have you ever heard the term dough
boys for soldiers? Yeah, definitely, but I don't really know
what it means. Well, the term started in the American
Civil War, and there was actually some debate, but it
was about how buttons on the soldiers' uniforms looked like
flower dumplings, or perhaps that the soldiers polished their metal
with flour. But there's another reason to call them dough boys.
(22:26):
During the Civil War, volunteers made massive batches of donuts
to serve to the troops, and this was a tradition
that continued into World War One, actually on into World
War Two. And like we talked about earlier that sailor
Hanson Gregory had just invented the ring shaped donut and
created the ten cutter. This was something that had become
available widely and it was used pretty frequently during the
(22:47):
Civil War. Then in World War One, the Salvation Army
actually sent volunteers to France near the stalemated front lines there,
and they would make these hot, fresh donuts for the
young people serving there to remind them of home.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
It's so weird that like there are facts like this
that we don't know, you know, Like it feels like,
after all these years, I would have heard this. But
also I feel like I don't really think of donuts as.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
A very American thing. They just feel like, yeah, from
around the world, I know, you know. I'm sure they
were just happy for something fresh and delicious to eat.
But it became this huge hit, and the Salvation Army
started to hold these annual fundraisers for veterans. They would
call them Donut Day to commemorate the donut lasses or
women who sailed to the front lines there, and they'd
make them hand out donuts. The Salvation Army sold these
(23:33):
treats as fundraisers and even had eating contests and other
stunts to drum up interests and of course more revenue.
So the Washington Post reported on this in nineteen twenty two.
It was about a donut race being held by the
Ellipse just south of the White House with this gigantic
sixty eight pound four foot donuts. Now, Donut Day is
still celebrated to this day on the first Friday in June.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I feel like we need to make celebrating Donut Day
more of a tradition here, definitely. So here's my last
fact which kind of blows my mind. Astrophysicists at the
University of Leone in France examined images from the earliest
times of the universe, and in twenty twenty one they
surmise that our universe is just one giant donut.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's some real science yet again, but actually I have
no idea what that means.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Mango. Yeah, so it's obviously not that it's made of
flower and fat and yeast. What we're talking about is
the shape, and the idea is that the universe is
closed in all three dimensions and shaped like a three
D donut of truly cosmic but not infinite size. This
theory posits that the universe is finite, with the entire
cosmos being only three or four times what we can
(24:46):
observe now. Astronomers agree that the universe is still flat,
meaning that parallel line state parallel in perpetuity. But while
we know as geometry, what these scientists are positing is
a different topology where the spatial relationships separate from shapes.
It's suggesting that our universe might be multiply connected, and
dimensions of our universe will connect back to each other. Now,
(25:09):
I know this sounds super confusing, but the astrophysicist Paul
Cutter actually explained it really well in an article on
life science, and this is what he said. If you
take a flat piece of paper, clearly parallel lines remain parallel.
Now you roll it into a cylinder. Still, all parallel
lines remain parallel, not diverging or connected. But now curl
the ends of the cylinder around to connect them. You
(25:30):
have a donut shape. The parallel lines still don't diverge
or connect, but the lines are no longer infinite, and
knowing this can help us measure the full size of
the universe. It also means that while technically you could
travel in one direction and wind up back where you begin,
you can't really do that. Like, the universe is constantly expanding,
often faster than the speed of light, so you can
(25:51):
never really catch up to yourself.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I'm just going to have to take your word for
it on this one. That is fascinating but also pretty
complicated and in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, donuts
is there anything they can't do? You know? Also, I
really love the fact that I should be dunking my
donuts and pieces with a spoon. So I think we're
gonna have to give you the trophy for that one, Mango.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
I know it feels so disgusting, and I love that
so proper, and I love that I'm going to be
a diner's just correcting people from now on. But I
will take the trophy. That is it for today's episode.
Remember if you've got donut facts to share, drop us
a line on our Instagram at Part Time Genius, or
you can always email our moms at Petgenius moms at
(26:33):
gmail dot com. Now from Gabe, Dylan, Marywill and myself,
thank you so much for listening. And I also have
to shout out to my wife Lizzie Jacobs, who research
and wrote for this episode. Lizzie is particularly good at
taking us on wrong turns on vacations that somehow accidentally
find donut shops. Love it, and it happens so much
that all of us think it's no longer a coincidence anyway.
