Behind the Scenes Minis: Chocolate Chips and Public Relations

Holly and Tracy reminisce about their families' first microwave ovens and their favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes. Then they discuss Ivy Lee's career and dubious associations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday, everybody. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy, I have
to ask you, and you kind of hinted at it,

(00:21):
when did your family get a microwave? So I'm not
sure exactly what year it was, but I was born
in n and I'm old enough to remember it entering
our household, and it was in a manner radar range.
And I actually wonder now that I think about it,
the house that I grew up in was built in

(00:42):
the nineteen fifties and we had a dishwasher, and I
don't really know. I don't remember if the dishwasher was
there from the time I was tiny, or if they
had to do work to make room for the dishwasher.
But if the dishwasher was already there, the space on
top of it was like the correct space to put
a microwave. So I kind of wonder if the house

(01:05):
was built with the intent that a microwave would go there,
or if that was just coincidental. But um, the thing
I specifically remember was my mother's insistence that we needed
to stay at least an arms length away from it
while it was cooking. Uh. And I also found a
picture of a model of the radar range from that era,

(01:29):
and I like, I have a sense memory of you
you pulled down a handle to open it. It was
like you pulled the handle down and it kind of
unlocked the door and it pulled the rest of the
way down. Yeah. I have such a strangely strong memory
of shopping with my parents for our first microwave. And
that would have been it was after we moved to Florida,

(01:53):
That's how I can say it. Um. And that would
have been nine, at the end of nine, so sometime
after that. And I remember the salesman being like your
mom was where you'd stay away a little missy, like
this is dangerous stuff, and that just I will never forget,
like him kind of scare tacticking me about the whole thing.
But we ended up taking that microwave home and that

(02:13):
was that. Um. I have a very ridiculous story about
microwaves and experiments, which is that, Um, when my beloved
and I first got married, I had a microwave already
and he had too. One was like his actual functioning
microwave and one was one that he bought to try
to fix up. And so at that point we had

(02:36):
three microwaves, so we picked one that we were going
to keep. We gave one of them away to the
housekeeper at my work at the time, um, because she
was moving and she was like, I actually do need
a microwave. I was like, great, here you go. Um.
And then the one that was kind of jankie and
didn't work great. We as the children that we were,
we didn't want to give it away to anybody because

(02:57):
if something went wrong, we would feel terrible. So we
were like blow things up. And so one afternoon on
a weekend, we went out on the patio because they're portable,
you can cook at the patio, and we put things
in the microwave you're not supposed to put things you're
not supposed to put in there, like we did the
egg and watched it explode. We put a CD in

(03:20):
there and watched it spin and spark. That was fun. Um. Yeah,
we just did silly thing, nothing like cruel or dangerous. Truly,
we were, you know, very ready. Brian Is I call
him safety Pup because he's very into like always being safe.
So he had the the fire extinguisher at the ready,
and we just played and it was very silly and
a great start to our marriage. But um, there are

(03:44):
some interesting video explainers online if you've ever wondered about
that whole You shouldn't put metal in the microware, Yeah,
because you can, but it's not real smart. It will
basically cause it to spark, and if it's something like
a four that has sharp edges, sometimes those sparks get
a little more intense and they can cause a fire,

(04:05):
and that's why you shouldn't do it. Also, the metal
will actually block your microwaves, so you're not going to
cook your food if you put it in a metal
dish in there. Um, but like the walls of your
microwave are metal, and they're obviously not exploding all the time.
So there's some there's a combo of myth and nuance
in play. Yeah. Yeah, but boy, I'd be lost without

(04:28):
my microwave. Same. I mean, I I there's a lot
of reheating that happens in our microwave, including the coffee
that I didn't finish and now it's cold and I
wanted to be warm again. Uh, that kind of stuff
I keep thinking about, like how revolutionary it was and
what it would take to feel that same thing regarding

