46: Culture’s Consequences: King Cake At Mardi Gras

Introducing…Dean’s new “Culture’s Consequences” Substack column, in which he reveals the hidden cultural reasons behind the daily headlines! In this episode, Dean and Tom bite into Dean’s February 2024 “Culture’s Consequences” article about Dong Phuong Bakery’s luscious King Cake, available only during New Orleans’ Mardi Gras season, and how it represents a melding of New Orleans, Creole, French, and Vietnamese cultures. Plus, they float into talk of krewes and parades during Mardi Gras, involving some of the cutest dogs you’ve ever seen. We hope you find this episode to be the same as Dean’s description in the article of the Dong Phuong King Cake: “layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of just-right.” Don’t be afraid to drool if so, dear listeners, and laissez les bons temps rouler (i.e., let the good times roll)! ***Subscribe to Dean’s Substack here to find ALL of Dean’s “Culture’s Consequences” articles, plus Dean’s CultureQuizzes and much much more!*** Have a cultural question or episode idea? Reach out on X/Twitter & Facebook (@OopsCultureShow) or by email at [e-mail]. Music: “Little Idea” – Bensound.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
- Ode. Oh,
- Tom, - You know, when we'redoing this right now, for,
for those listeners who maybe listening at any time ever,
potentially in the veryfar distant future,
it is now February in the year.
And so of what year? Of what year? Yes.
You wanna know what year it is, ?
I do, uh, it's 2024. Oh, cool. Yes.

(00:24):
I, I had no idea what yearwas honestly, .
I've lost all track of time
and, well, it's, it's a, um,
it's the, the time of the year.
What, what happens thatmight have a cultural impact
on us in this month,
- Not only this month, but right now,
as we speak about it, it, it's happening.

(00:44):
This la Miss Woo.
This is Mardi Gras timeall down in Orleans anyway,
and we've got carnivalin, in, in Rio coming up.
We've got Carnival in in Brazil.
We've got Carnival in differentparts of the Caribbean.
Nice. This is the month, man.
This is when we're, thisis coming up to lent.

(01:04):
We, you know, you gotta let it all out
because you can't do it onceLent comes and every Right.
You gotta pull it alltogether again. Okay.
So this is all leading up to,um, Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday.
- Fat Tuesday. Yeah. FatTuesday. Fat Tuesday.
- And I was reading somethingin the paper about this.
One of the phenomenons, one ofthe traditions of Mardi Gras,
certainly the, as it's donein, in New Orleans Yeah.

(01:27):
Is, uh, you know, it'sa very, it comes out
of a very Catholic tradition in
- The Right.
- It's celebration before Lent. Right.
Um, but over the years, the,the, the, the, the importance
of king cake and the reason I mention
king cake, king cake, king
- Cake King, king cake.
That's hard to say. King cake King.
Well, there, everybodysay it now. Here we go.
King, king cake. King

(01:47):
- Cake.
There's a Mardi CROs king,
and there's a Mardi GraMardi Gras queen Uhhuh, um,
and the connection of King and queen and,
and the three wise men,
- Uh, the three kings, three cows king,
three kings. So yeah.
- It's all coming together. Yeah. Right.
- Okay. Which probably may have been
kings may not in whatever. Yeah. Go
- Ahead.
So king cake Oh.

(02:08):
Is developed, it's afairly newer tradition in,
in Mardi Gras where you have this,
it's a delicious pastry, and
- It's, it's this- Huge cake.
It's like a crawler,
but it's, it's like a, a massive crawler.
- A giant crawler
- .
Giant crawler. Yeah.
And it's, it's, um, coveredin, in, in this, um,

(02:29):
- It's a king size crawler.
- Yeah,- Exactly. Yeah.
- See a frosting of threedifferent colors, uh, purple,
gold, and green, whichare the Mardi Gras colors.
- Okay. Yeah.- And, um, and inside you cut it,
and it could be flavored,it can have almond flavoring
inside or vanilla flavoring.
It's it, uh, but somewherein the cake is a baby Jesus.

(02:51):
- Oh, right, okay. A- Little plastic baby cheese.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah.- And most of the, uh,
commercial king cakes thatare, that are manufactured now
for Mardi Gras, keep the baby Jesus in a
little pl piece of plastic.
And they don't put it in the cake.
They put it right on the top,
so it becomes your responsibility.
'cause they don't want toput it inside the cake.

(03:12):
- So they don't get lawsuits from having
someone swallow the baby.
Jesus. Exactly. Okay.
- Although I think the swallowing the baby
Jesus is like communion. Right. Well,
- , wow.
Um, yeah, I did. Ididn't know that .
Well, sort of, I
- Mean, I'm guessing not beinga follower of the flock, I'm,
I'm looking at thewhole situation from the
outside, but Right.