(26:56):
That is it for this week's Part Time Genius.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Thank you so much for listen.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
This show is hosted by.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Will Pearson and me Mongaige Heatikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from
(27:41):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Guess what Will? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So you know what I think is completely underrated, like
criminally underrated, is Intimen's Donuts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh heck, yeah, I'm with John.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I mean, when I was a kid, I loved Intimate
so much, and today I feel like you only see
occasional references to them. You know, you might see him
on Seinfeld or sometimes on thirty Rock episodes where Tina
fags them a shoutout. But as a kid, I loved
anytime my mom brought home those powdered donuts or or
even the chocolate covered ones as a tree. And you know,
I just thought mister and missus Edemon must have been
(00:45):
like the luckiest person in the world because they could
just snag donuts whenever they wanted. But it turns out
there actually was an actual mister Entemen and a whole
family of Entemens. They started with a bakery in Brooklyn
and then they moved out to Breezy Bay, Shore Long Island,
and they were kind of a big deal. Like they
used to sell cakes to franksin Natra. Did you know
(01:06):
that I did not know this. No, yeah, it's pretty amazing.
And then eventually they started selling straight to grocery stores
across the country. But I actually had no idea how
big their operation was. They ran a fourteen acre pastream
factory turning out delicious donuts along with crumbcakes and other
treats that I'm sure everyone knows about. But that's like
(01:26):
twelve football fields lined up just for delicious doughnuts.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And that would have been a dream as a kid,
you know. And I throw in as a kid so
as not tap to embarrass myself by saying, it's actually
a dream now to just be able to go stand
around that many donuts. That's wild, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
But when the longest serving entimen, Charles, died a couple
of years ago at the healthy age of ninety two,
do you know what his sun revealed?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
What's that that he.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Never ate the treats? His son said, he just wasn't
a dessert guy. Is that insane?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That is ridiculous and one of the saddest things I've
ever heard.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
I know, But it's just one of nine facts you
absolutely have to know about donuts.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
So let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to
(02:28):
Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and on
the other side of the soundproof glass. Oh, this is
an interesting one, Mango. Dylan has this big sign and
it says no donut left behind. Yeah, he's looking really
serious about this, and he's got a whole bunch of
pastries out on the table. I think he's got some Zeppees,
(02:48):
some Cruilers, some Munchkins, the whole variety here. I think
there's actually some Berliners in there. So apparently he wants
to shed some light on the varieties of donuts without
holes and give them their due. You know, Dylan is
just so considerate, he really is. That's our friend and
producer of course, and Fagan. So, Mango, are you a
big donut guy? I mean I like donuts. I find
(03:09):
them delightful with coffee.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
We've got a donut plant nearros so we go out
to donuts occasionally, but they're not generally something I crave
these days. You know, when I'm around them, I definitely
eat too many. But weirdly, my biggest memory with donuts
is from when I was a kid. Our pediatric dentist
was right next to a Dunkin Donuts, and every time
I was done with an appointment, we would go get
a donut.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And it just feels so.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
I get a sugar retreat after, you know, take care
of your teeth and get fluoride on them or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
That makes me like your parents that much more. Mango,
that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And my dentist was also awesome. So like, the whole
experience was wonderful. But are you a donutut?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I love donuts, Mango, and I actually you were talking
about Intemen's earlier. So there's another variety called donuts. I
don't know if you call them donuts or donuts what
I'm really sure they come in the little bags. And
so you know this. There's a g people that I
get together every year. We go to a different place
around the country and we make up our own race
somewhere in the woods. And every year, and I'm not
(04:08):
making this up, we always bring bags of chocolate and
white powdered donuts and everybody gets one and you hold
it up in the air for a photo and then
you eat it because it gives you that TurboPower to
run the race. I don't know where the science is
behind that, but we do that every year. But there's
a lot of signs behind that, so much science behind
it. It helps you run super great in the woods. It's
(04:28):
specifically the woods. A donut helps you run. But anyway,
we should eventually get into this episode, So why don't
you start by giving us just a little bit of
donut background on why we're doing this show on donuts.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yeah. So one of the interesting things about donuts is
that they're just about every culture in some form, Like
the Smithsonian says that there are fossils of fried dough
on ancient indigenous settlements in the Southwest, And of course
you can still eat like incredibly yummy fried dough and
fry bread and soapapias from indigenous bakers there today. And
(05:00):
I don't think you can overstate just how much donuts
actually tie the world together. At least three of the
world's major religions have traditions of fried dough for key celebrations,
including Hanukkah, Ramadan and Bennet's for like Fat Tuesday and Carnival.
