May 15, 2026 • 26 mins
We bake them, fry them, mash them, and even turn them into toys, but potatoes weren't always so beloved. In fact, there was a time when they were considered such a threat to humanity, they were declared illegal! Today Will and Mango are serving up nine starch-tastic facts about the humble spud, from its long journey to our tables, to Ben Franklin's role as a potato influencer, to the ridiculous parade float that inspired the term "couch potato."
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This episode originally aired on July 15, 2022.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess What Mango?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Will? All right? So I know we both love mister
potato Head. At least I remember that you loved mister
potato Head. Did you remember that I loved mister potato head?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I did not remember that at all.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, big fan, big. And you know who invented mister
potato Head. It was George Lerner, created back in nineteen
forty nine. Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So my favorite thing about mister potato heead was that
it was initially just a bag of like face parts,
and kids would supply their own potatoes to jab these
face parts into it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Right, that is exactly right. You could use any like
use your imagination here. You could use carrots, turnips, or
really any root vegetable that you wanted, But potatoes were chosen.
This was interesting. Actually I didn't know exactly why. But one,
they're cheap. Of course, they were affordable, and they were
available year round on plus, I guess you could argue
they're funnier they're mister turnip head, but I don't know that.
(01:04):
It seems debatable. But the craze then took off when
Hasbro made this big TV commercial for the product, and
they sold it was something like four million dollars worth
of these toy parts within a few months. Now, that
was a fortune then. And the interesting thing though, is
that mister potato Head actually wasn't the first potato toy
on the market.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I don't know if you knew this, I did not
know that what was before it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, it was the first with three D pieces, so
they added a D to what was being done out
there in the world. It was competing with these these
potato head toys at the time that were using two
D pieces, like more like paper product type stuff, and
so you would stick these just onto the vegetable. But
what's interesting is that in nineteen thirty one, this was
(01:46):
a full eighteen years earlier, So think about this, like
potato toy technology was not fully evolved yet. But the
Soviet Union, of course they had to be first. They
launched this guide for kids on how to play with potatoes.
So basically it was like this. It was a pretty
delightful guide on how you could use a pen knife
and match sticks and you could turn a bunch of
(02:08):
potatoes into these little playthings. And so there's this illustration
on how to make two little potato kids and have
them see song on this bigger potato. And then there
was another one on how to turn five or six
potatoes into a race car with a tiny potato driver,
or this little potato man walking his potato pig on
a string leash. It honestly is a pretty delightful guide.
(02:31):
So but but you know, seeing this charming guide made
me think of how much joy potatoes bring the world.
Whether it's ridiculous Soviet sculptures, this is not. This is
real magna potatoes. There's now more than ever we need
potatoes to bring the world joy, or a bag of
supersized fries, which I know you and I are both
(02:51):
big fans of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
In college when you thought you were a vegetarian and
yet then you realize that the potatoes had been cooked
in animal fat. But but I thought we'd make a
whole show about potatoes.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I am all about this. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer on the other side of that
soundproof glass wearing a shirt that says in my readings,
I think it says over haters. Is that what it says? Yes,
I don't know what that means, but I love it
and I feel like I need one as well. That's
(03:47):
our good pal, Ramsey. So so Mango, what's up this week?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So I want to apologize to the listeners for this tease.
We had a few I guess like a month ago
or months ago, and thank them for being so patient
because you and I got to make an episode right
before my dad passed away, and my dad just loved
it and he listened for the hospital. And you know,
(04:12):
I had every intention of just plombing through and turning
the show weekly again. But your parents are incredible and
we are just so lucky, Like both our parents were
so important and giving us love and support, and we
got to go to this incredible college and then we
chose the dumbest possible career.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, I still love this and I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Just so grateful that we get to do this. So
thank you for making time this.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Week to talk about potatoes whatever diculous topics.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So, yeah, where do you want to start?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Do you want to talk about how the universe might
be shaped like a Pringle ship, or how the Alaskan
gold Rush during it, desperate miners used to actually trade
gold for potatoes because it was so nutritious, or what.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Are you going to start with these? That's there's some
good teases there I feel like should be considered. But
I'm actually gonna start with a fact about France back
in then seventeen hundreds, when the potato mango it was
actually declared illegal. Okay, yep. So potatoes came to Europe
by way of the Spaniards, who themselves had brought the
vegetables back from the Inca Empire in South America, of course,
(05:19):
and immediately there's this real distrust of the vegetables. Distrust Yeah,
I mean partially because potatoes are not mentioned in the Bible.
I don't know if you know this fact, and partially
because they grow underground, so people are weirdly suspicious of
them and at the time they're mostly fed to pigs.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Wait wait wait, yeah, yes, so you've done like a
word search and found that potatoes aren't aren't found in
the Bible.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
That they are not. No, I did the full search. No,
I actually just read through it. I should have done
a search all, but I just kind of read through
the whole thing didn't find it once. So anyway, basically
nobody will touch these things, even hungry commoners. And then
potatoes get blamed for things like when leprosy spreads, of
course everybody blames it on the potatoes. In all this mayhem,
(06:05):
the French Parliament decides to ban the vegetable. Now, this
was around seventeen forty eight, and the potato is actually
banned until seventeen seventy two, So good, twenty four years
of no potatoes.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Wow.
