May 22, 2025 • 45 mins
We love popcorn and suspect that most people do too. But do you know why it even pops? Or if it's healthy?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
That's right, Popcorn the snack a dish, And I want
to shout out listener Sean O'shullman.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
He came up with this idea, send it along.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
And I'm trying to get better about crediting people when
they send great ideas that we use.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh that's that's a great New Year's resolution, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, which reminds me I need to do a pickup
for Cliff's notes because I did not credit Mike D
of Overland Park, Kansas. Or maybe that'll suffice.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it might. Well I have to ask Mike D.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Okay, and he'll you know what he'll say.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He'll say the mic stance for money and the D
is for dime.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Was that exactly what you were going to say?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
No? But that's that was better? So okay.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So yeah, we're talking Popcorn Day and Chuck, there's a
lot a lot to talk about with popcorn. Who helped
us with this?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Anna?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
This is Anna Green?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Very nice? So if you don't know what popcorn is,
We'll wait a second. You go ahead and google popcorn
and then come back. I'm pretty sure most people know
what popcorn is because it's a global sensation. But I
have to say I'm quite proud that popcorn is through
and through American, and not just the United States version
(01:30):
of American, Mexico, Central America, South America, Canada will include Canada.
Sure they love it American in that sense. That is
popcorn through and through. Even still today, most of the
popcorn in the world comes from the Americas.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
And we should talk a little bit about corn because
popcorn is just a variety of corn. There are all
kinds of varieties of corn, and popcorn is the everta variety.
And if you are corn, you have three main things.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
You have a hull.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Maybe they might call it a pair of carp or
maybe even the brand. I like calling it the brand
the brand, and inside that hole you've got the germ
and the endosperm and popcorn specific hull, that outer shell
that has that stuff inside of it. That is the
main thing that makes it poppable corn. And that's what
makes it different than other kinds of corn because popcorn
(02:24):
has a really hard, hard outer shell, much harder than
other varieties of corn, and inside that hull there's a
much higher ratio of hard starch to soft starch.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And all that sounds well and good.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
But a little tidbit I never ever knew until this
episode was like, what is making that stuff pop?
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And it's very simple, right it is.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's awesome. It's a little tiny bit of water. Yeah,
Apparently anything less than thirteen percent water inside the popcorn
kernel is not good enough.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I think you mean the hull, yes, you're right, sorry,
or the brand as you like to see the bran.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, brand to me is like mast It's like one
of those homey words. I love it. It's the sweet
spot is between thirteen and twenty percent water content inside
the brand. And when you heat that, because the brand
is non porous, that that steam that gets generated gets
trapped inside. Well, as we all know, when steam expands,
(03:25):
it really expands, and it expands so much that it blows.
It blows the popcorn inside out.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, and that what you're eating, the white styrofoamy deliciousness
that you're eating, that is the starch while you're eating
that kernel up, I'm sorry, that hole. I guess it's
a kernel too, and that water is turning into steam
and expanding, the consistency of that starch is changing, becoming
more pliable of aka edible, and you're eating that interior
(03:59):
starch and you can still you know that that little
thing that gets stuck in your teeth, that's the last
bit of that hole that has exploded. And like you said, anything,
like when you get that unpopped stuff at the bottom
and you're like, what was your problem? Why didn't you
do what you were told?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
They said, all right, less than thirteen percent.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
More exactly, that's probably the case. It also could be
the case where that hole was fractured or something was
wrong with that hole.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, something's wrong with that. It ain't right. Yeah, And
so you're like, okay, well, why doesn't rice pop suckers?
Why doesn't Why isn't wheat pop smart guys? Well, it
turns out it's because they have porous holes, so steam
will come out of them. It won't build up pressure
inside like it does popcorns. So popcorn is a very unique, darling,
peculiar little thing that everybody loves. Yeah, no, don't don't
(04:47):
even come at us like you don't love popcorn. Everyone
loves popcorn.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Sorry, agreed, And we're going to get some some young
yuckers that are gonna say they hate popcorn.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I just don't get it. I don't get it either.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
There's a guy named Andrew Smith and he's a popcorn
aficionado and in popped culture. Pretty great name for something
on the internet. He has gone through and shared popcorn
varieties that were sold in the early I guess twentieth century,
between nineteen oh one and nineteen oh two. He said,
(05:21):
some of these may be different names, you know, like
the same thing that was named different by whoever was
growing it. But they had some pretty fun names like
tom thumb popcorn or tattooed Yankee. But popcorn wasn't sold
commercially at scale like that. Maybe a couple of varieties were,
but there seemed to be a lot more sort of
(05:41):
local varieties that people could grow and just sell kind
of locally. But again, it's not branded or anything at
this point. You're just buying it by like the scoop
or the bag.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, it was all popcorn. It was just a generic
term for popcorn. It's all called popcorn. But I think
in the mid nineteenth century. Later nineteenth century, the company
started to come along and basically branded their own version.
And there was even a mascot in the eighteen seventies
called Kernel Pop Love that one. I couldn't find a
(06:11):
picture of them, could you.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
No, But that's because I did not look.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
The same here. And there's actually a popcorn company from
not too far after Colonel Pop was developed nineteen fourteen,
called the American Popcorn Company. And they're the people who
make jolly Time popcorn. And if you've never made jolly
Time popcorn, you should just do it. Just go buy
one of those little foil things that has all the
(06:38):
stuff you need to pop the corn in it. And
as it pops, like the foil expands. It's just such
a great little thing. Word of advice, though I learned
this the hard way. Don't do it on a ceramic
cook top. It's really really bad for the ceramic cook top.
Oh wait, I'm talking about Jiffy pop. Jolly Time comes.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
In the bangs. Yeah, yeah, still you should try and
Jiffy pop I get.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, before we go further, I'm curious of how
you how do you pop your popcorn?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You know, I don't very much. We have like a
stir crazy I don't remember who makes it, but it's
like the the big like black, heavy bottom with like
a thing that spins around slowly on it so that
it stirs your your popcorn apparently in a crazy way,
and then it pop pop pops, but transparent. Well there's
(07:33):
a hamster that runs the whole thing. I guess technically
it's mechanical energy, but there's like a transparent yellow bowl
that keeps it from popping out, and then you just
turn it upside down, okay, yeah, and then you have
your bowl of popcorn right there.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So you got the old school sort of can't you
plug it in and it turns the little stirring thing.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, But weirdly we got it in the last few years.
We tried air popping for a while.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
And that's just like punishment garbage.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I use a whirlypop that is the stovetop thing that
you put, you know, on your stove. I have a
gas stove, so it's cooking with gas and you hand
crank that thing and it stirs it around.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
You need a hamster, I do.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Those are like seventy bucks, so you know, not cheap
but not expensive. There's also more expensive brands like that
that are like a couple of hundred bucks, like the Popsmith.
But the whole point is you're cooking it on your
stovetop and you're turning it yourself, right, And that's how
I like to do it. As the the you know
that yellow oil that's got the butter flavor in it,
(08:35):
and I just do a little bit of that popcorn
salt because I love salt. But that stuff is super
salty and goes a long way I saw.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, for sure. There's a specific kind called Flavacall and
that's what the movie theaters use, and it's designed to
dissolve in oil and get in every part of a
popcorn pop popcorn. I can't remember, I ah the name
for what? Oh flake, that's what a pop popcorn is called.
Did you know that?
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I did not know that. Well at any rate. It's
meant to get in every crevice and nook and cranny
of a popped flake, and yeah, I would guess it
doesn't take very much of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, and we don't pop popcorn a lot, like we
should do it for every single family movie night because
there's really no reason not to. But uh, you know,
Ruby loves it, the family loves it. So I'm gonna
start popping more popcorn. But let's go back.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Wait, I'm not quite done. I should say, like, more
often than not, it's microwave popcorn that.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
We Sorry, I'm judging you.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, it's all right. I can take it.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I just don't like it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
What about smart food? I like that stuff too.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah. Bag popcorn that's a whole other game, but a
huge industry.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Remember it used to be on our what do they
call it, a rider?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, like you had to give us smart pop popcorn
backstage at our shows.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah. It's good snack, calorie filling for sure, and cheesy,
pleasing to the tongue.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Let's go back a little bit though, and talk about cultivation,
because if you look at you know, indigenous Americans before
Europeans came along and wrecked everything, they were farming popcorn
in South and Central America, mainly in North America where
it was farmed it was in the southwest of the
(10:24):
United States and Mexico, or I guess most of that
was Mexico at the time. But when non indigenous Americans,
you know, white Europeans, came here, they started farming popcorn
in New England was a surprise.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Through most of the nineteenth century that was sort of
the center of popcorn, I guess, growing and manufacturing, until
eventually it moved to the Midwest in Chicago became the
hub of popcorn.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yes, which explains why Chicago is a caramel corn town.
And despite the fact that people in Chicago won't admit it,
Chicago is a caramel corn town.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
But most of the popcorn these days that comes for
the United States, well not most, but twenty five percent
of the popcorn popped in the US is grown in Nebraska,
it should be no surprise, but also grown in places
like Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah apparently also Brazil and Argentina grow a lot of
it too.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Okay, so chuck. A big question is whether popcorn is healthy,
and the answer is the resounding yes. If you just
air pop popcorn and only eat popcorn undressed in anything
and not cooked in oil.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
That's right. But what kind of serial killer does that? Yeah,
it is.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It's it's low in calorie. Like I said, it's a
really good source of fiber. It's one hundred percent whole grain,
and if you eat one serving as three cups of poppedcorn.