And with over ten billion donuts made in the US
each year, Americans really can't get enough. So with today's episode,
(05:21):
we thought, you know, maybe we could bring the whole
world together with something delicious and celebrate the donuts many
gifts to modern mankind.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
So what fact do you want to kick off with today?
I just got chill bumps with you, say, bit, that's
pretty great. Well, you know my fondness for maritime history,
so naturally my first fact comes from the sea. So
without a sailor and a bunch of queasy stomachs at sea,
we might not have the standard donut shape that we're
all super familiar with. And it goes back to about
(05:50):
eighteen forty seven. There was a sailor named Hanson Gregory
and he was making his way up the maritime corporate ladder.
He was actually only sixteen years old, which I guess
at that point that wasn't super young, but still that's impressive. Exactly, So,
Gregory was working on ships in the lime trade, and
this was off the coast of his native state of Maine.
So his mother, like any good mother, would pack donuts
(06:12):
to see with him. And these aren't just to send
him like a taste of home, but apparently also as
a way to word off scurvy.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Now I don't normally think of donuts as like a
way to ward off scurvy, So what was special about
these donuts?
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I did not either, but miss Gregory might have because
she put lemon rind into her cakes. At that point
in time, in the early US, donuts were just big
lumps of dough that were fried in animal fat. Now,
on the upside, they were supposed to keep well, which
is why she prepared her spiced and lemon scented cake
that way. But on the downside, Hanson said that the
donuts were so greasy. In fact, the donuts would often
(06:48):
just sort of sit in his fellow sailors tummies and
it would give them aches and pains and just make
them pretty uncomfortable. So why is that Well, part of
the reason is that they often weren't cooked through completely.
But Gregory had a solution to this. So the way
he tells it, and this is actually reported in the
Washington Post back in nineteen sixteen, when Gregory was back
on land in the town of Quincy, Massachusetts, he took
(07:11):
a tin cap to a pepper jar and started cutting
out the oily undercook centers of these donuts. And then
later on one of his short leaves. He had a
tinsmith make him this cutter that would help make that
hole in the center, and he left it with his
mother to make new donuts with this hole taken out,
and she started selling them around home and they just
kind of took off. So fried dough without the greasy center,
(07:34):
what's not to like about this?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So, I mean, obviously, like you're taking out this disgusting
middle part that isn't cooked through, Like, does he end
up copyriting this ten like, you know, he's improved the
donut in a major way.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Now, Yeah, it's a really good question. So Hanson actually
told the Post, I don't suppose Perry could patent the
North Pole or Columbus could pat in America. Instead, he
let the world have his delicious innovation. But that didn't
keep him from bragging about what he brought to the
table here.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So I'm guessing he doesn't get a piece of like
this multi billion dollar donut industry.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
All of which really has him to think, Yeah, it's
really wild. If he knew what was eventually coming, he
might have wanted more of a piece of it, but
he certainly kept the bragging rights, and wildly enough, he
told the Post that story from a sailor's retirement home
in Quincy, Massachusetts, which is also the home of the
original Dunkin Donuts just thirty five years later. Anyway, I
(08:27):
thought that was pretty interesting. So what he got next
to mego?
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So the next fact I have is that donuts were
named in the nineteen thirty four Chicago World's Fair, which
was referred to as the Century of Progress Fair, and
they were declared the food hit of the century. Now,
oddly enough, donuts were supposed to be a vision of
the future, and the reason kind of goes back to
the same issue Henson Gregory was trying to solve for.
(08:50):
So donuts cooked in vats of lard were super, super greasy.