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(09:06):
So I'd actually read this thing in Metal Floss years
ago that early farmers would plant potatoes on Easter and
sprinkle them with holy water because they wanted the plant
to grow safely and not be dangerous. But how do
potatoes make their way into favor in culture?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So there's this army officer Antoine Parmentier, and he gets
captured by the Prussians in the seven year war, and
so basically he's fed potatoes at this prison, and he
doesn't notice any ill effects, like he's supposed to get
leprosy and get all sick and all these other things.
He stays healthy pretty much the whole time. But also
he notices that France at the time has stopped exporting
(09:43):
grains and the Prussian army actually uses potatoes as a
replacement for it in their diet. So Parmentier looks at
all of this, and as he learns more, he realizes
that potatoes don't take that much effort to grow. So
when he's released back to France, he starts this campaign
to rehb illoitate the potato's image. He throws these dinner
parties where he serves all these potato courses to celebrities,
(10:06):
like then Franklin came to one of these things. He
gives potato flowers to Marie Antoinette, and she then popularizes
these things by wearing them in a hat. So people
start getting curious and you know, trying to figure out
what's going on with this leprosy fruit which is the potato.
But then he pulls off his greatest stunt, which I
(10:26):
haven't even mentioned yet.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So what's his greatest stunt.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He plants a potato patch. He puts a ring of
armed guards around it, so everyone starts thinking of them
as like this luxury. I mean, this really is pretty smart.
I think of them as this, you know, very valuable thing.
But then he quietly tells the guards to accept bribes
and allow people to start stealing the potatoes. So in
seventeen seventy two, all these peasants steel potatoes and treat
(10:54):
them like this precious food. And then the Paris Faculty
of Medicine finally declares the potato edible and makes them
legal again. Is amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
French science is just on top of it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I was right and know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So is Parmentier like famous in France for doing this?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, I guess kind of. And he, you know,
the potato helped France get through some difficult famines, and
Louis the sixteenth rewarded him for his work, actually declaring
how important Parmentier was keeping the masses fed. And when
he died, Parmentier's casket was actually placed in a plot
circled with potato plants, and in the middle there's this
(11:34):
bronze statue of him handing a potato to a commoner
who's standing below him.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So just so you know, I would also like a
statue of me handing out potatoes to commoners, just so
I can remember it as like a man of the people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, no, I kind of expected this. So there's already
one in the works. I've started out paying in installments
so that it'll be ready. It's going to be very expensive.
But anyway, enough about Parmentier. What fact are you going
to start with?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I've got one about baseball. So you've heard of the
old baseball trick where a first baseman might.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Walk up to the pitcher and fake hand on.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
The baseball, but actually he keeps the ball on the
glove and ye when he walks back to the bag
and the base runner steps off the base take a lead,
he sort of tags him out.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, of course, And it's like this old trick that
mostly gets used. I don't know, I feel like in
kids movies about baseball, like you remember this Rookie of
the Year, I mean, one of the greatest films of
all time.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I think, yeah, it is a very Rookie of the
Year play. But this minor league catcher for the Williamsport Bills.
His name is Dave Bresnahan. He was completely obsessed with
this trick play and this was in the late eighties,
like nineteen eighty seven, and Bresnahan was actually obsessed with
a variation of that trick using a fake baseball.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I love that n anybody was obsessed with this trick. But anyway,
how does that work?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, so in this case, the catcher replaces the ball
in his glove with the potato because you know how
people always confuse like baseballs for potato.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, it always happens.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So the way the trick works is that the catcher
accidentally throws the potato into outfield like it's an error,
and then you know, when the base runner tries to
steal home, the catcher shows that he actually has the
baseball hidden his glove the whole time and tags them out.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And do people they actually did this in baseball games.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So according to the La Times, which is where I
read about the story, I guess a few people got
away with it in their earliest days of baseball.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It was called the Tater trick.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And anyway, so Bresnahan decides he's going to pull off
the tater trick in a real game, and he goes
all out.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
He pays an artist to carve a.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Potato and paint seems on it like it's a real
baseball even picks the perfect game. He wants to do
it against the Phillies farm team in Reading because the
Philly fanatic will be there and that means they'll be
more of a crowd, right, and he starts trying to
lay the groundwork like in games before the big one,
he starts trying to pick off players at third, so
he's kind of getting this reputation as a catcher who
(13:58):
picks off players.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Anyway, the big day arrives and in the sixth inning
he gets into the perfect situation. There are two outs
and a man on third, and Reresnahan knows this is
his moment, so he comes up with this excuse. He
tells the empire that the webbing on his glove is
off and he needs to replace his glove, and then
he walks to the dugout, grabs this ridiculous carved potato
(14:21):
and then walks back.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So does anybody notice that he's doing this.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
The whole team?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like, I don't think the manager new but the whole
team starts laughing, and they're having a hard time like
controlling themselves because they know what's up. And Presidahan himself
is trying to keep it together. But when the runner
on third takes a lead and the pitch lens in
his glove, he snaps into action and he makes a
switch and he throws this potato to third, But instead
(14:47):
of overthrowing the potato past the third basement into the field,
he accidentally underthrows it and it bounces, and the potato
breaks into three pieces and it lands right in front
of the third base umpire but the player doesn't notice,
and you know, he charges home and Reresnahan shows him
the ball and tags him out, and then he walks
to the dugout.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And here's the.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Thing, right, Presihan assumes if his team follows him, the
other team will walk off too and the game will
just move on and continue.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So does this work?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Not at all?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Oh man?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
The officials are super confused. His teammates stay on the field.