If you eat three cups of popcorn, that's about fifteen
percent of your daily recommended fiber intake. So if you
double that, you're getting thirty percent.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I saw so I was like, there's got to be
something wrong with popcorn. I searched Dark side of popcorn,
and the best I could come up with is that
it's there's enough fiber in it that if you have
irritable bowel syndrome, you need to be careful of your
popcorn intake. That's the worst thing anyone has to say
about popcorn.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, you can also get about three grams of protein
preserving eighteen grams of carbs, one gram of fat. You
can get vitamin B six, a e K riboflavon, buyme
nicene folate, So.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
It's pretty good for you.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
The nutritional values are going to shift some when you
cook it in oil and add toppings and butter flavored stuff,
but it's not like it destroys the nutritional value.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
The fiber's still in there right.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, for sure, it just makes it less healthy. You know,
you've got all the problems that you have for eating butter,
and not just eating butter, but liquid butter. Wow, you
want to talk about where popcorn came from?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Because I do, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So, like I said, popcorn is indigenous to the Americas,
and that's because corn is indigenous to the Americas. As
far as we can tell, especially if you've read fourteen
ninety two, corn was domesticated from the wild Taosenti plant
as far back as nine thousand years ago. And the
whole thing began in Mexico, and it was such a
(13:26):
good idea that it spread throughout Central and South America. Right. Yes,
popcorn itself is not that much younger, maybe about twenty
five hundred years or so.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, I mean sixty seven hundred years ago there was popcorn.
We just you know, don't know exactly when people started
eating it.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Right, but we do have archaeological evidence. I think people
have found popcorn buried with people in like South America,
and I think there was one burial in per maybe
where the burial was one thousand years old, but the
popcorn was still viable, like you could have popped it.
Imagine eating thousand year old funeral burial popcorn. That would
(14:12):
really be something.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, It's probably in some fancy menu somewhere in a
fancy restaurant.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, one of those underground restaurants for richies where they
eat people.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, where they eat ancient foods and people, yeah, disguised
as tasty. There is written documentation. I believe the first
written documentation of popcorn comes from when the Europeans came
over again to the Americas. There was a missionary in
the sixteenth century name Bernardino the Sahagun. He was not
(14:46):
Italian really, and he claimed Aztecs were wearing popcorn garlands,
so it was already being used as sort of a decorative.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And they called it momo cheetle okay.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And there was a seventeenth century missionary rename I'm not
even gonna try. His last name was Kobo, I can
say that one. And he saw Pruvian's toasting a quote,
a certain kind of corn until it burst, clearly popcorn.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. They called it pens and cola.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Cool, that's all I got, good stuff?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Uh Yeah, so yes, they were. They were. These guys
were witnessing popcorn, and you would think like, oh, okay, well
it would immediately become a big deal everywhere. That's not
necessarily the case. Despite there being a legend that popcorn
was introduced to the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, that
seems to have been a nineteenth century invention, which is
(15:39):
actually about the time that popcorn became a favored American
snack in the United States.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, we should probably take a break and come back
and talk about what happened from there.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I think that's a great idea, Joe, all right, we'll
be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I want to learn about a terror sort and call
it red actel. How to take a berg fractal gink
is Khan.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers and all run
on sport up Jerry.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So euro Americans knew of popcorn long before they started
eating it. It was just associated with Native Americans. There
was a Native American thing. They love their popcorn. But
in the nineteenth century, as far back as the eighteen twenties,
people selling seeds started selling popcorn. Seeds kind of slowly
but surely started to gain traction. Thurreau was a fan.
(16:42):
He called popcorn a perfect winter flower, which seems like
a miss to me. And in eighteen forty eight popcorn
showed up in the debut edition of the Dictionary of Americanisms,
and I was looking through that. Chuck and keep a
stiff upper lip was in there too, which I associate
one with the UK. But apparently that's American.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Oh. I never really thought about where that might have
come from.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I always thought it was the UK, but I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, as far as popcorn goes, they used to make
it in all kinds of crazy ways early on. Sometimes
they would just throw it in a fire and wait
for it to pop out, I guess, and eat it
with a little little ash on it. Sometimes they would
put like an iron like an iron plank on a fire,
like you might do steamed oysters or something. If you're
(17:33):
sitting by the beach these days and you've got some
oysters and you throw a wet towel over those oysters.
With popcorn, you could just throw those kernels on that
hot plate, storm around just like it was on your stovetop,
and wait for it to pop.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
What's the towel for.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
The towel is for the oysters to steam them?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Oh, so you cover the oysters with the towel and
it keeps the steam inside.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Yeah. Yeah, with a wet to gotcha.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Guy, Yeah, and creates that steam. So, but that's oysters
just neither here there.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
So a frying pan obviously is one way you could
have popped it early on, but those things were really
really heavy to work with. They still are very heavy
you work with as far as like holding one and
shaking it over a hot fire. And before they had
gas s doves, you know, you got to nail the
popcorn heating temperature or else you're gonna scorch it and
it's not gonna taste great or it's never going to pop.
(18:21):
So until gas stoves came along, it was just harder.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, so it wasn't quite as popular, you know. Yeah,
although you can imagine there were some country women who
had like a much bigger, stronger right arm from popping
popcorn iron skillet, yeah, dead give away that they were
a popcorn fan. Yeah. Finally, in eighteen sixty six, the
first patent was issued for a popcorn popper, and it
(18:45):
was essentially just like you know those old timey toast makers.
There's like a it's like an iron rod and it
ends in like a mesh basket that you'd put the
bread in and toast it. Yeah, something like that. But
the mesh was thin enough that the popcorn brand wouldn't
fall out when you're popping it, and it would just
(19:05):
go pop pop, pop pop. My feet can't stop.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
They still make those for camping, you know, you can
still get those.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Okay, that makes sense. Well, that is the first patented
popcorn popper that came on the market, and it was
I mean still hard to do, but it was much
lighter than holding an iron skillet over the fire until
your popcorn popped.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Yeah, at the very least is lighter and had a
much longer handle.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Right, So people were like, okay, I can kind of
get into this, and that's when it just started to
take off.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So that was eighteen sixty six. Like you said,
so in the eighteen seventies, if there was a public event,
you were going to be able to buy popcorn there.
Anything that had a concession stand was going to be
selling popcorn by that time. And in the eighteen nineties
that was a guy named Charles cr Etrs Creditors, I
guess in eighteen ninety three. He was a confectionery shop
(19:55):
owner in Ohio and he patented, I guess the first
sort of mobile portable popcorn machine that he adapted from
a peanut roaster of his own design, and all of
a sudden you could have like a popcorn stand on
a sidewalk, and that became like a thing.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
People were buying popcorn because it was always pretty cheap.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah. I looked at a picture. This is glorious. It's
super got like the big old penny farthing wheels on it.
It's just I would love to.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Buy popcorn from it, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I penny Thuring farthing is called that, no, because one
wheel was relatively the size of a penny to the
size of the farthing.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Oh wow, it's neat.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Is that kind of like that thing? Where like if
Earth was the size of a pinhead, the sun would
be the size of a basketball exactly. So this is
the nineteenth century. I think we made it through right, Yeah, yeah, okay,
So by the twentieth century, Oh no, we haven't quite
made it either, because I think we would be remiss
(20:53):
to not mention cracker jacks.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I mean, people in the late nineteenth century were into
pop like sweet popcorn balls and making popcorn sweet and delicious.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So it was a dirty lie when you said that
we made it out of the nineteenth.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Century, so dirty. I mean this was eighteen ninety six.
We were so close.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
So they were eating sweet popcorn in the eighteen forties.
I think cracker Jack came along in ninety six.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yes, so another thing that people put popcorn to use for. Again,
people are starting to get pretty crazy with this. Remember
our live episode on the Kellogg Brothers at the bat
Battle Creek Sanitarium. Before they started serving cereal there, John
Harvey Kellogg's wife Ella Kellogg, introduced popcorn as a cereal,
(21:41):
a breakfast cereal with milk and a sweetener, and it
was essentially the predecessor to the corn flakes and the
brand flakes and everything that came after that. And in
my opinion, it was the direct indirect predecessor of corn pops,
which are still around today. But they came out in
nineteen fifty and we're one of my all time favorite cereals.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Oh okay, I was like, what is corn pops? Yeah? Yeah,
corn pops? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
She called it popcorn pudding. And there's a historian named
Andrew Smith that was basically like, popcorn may have been
what cereal became if it hadn't have been for other
grain manufacturers really getting super aggressive with the breakfast cereal
companies being like no, no, no, you want to use
brand or.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Oat or whatever.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, don't be stupid.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Another thing you could use it for back then that
I have recently used it for is for flour. You
could grind popcorn into flour.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
And I have had this pancake popcorn pancake mix in
my house, which is pretty good and way better for
you than pancakes.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's gluten free, right, yeah, and it
is good. You're not just saying that it's pretty up
some money on my god, you're gonna like.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
I can't remember the name of the company, unfortunately, but
you could. You can find that out pretty easily.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I saw a recipe for popcorn bread and I was like, wow,
that sounds interesting. And if you look closely, there's like
five other types of flour in it. It's popcorn is
just part of it. Yeah, I'd still eat it if
somebody else made it, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So we finally made it to the twentieth century. And
the reason the twentieth century became such a big deal
as far as popcorn goes is because that is when
movies started to come out At first they were silent movies,
and then talkies and movie theaters started to open throughout
the United States, and very quickly people were like, popcorn
and movies go together really well. But it turns out
(23:31):
the theater owners were the last ones to figure this out.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
They were like, this stuff is a disaster of a mess.