In fact, the original Dutch name for that kind of
donut that became really popular in New York and up
and down the Eastern Seaboard was oily cake, which you know,
doesn't sound so appetizing.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
It's not great branding.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
But more than that, doughnuts were also really really stinky,
Like they had this foul smell that theatergoers in New
York City actually like complained about because these stale oily
aromas were just waffed through the air. And so there
was this theater in New York. There's a Russian Jewish
immigrant named Adolph Levitt, and he was frying up donuts
the traditional way. But then he comes up with something
(09:27):
in genius and he invents a way to keep all
that funk and closed with a donut machine.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Well that's a brilliant move. So how did he do that?
Was it maybe a little less hog fat or what? Yeah,
I mean that's part of it.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
But it took him from nineteen twenty when he had
this idea to nineteen thirty one when he debuted this
spectacular machine in the window of his Mayflower Donuts in Harlem,
New York. It was the same machine he took to
the nineteen thirty four World Spare and that he sold
through catalogs to bakeries around the country. The machine used
forty percent less oil than traditional methods, but even better
(10:00):
than all of that, he used blowers to get rid
of the smell, and I enclosed the whole process and
glass which you kept in the odor. But most importantly,
donuts became entertainment.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Oh wow, that long ago. So when I think of
this whole thing, like watching donuts go across the conveyor belt.
That whole bit. I associate that with Krispy Kreme, like
my kids used to love going to those stores. In
two hundreds pro sets the belt that forever and ever.
Is this the precursor to that?
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Or what?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah? Totally is.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So his machine drew crowds to the windows. In fact,
the New Yorker covered it for Talk of the Town
and they wrote, quote, doughnuts float dreamily through a grease
canal and a glass enclosed machine, walk dreamily up a
moving ramp, and tumble dreamily into an outgoing basket.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
It is.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
And for all of that dreaminess, it was an efficient machine.
It actually cranked out twelve hundred doughnuts every hour. And
that meant that not only could he draw people in
with the excitement of watching this automated process, which felt
like watching the future, but he could all also sell
them fresh. People could get hot doughnuts by the dozens,
and it no longer bothered neighbors because the problem with
(11:06):
the smell was completely dealt with. So mister Levitt that
first year he cleared twenty five million dollars, which is
about a half billion dollars today. And Levitt's business partner
made it sound like God's work. He said that the
machine quote has taken the donut out of the mire
of prejudice that surrounded the heavy, grease soaked product of
(11:26):
the old oaken bucket and made it into a light,
puffy product of a machine. It's so amazing that all
of this is documented. But one last thing about Levitt
and his machine. Arthur Levitt was an avowed optimist, and
all around his Mayflower Donuts he had printed quote, as
you go through life, make this your goal.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Wash the donut, not the hole. That's pretty awesome. I mean,
I don't know exactly what it means, but it has
no meaning, but it's also pretty great. I love it,
and I can only imagine that kind of optimism is
what got Fred the Baker into the donut business. Do
you remember Fred the Baker? Mango, of course, time to
make the donuts. Yes, he sounded a little weary and
didn't sound super optimistic about it, but he's the subject
(12:06):
of our next fact. So for younger listeners, Fred the
Baker was an iconic character in the Duncan Donuts ads
from nineteen eighty one all the way up till nineteen
ninety seven. So you'd see him clocking at the store
before dawn, heading back to make the donuts. And the
whole idea was to show that these donuts were always
being made fresh right there at Duncan, unlike supermarkets, which
I guess is where everybody else was buying donuts. Anyway.
(12:29):
It was played by a character actor and named Michael Vale,
who had a poor man's Tom Selleck stash about him,
and the ad campaign was this huge hit. People loved
Fred the Baker. But after about fifteen years, Duncan was
ready to move on to a new campaign. Sure, but
they worried what might happen given just how much everybody
loved Fred. So Duncan decided to do their due diligence
(12:50):
and they asked customers what they would think if Fred
the Baker just kind of stopped showing up in commercials,
maybe moved off to a farm somewhere. And guess what
they said. I mean, I'd expect people to argue for
his job. Almost they actually argued for him to get retirement.