(04:50):
cooking today. And I was like, it really is like
if someone was like, no, you're going to cook in
a hologram, like it would Yeah. So which is the
most subtle Bob's Burger's reference I have ever made be
made on the show? Um, for any anybody that listens,
you know what I'm talking about. Um, But yeah, I
just it's an astonishing um thing to think about how
quickly it changed the way people perceived the work of

(05:14):
the kitchen and changed it. And it's very you know
in those Kitchen of Tomorrow newsreels. Well, and it also
makes me think about how um, like there are a
lot of folks who are microwave is a lot more
accessible than any other way you might like people who
are in shelters or emergency housing a lot of times

(05:35):
like that's that's what you've got, Like you can't have
the things, um, and so that like it feeds into
criticisms that people have about convenience foods, and it's like
for a lot of folks, the convenience foods are the
ones that are available to them, so chill well, and
they're also like if you were on a very very
tight budget and just starting out a household and for

(05:58):
some reason you did not have a stove war range.
A microwave is usually a lot more affordable, um and
an easier way to like make sure you have access
to hot food than if you had to buy an
entire new, much larger appliance. UM. And now there you know.
You can get a microwave for quite cheap these days.

(06:18):
It may not have very many bells and whistles, but
you can get your food warm, um microwaves. How we
love you, Ruth Wakefield. Yeah, I feel some ways about her,
And I will tell you a story. And I didn't
include this in the episode because it was a story
that was given to like a leisure magazine anonymously by

(06:40):
someone who said they worked in her restaurant. So it's
not one that you can easily verify. But it falls
so much in line with all of the other things
that people have said about her over the years that
I I think it's it bears merit to discuss it. Um.
According to this, Ruth, in running the toll house in

(07:05):
was a real stickler about employees not taking any food. Yeah,
which I have feelings about to begin with, that's a
whole other thing. Um, Like at the end of the night,
if there were leftovers, they went in the trash. Yeah,
which I feel ways about. Yes, I think we both do, um,

(07:25):
And I'm sure in her head that was part of
quality control and like no one will ever see anything
from toll House that's been reheated, blah blah blah blah.
But anyway, there's also some food safety stuff that's legitimate.
But that's totally valid. Yes, But apparently there was a night,
according to this interview, um, where Ruth was not in
the restaurant for some reason, and so several of the

(07:47):
employees were like, I would really like some cookies at
the end of the shift, and so they had asked
the kitchen like, hey, when the when we closed for
the night, whatever's left, will you just put him aside
for us? And they then ate them after the restaurant
had closed and Ruth came in and according to this person,

(08:08):
she did not say a word. She looked each of
them in the eye, looked at each of their plates,
never said anything about it. But the next week there
was a deduction in all of their pay for the
amount of the cookies they had eaten. And I'm like
Ruth for real. I mean, first of all, if you
think about a restaurant's overhead for like what even if

(08:31):
it were a couple dozen cookies a successful restaurant, it's nothing.
And if you have good staff, treat them nicely so
they'll stay your stat like it's it's striking to me
how many former employees wanted to talk to the press
all the time right right well, And it's in addition
to the like kindness and fairness to staff. Food waste

(08:55):
is a big problem. It is a big problem about hunger.
It's a big problem about climate. Like it's a big
problem that's threaded through a lot of stuff. There are
some misperceptions about what grocery store chains will and will
not participate in food rescue programs, which gets on right,
because if you're running one of those, it's hard to
get started. And I don't want people to be discouraged

(09:17):
from approaching an entire chain because people have wrongfully said
on Twitter that they don't do that, but like that
kind of stuff being like nope, you can't even eat that,
We're just gonna throw it in the trash. I hate it.
Me too. I get it when it's based in the
fact of that has been sitting out for more than
four hours, it's no longer safe to eat, or that

(09:40):
was on somebody's plate, and that's a hepatitis risk, Like
that's legitimate shower. But these are literally cookies that would
have been already have have a longer yeah life, Like
you can eat a cookie that's been sitting out generally. Yeah,
And they weren't given they were literally like put them aside,
whatever's left over, because we would like to eat them

(10:00):
instead of throw them out. Yeah, they do have a
very nice shelf life. There what my mother would send
me as a care package at various points in my life.
And also what one of the things that my mother
did before I was born. My dad was in the
army and he was stationed in Alaska, and like me,
as we just discussed and we were talking about Ernest Jackton.