It's all over the floor, and it still is, but
they deal with it because they make a ton of
money selling it. It was the depression coming along where
theater owners were like, hey, wait a minute, people don't
have a lot of money right now. Popcorn is very,
very cheap. It's a very affordable snack. So the people
(23:58):
were selling popcorn outside at theater that people could bring in,
much like my mother did in the nineteen eighties and
the first YEP, and they finally were like, hey, maybe
we could lease lobby space these popcorn vendors and just
have them sell it in here.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
And then someone was like, wait a minute, we're what
are we doing. We're doing this all wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
We need to pop and sell this popcorn because the
markup is incredible and we're just losing money. So they started,
you know, it became hand in hand with theaters making
profits from the concessions largely popcorn.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yes, I mean like a lot of money off of popcorn.
There's a well trod story about a theater owner from
during the depression name R. J. McKenna, who found that
popcorn was basically keeping his theater afloat. During the depression,
people didn't really have much money for a movie theater ticket,
(24:53):
but if they did, they still had money enough for
popcorn because it was a cheap snack. So R. J.
McKenna made the very wise is this decision of lowering
his ticket prices below what he would have made a
profit on because he made so much money off of
popcorn in the concession stands. And I think they the
number that's bandied about is two hundred thousand dollars from
(25:16):
popcorn alone, which is more than four and a half
million dollars today. If that's in nineteen thirty six, dollars.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
From popcorn big big profits.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah for sure. And he said a bit of a tradition,
as we'll find out that popcorn still big.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Profits, Yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
During World War Two, there were sugar shortages, so sweet
treats were on the wigin I guess, and salty treats rose,
and popcorn was right at the center of that. Apparently,
Americans were eating three times more popcorn in the nineteen
forties than they ever had before, and also in the
know the connection to movie theater strengthened during the nineteen forties.
(25:56):
In nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn people
eating in the United States was in those movie theaters.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, and there's another really great I want to say
it's an urban legend, but it actually happened a guy
named James Vicari or Vickery, who we've talked about before,
because he was basically the inventor of subliminal advertising, even
though subliminal advertising isn't really a thing. But the reason
he ties into this is because he supposedly experimented on
(26:27):
people showing frames interlaced within movies that popped up so
quickly that you couldn't perceive them, you only perceived them subliminally,
and they said things like go eat more popcorn, and
popcorn sales like tripled. Supposedly, even though the whole thing
was a total fraud and the guy made it up,
it's still worth mentioning.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
If you ask me, he didn't actually even do that,
he said later that he made all of that up.
He never even did the subliminal advertising.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I saw that too.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, so that was just a fraud from top to bottom.
Prior to the thirties, most of the popcorn was white corn,
but movie theaters moved to the yellow corn variety and
it just looked better. It looked buttery, even though it wasn't,
and people that just became the de facto popcorn that
you mainly eat here in the United States, is that
(27:16):
yellow corn. I think by nineteen ninety ten percent of
commercially soul popcorn was whitecorn.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Let me ask you, do you get buttered popcorn at
the movies?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I get popcorn, And the AMC that I go to
here has the do your own butter. That's not butter,
by the way, at all. It's buttered flavored oil and stuff.
But I add, you know, when I was a kid,
I would just drench it in that stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Now I do not.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Now I do like that flavor, but I'll just do
a pretty sparing couple of squirts and shakes.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah. I never was into it, even as a kid.
I'd hard to be and I just couldn't get into
it for some reason. I think because it just it's
the popcorn. And I don't like popcorn wet.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I love it, but it's just you can't have it
drenched in that stuff. Like that's when it's really bad
for you. It's when you're just like dumping all that
oil on there. But a little bit I like, and
I'll shake it up and you get you know, I
get enough of that flavor just from a dab good.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I respect our differences.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Here's the thing though, with TV coming along, the popcorn
industry was really really worried that like, oh no, like
you know, all this popcorn is being eat in movie
theaters like we're toast because people aren't gonna go to
the movies anymore because of TV. A. That didn't really happen.
People still went to the movies back then. But what
they found out was people loved popping that popcorn at
(28:45):
home while they watched TV. And you can also have
popcorn ads on TV, and so people with their televisions
were eating more popcorn than ever in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah. Well, you know what stuck out to me from
that that anecdote, Chuck, is like, that's a an example
of early disruption, right yea, where people are like, oh,
there's a change, there's a huge sea change in the
way people do things, So this thing is going to
totally go away forever, right, And just since the Internet age,
we found that just doesn't really happen, Like everything from
(29:16):
bookstores to paper to I don't know, seeing people in person,
we're all just destined to just go away because they've
been replaced and it's just not how it goes, which
I think is kind of neat to understand because it
makes you a little less fearful of change or technology
or progress in some ways, I agree, although anyone who's
(29:38):
listened to the end of the world knows there's plenty
of technology to be scared of. It's got to be selective.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, and you know there are dents and industries for sure,
like you know, newspapers and magazines. Some have shuddered, but
if you believed, you know what the scare tactics, everyone's
gonna be like, you're never going to hold a newspaper
again after a certain year.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, newspapers, So that one did take a pretty hard hit,
but it wasn't necessarily because of the Internet. It was
because of captains of industry essentially realizing that they could
capture journalism if they if they defunded local news, and
that's exactly what happened. And I don't remember what episode
(30:19):
it was on. There's this there's a YouTube podcast that
I love, if you mean introduced it to me or
me to it, one of the two called doom Scroll.
It's hosted by a guy named Joshua Ciderella, and he
has the most interesting guests on who are just they
just think and talk about their thoughts, and I mean
like it's it's all rooted in, you know, like academia
(30:41):
or research or something. They're not just riffing or anything
like that. But one of them was talking about that
that capture and what happened to it, and it's just
so strange to think, like, yeah, local newspapers went away,
but the effect that that had on democracy and on
people being informed and just generally caring about stuff that
was a huge, huge deal.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Allegedly, did he eat popcorn while they said this stuff?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
No? I don't think he did. No, he drinks like
Lacroix instead.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
All right, well let's take our second break and we'll
finish up with popcorn.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Right after this, I want to learn.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
About a terrisort and call it fridactyl. How to take
a pink is gone? That's a little hunt word up, Jerry.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
All Right, So we talked a little bit about innovations
and how to pop popcorn over the years. That is
still evolving. I feel like every few years there's some
new sort of weird gadget to pop popcorn with.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I did not know that, man.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, electricity coming along was a big deal obviously for
electric popcorn poppers like you have, well, you and your
electric hamster. That is, they had a drawback though, because
they were dangerous. The early electric popcorn poppers were like
(32:16):
fires waiting to happen, essentially. I think in the late
sixties Consumer Bulletin examined all the most popular ones and
one of them they determined did not post safety hazards.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, that's the one we have.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, from nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Although the hamster that runs our popcorn popper did come
with a little fire chiefs hat that he wears.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
It's so cute.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
So yeah, that's another interesting thing about popcorn. If you
kind of track its trajectory, it just keeps evolving with
new stuff. Like anytime something new comes along that you
can apply to popcorn. Whether it's movies or TVs or electricity,
people apply it to popcorn like it's just this little
thing lurking in the background that's been woven into our
(32:59):
culture so thoroughly and for so long, you just look
right past it and then it trips you as you
walk by, and you suddenly recognize how important popcorn is.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah. TV Time was another one.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
We already mentioned jippy pop, but TV Time was it
was just a packaging innovation where they had like sealed
popcorn to keep it really fresh, and then also separate
kind of like fun dip, separate compartments for seasonings and oil.
So it was kind of an all in one thing.
So just even little innovations that aren't mechanical, like packaging
(33:33):
innovations like microwave popcorn. I guess we could get too,
because that really changed the game.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, and we've talked about this guy plenty of times.
He was kind of like the Hayflick limit for a
while and early yeah stuff, you should know. He came
up a lot. But a guy named Percy Spencer worked
for the Raytheon Company and he was in charge of
creating magnetrons. I can't remember what he was doing with them.
I think they're for like radar or something. And he
was standing next to one at some point and he
(34:00):
had a chocolate bar. I'm guessing mister goodbar, that's what
I've always envisioned, Yeah, in his front pocket, like a
total nerd, because obviously his shirt was also a short
sleeve button down shirt, and the mister goodbar melted in
his pocket and he thought, hmm, that's curious.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
And I was saving this late exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
No, it's just oozy. And then he decided almost immediately
to see what happens with popcorn, if you could do
the same thing with popcorn, and he did it.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, And so like microwaves and popcorn, microwave popcorn grew
in lockstep from.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
The very beginning.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
In fact, he even in his nineteen forty six patent
for the microwave showed popcorn being popped, so it was
always sort of tied together. The first commercial microwaves were
very big and expensive and not really for the home.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
They were more for restaurants.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
So once they went to the house, microwave popcorn was
right there along with it. In nineteen fifty one, a
gentleman named Orville Redenbacher got to together with a guy
named Charles Bowman and bought a corn plant in Indiana
and experimented with different versions of popcorn varieties and landed
on the Red Bow variety, and in nineteen sixty nine
(35:11):
started selling Orvile Reddenbacher branded popcorn. And here's what I
didn't know. They sold that brand six years later. They
sold it in nineteen seventy six, Wow, to hunt wessn Foods.