Apparently they said Fred could leave if he were treated
like an honored friend and employee. So Duncan Donuts gave
(13:13):
him a big retirement party including a parade in Boston
and free donuts to over six million customers on his
retirement day. This was September twenty second, nineteen ninety seven,
and it's a sad little coda. Four years later, actor
Michael Vale actually died about the same exact time that
Duncan stopped making their donuts in store. No more Fred
(13:34):
Baker in all the senses. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know, I kind of want to see that survey
because it feels like, you know, if the options are
Firefred or give him a big retirement party including a parade,
like of course.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
People are going to choose that. Yeah, yeah, which which
ones of these would you choose?
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So? Yeah, okay, Well, the s fifth fact is about
a man named Ted Nagoy and he's actually the reason
that four out of five donut shops in southern California
are owned by Cambodian refugees and their families.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I've actually always thought that was fascinating. So how did
Cambodians get so involved in US donut culture?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So Ted came to the US in nineteen seventy five.
This was with a wave of nearly half a million
refugees from Cambodia, where at the time the dictator Polpod
and the Khmer Rouge had taken over, and those immigrants
by and large came to the US through Camp Pendleton,
which is south of Orange County.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Now.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Eventually, Ted got a job as a janitor in a
church in the OC and another job as a gas
station attendant overnight. And while he was working at this
gas station, he saw what a great business the donut
shop next door was. Eventually he was tempted to go
over to try a donut on one of his breaks,
and he found out that donuts were not only delicious,
it actually felt kind of familiar. So numb Kong is
(14:52):
this treat from Cambodia that was fried dough made in
a ring shape, you know, just like donuts, except numb
kong were made out of rice flour. And he really
loved these donuts. He became a regular and he thought
about selling them himself. So he asked a woman at
the counter, was there any hope for him to own
a shop like this, and they actually suggested he applied
(15:13):
to the management program for their donut chain, which was Winchel's. Now,
he convinced the pastor at his church where he was
janitor to sponsor him, and the pastor obliged, and he
became the first Southeast Asian to go through this program. Now,
of course, he made a big change when he started
managing his own shop. He put his wife, Sangatini and
his kids to work. He barely slept. But you know,
(15:36):
in actually not that long, he had enough to buy
a local donut shop called Christie's. Now, what's interesting about
Ted is he didn't change the name or the donuts
they sold. He just made them around the clock, like
these really fresh and really tasty donuts. Thanks to his
and his family's tirelessness, within a year, he bought three
more shops. By nineteen eighty, just five years after arriving
(15:57):
in the US, he owned twenty shops, and even crazier,
he didn't change the names in any way or show
that they were connected. He really wasn't building a brand.
He was just keeping these mom and pop donut shops going.
And as he went he brought his community with him.
So workers, managers, shop owners themselves all came from his
friends and family, and in fact, my friend Vana's family
(16:19):
had a shop around that area too. But in addition
to the reason why, like Cambodians owned donut shops in
southern California. He's also responsible for why donut shops use
pink boxes.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Oh wow, so why is that?
Speaker 1 (16:32):
So? When Ted was sourcing boxes for his donut shops,
he experienced, you know, serious sticker shock when he was
looking at the white boxes that bakeries were using, and
he asked like, did they have anything cheaper? And apparently
there was a bunch of leftover pink card stock from
this other client. It was much much cheaper. Also, it
was kind of reminiscent of the color red, which is
(16:53):
so important to Asian cultures and businesses and particularly ethnically
Chinese people like his own. Anyway, before four long, donut
shops around the country had picked up on this iconic
box color. And you look at things like Voodoo Donuts
today from Portland, their logo and boxes are pink. And
it's all thanks to this money saving venture from this
(17:13):
immigrant on the hustle. Actually, though, there's one last fact.