In the meantime, the third base ump goes to inspect
this you know, broken up potato, and when he realized
what's happened, officials just award the runner home plate and
then Bresnahan gets pulled from the game for his Shenanigans
and the next day he's fined fifty dollars and cut
from the team.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Oh my gosh, that we have way more sad than
I expected. That's a funny trick.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Reresnahan actually didn't mind that much because he was not
that great a player, and the fans loved it, so
he became such a like fan favorite or this legend
that the team ended up retiring his jersey at the
sold out game. And uh, and they charge a dollar
for tickets where not only could you attend, but you
also got a potato with your ticket, And actually the
(16:07):
largest chunk of that potato he threw in that Phillies
game is in a jar of alcohol sitting on display
in a baseball history museum in California. So like, I
think President Ahead actually feels like he went out.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And yeah, he came out on top. That's pretty fun.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
So what do you have that's next? All right?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
How about a quick one from the Farmer's Almanac. I
know you're a fan of the Farmer's Almanacs, so I
feel like that's where my favorite of the Almanacs. Oh, definitely, definitely.
So if you've got a knife with some small rust spots,
you can actually use a potato to fix that.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So how's that work? Do you like use the potatoes
to sprub away the rust or what?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I mean? That would be one way, But according to
the Almanac and quite a few other online sources, it's
actually even easier than that. So you just insert the
knife into the potato, let it sit, and the oxalic
acid and the potato will work on the rust and
soften it so that it then rinses away.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
How great would it be if that was like the
best way to clean all your utensils, Like you just
stab them into potatoes and leave them overnight to clean them.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Be the best feelings. Just keep stabbing potatoes.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I'd have so many potatoes around.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Speaking of a lot of potatoes, here's a trend I
kind of want to bring back from twenty twelve in Japan,
and it's the McDonald's potato party.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I mean, we've established you do love McDonald's French fries.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I know with sweden sower sauce. It's it's like one
of the many food quirks and loves I have. But
about a decade ago, the McDonald's and Japan started running
a sale kind of like the dollar Menu, where large
fries were suddenly steeply discounted, And so some teens ordered
twenty three large fries and made a mountain of them
on a bunch of trays and posted to social media
(17:47):
and people just went crazy, I guess, And this is
according to giz Moto, the McDonald's and Japan use a
more polite form of Japanese, so even though it's not fancy,
you're supposed to act with like a little bit more um,
I guess. And the photo gets retweeted thousands of times,
and people are angry that kids are acting silly and
(18:08):
being a bother to the McDonald's, and some people are
just stunned to see that many fries in one place.
But the biggest chorus around these photos is this argument
that if you order that many fries, you have to
eat them or is disrespectful.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And I would agree with that. But did this become
a trend?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, Like potato parties started popping up all over the place,
and some kids saw the twenty three fry order as
a challenge. Obviously, so in Okinawa, some kids ordered forty
large fries. At the McDonald's near Okayama Station, a small
group of kids ordered sixty large fries, and that photo
got retweeted tens of thousands of times apparently, and so, like,
(18:46):
you know, the kids are supposed to finish these fries,
and they actually do, like like I think, it takes
them about three hours, but.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The employees get super upset.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Apparently the fries took up a whole large table on
their own, and then all the people watching these kids
house these fries take up another large table. So you know,
it felt like they were losing business. And one employee
from the restaurant took to Twitter and just asked for
it to quote please stop, please stop. That said, if
(19:18):
you are heading trays and trays of fries over to kid,
you've got to expect there's gonna be a little chaos.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
When you said the three hours, though, the only thing
I could think of is like, while the fries are delicious,
after about thirty minutes, if they're sitting there, they go
from really good to pretty gross pretty fast. I wonder
they must have just kept ordering them rather than ordering
a bunch at one time, because I don't know I'd
have to see how that works. But how did the
(19:44):
trend finally die down?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So McDonald's just up the price on the fries to
their regular price and it kind of stopped really soon
after that, which is a pretty simple fix.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, yeah, all right. So here's a weird When I
was watching this documentary about potato chips and ed her
from Hers Potato Chips, and he said that if they
still made potato chips the way they used to, this
was about fifty years ago when the company started, they
would have to charge twenty five dollars a bag.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Twenty five dollars the back. Why is that?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I mean, that's just how much the industry has automated
since then. It's actually kind of amazing to watch how
it all works. So when a truck full of potatoes
goes to the Hers factory, the trailers pulled onto a
scale where the potatoes are then weighed, and then it
lifts the potatoes and dumps the potatoes onto a conveyor
belt and the whole process starts kind of without humans.