(03:32):
Yeah. Swallow the baby Jesus.I think that's probably the
- Thing thing.
Well, in truth, yes. It's the,the body of Christ is. Yeah.
Okay. Is, uh, I I ispart of communion. Yeah.
- It's this big, it'slike an inch pig. Yeah.
- A little plastic baby.Which makes it even easier
to swallow.
- Right? Yeah. So you don't want,
- I think it's the litigation part
that's probably driving what
- They're doing.
You don't, you don't want,you don't wanna do that,
- Right?
No. No. Yeah. I thinkI'd rather not. Yeah. So,
- Um, and why,- Why are we,

(03:53):
why are we talking aboutthis? Well, because
- It's, because it's a Mardi Gras Oh.
Tradition. And this isthe month of Mardi Gras.
And here's the thing about, wait,
- Here's the thing. Hold on. Hold. Here's
- The cultural thing.
Yes. Okay. Right. Well,wait, wait a minute.
We, before we've like,why are we here? Well,
- That's what I'm wondering because
- It's a cultural thing, because Oops.

(04:13):
Your culture show, your is showing,
- And it's showing quite a bit here.
- And, and I'm here with Tom Peterson
- And, and I'm here with Dean Foster, and
- We are both here with- Torin.
Hello. Hey. Hi, .

(04:33):
I didn't know if I was supposed to say in
my name or not. You're
- In and we're, and we're all,
and we're all wishing we're sitting
around eating king cake. Oh, yeah.
- Water now. Some kingcake right now. Yeah.
- Yep. It's, it's very tasty. Yep.
But everybody in New Orleanshas got their favorite king
cakes, so, and there's lotsof bakeries that make them.
So you gotta be very careful about
what you say about King cake,
because you're probablygonna be either complimenting

(04:56):
or putting somebody's favoriteking cake manufacturer down.
And everybody's got theirfavorites. So. Well, I
- Don't want, I don'thave No, I'm gonna desire
to dis the king cake.
No wish to, no wish to that.
- Well, I say that as a caveat now
because one of the thingsthat struck me recently is
that there's been this onemanufacturer of king cake in,
in New Orleans that has gottena tremendous amount of press.

(05:19):
Hmm. And the king cake, by theway, is phenomenal. Mm-Hmm.
. It reallyis good. It's dung.
- Okay. King- Cake. Mm.
- Okay.- Now Ang doesn't sound very French or
- Cre I would not saythat would sound French.
- Right, right. Because they'renot, they're Vietnamese.
Okay. Okay. It's a Vietnamesebakery that started about,

(05:40):
I think, uh, 10 or 15 years ago.
Okay. Uh, by Vietnameseimmigrants Uhhuh .
And here's the cultural connection.
You've got, you've got the influence
of French culture in both NewOrleans Yes. And in Vietnam.
- Right. Uhhuh and- Everybody's,
- Because it was a colony of, of France.
- Yes. And in Vietnam,one of the amazing things

(06:00):
that struck me, the veryfirst time I I was there,
was the fact that you have this incredible
Southeast Asian food.
Hmm. You know, you've got allof the, the lemongrass and,
and the buns and, and, and,
and the delicious Southeast Asian foods
that you can imagine ifyou've ever had Thai food.
Mm-Hmm hmm. Yes. And the fur Mm-Hmm.
Which is uniquely Vietnamese Mm-Hmm.

(06:21):
, which is this,basically this hot soup.
Mm-Hmm. , youknow, it's, right. Yeah.
You can have it with beef,you can have it with chicken,
you can have it with veggies,you can have it with shrimp.
Uh, I'm getting real hungry.It, it's, it's wonderful.
And, but it's all SoutheastAsian style. Right. Okay. Yep.
Um, and then you have, um, you,
you see people cominghome at the end of the day
with fresh baked baguettes saga,

(06:44):
the French influence in, in Yeah.
You know, in, in Ho ChiMinh City, it's part
of Vietnamese culture.
Sure, sure. So you have rice
and bread, not just rice culture.
Mm. Yeah. But you have riceand bread culture. Okay.
Uhhuh . And, uh, and,
and in Vietnam you can haveFrench delicacies as well as,

(07:04):
uh, Southeast Asian style food.
Huh. And it, it's right there.
It's, it's always, sincethe French, certainly, um,
the colonization, it,
it's always been heavilyinfluenced by French cuisine.
Mm. So now we have these French, these,
these Vietnamese immigrantscoming to the Gulf Coast
of the United States andsettling where, of course,

(07:27):
in a warm climate Right.
Where they can continueto do their seafood.
And because the Gulf is filledSure. With shrimp. Mm-Hmm.
Absolutely. Asit is the, the Gulf of Saigon
in, in, in Vietnam.
Mm-Hmm. . And
so it's a very similar topography,
and it allows them to continueto do the kind of, um, uh,

(07:48):
living that they, that they were doing.
Yeah, sure. And they bringwith them all of their
culinary traditions, includingthe French tradition.
Yeah. Which matches
with the French traditions in New Orleans.
It's like a perfect fit. Okay. Yeah.
So now you have a Vietnamesebakery making king cake. Mm.
And what do they do? They makeit in a uniquely French way.