But he was just the name and face of it,
So he stayed the name and face of it.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Wow. Yeah. And I've read bow variety, you said, I
wonder if they named it after his penchant for red
bow ties, or he started wearing red bow ties because
of the variety.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
I don't think they named the variety, So I bet
you he started wearing that thing because of that.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Thank you, CA. He also just said one more thing
about Orvile Riddenbacher. His Eames lounge chair, you know, the
one with the ottoman. Yeah, he had one in his
office and I think Nebraska, Omaha or something, and it's
still out there Orvile red Eames lounge chair from his
offices out there somewhere in.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
The world, like someone owns it.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, I've coveted it ever since I first heard about that.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Not just a name chair you want Orvile Reddenbocker's Emes chair.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yes, okay, and I still I don't know why. I've
never really stepped back and asked myself, but it's it
just got me for some reason.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I mean, you can't be a gen x er and
not have a soft spot for Orvile Reddenbacker and the
Bartles and James guys.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
No, yeah, they were great. They were wonderful dudes. They
were the predecessor of Penn and Teller.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
I think, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So yeah, we talked about microwaves and how microwaves started
coming to the home, and microwave popcorn came along quickly
after that. I think nineteen eighty one was when you
could start buying microwave popcorn. And like I said, it's
like a global phenomenon. I think I said it. At
the outset. Everybody knows popcorn, whether you love it or not.
You know about popcorn, you know where to buy it,
(36:57):
and there's different tastes around the world, as you might
i'd imagine, apparently in the United States, the favorite flavors
of popcorn are salted, buttered, white cheddar, regular cheddar. So
white Cheddar's finally overtaken regular cheddar. This is a big deal.
And then kettle which is the sweet kind.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
I like a kettle corn.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
That's all right. I've never been crazy for it, but
you know, if somebody put it in my mouth, I
wouldn't just spit it out.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I'm gonna try that sometimes, he would have backstage at
our next live show, I'm just gonna stuff some kettle
corn in your mouth.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Do you remember when we were filming a We were
filming some commercial, I think, and we were eating popcorn
at the movies for this part of the commercial, and
we did like one take and then chat. Our friend,
the director directed the stuff. He's doing a TV show.
He came over. He's like, just one note, don't mash
(37:56):
a handful of popcorn into your mouth all at once.
And he goes, that's a note for regular life too.
Oh no, yeah, And so.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Are you supposed to eat it?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I don't know, Like I guess you hold it in
one hand and then like daintily pluck a few out
with the other hand. That's what I've seen people do
in the movies. But I like that, Yeah, I just
put my hand in a bag of popcorn or a
bullet popcorn, just shove it into my face as best, like, Okay,
it's not just me, but yeah, Chad made it seem
(38:27):
like it.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Was just me.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Isn't it a little funny that you ever think about
that we used to get way more opportunities to do
that stuff very much earlier in our career.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Uh yeah. I think also that we've kind of mellowed
out in our quest or our willingness to do stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
We kind of like we said, yeah, we're kind of like.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Hey, we're happy podcasting. We tried so many different things
and it's always just come back to podcasting that I
think we're just like, yeah, we're happy living this way.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
I mean I am.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I'm kind of glad now that I'm older and have
a you know, family at home that did not have
to travel to do that stuff.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
It just seems weird.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Like earlier on, I felt like TV shows were trying
to get us on to be like talk show guests
or like Toyota do Toyota commercials, Hey come on and
talk about the housing crisis for the NBC and like
just nobody asks anymore, and it's.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
It's quite wonderful.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, it is nice.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Anyway, if you go around the country, you're gonna get
some interesting flavors. In Japan, apparently there's a bagged popcorn
company called Mike that Fred La owns, and they have
of course, like Yuzu salt or.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Kishu plum popcorn.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
So you're gonna get some some pretty exciting flavors when
you travel around the world, depending what they like there.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, and I know for a fact it's not pronounced Mike,
but I failed to ask you me how to pronounce it.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So now what is it?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Me? K, We'll go with Mike, but it's not Mike.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Well, of course it's not Mike. But I'm an American, so.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
No, I'm with you. I just wish I knew how
to say it, but you probably were right with me.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
What else could it be? Me? K? Nike?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Kind of yeah, mikey? What else? Chuck? Is there anything
else to say about popcorn? Oh? I know one? Apparently
people have used popcorn as like a packaging like stuffer.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
For packing peanuts.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, packing peanuts, but popcorn instead. Since like the nineteen fifties.
But the problem is is if you use popcorn, it
can get kind of gross, especially if you didn't think
and you popped it in oil and covered it with
butter before you put it in as a packaging material.
It'll just get gross. It can attract pests and stuff
(40:37):
like that. So no one's quite figured it out, but
I guess a few years back, twenty twenty one, there's
some German researchers who are like hot on the trail
of this, using scraps of corn that is like that
you get off the floor of like a corn flake
factory that they figured out how to pop and it's
essentially styrofoam, but it's made of pop corn, And I'm like,
(41:01):
hurry up with this because styrofoam is one of the
worst things humans produce on this entire planet.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, totally, packing peanuts are a nightmare, they really are.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
So yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Popcorn could could help out with that, just a couple
of things to finish on. It is an eight hundred
and fifty million dollar industry. I guess in the United
States alone that bag popcorn, like the smart popping, all
that stuff combined is about one point five billion, So
it is it is.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It's popping.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Yeah, it's pop it's popping.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And I'm glad that we held onto the stat because
we kind of teased about movie theaters and how much
the markup was and how much money they made. The
popcorn markup in movie theaters is one two hundred and
seventy five percent.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Totally buy that. That actually seems low.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, it's such a money maker because it's just so
cheap to get and you get that machine that runs forever,
maybe a little maintenance on it, and then the stuff
goes with it, and then you sell it for a
gazillion dollars for a bucket. Then you got that butter
flavored liquid. This snow good.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
If you do like.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Real butter on your popcorn at home, I encourage that
because real butter is great. But you got to use
clarified butter or ghee right because the water and the
milk solids are removed in those and that's what's going
to make the popcorn soggy. So if you're just melting
butter and pouring on your popcorn, you're like, why is
my popcorn soggy and gross? That's why I use clarified
(42:29):
butter or clarify your own butter and pour it over
your popcorn, and it is delicious and not soggy.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Very nice. I think that's it for popcorn.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Right, I've got nothing else on popcorn. Go forth and
eat it. It's good and pretty good for you.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yeah, and check out that book by Andrew Smith, pop Culture,
because it's the definitive toe on popcorn.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, since we talked about Andrew Smith, it's time obviously
for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
This is from Cecilia S and it's about our music
bumpers that we've said before, but it always bears repeating.
They are made by stuff you should know, listeners. They
always have been. Every single one of them are made
by listeners and they send them in and it's a
really cool, like interactive part of the show for the
listenership guys. In terms of your music bumpers, I love
how they relate.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
To the episode subject.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
If it's about an eerie subject, the song reflects that
with an eerie tone, or if it's a somber, sad subject,
the song reflects that. And there are many other examples.
This brings to my father, who is a music director
at the church we belong to growing up. He would
sometimes fill in when the organist was unavailable, and before
and after Mass he would softly play hymns but an
insert a bit of whimsy. For example, at the start
(43:42):
of baseball season he'd play a little take Me out
to the ballgame and the style of a hymn, or
during football season the university fight song could be heard
in the fashion of a solemn liturgical piece. Many other
instances of his playfulness. He had a big band combo
in college in the nineteen forties and into the seventies,
and they could sometimes be heard in church.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Anyway, love the show.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
You both display such curiosity and knowledge and with wonderful
wit and sensitivity when needed.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
Thank you to whoever is responsible for the music.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
It's not often I would say that about a podcast,
so Cecilia, like we said, those are from the listeners.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
But Jerry, our esteemed third leg of our.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Stool, is who ties those so aptly to the subject
matter with her own wit and whimsy.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, Jerry deserves way more credit for that too, because
sometimes it's just like, man, you just knocked it out
of the park with that pick.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Jerry, she does, and we're never like, uh, who Jerry
this is a Halloween one, so make sure to use
a scary bumper.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, we don't do that.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
We leave it to Jerry, she does her thing.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah. And also, huge, huge, heartfelt thanks. I think I
just said thanks, but I really meant thanks to every
single person who's ever sent in a music bumper, because
that's just such a cool, just little subtle part of
the show. Ye, all those different, great little pieces of music.
Thank you to everybody who's ever done that. Thank you
(45:04):
to everybody who's going to do it in the future,
even too.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yeah, twelve seconds or less.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
I think we say sixteen. I thought it was twelve
somewhere in that neighborhood. Between twelve and sixteen seconds, how
about that.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Yeah, but if you send in one of those thirty
second long ones, you'll hear from me saying this is great,
but cut it down and we'll use it.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah. That's a note for real life too.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
like Cecilia, you can send us an email too. Send
it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
That's right, Popcorn the snack a dish, And I want
to shout out listener Sean O'shullman.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
He came up with this idea, send it along.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
And I'm trying to get better about crediting people when
they send great ideas that we use.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh that's that's a great New Year's resolution, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, which reminds me I need to do a pickup
for Cliff's notes because I did not credit Mike D
of Overland Park, Kansas. Or maybe that'll suffice.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, it might. Well I have to ask Mike D.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Okay, and he'll you know what he'll say.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
He'll say the mic stance for money and the D
is for dime.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Was that exactly what you were going to say?