When Ted's wife, Sangatini, became a US citizen, she actually
took the name Christie's after their first thoughbut shop.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
So pretty sweet. That is a great story, all right, Well,
here's one thing that always bugged me. So you know
that famous speech by JFK at the Berlin Wall was
back in nineteen sixty three, and he says, I beIN
ein Berliner, right, And it's supposed to be this really
stirring moment where he's expressing solidarity with the people of
Berlin who now have a big wall between the Communists
(17:43):
and the Democratic sides. But then everyone there laughed at
it because in Germany that doesn't mean I'm a citizen
of Berlin. It means I am a jelly donut. Not
quite so stirring here, And as people know, there was
a bit of laughter in the audience, but the laughter
actually wasn't immediate. It came a minute later when Kennedy said,
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
So clearly people there didn't take the Berliner line as
a joke. They were actually laughing at this later comment
by Kennedy. So how do we get the story about
the jelly donut.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Well, if you order a Berliner at a bakery and
the rest of Germany, you will get a jelly donut.
But Berliners themselves don't call jelly donuts after themselves they
call them fan Kuchen. Now, the story actually originates with
a British novelist, Lynn Dayton, who wrote a book with
an unreliable narrator who claims that ik ben ein Berliner
was a joke and that German cartoonist had a field
(18:35):
day with the gaff the next day, but none of
that was actually true. It was part of his fictional
character's unreliability. So the New York Times repeated the story
in their review, and then it got repeated in American
publications for years and years. But with the advent of Wikipedia,
the Germans finally put the myth to rest. So in
the German Wikipedia entry about the speech, it has a
(18:57):
heading labeled quote misconception of the English World. So anyway,
it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That's amazing. I feel like you hear that joke everywhere,
from like Eddie Izard to you know, mention that it's
just repeated. But uh, that's funny that that's a total misconception.
I actually have a great fact I can't wait to
tell you, but we've got to hit up some ads first,
so don't touch that dial.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Welcome back to Part time Genius. We're talking about one
of our favorite topics donuts? All right, mango, what do
you have next? Well?
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Did you know that the phrase dollars to donuts like
I bet dollars to donuts before donuts was dollars to buttons,
which is just.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Such a super scus fun.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
I mean, dollars to doughnuts also makes no sense, but
dollars buttons just sounds weaker. So I want to go
the fact in, but I actually have it. Another fact,
and is that did you know that dunking your donuts
in coffee is officially considered bad manners?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I did not know this.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I did not know this, And cops all over the
country are being problematic to people like Emily Post who
wrote this about them in nineteen forty one. So apparently,
in nineteen forty one, the Campfire Girls did this annual
fundraiser that was a donut drive, and I'm guessing the
girl Scouts had the market cornered on cookies. And anyway,
some young enterprising Campfire Girls wrote to Emily Post column
(20:32):
to get her endorsement of dunking donuts and coffee, and
she flat out refused, like she would not endorse it.
She wrote that as much as she would like to agree,
with such an upstanding group of young people. Quote, dipping
a great round object into a coffee or teacup and
then biting into the sopping object is about as bad
(20:53):
an example of table behavior as could be found. But
she did suggest a workaround.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
That will work. Emily Post always coming up with a solution.
So what was it?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
So she says, you can break off a piece of
your donut, drop it into your coffee, and use a
spoon to scoop it out and eat it, and somehow
this is better. It does not sound better to be
like trying to fish out tiny pieces of donut from
your coffee with a spoon.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
That sounds terrible. Plus the coffee.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Gets all crumbly it anyway, I have a hard disagree
with this one. The founder of Dunkin Donuts, Bill Rosenberg,
actually tried to solve it as well, except he tried
a different thing. He invented a dunker, which was a
regular cake donut, but it had a handle coming off
the ring. Do you remember these donuts?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I don't know that I do. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
They were like misshaped donuts that you would dunk, but
apparently dunk and sold Dunkers at the chain for years,
but they had to be cut by hand, and everyone
agreed that they didn't really make the dunking any easier,
and so they discontinued it in two thousand and three.
All gone, Yeah, so will what do you have for
your last facts?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
All right, mango? Have you ever heard the term dough
boys for soldiers? Yeah, definitely, but I don't really know
what it means. Well, the term started in the American
Civil War, and there was actually some debate, but it
was about how buttons on the soldiers' uniforms looked like
flower dumplings, or perhaps that the soldiers polished their metal
with flour. But there's another reason to call them dough boys.