(08:11):
Mm. Which makes it suddenlyan amazing standout. Mm. Nice.
Now, I've had, I've had different kinds
of king cakes in New Orleans.
Okay. And they're all wonderful,
and they're all slightlydifferent and, huh.
You know, you can have,uh, but they're all ishish.
And you can have a blind,
we should definitely have ablind tasting at king cakes.

(08:31):
'cause they're all fabulous whales.
I must ,they're gonna force me into it.
I'll do my best. .
But this one when I justmost recently had, um,
had, had, had done kingcake was very different.
Okay. Oh, and it was different
because the tradition that theVietnamese immigrants brought

(08:53):
with them was the tradition of lamination.
- Oh, yeah. Where
- You, where you take the doughand you, and you roll it out
and there's, and, andyou fold it and fold it
and fold it and fold it.
And between each fold,there's lots of butter. Oh
- My goodness. There's
- Lots of cinnamon.

(09:13):
- Oh my goodness.- That they put in there. Mm-Hmm.
And then, and then you,and then you chill it,
and then you do it again.
You roll it out, you fold it, you fold it,
you fold it, you fold it.
Butter, butter, butter,butter. Chill it, do it again.

- You over there.
- And then,- And then,
unless I was eating some of that. Right.

(09:35):
- And then you frost- It. Just imagine you're,
- And what we're doing is we're, that's
- The problem. I'm,
- We're frosting it withthe lightest frosting.
This is not a thick coat of heavy crusty
- Frosting too.
Right. Right's, muchfrosting. This is light. Yeah.
You don't, don't overdue. Well,
- In a, in a very French fashion,

(09:55):
- ,- But it's a French fashion that comes
to us via Vietnam.
- Right, right. Yeah. Oh,that sounds wonderful.
- My gosh. And this particularking cake is bringing
traditional French culinary aspects
- Right.
- To the king cake. Yeah, sure.
- Yeah,- Sure. Which is, which
I have not seen in other king cakes.

(10:15):
Right. So you bite into this one. Yeah.
And the butter just oozes
- Oh my gosh. From it
- Wow.
Into this very light,light sweet frosting.
- Yeah. Wow. Yeah.- And I don't know if I were the baby
Jesus, I wouldn't wannacome out , right.
- . Oh, no, no, no,no. Stay there forever.
I, I think that's wise.

(10:35):
Um, it's, I mean it, ifit's what it's telling me is
that if I lived in New Orleans,
I would weigh 400 pounds. .
- There is there is that,
- I'm not tall.
So 400 pounds. Yes.
Can, can I ask with that, isking cake baked year round?

(10:56):
No, no. Just during Mar. Oh.
You can only get it during thattime. So that helps .
- You can only get it, I supposeyou can go into some sort
of, you know, store wherethey're got frozen cake.
Yeah. Tea cake, you know, that's
- Not fresh- Baked.
Nobody wants it. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, they only make it the, usually the two
or three weeks coming up to Mardi Gras.
Yeah. And then onceMardi Gras is finished,

(11:16):
once we got Fat Tuesday,
that's it. It goes away. We're done.
- You gotta wait. Gotta- Wait. Yeah.
- Wow. Wow. Well, that's, Imean, that's disappointing.
Can I ask why we're notin New Orleans right now,
- ?
Well, that's a question thatwe all often ask ourselves.
Yeah. Just about any time of year. Yeah.
Except maybe the middleof the summer. Well,
- That's, there are times where Yeah.

(11:37):
Yeah. No, but unbelievable. Imean, that's, that's such Oh
- My gosh. And, and,
- And I'm not gonna recover. So,
- And Don King cake has become so popular,
particularly this year.
It just kind of, the,everyone became aware of it.
It just hit the radar that,um, this year they ran out.
Uh, you couldn't order it. Yeah.