(20:36):
The whole thing is starting there. And instead of watching
to see which potatoes are colored green and which ones
are good, this computer sorts all of this out and
the imperfect potatoes and chips are all weeded out along
the way. Ed Hear actually says that when his mom
was involved in the business and used to supervise the
bagging of these chips, they would bag five to ten
(20:56):
pounds of chips every hour, and now with fewer people,
more computers on the line, they bag five to six
tons of potato chips every hour, which is insane.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That is amazing, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Speaking of potato chip bags, here's a quick interesting one.
So people absolutely hate that potato chip bags are over
fifty percent air. In fact, Korean college students in twenty
fourteen protested this fact by taking one hundred and sixty
potato chip bags, binding them together with plastic and tape,
and using them to build a raft to float across
the river. And apparently two hundred plus people watch that feet.
(21:32):
But the question remains, why do potato chips have so
much air in them?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Mm hmm, yeah, And do you have an answer to this?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, it is intentional. It is called slackvill and that's
the industry term. Basically, those bags are pumped full of
a little extra nitrogen to both keep the chips preserved
but also because if the bags are packed with air,
they won't get mishandled, and you won't end up with
a bag full of crumbs. A way to protect you
from getting a half bag of like fully round chips.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Oh that's interesting. I guess we always assume that it's
just too to be cheap or cheat us out of
a certain number of chips or something. But that's pretty interesting.
All right, We've got a couple more facts to go,
but let's pause for just a quick break. Welcome back
(22:31):
to part time Genius, where we're talking about a really
important summer topic, potatoes, of course. So Mango, we've each
got one fact to go. What do you want to
close with?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, I know you're probably a little late to celebrate this,
but I want to point out to you that in
two thousand and eight, the UN declared it the International
Year of the Potato.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Okay, well, we're just what fourteen years behind celebrating this
historic event. That's never too late, It's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Well, it's kind of interesting why the UN decided to
do this. As they put it, they wanted to shed
new light on a hidden treasure, and part of the
reason is that growing potatoes is surprisingly efficient in combating
hunger because potatoes aren't really traded across borders. Because they're
so easy to grow across climates from low to high altitudes,
(23:18):
and because they're not really globally traded like most cereal crops,
they offer a lot of food security and farmers don't
have to worry about the prices fluctuating because of global markets.
Apparently that year, places like Peru encouraged locals to use
potato flour to reduce the reliance on wheat imports, and
both the Chinese and Indian governments leaned into potato production
to feed their growing populations. And I kind of like that,
(23:40):
after all that time, the UN finally gave the potato
it's due in this giant report.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I agree. I kind of like that too.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
So how are you gonna close this up?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
All?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, I was torn. There were a couple facts I
was looking at, but I'm gonna save one of them
for this. I think we need to do a follow
up with nine more great facts about potatoes because they're
just so much. But how about a fact about couch potatoes?
So unlike most etymology, which can be pretty frustrating because
the origins are always you know, pretty murky. We've dealt
(24:10):
with that on several topics before. There is an exact
start date for the word couch potato. He first appeared
in print back in nineteen seventy nine, the year both
you and I were born. This was in the La
Times while referencing a float on a parade route. According
to the article quote, the couch potatoes will be lying
(24:30):
on couches watching television as they are towed toward the
parade route. According to the excellent site Today, I learned
a man named Tom Locino was the first to coin
the phrase. He had this good buddy named Bob Armstrong,
and they'd already started this little group called the boob Tubers,
and it was kind of this ridiculous protest against the
California health craze at the time, and the boob tubers
(24:54):
were basically committed to sitting in front of the TV
and snacking instead of jazzer siding or whatever the the
fad was at the time. So after recruiting their friends,
they launched this float in the Duda Parade.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
None of this sounds real, this.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Joke parade to parody the Tournament of Roses Parade. But
one day in nineteen seventy six, Lsino called up Armstrong
and when his girlfriend answered the phone, he asked, Hey,
is the couch Potato there? And apparently she looked over
saw her boyfriend just planted on the couch and started laughing.
And after that they rebranded as the couch Potatoes and
(25:29):
tried to trademark the word, but it actually became too
popular in pop culture for them to protect the mark.
I had actually never heard this story before, you know,
doing the prep for this episode.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So that is so funny that there's actually a person
who invented that phrase, Tom Lasino. I think you deserve
this week's trophy for best Fact, But since I don't
actually know you, I think will you should accept this
award in his honor.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
All right, I guess I'll do that. Thanks so much, Tom,
I appreciate it, buddy. That's it for this week's Part
Time Genius. Will be back with more very important facts soon.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Guess What Mango?
Speaker 3 (00:12):
What's that?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Will? All right? So I know we both love mister
potato Head. At least I remember that you loved mister
potato Head. Did you remember that I loved mister potato head?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I did not remember that at all.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, big fan, big. And you know who invented mister
potato Head. It was George Lerner, created back in nineteen
forty nine. Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So my favorite thing about mister potato heead was that
it was initially just a bag of like face parts,
and kids would supply their own potatoes to jab these
face parts into it.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Right, that is exactly right. You could use any like
use your imagination here. You could use carrots, turnips, or
really any root vegetable that you wanted, But potatoes were chosen.