(22:26):
During the Civil War, volunteers made massive batches of donuts
to serve to the troops, and this was a tradition
that continued into World War One, actually on into World
War Two. And like we talked about earlier that sailor
Hanson Gregory had just invented the ring shaped donut and
created the ten cutter. This was something that had become
available widely and it was used pretty frequently during the
(22:47):
Civil War. Then in World War One, the Salvation Army
actually sent volunteers to France near the stalemated front lines there,
and they would make these hot, fresh donuts for the
young people serving there to remind them of home.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
It's so weird that like there are facts like this
that we don't know, you know, Like it feels like,
after all these years, I would have heard this. But
also I feel like I don't really think of donuts as.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
A very American thing. They just feel like, yeah, from
around the world, I know, you know. I'm sure they
were just happy for something fresh and delicious to eat.
But it became this huge hit, and the Salvation Army
started to hold these annual fundraisers for veterans. They would
call them Donut Day to commemorate the donut lasses or
women who sailed to the front lines there, and they'd
make them hand out donuts. The Salvation Army sold these
(23:33):
treats as fundraisers and even had eating contests and other
stunts to drum up interests and of course more revenue.
So the Washington Post reported on this in nineteen twenty two.
It was about a donut race being held by the
Ellipse just south of the White House with this gigantic
sixty eight pound four foot donuts. Now, Donut Day is
still celebrated to this day on the first Friday in June.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I feel like we need to make celebrating Donut Day
more of a tradition here, definitely. So here's my last
fact which kind of blows my mind. Astrophysicists at the
University of Leone in France examined images from the earliest
times of the universe, and in twenty twenty one they
surmise that our universe is just one giant donut.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
That's some real science yet again, but actually I have
no idea what that means.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Mango. Yeah, so it's obviously not that it's made of
flower and fat and yeast. What we're talking about is
the shape, and the idea is that the universe is
closed in all three dimensions and shaped like a three
D donut of truly cosmic but not infinite size. This
theory posits that the universe is finite, with the entire
cosmos being only three or four times what we can
(24:46):
observe now. Astronomers agree that the universe is still flat,
meaning that parallel line state parallel in perpetuity. But while
we know as geometry, what these scientists are positing is
a different topology where the spatial relationships separate from shapes.
It's suggesting that our universe might be multiply connected, and
dimensions of our universe will connect back to each other. Now,
(25:09):
I know this sounds super confusing, but the astrophysicist Paul
Cutter actually explained it really well in an article on
life science, and this is what he said. If you
take a flat piece of paper, clearly parallel lines remain parallel.
Now you roll it into a cylinder. Still, all parallel
lines remain parallel, not diverging or connected. But now curl
the ends of the cylinder around to connect them. You
(25:30):
have a donut shape. The parallel lines still don't diverge
or connect, but the lines are no longer infinite, and
knowing this can help us measure the full size of
the universe. It also means that while technically you could
travel in one direction and wind up back where you begin,
you can't really do that. Like, the universe is constantly expanding,
often faster than the speed of light, so you can
(25:51):
never really catch up to yourself.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I'm just going to have to take your word for
it on this one. That is fascinating but also pretty
complicated and in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, donuts
is there anything they can't do? You know? Also, I
really love the fact that I should be dunking my
donuts and pieces with a spoon. So I think we're
gonna have to give you the trophy for that one, Mango.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
I know it feels so disgusting, and I love that
so proper, and I love that I'm going to be
a diner's just correcting people from now on. But I
will take the trophy. That is it for today's episode.
Remember if you've got donut facts to share, drop us
a line on our Instagram at Part Time Genius, or
you can always email our moms at Petgenius moms at
(26:33):
gmail dot com. Now from Gabe, Dylan, Marywill and myself,
thank you so much for listening. And I also have
to shout out to my wife Lizzie Jacobs, who research
and wrote for this episode. Lizzie is particularly good at
taking us on wrong turns on vacations that somehow accidentally
find donut shops. Love it, and it happens so much
that all of us think it's no longer a coincidence anyway.
(26:56):
That is it for this week's Part Time Genius.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Thank you so much for listen.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
This show is hosted by.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Will Pearson and me Mongaige Heatikler and research by our
good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and
produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey. For more podcasts from
(27:41):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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