Speaker 4 (00:54):
No? But that's that was better? So okay.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
So yeah, we're talking Popcorn Day and Chuck, there's a
lot a lot to talk about with popcorn. Who helped
us with this?
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Anna?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
This is Anna Green?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Very nice? So if you don't know what popcorn is,
We'll wait a second. You go ahead and google popcorn
and then come back. I'm pretty sure most people know
what popcorn is because it's a global sensation. But I
have to say I'm quite proud that popcorn is through
and through American, and not just the United States version
(01:30):
of American, Mexico, Central America, South America, Canada will include Canada.
Sure they love it American in that sense. That is
popcorn through and through. Even still today, most of the
popcorn in the world comes from the Americas.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
And we should talk a little bit about corn because
popcorn is just a variety of corn. There are all
kinds of varieties of corn, and popcorn is the everta variety.
And if you are corn, you have three main things.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
You have a hull.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Maybe they might call it a pair of carp or
maybe even the brand. I like calling it the brand
the brand, and inside that hole you've got the germ
and the endosperm and popcorn specific hull, that outer shell
that has that stuff inside of it. That is the
main thing that makes it poppable corn. And that's what
makes it different than other kinds of corn because popcorn
(02:24):
has a really hard, hard outer shell, much harder than
other varieties of corn, and inside that hull there's a
much higher ratio of hard starch to soft starch.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
And all that sounds well and good.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
But a little tidbit I never ever knew until this
episode was like, what is making that stuff pop?
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And it's very simple, right it is.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
It's awesome. It's a little tiny bit of water. Yeah,
Apparently anything less than thirteen percent water inside the popcorn
kernel is not good enough.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I think you mean the hull, yes, you're right, sorry,
or the brand as you like to see the bran.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, brand to me is like mast It's like one
of those homey words. I love it. It's the sweet
spot is between thirteen and twenty percent water content inside
the brand. And when you heat that, because the brand
is non porous, that that steam that gets generated gets
trapped inside. Well, as we all know, when steam expands,
(03:25):
it really expands, and it expands so much that it blows.
It blows the popcorn inside out.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah, and that what you're eating, the white styrofoamy deliciousness
that you're eating, that is the starch while you're eating
that kernel up, I'm sorry, that hole. I guess it's
a kernel too, and that water is turning into steam
and expanding, the consistency of that starch is changing, becoming
more pliable of aka edible, and you're eating that interior
(03:59):
starch and you can still you know that that little
thing that gets stuck in your teeth, that's the last
bit of that hole that has exploded. And like you said, anything,
like when you get that unpopped stuff at the bottom
and you're like, what was your problem? Why didn't you
do what you were told?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
They said, all right, less than thirteen percent.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
More exactly, that's probably the case. It also could be
the case where that hole was fractured or something was
wrong with that hole.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, something's wrong with that. It ain't right. Yeah, And
so you're like, okay, well, why doesn't rice pop suckers?
Why doesn't Why isn't wheat pop smart guys? Well, it
turns out it's because they have porous holes, so steam
will come out of them. It won't build up pressure
inside like it does popcorns. So popcorn is a very unique, darling,
peculiar little thing that everybody loves. Yeah, no, don't don't
(04:47):
even come at us like you don't love popcorn. Everyone
loves popcorn.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Sorry, agreed, And we're going to get some some young
yuckers that are gonna say they hate popcorn.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I just don't get it. I don't get it either.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
There's a guy named Andrew Smith and he's a popcorn
aficionado and in popped culture. Pretty great name for something
on the internet. He has gone through and shared popcorn
varieties that were sold in the early I guess twentieth century,
between nineteen oh one and nineteen oh two. He said,
(05:21):
some of these may be different names, you know, like
the same thing that was named different by whoever was
growing it. But they had some pretty fun names like
tom thumb popcorn or tattooed Yankee. But popcorn wasn't sold
commercially at scale like that. Maybe a couple of varieties were,
but there seemed to be a lot more sort of
(05:41):
local varieties that people could grow and just sell kind
of locally. But again, it's not branded or anything at
this point. You're just buying it by like the scoop
or the bag.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, it was all popcorn. It was just a generic
term for popcorn. It's all called popcorn. But I think
in the mid nineteenth century. Later nineteenth century, the company
started to come along and basically branded their own version.
And there was even a mascot in the eighteen seventies
called Kernel Pop Love that one. I couldn't find a
(06:11):
picture of them, could you.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
No, But that's because I did not look.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
The same here. And there's actually a popcorn company from
not too far after Colonel Pop was developed nineteen fourteen,
called the American Popcorn Company. And they're the people who
make jolly Time popcorn. And if you've never made jolly
Time popcorn, you should just do it. Just go buy
one of those little foil things that has all the
(06:38):
stuff you need to pop the corn in it. And
as it pops, like the foil expands. It's just such
a great little thing. Word of advice, though I learned
this the hard way. Don't do it on a ceramic
cook top. It's really really bad for the ceramic cook top.
Oh wait, I'm talking about Jiffy pop. Jolly Time comes.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
In the bangs. Yeah, yeah, still you should try and
Jiffy pop I get.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I mean, before we go further, I'm curious of how
you how do you pop your popcorn?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You know, I don't very much. We have like a
stir crazy I don't remember who makes it, but it's
like the the big like black, heavy bottom with like
a thing that spins around slowly on it so that
it stirs your your popcorn apparently in a crazy way,
and then it pop pop pops, but transparent. Well there's
(07:33):
a hamster that runs the whole thing. I guess technically
it's mechanical energy, but there's like a transparent yellow bowl
that keeps it from popping out, and then you just
turn it upside down, okay, yeah, and then you have
your bowl of popcorn right there.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
So you got the old school sort of can't you
plug it in and it turns the little stirring thing.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, But weirdly we got it in the last few years.
We tried air popping for a while.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
And that's just like punishment garbage.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
I use a whirlypop that is the stovetop thing that
you put, you know, on your stove. I have a
gas stove, so it's cooking with gas and you hand
crank that thing and it stirs it around.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
You need a hamster, I do.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Those are like seventy bucks, so you know, not cheap
but not expensive. There's also more expensive brands like that
that are like a couple of hundred bucks, like the Popsmith.
But the whole point is you're cooking it on your
stovetop and you're turning it yourself, right, And that's how
I like to do it. As the the you know
that yellow oil that's got the butter flavor in it,
(08:35):
and I just do a little bit of that popcorn
salt because I love salt. But that stuff is super
salty and goes a long way I saw.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, for sure. There's a specific kind called Flavacall and
that's what the movie theaters use, and it's designed to
dissolve in oil and get in every part of a
popcorn pop popcorn. I can't remember, I ah the name
for what? Oh flake, that's what a pop popcorn is called.
Did you know that?
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:06):
I did not know that. Well at any rate. It's
meant to get in every crevice and nook and cranny
of a popped flake, and yeah, I would guess it
doesn't take very much of that stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Yeah, and we don't pop popcorn a lot, like we
should do it for every single family movie night because
there's really no reason not to. But uh, you know,
Ruby loves it, the family loves it. So I'm gonna
start popping more popcorn. But let's go back.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Wait, I'm not quite done. I should say, like, more
often than not, it's microwave popcorn that.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
We Sorry, I'm judging you.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yeah, it's all right. I can take it.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
I just don't like it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
What about smart food? I like that stuff too.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Yeah. Bag popcorn that's a whole other game, but a
huge industry.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Remember it used to be on our what do they
call it, a rider?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, like you had to give us smart pop popcorn
backstage at our shows.
Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah. It's good snack, calorie filling for sure, and cheesy,
pleasing to the tongue.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Let's go back a little bit though, and talk about cultivation,
because if you look at you know, indigenous Americans before
Europeans came along and wrecked everything, they were farming popcorn
in South and Central America, mainly in North America where
it was farmed it was in the southwest of the
(10:24):
United States and Mexico, or I guess most of that
was Mexico at the time. But when non indigenous Americans,
you know, white Europeans, came here, they started farming popcorn
in New England was a surprise.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Through most of the nineteenth century that was sort of
the center of popcorn, I guess, growing and manufacturing, until
eventually it moved to the Midwest in Chicago became the
hub of popcorn.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yes, which explains why Chicago is a caramel corn town.
And despite the fact that people in Chicago won't admit it,
Chicago is a caramel corn town.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
But most of the popcorn these days that comes for
the United States, well not most, but twenty five percent
of the popcorn popped in the US is grown in Nebraska,
it should be no surprise, but also grown in places
like Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah apparently also Brazil and Argentina grow a lot of
it too.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Okay, so chuck. A big question is whether popcorn is healthy,
and the answer is the resounding yes. If you just
air pop popcorn and only eat popcorn undressed in anything
and not cooked in oil.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
That's right. But what kind of serial killer does that? Yeah,
it is.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
It's it's low in calorie. Like I said, it's a
really good source of fiber. It's one hundred percent whole grain,
and if you eat one serving as three cups of poppedcorn.