This was interesting. Actually I didn't know exactly why. But one,
they're cheap. Of course, they were affordable, and they were
available year round on plus, I guess you could argue
they're funnier they're mister turnip head, but I don't know that.
(01:04):
It seems debatable. But the craze then took off when
Hasbro made this big TV commercial for the product, and
they sold it was something like four million dollars worth
of these toy parts within a few months. Now, that
was a fortune then. And the interesting thing though, is
that mister potato Head actually wasn't the first potato toy
on the market.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I don't know if you knew this, I did not
know that what was before it.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, it was the first with three D pieces, so
they added a D to what was being done out
there in the world. It was competing with these these
potato head toys at the time that were using two
D pieces, like more like paper product type stuff, and
so you would stick these just onto the vegetable. But
what's interesting is that in nineteen thirty one, this was
(01:46):
a full eighteen years earlier, So think about this, like
potato toy technology was not fully evolved yet. But the
Soviet Union, of course they had to be first. They
launched this guide for kids on how to play with potatoes.
So basically it was like this. It was a pretty
delightful guide on how you could use a pen knife
and match sticks and you could turn a bunch of
(02:08):
potatoes into these little playthings. And so there's this illustration
on how to make two little potato kids and have
them see song on this bigger potato. And then there
was another one on how to turn five or six
potatoes into a race car with a tiny potato driver,
or this little potato man walking his potato pig on
a string leash. It honestly is a pretty delightful guide.
(02:31):
So but but you know, seeing this charming guide made
me think of how much joy potatoes bring the world.
Whether it's ridiculous Soviet sculptures, this is not. This is
real magna potatoes. There's now more than ever we need
potatoes to bring the world joy, or a bag of
supersized fries, which I know you and I are both
(02:51):
big fans of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
In college when you thought you were a vegetarian and
yet then you realize that the potatoes had been cooked
in animal fat. But but I thought we'd make a
whole show about potatoes.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
I am all about this. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
friend mangesh Hot Ticketer on the other side of that
soundproof glass wearing a shirt that says in my readings,
I think it says over haters. Is that what it says? Yes,
I don't know what that means, but I love it
and I feel like I need one as well. That's
(03:47):
our good pal, Ramsey. So so Mango, what's up this week?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So I want to apologize to the listeners for this tease.
We had a few I guess like a month ago
or months ago, and thank them for being so patient
because you and I got to make an episode right
before my dad passed away, and my dad just loved
it and he listened for the hospital. And you know,
(04:12):
I had every intention of just plombing through and turning
the show weekly again. But your parents are incredible and
we are just so lucky, Like both our parents were
so important and giving us love and support, and we
got to go to this incredible college and then we
chose the dumbest possible career.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, I still love this and I'm.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Just so grateful that we get to do this. So
thank you for making time this.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Week to talk about potatoes whatever diculous topics.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So, yeah, where do you want to start?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Do you want to talk about how the universe might
be shaped like a Pringle ship, or how the Alaskan
gold Rush during it, desperate miners used to actually trade
gold for potatoes because it was so nutritious, or what.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Are you going to start with these? That's there's some
good teases there I feel like should be considered. But
I'm actually gonna start with a fact about France back
in then seventeen hundreds, when the potato mango it was
actually declared illegal. Okay, yep. So potatoes came to Europe
by way of the Spaniards, who themselves had brought the
vegetables back from the Inca Empire in South America, of course,
(05:19):
and immediately there's this real distrust of the vegetables. Distrust Yeah,
I mean partially because potatoes are not mentioned in the Bible.
I don't know if you know this fact, and partially
because they grow underground, so people are weirdly suspicious of
them and at the time they're mostly fed to pigs.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Wait wait wait, yeah, yes, so you've done like a
word search and found that potatoes aren't aren't found in
the Bible.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
That they are not. No, I did the full search. No,
I actually just read through it. I should have done
a search all, but I just kind of read through
the whole thing didn't find it once. So anyway, basically
nobody will touch these things, even hungry commoners. And then
potatoes get blamed for things like when leprosy spreads, of
course everybody blames it on the potatoes. In all this mayhem,
(06:05):
the French Parliament decides to ban the vegetable. Now, this
was around seventeen forty eight, and the potato is actually
banned until seventeen seventy two, So good, twenty four years
of no potatoes.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Wait, so can I tell you how excited I am
to have Nord VPN sponsoring our little show part time genius.
You know, when I get excited, I make lists, and
I'm going to tell you why Nord is so great
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(06:43):
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(07:03):
to get my Mama subscription right after this ad read two.
It is great for sports fans. If you listened to
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secretly watch as many college basketball games as my wife
and family will allow me to. Please don't remind me
how this season ended for us. But that isn't it.
(07:25):
I also love watching soccer and tennis, but when I
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the total worst, except because NordVPN lets you change your location,
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Speaker 3 (07:45):
And three, one.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
NordVPN subscription can be used on up to ten devices,
which is incredible. I mean, I don't want to do
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there are a lot of ways to stretch this deal.