(11:58):
Um, and what they didis they always had some
every morning Mm-Hmm.
. And so peoplewere lining up at dawn in front
of the, in front of the bakery.
- Right. Oh my gosh. Good for that.
Sleeping overnight probably. Yeah.
Or just not going to sleep
as it would be the casein New Orleans often.
Yeah, exactly. Um, you gotta cap
- Bond.
No. You know, this is what youcan have on top of your, um,

(12:20):
your, your coffee andyour coffee and benets
- And benets and beignets.
Yeah. Because beignets in that,what's, there's no problem.
- Benets, you'll have every day.
And so you'll continue tohave your beignet. Sure.
But around Mardi Gras,you'll have your beignet
and coffee and king
- Cake.
Well, once they stop making it, I would,
I would hide my tears in beignets.
Mm-Hmm. . That's, you know,
that a So I think it's, I think,

(12:40):
- I think it was a LouisPrima hit back in the forties.
. Hide my tears in be,
- I'm really sure it was not Louis Prima.
I,
- My tears,- 99% of the people listening
to this have no idea who Louis
- Is.
Well, but he was, hewas a big New Orleans.
He came from New Orleans. Okay.
He was a big New Orleansmusician. There you go.
And he kind of, he kinda linkeda lot of New Orleans style,

(13:02):
- But extremely into the Italian. Very
- Much so.
Lifestyle, ItalianAmerican Orleans, Italian,
- New Orleans, Italian.
Right. Uh, lifestyle.
And, and his music very much represented.
- And K and King cake is,
- But all of you people wanna go out
and get something from him right now. Yes.
- Comes outta the, theFrench and Creole tradition.
Mm mm-Hmm. . Butnow we have Vietnam bringing
classic French lamination

(13:25):
techniques to the kingcake. Yeah. And making
- French lamination specialsounds like something
that you talk about in somesort of romantic a aspect.
I'm, uh, I'm just, is itjust saying, you know?
- Well, I, I, I think if you, if,
- I mean, you know,- If you're on,
- I'm on board for Frenchlamination. I'm thinking
- Arts and crafts. But
- Are, are you?
Yeah. Well, so am I in away ? Oh, no, no.

(13:47):
- It's a culinary term.- Ah, ah.
- But the French have kind of, like, made
that their technique.
And now there are other cultures
that do lamination too, but, well,
- Vietnam.
- Yeah, because it wasbecause of the French. Right,
- Exactly.
Yeah. And there's, youknow, the influence.
Well, that's like New Orleans.
The French were there. It was colon.
- I just never had king cakewith so much butter oozing out.

(14:10):
- Yeah. You made the point.
I'm sitting over here ready to eat my arm.
right now. ,
- Because I know you, I knowyou've got a, um, a Substack,
which hopefully many of our,
our listeners are also avid readers of.
Um, is this something that you,
I don't know when we're releasing this,
but that either youare going to write about

(14:32):
or maybe have written aboutby the time this comes out?
I'm not sure. I'm justcurious. 'cause this,
it's had, this is somethingvery pertinent. Yeah.
- The article is definitely coming out on,
on my Substack Oh, great.
Which is Dean Foster Globaldo substack.com. Cool. Okay.
And, uh, it's, what was
- That, - Dean Foster GlobalDo substack.com. Okay.
- Thanks. Got the link notes.
- And, and it's coming outin my column on Culture's

(14:54):
Consequences, where wetalk about headlines
or things that are going on in the news.
A as this month is, wasn't
- That Game Marty Show with Bob Barker?
Welcome to Culture's
- Consequences. If only it were,
- It's a maybe Arizona now too.
Yeah. Not with Bob Barker.Culture. Consequences.
Maybe it should be not with Bob. Yeah.
Maybe it should be with a different
host. With a different host.
- Well, we're talkingabout to carry, maybe we,
we talk about not he,

(15:15):
the cultural reasons for the headlines.
Not the political, not theeconomic, not social policy,
but what's going, why is there a
- Cultural podcast?
Exactly. So, you know, we have to have,
- So we're mentioning it here, here,
- Too.
Absolutely. There wego. Right. Okay. Cool.
Well, that makes sense. Nice. Yeah. Nice.
- Yeah. So

(15:38):
let's, the Good Times roll.
- Yes. Well, absolutely.
Let's, it would be nice if they would
roll for a while, you know,
- Just really, 'cause we need some,
we could use a few thisyear. We really need some,
- A couple of them.
Yeah. Yeah.
Besides the, um, the King cake
or maybe an, an adjacent kingadjacent to King cake, uh,

(16:03):
what other cultural aspectsaround Mardi Gras, um, that are,
are, are kind of obvious flagrant
or not so flagrant, maybethat's more important.
Maybe ones that are underlying issues
or aspects
or anything like that. Yougot anything for us? Well,
- You, you know, youknow the crews, right?
So there's, uh, different crews,different groups of people

(16:25):
that represent different clubs,
- Crews, not a cruise
that you would take likedown the Mississippi.
Right. Oh, A-C-R-E-W-S?
- No, K-R-E-W-E.- Oh mm, very
- Good.
KREW Okay. Cruise. Yeah.
And they represent the, the,the tradition goes back, um,
uh, I'm not quite sure how long,but, but quite a long time.