If you eat three cups of popcorn, that's about fifteen
percent of your daily recommended fiber intake. So if you
double that, you're getting thirty percent.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
I saw so I was like, there's got to be
something wrong with popcorn. I searched Dark side of popcorn,
and the best I could come up with is that
it's there's enough fiber in it that if you have
irritable bowel syndrome, you need to be careful of your
popcorn intake. That's the worst thing anyone has to say
about popcorn.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, you can also get about three grams of protein
preserving eighteen grams of carbs, one gram of fat. You
can get vitamin B six, a e K riboflavon, buyme
nicene folate, So.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
It's pretty good for you.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
The nutritional values are going to shift some when you
cook it in oil and add toppings and butter flavored stuff,
but it's not like it destroys the nutritional value.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
The fiber's still in there right.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, for sure, it just makes it less healthy. You know,
you've got all the problems that you have for eating butter,
and not just eating butter, but liquid butter. Wow, you
want to talk about where popcorn came from?
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Because I do, yes.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So, like I said, popcorn is indigenous to the Americas,
and that's because corn is indigenous to the Americas. As
far as we can tell, especially if you've read fourteen
ninety two, corn was domesticated from the wild Taosenti plant
as far back as nine thousand years ago. And the
whole thing began in Mexico, and it was such a
(13:26):
good idea that it spread throughout Central and South America. Right. Yes,
popcorn itself is not that much younger, maybe about twenty
five hundred years or so.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, I mean sixty seven hundred years ago there was popcorn.
We just you know, don't know exactly when people started
eating it.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Right, but we do have archaeological evidence. I think people
have found popcorn buried with people in like South America,
and I think there was one burial in per maybe
where the burial was one thousand years old, but the
popcorn was still viable, like you could have popped it.
Imagine eating thousand year old funeral burial popcorn. That would
(14:12):
really be something.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, It's probably in some fancy menu somewhere in a
fancy restaurant.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, one of those underground restaurants for richies where they
eat people.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah, where they eat ancient foods and people, yeah, disguised
as tasty. There is written documentation. I believe the first
written documentation of popcorn comes from when the Europeans came
over again to the Americas. There was a missionary in
the sixteenth century name Bernardino the Sahagun. He was not
(14:46):
Italian really, and he claimed Aztecs were wearing popcorn garlands,
so it was already being used as sort of a decorative.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
And they called it momo cheetle okay.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And there was a seventeenth century missionary rename I'm not
even gonna try. His last name was Kobo, I can
say that one. And he saw Pruvian's toasting a quote,
a certain kind of corn until it burst, clearly popcorn.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Yeah. They called it pens and cola.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Cool, that's all I got, good stuff?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Uh Yeah, so yes, they were. They were. These guys
were witnessing popcorn, and you would think like, oh, okay, well
it would immediately become a big deal everywhere. That's not
necessarily the case. Despite there being a legend that popcorn
was introduced to the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, that
seems to have been a nineteenth century invention, which is
(15:39):
actually about the time that popcorn became a favored American
snack in the United States.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, we should probably take a break and come back
and talk about what happened from there.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
I think that's a great idea, Joe, all right, we'll
be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
I want to learn about a terror sort and call
it red actel. How to take a berg fractal gink
is Khan.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
That's a little hunt the Lizzie Borderers and all run
on sport up Jerry.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So euro Americans knew of popcorn long before they started
eating it. It was just associated with Native Americans. There
was a Native American thing. They love their popcorn. But
in the nineteenth century, as far back as the eighteen twenties,
people selling seeds started selling popcorn. Seeds kind of slowly
but surely started to gain traction. Thurreau was a fan.
(16:42):
He called popcorn a perfect winter flower, which seems like
a miss to me. And in eighteen forty eight popcorn
showed up in the debut edition of the Dictionary of Americanisms,
and I was looking through that. Chuck and keep a
stiff upper lip was in there too, which I associate
one with the UK. But apparently that's American.
Speaker 4 (17:05):
Oh. I never really thought about where that might have
come from.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I always thought it was the UK, but I was wrong.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, as far as popcorn goes, they used to make
it in all kinds of crazy ways early on. Sometimes
they would just throw it in a fire and wait
for it to pop out, I guess, and eat it
with a little little ash on it. Sometimes they would
put like an iron like an iron plank on a fire,
like you might do steamed oysters or something. If you're
(17:33):
sitting by the beach these days and you've got some
oysters and you throw a wet towel over those oysters.
With popcorn, you could just throw those kernels on that
hot plate, storm around just like it was on your stovetop,
and wait for it to pop.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
What's the towel for.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
The towel is for the oysters to steam them?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Oh, so you cover the oysters with the towel and
it keeps the steam inside.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Yeah. Yeah, with a wet to gotcha.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Guy, Yeah, and creates that steam. So, but that's oysters
just neither here there.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
So a frying pan obviously is one way you could
have popped it early on, but those things were really
really heavy to work with. They still are very heavy
you work with as far as like holding one and
shaking it over a hot fire. And before they had
gas s doves, you know, you got to nail the
popcorn heating temperature or else you're gonna scorch it and
it's not gonna taste great or it's never going to pop.
(18:21):
So until gas stoves came along, it was just harder.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, so it wasn't quite as popular, you know. Yeah,
although you can imagine there were some country women who
had like a much bigger, stronger right arm from popping
popcorn iron skillet, yeah, dead give away that they were
a popcorn fan. Yeah. Finally, in eighteen sixty six, the
first patent was issued for a popcorn popper, and it
(18:45):
was essentially just like you know those old timey toast makers.
There's like a it's like an iron rod and it
ends in like a mesh basket that you'd put the
bread in and toast it. Yeah, something like that. But
the mesh was thin enough that the popcorn brand wouldn't
fall out when you're popping it, and it would just
(19:05):
go pop pop, pop pop. My feet can't stop.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
They still make those for camping, you know, you can
still get those.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Okay, that makes sense. Well, that is the first patented
popcorn popper that came on the market, and it was
I mean still hard to do, but it was much
lighter than holding an iron skillet over the fire until
your popcorn popped.
Speaker 4 (19:24):
Yeah, at the very least is lighter and had a
much longer handle.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Right, So people were like, okay, I can kind of
get into this, and that's when it just started to
take off.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So that was eighteen sixty six. Like you said,
so in the eighteen seventies, if there was a public event,
you were going to be able to buy popcorn there.
Anything that had a concession stand was going to be
selling popcorn by that time. And in the eighteen nineties
that was a guy named Charles cr Etrs Creditors, I
guess in eighteen ninety three. He was a confectionery shop
(19:55):
owner in Ohio and he patented, I guess the first
sort of mobile portable popcorn machine that he adapted from
a peanut roaster of his own design, and all of
a sudden you could have like a popcorn stand on
a sidewalk, and that became like a thing.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
People were buying popcorn because it was always pretty cheap.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah. I looked at a picture. This is glorious. It's
super got like the big old penny farthing wheels on it.
It's just I would love to.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Buy popcorn from it, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I penny Thuring farthing is called that, no, because one
wheel was relatively the size of a penny to the
size of the farthing.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Oh wow, it's neat.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Is that kind of like that thing? Where like if
Earth was the size of a pinhead, the sun would
be the size of a basketball exactly. So this is
the nineteenth century. I think we made it through right, Yeah, yeah, okay,
So by the twentieth century, Oh no, we haven't quite
made it either, because I think we would be remiss
(20:53):
to not mention cracker jacks.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I mean, people in the late nineteenth century were into
pop like sweet popcorn balls and making popcorn sweet and delicious.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So it was a dirty lie when you said that
we made it out of the nineteenth.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Century, so dirty. I mean this was eighteen ninety six.
We were so close.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
So they were eating sweet popcorn in the eighteen forties.
I think cracker Jack came along in ninety six.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yes, so another thing that people put popcorn to use for. Again,
people are starting to get pretty crazy with this. Remember
our live episode on the Kellogg Brothers at the bat
Battle Creek Sanitarium. Before they started serving cereal there, John
Harvey Kellogg's wife Ella Kellogg, introduced popcorn as a cereal,
(21:41):
a breakfast cereal with milk and a sweetener, and it
was essentially the predecessor to the corn flakes and the
brand flakes and everything that came after that. And in
my opinion, it was the direct indirect predecessor of corn pops,
which are still around today. But they came out in
nineteen fifty and we're one of my all time favorite cereals.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
Oh okay, I was like, what is corn pops? Yeah? Yeah,
corn pops? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
She called it popcorn pudding. And there's a historian named
Andrew Smith that was basically like, popcorn may have been
what cereal became if it hadn't have been for other
grain manufacturers really getting super aggressive with the breakfast cereal
companies being like no, no, no, you want to use
brand or.
Speaker 4 (22:23):
Oat or whatever.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, don't be stupid.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Another thing you could use it for back then that
I have recently used it for is for flour. You
could grind popcorn into flour.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
And I have had this pancake popcorn pancake mix in
my house, which is pretty good and way better for
you than pancakes.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's gluten free, right, yeah, and it
is good. You're not just saying that it's pretty up
some money on my god, you're gonna like.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
I can't remember the name of the company, unfortunately, but
you could. You can find that out pretty easily.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
I saw a recipe for popcorn bread and I was like, wow,
that sounds interesting. And if you look closely, there's like
five other types of flour in it. It's popcorn is
just part of it. Yeah, I'd still eat it if
somebody else made it, you know.
Speaker 4 (23:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
So we finally made it to the twentieth century. And
the reason the twentieth century became such a big deal
as far as popcorn goes is because that is when
movies started to come out At first they were silent movies,
and then talkies and movie theaters started to open throughout
the United States, and very quickly people were like, popcorn
and movies go together really well. But it turns out
(23:31):
the theater owners were the last ones to figure this out.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
They were like, this stuff is a disaster of a mess.