(08:08):
I mean, I'm joking, but also I have like a
million devices, So the idea of spreading this across ten
devices is pretty amazing. It is premium cybersecurity for the
price of a cup of coffee every month.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Anyway, if you love.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
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no risk no risk with Nords thirty day money back guarantee.
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and do it on multiple devices. Nor VPNs for you.
(09:06):
So I'd actually read this thing in Metal Floss years
ago that early farmers would plant potatoes on Easter and
sprinkle them with holy water because they wanted the plant
to grow safely and not be dangerous. But how do
potatoes make their way into favor in culture?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
So there's this army officer Antoine Parmentier, and he gets
captured by the Prussians in the seven year war, and
so basically he's fed potatoes at this prison, and he
doesn't notice any ill effects, like he's supposed to get
leprosy and get all sick and all these other things.
He stays healthy pretty much the whole time. But also
he notices that France at the time has stopped exporting
(09:43):
grains and the Prussian army actually uses potatoes as a
replacement for it in their diet. So Parmentier looks at
all of this, and as he learns more, he realizes
that potatoes don't take that much effort to grow. So
when he's released back to France, he starts this campaign
to rehb illoitate the potato's image. He throws these dinner
parties where he serves all these potato courses to celebrities,
(10:06):
like then Franklin came to one of these things. He
gives potato flowers to Marie Antoinette, and she then popularizes
these things by wearing them in a hat. So people
start getting curious and you know, trying to figure out
what's going on with this leprosy fruit which is the potato.
But then he pulls off his greatest stunt, which I
(10:26):
haven't even mentioned yet.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So what's his greatest stunt.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He plants a potato patch. He puts a ring of
armed guards around it, so everyone starts thinking of them
as like this luxury. I mean, this really is pretty smart.
I think of them as this, you know, very valuable thing.
But then he quietly tells the guards to accept bribes
and allow people to start stealing the potatoes. So in
seventeen seventy two, all these peasants steel potatoes and treat
(10:54):
them like this precious food. And then the Paris Faculty
of Medicine finally declares the potato edible and makes them
legal again. Is amazing.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
French science is just on top of it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I was right and know what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
So is Parmentier like famous in France for doing this?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, I guess kind of. And he, you know,
the potato helped France get through some difficult famines, and
Louis the sixteenth rewarded him for his work, actually declaring
how important Parmentier was keeping the masses fed. And when
he died, Parmentier's casket was actually placed in a plot
circled with potato plants, and in the middle there's this
(11:34):
bronze statue of him handing a potato to a commoner
who's standing below him.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
So just so you know, I would also like a
statue of me handing out potatoes to commoners, just so
I can remember it as like a man of the people.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, no, I kind of expected this. So there's already
one in the works. I've started out paying in installments
so that it'll be ready. It's going to be very expensive.
But anyway, enough about Parmentier. What fact are you going
to start with?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I've got one about baseball. So you've heard of the
old baseball trick where a first baseman might.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Walk up to the pitcher and fake hand on.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
The baseball, but actually he keeps the ball on the
glove and ye when he walks back to the bag
and the base runner steps off the base take a lead,
he sort of tags him out.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, of course, And it's like this old trick that
mostly gets used. I don't know, I feel like in
kids movies about baseball, like you remember this Rookie of
the Year, I mean, one of the greatest films of
all time.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
I think, yeah, it is a very Rookie of the
Year play. But this minor league catcher for the Williamsport Bills.
His name is Dave Bresnahan. He was completely obsessed with
this trick play and this was in the late eighties,
like nineteen eighty seven, and Bresnahan was actually obsessed with
a variation of that trick using a fake baseball.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I love that n anybody was obsessed with this trick. But anyway,
how does that work?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, so in this case, the catcher replaces the ball
in his glove with the potato because you know how
people always confuse like baseballs for potato.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, it always happens.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
So the way the trick works is that the catcher
accidentally throws the potato into outfield like it's an error,
and then you know, when the base runner tries to
steal home, the catcher shows that he actually has the
baseball hidden his glove the whole time and tags them out.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And do people they actually did this in baseball games.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So according to the La Times, which is where I
read about the story, I guess a few people got
away with it in their earliest days of baseball.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
It was called the Tater trick.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
And anyway, so Bresnahan decides he's going to pull off
the tater trick in a real game, and he goes
all out.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
He pays an artist to carve a.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Potato and paint seems on it like it's a real
baseball even picks the perfect game. He wants to do
it against the Phillies farm team in Reading because the
Philly fanatic will be there and that means they'll be
more of a crowd, right, and he starts trying to
lay the groundwork like in games before the big one,
he starts trying to pick off players at third, so
he's kind of getting this reputation as a catcher who
(13:58):
picks off players.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Anyway, the big day arrives and in the sixth inning
he gets into the perfect situation. There are two outs
and a man on third, and Reresnahan knows this is
his moment, so he comes up with this excuse. He
tells the empire that the webbing on his glove is
off and he needs to replace his glove, and then
he walks to the dugout, grabs this ridiculous carved potato
(14:21):
and then walks back.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
So does anybody notice that he's doing this.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
The whole team?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Like, I don't think the manager new but the whole
team starts laughing, and they're having a hard time like
controlling themselves because they know what's up. And Presidahan himself
is trying to keep it together. But when the runner
on third takes a lead and the pitch lens in
his glove, he snaps into action and he makes a
switch and he throws this potato to third, But instead
(14:47):
of overthrowing the potato past the third basement into the field,
he accidentally underthrows it and it bounces, and the potato
breaks into three pieces and it lands right in front
of the third base umpire but the player doesn't notice,
and you know, he charges home and Reresnahan shows him
the ball and tags him out, and then he walks
to the dugout.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And here's the.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Thing, right, Presihan assumes if his team follows him, the
other team will walk off too and the game will
just move on and continue.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So does this work?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Not at all?