(16:47):
It's gotta be at least ahundred years, maybe more, um,
where different social clubs Yeah.
In New Orleans would gatherand celebrate Mardi Gras.
Mm-Hmm. ina very special way. Okay.
They usually, you know,there's, there, there were crews
that represented socialclubs that were quite, um,

(17:07):
elite in, in the city.
Okay. Yeah. And if you goback a hundred years, you're,
you're talking about, um, civil war time
and post-Civil war and pre-Civil war.
And, and so these were verysegregated, um, activities Sure.
And different social clubs Sure.
Were only, all social clubsat the time were only white.
There was one or two that were black,

(17:27):
but they were, as far as I know,
they were not included in the
- Parade, in the mainparades. Right. Yeah.
- So, so different crews wouldparade at different times.
Yeah. And, um,
you have different crewsparading at different times up
to Mardi Gras Yeah.
That Tuesday. Okay.
So for the two, the 10 days, let's say

(17:50):
before Mardi Gras, you've gotdifferent parades every day
by these different crews.
And of course, um, one of the, one
of the main black crews now is
the Zulus Uhhuh .
And everybody comes out forthe, for, for these Zulu
- Crew, the, the, and,and these crews for people
who don't know,
and again, I'm not gonna pretend I,

(18:10):
I know things about this, but I'm,
I think this is when you'reseeing the very decorated, uh,
costuming and, and, and floats perhaps.
- Yeah. Yeah. Floats andextraordinary costumes and stuff.
- And lot, a lot of time and effort being
- Put this stuff and lots of music.
- Right. Lots of music. Right, right.
So you see these di very different areas.
And you're talking the zulus.

(18:31):
Are they, I'm thinking they're going
to be incredibly colorful.
- Yeah. A amazing, yeah.Nice. Truly amazing.
And everybody wants to get some sort
of souvenir from thesefloats as they go by.
Right, right. So each float is,
is is throw literally throwingthese different things
to the crowds on both sides.
Sure. And you wannacatch the Zulu coconuts,
and you wanna catch, um,whatever crew is going by,

(18:54):
whatever specialty they've got,you know, coconut coconuts.
Wow. Yeah. But they're really quite
dramatically designed. Really?
- Are they tossing these things? Yes,
- They are.
- The, the, the coconuts.Yes. Wow. Wow. Yeah.
- You gotta really have a heads up.
- A heads up. And you better have a good
pair of hands, .
Exactly. I'm not surewhat that, because I know
- About throwing beads, but, uh, yeah.
Yeah. Those won't give you a concussion.

(19:15):
- Yeah.- Yeah. The beads.
Of course, everybodythrows the beads. Yeah.
- Yeah. - So you gotdifferent crews and different,
and they're all marchingon different days,
and there's lots of musicand it's big celebration.
- Okay. Mm-Hmm. .Mm-Hmm. .
So in, in these,
in all these crew crewsthey're representing now are,
aren't they representing things like, um,

(19:35):
more indigenous peoples of the area?
- Well, some of themare serious like that.
- Some like would've beenAfrican American, that kind
of thing, along with many
of the different in indigenous areas.
And some are just, you're talking
social, so you're talking like
- Social clubs just for fun Mm-Hmm.
- Groups that get togetherfor whatever reason.
- And, and every yearyou get new crews that,
that are joining thesedifferent parades, um, that,

(19:57):
that are just, just for the fun of it.
Mm. Right. Right. I mean,like most recently, this week,
I think we had the crewof Barcus, which is dogs.
- Oh, okay. Right. Oh, okay.
That makes sense. I get it. Yeah.
- Yeah. and, uh, so the dogs,
but there's also thepeople who own the dogs
who are on the floats.
And, uh, it's a great deal of fun.

(20:17):
- I, I hope they're notthrowing dogs into the
- .
No, I don't think they throw the
- Off bones.
Maybe. I don't mean bones of dogs.
Oh, let's not go there. Come on.
- Why throwing a dog a- Bone? I,
- No, this is a celebration,- Chew bone or something
- Like that.
The dogs are walking alongwith the floats. Oh, I
- See.
That's good to hear. That makes
- They're own, makes me feelbetter about it, and Sure.
Everybody's having a good time.
- Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.Good. Nice. Okay. Nice. That's

(20:39):
- Nice. Are the dogs dressed up?
- Yeah, of course. They'redressed up. Okay, good.
Yeah, they're in costume
- And- Everybody's in costume.
You gotta be for Mardi Gras. Yeah, right.
- Do the, and and do theythe costume type of stuff.
I mean, I've seen so many pictures
and videos of, of thepeople really dressed, lots
of feathers and beads and,

(21:00):
and sparkles of all differentkinds and stuff like that.
And, and then, but like with the barcus,
I think you said is, wouldthey be dressed up like,
like dogs or are theygoing out and dressing?
I know you don't have tobe an expert on Barca.
- Well, there's a, there'sa king of Barca, so one
of the dogs is gonnawin, you know, and, and,
and the owners are also dressed
- Up in, in costumes.