It's all over the floor, and it still is, but
they deal with it because they make a ton of
money selling it. It was the depression coming along where
theater owners were like, hey, wait a minute, people don't
have a lot of money right now. Popcorn is very,
very cheap. It's a very affordable snack. So the people
(23:58):
were selling popcorn outside at theater that people could bring in,
much like my mother did in the nineteen eighties and
the first YEP, and they finally were like, hey, maybe
we could lease lobby space these popcorn vendors and just
have them sell it in here.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
And then someone was like, wait a minute, we're what
are we doing. We're doing this all wrong.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
We need to pop and sell this popcorn because the
markup is incredible and we're just losing money. So they started,
you know, it became hand in hand with theaters making
profits from the concessions largely popcorn.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yes, I mean like a lot of money off of popcorn.
There's a well trod story about a theater owner from
during the depression name R. J. McKenna, who found that
popcorn was basically keeping his theater afloat. During the depression,
people didn't really have much money for a movie theater ticket,
(24:53):
but if they did, they still had money enough for
popcorn because it was a cheap snack. So R. J.
McKenna made the very wise is this decision of lowering
his ticket prices below what he would have made a
profit on because he made so much money off of
popcorn in the concession stands. And I think they the
number that's bandied about is two hundred thousand dollars from
(25:16):
popcorn alone, which is more than four and a half
million dollars today. If that's in nineteen thirty six, dollars.
Speaker 4 (25:24):
From popcorn big big profits.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah for sure. And he said a bit of a tradition,
as we'll find out that popcorn still big.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Profits, Yeah, big time.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
During World War Two, there were sugar shortages, so sweet
treats were on the wigin I guess, and salty treats rose,
and popcorn was right at the center of that. Apparently,
Americans were eating three times more popcorn in the nineteen
forties than they ever had before, and also in the
know the connection to movie theater strengthened during the nineteen forties.
(25:56):
In nineteen forty five, more than half the popcorn people
eating in the United States was in those movie theaters.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, and there's another really great I want to say
it's an urban legend, but it actually happened a guy
named James Vicari or Vickery, who we've talked about before,
because he was basically the inventor of subliminal advertising, even
though subliminal advertising isn't really a thing. But the reason
he ties into this is because he supposedly experimented on
(26:27):
people showing frames interlaced within movies that popped up so
quickly that you couldn't perceive them, you only perceived them subliminally,
and they said things like go eat more popcorn, and
popcorn sales like tripled. Supposedly, even though the whole thing
was a total fraud and the guy made it up,
it's still worth mentioning.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
If you ask me, he didn't actually even do that,
he said later that he made all of that up.
He never even did the subliminal advertising.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I saw that too.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, so that was just a fraud from top to bottom.
Prior to the thirties, most of the popcorn was white corn,
but movie theaters moved to the yellow corn variety and
it just looked better. It looked buttery, even though it wasn't,
and people that just became the de facto popcorn that
you mainly eat here in the United States, is that
(27:16):
yellow corn. I think by nineteen ninety ten percent of
commercially soul popcorn was whitecorn.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Let me ask you, do you get buttered popcorn at
the movies?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
I get popcorn, And the AMC that I go to
here has the do your own butter. That's not butter,
by the way, at all. It's buttered flavored oil and stuff.
But I add, you know, when I was a kid,
I would just drench it in that stuff.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Now I do not.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Now I do like that flavor, but I'll just do
a pretty sparing couple of squirts and shakes.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah. I never was into it, even as a kid.
I'd hard to be and I just couldn't get into
it for some reason. I think because it just it's
the popcorn. And I don't like popcorn wet.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
I love it, but it's just you can't have it
drenched in that stuff. Like that's when it's really bad
for you. It's when you're just like dumping all that
oil on there. But a little bit I like, and
I'll shake it up and you get you know, I
get enough of that flavor just from a dab good.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
I respect our differences.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Here's the thing though, with TV coming along, the popcorn
industry was really really worried that like, oh no, like
you know, all this popcorn is being eat in movie
theaters like we're toast because people aren't gonna go to
the movies anymore because of TV. A. That didn't really happen.
People still went to the movies back then. But what
they found out was people loved popping that popcorn at
(28:45):
home while they watched TV. And you can also have
popcorn ads on TV, and so people with their televisions
were eating more popcorn than ever in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah. Well, you know what stuck out to me from
that that anecdote, Chuck, is like, that's a an example
of early disruption, right yea, where people are like, oh,
there's a change, there's a huge sea change in the
way people do things, So this thing is going to
totally go away forever, right, And just since the Internet age,
we found that just doesn't really happen, Like everything from
(29:16):
bookstores to paper to I don't know, seeing people in person,
we're all just destined to just go away because they've
been replaced and it's just not how it goes, which
I think is kind of neat to understand because it
makes you a little less fearful of change or technology
or progress in some ways, I agree, although anyone who's
(29:38):
listened to the end of the world knows there's plenty
of technology to be scared of. It's got to be selective.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, and you know there are dents and industries for sure,
like you know, newspapers and magazines. Some have shuddered, but
if you believed, you know what the scare tactics, everyone's
gonna be like, you're never going to hold a newspaper
again after a certain year.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, newspapers, So that one did take a pretty hard hit,
but it wasn't necessarily because of the Internet. It was
because of captains of industry essentially realizing that they could
capture journalism if they if they defunded local news, and
that's exactly what happened. And I don't remember what episode
(30:19):
it was on. There's this there's a YouTube podcast that
I love, if you mean introduced it to me or
me to it, one of the two called doom Scroll.
It's hosted by a guy named Joshua Ciderella, and he
has the most interesting guests on who are just they
just think and talk about their thoughts, and I mean
like it's it's all rooted in, you know, like academia
(30:41):
or research or something. They're not just riffing or anything
like that. But one of them was talking about that
that capture and what happened to it, and it's just
so strange to think, like, yeah, local newspapers went away,
but the effect that that had on democracy and on
people being informed and just generally caring about stuff that
was a huge, huge deal.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Allegedly, did he eat popcorn while they said this stuff?
Speaker 2 (31:07):
No? I don't think he did. No, he drinks like
Lacroix instead.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
All right, well let's take our second break and we'll
finish up with popcorn.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Right after this, I want to learn.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
About a terrisort and call it fridactyl. How to take
a pink is gone? That's a little hunt word up, Jerry.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
All Right, So we talked a little bit about innovations
and how to pop popcorn over the years. That is
still evolving. I feel like every few years there's some
new sort of weird gadget to pop popcorn with.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I did not know that, man.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Yeah, electricity coming along was a big deal obviously for
electric popcorn poppers like you have, well, you and your
electric hamster. That is, they had a drawback though, because
they were dangerous. The early electric popcorn poppers were like
(32:16):
fires waiting to happen, essentially. I think in the late
sixties Consumer Bulletin examined all the most popular ones and
one of them they determined did not post safety hazards.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, that's the one we have.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, from nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Although the hamster that runs our popcorn popper did come
with a little fire chiefs hat that he wears.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
It's so cute.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
So yeah, that's another interesting thing about popcorn. If you
kind of track its trajectory, it just keeps evolving with
new stuff. Like anytime something new comes along that you
can apply to popcorn. Whether it's movies or TVs or electricity,
people apply it to popcorn like it's just this little
thing lurking in the background that's been woven into our
(32:59):
culture so thoroughly and for so long, you just look
right past it and then it trips you as you
walk by, and you suddenly recognize how important popcorn is.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah. TV Time was another one.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
We already mentioned jippy pop, but TV Time was it
was just a packaging innovation where they had like sealed
popcorn to keep it really fresh, and then also separate
kind of like fun dip, separate compartments for seasonings and oil.
So it was kind of an all in one thing.
So just even little innovations that aren't mechanical, like packaging
(33:33):
innovations like microwave popcorn. I guess we could get too,
because that really changed the game.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, and we've talked about this guy plenty of times.
He was kind of like the Hayflick limit for a
while and early yeah stuff, you should know. He came
up a lot. But a guy named Percy Spencer worked
for the Raytheon Company and he was in charge of
creating magnetrons. I can't remember what he was doing with them.
I think they're for like radar or something. And he
was standing next to one at some point and he
(34:00):
had a chocolate bar. I'm guessing mister goodbar, that's what
I've always envisioned, Yeah, in his front pocket, like a
total nerd, because obviously his shirt was also a short
sleeve button down shirt, and the mister goodbar melted in
his pocket and he thought, hmm, that's curious.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
And I was saving this late exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
No, it's just oozy. And then he decided almost immediately
to see what happens with popcorn, if you could do
the same thing with popcorn, and he did it.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, And so like microwaves and popcorn, microwave popcorn grew
in lockstep from.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
The very beginning.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
In fact, he even in his nineteen forty six patent
for the microwave showed popcorn being popped, so it was
always sort of tied together. The first commercial microwaves were
very big and expensive and not really for the home.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
They were more for restaurants.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
So once they went to the house, microwave popcorn was
right there along with it. In nineteen fifty one, a
gentleman named Orville Redenbacher got to together with a guy
named Charles Bowman and bought a corn plant in Indiana
and experimented with different versions of popcorn varieties and landed
on the Red Bow variety, and in nineteen sixty nine
(35:11):
started selling Orvile Reddenbacher branded popcorn. And here's what I
didn't know. They sold that brand six years later. They
sold it in nineteen seventy six, Wow, to hunt wessn Foods.