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Oh man?
Speaker 1 (15:20):
The officials are super confused. His teammates stay on the field.
In the meantime, the third base ump goes to inspect
this you know, broken up potato, and when he realized
what's happened, officials just award the runner home plate and
then Bresnahan gets pulled from the game for his Shenanigans
and the next day he's fined fifty dollars and cut
from the team.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
Oh my gosh, that we have way more sad than
I expected. That's a funny trick.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Reresnahan actually didn't mind that much because he was not
that great a player, and the fans loved it, so
he became such a like fan favorite or this legend
that the team ended up retiring his jersey at the
sold out game. And uh, and they charge a dollar
for tickets where not only could you attend, but you
also got a potato with your ticket, And actually the
(16:07):
largest chunk of that potato he threw in that Phillies
game is in a jar of alcohol sitting on display
in a baseball history museum in California. So like, I
think President Ahead actually feels like he went out.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
And yeah, he came out on top. That's pretty fun.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
So what do you have that's next? All right?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
How about a quick one from the Farmer's Almanac. I
know you're a fan of the Farmer's Almanacs, so I
feel like that's where my favorite of the Almanacs. Oh, definitely, definitely.
So if you've got a knife with some small rust spots,
you can actually use a potato to fix that.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So how's that work? Do you like use the potatoes
to sprub away the rust or what?
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I mean? That would be one way, But according to
the Almanac and quite a few other online sources, it's
actually even easier than that. So you just insert the
knife into the potato, let it sit, and the oxalic
acid and the potato will work on the rust and
soften it so that it then rinses away.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
How great would it be if that was like the
best way to clean all your utensils, Like you just
stab them into potatoes and leave them overnight to clean them.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Be the best feelings. Just keep stabbing potatoes.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
I'd have so many potatoes around.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Speaking of a lot of potatoes, here's a trend I
kind of want to bring back from twenty twelve in Japan,
and it's the McDonald's potato party.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I mean, we've established you do love McDonald's French fries.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I know with sweden sower sauce. It's it's like one
of the many food quirks and loves I have. But
about a decade ago, the McDonald's and Japan started running
a sale kind of like the dollar Menu, where large
fries were suddenly steeply discounted, And so some teens ordered
twenty three large fries and made a mountain of them
on a bunch of trays and posted to social media
(17:47):
and people just went crazy, I guess, And this is
according to giz Moto, the McDonald's and Japan use a
more polite form of Japanese, so even though it's not fancy,
you're supposed to act with like a little bit more um,
I guess. And the photo gets retweeted thousands of times,
and people are angry that kids are acting silly and
(18:08):
being a bother to the McDonald's, and some people are
just stunned to see that many fries in one place.
But the biggest chorus around these photos is this argument
that if you order that many fries, you have to
eat them or is disrespectful.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
And I would agree with that. But did this become
a trend?
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, Like potato parties started popping up all over the place,
and some kids saw the twenty three fry order as
a challenge. Obviously, so in Okinawa, some kids ordered forty
large fries. At the McDonald's near Okayama Station, a small
group of kids ordered sixty large fries, and that photo
got retweeted tens of thousands of times apparently, and so, like,
(18:46):
you know, the kids are supposed to finish these fries,
and they actually do, like like I think, it takes
them about three hours, but.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
The employees get super upset.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Apparently the fries took up a whole large table on
their own, and then all the people watching these kids
house these fries take up another large table. So you know,
it felt like they were losing business. And one employee
from the restaurant took to Twitter and just asked for
it to quote please stop, please stop. That said, if
(19:18):
you are heading trays and trays of fries over to kid,
you've got to expect there's gonna be a little chaos.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
When you said the three hours, though, the only thing
I could think of is like, while the fries are delicious,
after about thirty minutes, if they're sitting there, they go
from really good to pretty gross pretty fast. I wonder
they must have just kept ordering them rather than ordering
a bunch at one time, because I don't know I'd
have to see how that works. But how did the
(19:44):
trend finally die down?