(21:21):
Yeah. And are they dressing up like
dogs or don't you know? No,
- No.
I, no, the, the owners, no.
- And not, the dogs aren'tdressing up like dogs.
I think they have a pretty good
costume on their own . Right.
- But, oh, the bean paradeis happening too. Oh, okay.
There's, here we go. Yeah. TheBean parade is, is a big one.
- Okay. Yes.- We wear,
- These are people who

(21:41):
- Wearing costumes that theybeaded themselves with beans.
- With beans, yes. Actuallygrown beans of some kind,
like actual bean beans,
- Not like, like rice
and beans, which is atraditional dish in New Orleans.
Sure. So the beans, butbefore you cook them.
- Okay. Yeah. So, but yeah. Okay.
- And, and jackets and, and- All made from the beans. All

(22:05):
- Made from the- Beans.
Wow. Okay. And are they throwing beans?
- That's a good question.I should ask my daughter.
'cause she lives in New Orleans. Yeah. And
- She's, and takes part in these things.
- That's true. Oh, definitelyinto the beans. Yeah.
- Oh, she's into thebeans. Yeah. Yes. Oh, okay.
- She's been beaning for weeks.
- It may be me, but I wouldsay, you don't wanna walk behind
that group, you know,
- I, I see. Yeah. You know.

(22:25):
- Yeah. It's just, just a thought.
- Well, they're uncooked.
- Well, okay. True.
And I have a hard timebelieving that the, the people
who do this don't consume beans
- Well- In large quantities.
in large quantities, massive
quantities, perhaps. Of course,
- Because they- Would've to, I mean, you gotta get a lot
of beans to do this.

(22:45):
Right. You need yourenergy. And at some point,
- Um, I have to read off, Ilooked at the parks website.
- Okay. And,- Okay, uh,
there's wonderful pictures of dogs.
People should definitely checkthis out. Crew of barus.org.
. I'm giving Barus a plug.
- Uh, crew being K-R-E-W-E.
- Yes. That's how we spelledit earlier of barus.org.
And, um, we've got some,some Parkes royalty here.

(23:08):
We've got the Barus Kingis King Bentley Jins.
We've got the BuresQueen, queen be Brusard.
And the celebrity GrandMarshall is of course,
Pippa, the three-legged dog. Oh,
- Course.
- The p the three-legged dogcourse. We gotta give course.
They're all very cute. Yougotta give it to Pippa.
I mean, she comes out, Pippa
- I think is maybe my, my, I mean, I hate
to choose favorites here. Now
- Pippa's an automatic winner.

(23:30):
She's got three legs. She wins.
- Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. They're
- Very, very cute dog. Yeah. Check it.
- Okay. Alright. Nice. Very nice.
We've got beans, we've got,uh, Zulus, we've got, uh,
many of these kinds of things.
Anything else? In and around the, um, the,
the event down there of, ofthat you also mentioned Brazil,

(23:51):
we've talked about this in the past
- Carnival in Brazil.
- Yeah. Which is,- We call it Mardi Gras Inval in New
Orleans because of theFrench influence. Right,
- Right.
Which means that Tuesday. Right.
- So,- Which is the Tuesday before,
- Right before Lent lent.
Yes. Which is Wednesday. Right. So
- Ash Wednesday- Actually Ash Wednesday.
Right, right. And that's whenall celebration stops, right?
Oh, yes. It's very, and nowwe have to give something up.

(24:13):
- That's right. You s youmust, you must sacrifice. Yes.
- So this is all about celebrating
as much as you possibly can
- Before that.
Right. Fitting it in. Yep. Yeah.
- So in, in Brazil, okay. It'snot French, it's Portuguese.
Mm-Hmm. .Uh, so this is really a
carnival tradition, right?
I mean, Mardi Gras is aform of carnival. Mm-Hmm.
, same thing. Mm-Hmm.
- . Right. And Carnival
is is all over the globe.