But he was just the name and face of it,
So he stayed the name and face of it.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Wow. Yeah. And I've read bow variety, you said, I
wonder if they named it after his penchant for red
bow ties, or he started wearing red bow ties because
of the variety.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
I don't think they named the variety, So I bet
you he started wearing that thing because of that.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Thank you, CA. He also just said one more thing
about Orvile Riddenbacher. His Eames lounge chair, you know, the
one with the ottoman. Yeah, he had one in his
office and I think Nebraska, Omaha or something, and it's
still out there Orvile red Eames lounge chair from his
offices out there somewhere in.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
The world, like someone owns it.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, I've coveted it ever since I first heard about that.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
Not just a name chair you want Orvile Reddenbocker's Emes chair.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yes, okay, and I still I don't know why. I've
never really stepped back and asked myself, but it's it
just got me for some reason.
Speaker 4 (36:20):
I mean, you can't be a gen x er and
not have a soft spot for Orvile Reddenbacker and the
Bartles and James guys.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
No, yeah, they were great. They were wonderful dudes. They
were the predecessor of Penn and Teller.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
I think, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
So yeah, we talked about microwaves and how microwaves started
coming to the home, and microwave popcorn came along quickly
after that. I think nineteen eighty one was when you
could start buying microwave popcorn. And like I said, it's
like a global phenomenon. I think I said it. At
the outset. Everybody knows popcorn, whether you love it or not.
You know about popcorn, you know where to buy it,
(36:57):
and there's different tastes around the world, as you might
i'd imagine, apparently in the United States, the favorite flavors
of popcorn are salted, buttered, white cheddar, regular cheddar. So
white Cheddar's finally overtaken regular cheddar. This is a big deal.
And then kettle which is the sweet kind.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
I like a kettle corn.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
That's all right. I've never been crazy for it, but
you know, if somebody put it in my mouth, I
wouldn't just spit it out.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
I'm gonna try that sometimes, he would have backstage at
our next live show, I'm just gonna stuff some kettle
corn in your mouth.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Do you remember when we were filming a We were
filming some commercial, I think, and we were eating popcorn
at the movies for this part of the commercial, and
we did like one take and then chat. Our friend,
the director directed the stuff. He's doing a TV show.
He came over. He's like, just one note, don't mash
(37:56):
a handful of popcorn into your mouth all at once.
And he goes, that's a note for regular life too.
Oh no, yeah, And so.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
Are you supposed to eat it?
Speaker 2 (38:06):
I don't know, Like I guess you hold it in
one hand and then like daintily pluck a few out
with the other hand. That's what I've seen people do
in the movies. But I like that, Yeah, I just
put my hand in a bag of popcorn or a
bullet popcorn, just shove it into my face as best, like, Okay,
it's not just me, but yeah, Chad made it seem
(38:27):
like it.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
Was just me.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Isn't it a little funny that you ever think about
that we used to get way more opportunities to do
that stuff very much earlier in our career.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Uh yeah. I think also that we've kind of mellowed
out in our quest or our willingness to do stuff
like that.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
We kind of like we said, yeah, we're kind of like.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Hey, we're happy podcasting. We tried so many different things
and it's always just come back to podcasting that I
think we're just like, yeah, we're happy living this way.
Speaker 4 (38:58):
I mean I am.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
I'm kind of glad now that I'm older and have
a you know, family at home that did not have
to travel to do that stuff.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
It just seems weird.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Like earlier on, I felt like TV shows were trying
to get us on to be like talk show guests
or like Toyota do Toyota commercials, Hey come on and
talk about the housing crisis for the NBC and like
just nobody asks anymore, and it's.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
It's quite wonderful.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, it is nice.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Anyway, if you go around the country, you're gonna get
some interesting flavors. In Japan, apparently there's a bagged popcorn
company called Mike that Fred La owns, and they have
of course, like Yuzu salt or.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
Kishu plum popcorn.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
So you're gonna get some some pretty exciting flavors when
you travel around the world, depending what they like there.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Yeah, and I know for a fact it's not pronounced Mike,
but I failed to ask you me how to pronounce it.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
So now what is it?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Me? K, We'll go with Mike, but it's not Mike.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Well, of course it's not Mike. But I'm an American, so.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
No, I'm with you. I just wish I knew how
to say it, but you probably were right with me.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
What else could it be? Me? K? Nike?
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Kind of yeah, mikey? What else? Chuck? Is there anything
else to say about popcorn? Oh? I know one? Apparently
people have used popcorn as like a packaging like stuffer.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
For packing peanuts.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, packing peanuts, but popcorn instead. Since like the nineteen fifties.
But the problem is is if you use popcorn, it
can get kind of gross, especially if you didn't think
and you popped it in oil and covered it with
butter before you put it in as a packaging material.
It'll just get gross. It can attract pests and stuff
(40:37):
like that. So no one's quite figured it out, but
I guess a few years back, twenty twenty one, there's
some German researchers who are like hot on the trail
of this, using scraps of corn that is like that
you get off the floor of like a corn flake
factory that they figured out how to pop and it's
essentially styrofoam, but it's made of pop corn, And I'm like,
(41:01):
hurry up with this because styrofoam is one of the
worst things humans produce on this entire planet.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, totally, packing peanuts are a nightmare, they really are.
Speaker 4 (41:11):
So yeah, maybe.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Popcorn could could help out with that, just a couple
of things to finish on. It is an eight hundred
and fifty million dollar industry. I guess in the United
States alone that bag popcorn, like the smart popping, all
that stuff combined is about one point five billion, So
it is it is.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It's popping.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Yeah, it's pop it's popping.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
And I'm glad that we held onto the stat because
we kind of teased about movie theaters and how much
the markup was and how much money they made. The
popcorn markup in movie theaters is one two hundred and
seventy five percent.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Totally buy that. That actually seems low.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, it's such a money maker because it's just so
cheap to get and you get that machine that runs forever,
maybe a little maintenance on it, and then the stuff
goes with it, and then you sell it for a
gazillion dollars for a bucket. Then you got that butter
flavored liquid. This snow good.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
If you do like.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Real butter on your popcorn at home, I encourage that
because real butter is great. But you got to use
clarified butter or ghee right because the water and the
milk solids are removed in those and that's what's going
to make the popcorn soggy. So if you're just melting
butter and pouring on your popcorn, you're like, why is
my popcorn soggy and gross? That's why I use clarified
(42:29):
butter or clarify your own butter and pour it over
your popcorn, and it is delicious and not soggy.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Very nice. I think that's it for popcorn.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Right, I've got nothing else on popcorn. Go forth and
eat it. It's good and pretty good for you.
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yeah, and check out that book by Andrew Smith, pop Culture,
because it's the definitive toe on popcorn.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, since we talked about Andrew Smith, it's time obviously
for listener mail.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
This is from Cecilia S and it's about our music
bumpers that we've said before, but it always bears repeating.
They are made by stuff you should know, listeners. They
always have been. Every single one of them are made
by listeners and they send them in and it's a
really cool, like interactive part of the show for the
listenership guys. In terms of your music bumpers, I love
how they relate.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
To the episode subject.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
If it's about an eerie subject, the song reflects that
with an eerie tone, or if it's a somber, sad subject,
the song reflects that. And there are many other examples.
This brings to my father, who is a music director
at the church we belong to growing up. He would
sometimes fill in when the organist was unavailable, and before
and after Mass he would softly play hymns but an
insert a bit of whimsy. For example, at the start
(43:42):
of baseball season he'd play a little take Me out
to the ballgame and the style of a hymn, or
during football season the university fight song could be heard
in the fashion of a solemn liturgical piece. Many other
instances of his playfulness. He had a big band combo
in college in the nineteen forties and into the seventies,
and they could sometimes be heard in church.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Anyway, love the show.
Speaker 3 (44:03):
You both display such curiosity and knowledge and with wonderful
wit and sensitivity when needed.
Speaker 4 (44:08):
Thank you to whoever is responsible for the music.
Speaker 3 (44:11):
It's not often I would say that about a podcast,
so Cecilia, like we said, those are from the listeners.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
But Jerry, our esteemed third leg of our.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Stool, is who ties those so aptly to the subject
matter with her own wit and whimsy.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah, Jerry deserves way more credit for that too, because
sometimes it's just like, man, you just knocked it out
of the park with that pick.
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Jerry, she does, and we're never like, uh, who Jerry
this is a Halloween one, so make sure to use
a scary bumper.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, we don't do that.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
We leave it to Jerry, she does her thing.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah. And also, huge, huge, heartfelt thanks. I think I
just said thanks, but I really meant thanks to every
single person who's ever sent in a music bumper, because
that's just such a cool, just little subtle part of
the show. Ye, all those different, great little pieces of music.
Thank you to everybody who's ever done that. Thank you
(45:04):
to everybody who's going to do it in the future,
even too.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yeah, twelve seconds or less.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
I think we say sixteen. I thought it was twelve
somewhere in that neighborhood. Between twelve and sixteen seconds, how
about that.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
Yeah, but if you send in one of those thirty
second long ones, you'll hear from me saying this is great,
but cut it down and we'll use it.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Yeah. That's a note for real life too.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Well, if you want to get in touch with us,
like Cecilia, you can send us an email too. Send
it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!