Speaker 1 (19:46):
So McDonald's just up the price on the fries to
their regular price and it kind of stopped really soon
after that, which is a pretty simple fix.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, yeah, all right. So here's a weird When I
was watching this documentary about potato chips and ed her
from Hers Potato Chips, and he said that if they
still made potato chips the way they used to, this
was about fifty years ago when the company started, they
would have to charge twenty five dollars a bag.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Twenty five dollars the back. Why is that?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I mean, that's just how much the industry has automated
since then. It's actually kind of amazing to watch how
it all works. So when a truck full of potatoes
goes to the Hers factory, the trailers pulled onto a
scale where the potatoes are then weighed, and then it
lifts the potatoes and dumps the potatoes onto a conveyor
belt and the whole process starts kind of without humans.
(20:36):
The whole thing is starting there. And instead of watching
to see which potatoes are colored green and which ones
are good, this computer sorts all of this out and
the imperfect potatoes and chips are all weeded out along
the way. Ed Hear actually says that when his mom
was involved in the business and used to supervise the
bagging of these chips, they would bag five to ten
(20:56):
pounds of chips every hour, and now with fewer people,
more computers on the line, they bag five to six
tons of potato chips every hour, which is insane.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
That is amazing, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Speaking of potato chip bags, here's a quick interesting one.
So people absolutely hate that potato chip bags are over
fifty percent air. In fact, Korean college students in twenty
fourteen protested this fact by taking one hundred and sixty
potato chip bags, binding them together with plastic and tape,
and using them to build a raft to float across
the river. And apparently two hundred plus people watch that feet.
(21:32):
But the question remains, why do potato chips have so
much air in them?
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Mm hmm, yeah, And do you have an answer to this?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Yeah, it is intentional. It is called slackvill and that's
the industry term. Basically, those bags are pumped full of
a little extra nitrogen to both keep the chips preserved
but also because if the bags are packed with air,
they won't get mishandled, and you won't end up with
a bag full of crumbs. A way to protect you
from getting a half bag of like fully round chips.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Oh that's interesting. I guess we always assume that it's
just too to be cheap or cheat us out of
a certain number of chips or something. But that's pretty interesting.
All right, We've got a couple more facts to go,
but let's pause for just a quick break. Welcome back
(22:31):
to part time Genius, where we're talking about a really
important summer topic, potatoes, of course. So Mango, we've each
got one fact to go. What do you want to
close with?
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Well, I know you're probably a little late to celebrate this,
but I want to point out to you that in
two thousand and eight, the UN declared it the International
Year of the Potato.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Okay, well, we're just what fourteen years behind celebrating this
historic event. That's never too late, It's okay.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Well, it's kind of interesting why the UN decided to
do this. As they put it, they wanted to shed
new light on a hidden treasure, and part of the
reason is that growing potatoes is surprisingly efficient in combating
hunger because potatoes aren't really traded across borders. Because they're
so easy to grow across climates from low to high altitudes,
(23:18):
and because they're not really globally traded like most cereal crops,
they offer a lot of food security and farmers don't
have to worry about the prices fluctuating because of global markets.
Apparently that year, places like Peru encouraged locals to use
potato flour to reduce the reliance on wheat imports, and
both the Chinese and Indian governments leaned into potato production
to feed their growing populations. And I kind of like that,
(23:40):
after all that time, the UN finally gave the potato
it's due in this giant report.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I agree. I kind of like that too.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
So how are you gonna close this up?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
All?
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, I was torn. There were a couple facts I
was looking at, but I'm gonna save one of them
for this. I think we need to do a follow
up with nine more great facts about potatoes because they're
just so much. But how about a fact about couch potatoes?
So unlike most etymology, which can be pretty frustrating because
the origins are always you know, pretty murky. We've dealt
(24:10):
with that on several topics before. There is an exact
start date for the word couch potato. He first appeared
in print back in nineteen seventy nine, the year both
you and I were born. This was in the La
Times while referencing a float on a parade route. According
to the article quote, the couch potatoes will be lying
(24:30):
on couches watching television as they are towed toward the
parade route. According to the excellent site Today, I learned
a man named Tom Locino was the first to coin
the phrase. He had this good buddy named Bob Armstrong,
and they'd already started this little group called the boob Tubers,
and it was kind of this ridiculous protest against the
California health craze at the time, and the boob tubers
(24:54):
were basically committed to sitting in front of the TV
and snacking instead of jazzer siding or whatever the the
fad was at the time. So after recruiting their friends,
they launched this float in the Duda Parade.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
None of this sounds real, this.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Joke parade to parody the Tournament of Roses Parade. But
one day in nineteen seventy six, Lsino called up Armstrong
and when his girlfriend answered the phone, he asked, Hey,
is the couch Potato there? And apparently she looked over
saw her boyfriend just planted on the couch and started laughing.
And after that they rebranded as the couch Potatoes and
(25:29):
tried to trademark the word, but it actually became too
popular in pop culture for them to protect the mark.
I had actually never heard this story before, you know,
doing the prep for this episode.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
So that is so funny that there's actually a person
who invented that phrase, Tom Lasino. I think you deserve
this week's trophy for best Fact, But since I don't
actually know you, I think will you should accept this
award in his honor.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
All right, I guess I'll do that. Thanks so much, Tom,
I appreciate it, buddy. That's it for this week's Part
Time Genius. Will be back with more very important facts soon.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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