(24:34):
Right.
- Wherever there was the,the, um, Catholic Right.
Mediterranean influence.Right. Yeah. Because usually
- Brought it's in someof the Caribbean Yes.
- But usually brought through the,
the period of colonization.
Sure. So it's, it's notsomething to celebrate,
but it celebration
- Comes.
Well, but you celebratetaking it from that as and,

(24:54):
and owning it for your own. Right. So
- Wherever the French colonized,
wherever the Portuguesecolonized. Right. Or, um,
- But not the British.
- Not the British. We don'thave carnival in British. No.
So what we have in, in instead. Well,
- It's not a big Catholic country anymore.
Exactly. It's been a like fif to the,
since the 15 hundreds Right
- Around there.
You know, this is all just an excuse
for midwinter celebration

(25:16):
because we'll all go madif we don't have something.
Yeah. So what do we have? Yeah.
We puritans who don'tcome out of these cultures
that don't come out have of the, the,
this Catholic tradition.
- Oh, I'll tell what we have.
Have, do you know what we have? We
- Have Halloween.
- We have Halloween,right In that time period.
I know what we have in thistime period. Also, Groundhog Day

(25:39):
- , that's a celebration.
. I'd like to see Punka
to Phil dressed up in beans,
- Throwing into the Barca thing.
Um, come on, the crew. Comeon. Yeah. Pun be a Barca Royal.
And everybody's got somerodent who's supposedly
telling us about the weather.
- , you know, thatsays so much about them
- As the meteorologist.
It doesn't say much aboutthem, does it?

(26:01):
- About how to have a good time.
- Yeah. Well that's kind ofwhere I'm going with that.
- In a puritan basedculture versus a absolutely
non Puritan based culture. Yeah.
- Enjoy this. This isgoing to enlighten you
because see, it's also gonnatell you if there's six more
weeks of winter or not.
So when it tells you that,
boy do you feel goodabout, there's six more

(26:21):
- Weeks of winter.
90% of the time it always says Yeah.
That you got six more weeks. Winter. Guess
- What?
Winter you got six, sixmore weeks of winter
because you do super.
Yeah. 'cause no matterwhat the stupid thing says,
you're gonna have sixmore weeks of went. You'll
- Actually have that turns out.
So go in. So go back and haveanother slice of king cake
- .
Sounds good to me. I mean,
you sold me absolutelypretty quickly earlier.
Yep, yep. Yeah. Yep. I,
I'm all in on the taste test. Absolutely.

(26:42):
- So is that starting rightnow? Right now. Ready to
- Go?
Okay. I thought, I thoughtwe were going to do that.
I thought we were gonna havea taste test of, of King cake
during I wasn't made aware ofthis during this discussion.
Okay. A blind, I'm a littleannoyed Right. That we're not,
- I'm, I'm a little- Aggrieved.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I'm, and I,
and I, you know, I'm not surewho's responsible for that.
I, I, I'm know, can weblame you? Torin is the
- Producer.
I, I'm, I think we have toblame Dean. I I don't, I don't

(27:04):
- Wanna That's throw that out there.
- But, but I'm gonna throw it out
- Because I we didn't anythingget it off of me here.
- You know, I I, I could haveplaced an order with Don,
like back in November andmaybe they would've put
- On list, gotten it tous by now. A little, a
- Little proactive here.Maybe I would've been
- Yeah, I know.
I think, I think perhaps that, uh,
the ball has been droppedvery much so, so to speak.

(27:25):
Yeah. Um, and,
and maybe the king cake has been dropped
. That's, let's
- Hope. I don't wannaeven think about that.
- .
- Dean, can I ask,
'cause we, you mentionedyour culture, conse culture's
consequences column on your substack.
Um, what else have youtalked about in terms of sort

(27:46):
of getting behind the daily headlines?
- Well, um, we, we, we talkedabout, um, in one article,
I think the one that cameout just before, um, Ukraine
and Russia and the cultural issues, uh,
behind that conflict.
Okay. Uh, specifically, um,not economic, not political,
but the cultural issues, the differences
between Ukraine cultureand Russian culture.

(28:08):
Gotcha. And they're,one of the features, uh,
while they share many similarities, uh,
because of the ethnic rootsare off, are, are the same, uh,
generally speaking, um, LANlinguistic roots are the same,
although Ukrainian is a differentru language from Russian.
Mm. Um, and, um, and,
and they're both EasternOrthodox in terms of religion,

(28:30):
uh, the significant
- And, and the, and the SovietUnion had controlled it for,
for 90 some
- Years and, and before thatin history several times
as well for other reasons.
Sure. Um, so there's lots of similarity,
but fundamentally Iwould even go so far as
to say there are probably, um,
as many re reasons why they are different.
Mm-Hmm. And one of thosesignificant reasons is a,

(28:54):
is the Russian culture.
Hmm. Russian culture is, is,um, what I would define as one
of the world's insecure cultures.
Hmm. Where it has to get its definition
from those other cultures around it Hmm.
As opposed to supplyingit itself. Hmm hmm.
And this is not thecase with Ukraine. Hmm.
Which has a very def well-definedculture. Interesting.

(29:16):
Okay. So, uh, we wrote about that. Hmm.
And that's on the Substack.
And before that we did a,uh, an article about, um,
about, uh, Mr.
Musk and Tesla in Sweden,where most of the cars are,
are produced in Europe.
And the problem, most
- Of the Tesla cars- Are produced in
Sweden, a lot of them are Okay.
And, uh, there's a bigstrike in the Swedish factory

(29:39):
because he went in with, uh,
nons Swedish ideasabout how to manufacture
and how to compensatepeople for their jobs.
Mm-Hmm. Sure. And the Swedes
wouldn't have any of it.
- Yeah. Hard to believethe Swedes wouldn't have
any of that .
Um, and, and not hard to believeat all that, that, that Mr.
Musk, Elon Musk brought inhis own ideas, um, of them,

(30:03):
which I'm guessing arebasically his American ideas
that he's bringing out ofhere to, to bring over there.
I'm guessing, am I
- Wrong?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
- Okay. Hmm. Well, we do knowhow to do everything right.
The American, the Amer. Oh, of course.
We do know how to doeverything right. Yes.
I'm not talking about us individually,
I'm talking about the U us A USA.

(30:24):
Yeah. Which would lead us tosomething like what is known
as the Ugly American,
which maybe we'll talk aboutit in another, in another, uh,
could be interesting maybe. Well,
- You know, from point, froma cultural point of view,
everybody can be ugly if you don't
understand the culture. Mm.
- I take exception to that.What do you Oh, dare you.
I know that the, look,I didn't get cleaned up

(30:46):
and really spruced up today,but gimme a break here.
I'm may covered in king cake,
but normally I was buried.
I wanna play the baby Jesus. Do you? I do. Okay.
I would do in a massive king cake.
I would, I would appreciatetoo. Only a layered one though.
That's, that's what I want.Laminated. Laminated. I'm sorry.
Laminated. Laminated. Yeah.No, no, that's okay. Yes.
You gotta be picky.Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(31:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. It's
- Remarkable how thecultural influences went
around the world for this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Youhave the French cultural
influence in New Orleans, right.
That, that was theresince the French Days of
- Conversation.
Women, the French had controlled
- It.
Mm-Hmm. . Andthen the Vietnam Vietnamese
immigrants bringing French influences from
Vietnam. Right. Uh,
- That's- Cool.

(31:27):
Yeah. And back, back to Yes. New
- Orleans.
- Yes. Which kind of explainswhy this phenomenon happened
with this particular bakery,
because there was this need for,
or at least this appreciationfor in a town that's dedicated
to food and music in good times.
Mm-Hmm. ,um, the, this, this need
for something

(31:48):
that would make this makethe king cake stand out
more than any of the others.
Mm-Hmm. .Or at least give it,
give it a recognition that, um,
that would require something more than
what was being produced.
And what was, what would that be?
It would be French culinarytechniques. Yeah, yeah,
- Yeah. But
- From Vietnam, right?

(32:09):
- Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sure.That or melding. Yeah.
- And that became, thatbecame a phenomenon
- And it sounds good to me.
Yeah. I a field trip. Yeah,absolutely. N right now.
Alright, well then let's maybe
wrap it up and head over there.
We can get there bydinner. Okay. To new to
- New Orleans or Saigon?
- Uh, well guess I think ifwe're getting there by dinner,
we gotta go the NewOrleans route first, right?

(32:29):
Sure. Stop there firstand stop over. Okay.
Have five king cakes each, each of,
of the laminated Absolutely.
Uhhuh and then yeah. Off to Vietnam,
- Then hop on a plane andget, get to, uh, yeah.
To Vietnam. Yeah. Getta Chi Min City
and absolutely my, one of myfavorite restaurants, Cho.
- Oh, okay. Okay. Let's go.
Well, we'll talk about thaton another day, ,

(32:49):
because, uh, thank you Deanfor, uh, for this today with
that, I'm, I'm just sittinghere drooling all over
myself, which is Yeah.
This's d Drew all overcourse. Pretty disgust.
Really, really, really gross.Yeah. Yep. Thank you. Torn.
My pleasure. And, and,and I'm Tom Peterson
and we've been here, uh,talking at you about all
of these wonderful foods
because easy for you to say.

(33:13):
And, ooh, oops. Your
- Culture, culture is showing- Smell ya
before you roll offand disappear back into
your own cultures.
Let me give you some informationabout something we really

(33:36):
want you to know, and that'show to get hold of us.
Give us your questions, your comments,
anything along those lines by email.
It's oops. Culture [e-mail].
And be sure to follow us onwhatever social media you
use at Oops.
Culture show. Thanks.