(10:23):
I don't like the cold, I don't like the dark.
Neither did my mom, and so she would bake chocolate
chip cookies every week to make the house smell nice.
There's almost nothing that smells better. Do you have a
favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe? I do, and it is
my mom's and it's similar to the toll house recipe
from the back of the package. I don't put nuts

(10:45):
in there because I don't want them. Um, But like
there's some dry ingredient measurements that are slightly different than
what's on the back of the package currently, So like,
I don't know if it's an older version of the
back of the package Nestlee recipe or if it's something
that my mom fine tunes. Um. But I generally put
extra chocolate chips in there instead of nuts, so I

(11:08):
have a trick. My favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe is
a riff on the one from the Wookie Cookies cookbook,
which was like the first official Star Wars cookbook. Um,
which is a delicious chocolate chip cookie. It is made
with a cinnamon in it, and it is half milk

(11:29):
chocolate chips and half dark chocolate chips. Um. But listen,
I normally am gonna always want salty and buttery things,
but when I want something sweet, I really want it
cloying lee sweet, so dark chocolate get on out of
here and instead goes in butter scotch chips. Um. It's
such a rich and beautiful cookie at that point because

(11:51):
the cinnamon in the butter scots just elevate the whole
thing and give it like layers of flavor. And can
I tell you a story that unites both halfs of
of this episode. Yes. Um. So, when I was living
in Somerville, Massachusetts, we were on the top floor of
a brick building that did not have a lot of shade,

(12:11):
and our kitchen became so unbelievably hot that we would
go to great links to figure out how we would
eat for the day without having to turn the oven
on fair which microwave right. So one day we were
at the grocery store and my spouse, who I love,
decided he wanted chocolate chip cookies. And it was nineties

(12:34):
something degrees, which meant it was well beyond a hundred
in the kitchen, and I was like, why are you
going to turn the oven on? This makes no sense.
He said, I just really want them, and I said okay,
And so we got home, we unloaded all the groceries,
and again I love him, he left the chocolate chip

(12:56):
bag in the kitchen, so when he went to make
his cookies, it was liquid um. And so what he
made was chocolate cookies with the chocolate like just infused
all through it and that was delicious also still yummy.
I don't I think at no point ever again after that,
before we moved out of the apartment, did he ever

(13:17):
want to turn the oven on when it was that hot?
I love to bake in thankfully. Um Last year at
Christmas I got a much nicer range because the one
that we got was like when we first moved into
this house was like the very cheapest gas range we

(13:38):
could get, and it just like, even though it was
new at the time, it was it was such a
low end model that like it didn't always heat consistently,
it was just And now I feel like for the
last year and a half I have had like the
bliss of a really reliable, good oven and like it's
cookie time all the time. Yeah. Yeah. This week on

(14:10):
the show, we talked about Ivy lad Better Lee, who
represented a lot of people and industries and organizations on
what I would just as a personal feeling, I feel
like was the wrong side, like when a lot of
miners get shot at or killed in the middle of

(14:31):
a labor dispute, going to represent the minds Uh, Sure,
there's an argument that everybody involved deserves to have some
uh some you know, competent representation. But man, there were
just so many things in his background that were like

(14:51):
and then this industry that was, you know, forcing workers
in the mind to build them mine, but only paying
them for substances they actually mind, so like any work
they were doing building the mind went unpaid. Uh, then
making an argument to be like why that was an

(15:13):
actually good and reasonable thing to do. I was not
fond of that at all. No, I mean, it's it's interesting, right,
I'm fascinated by his work and in some ways, like
I just have an aversion even though I know at
this point it is a part of the world we
live in. I'm I'm fascinated and picked out by the

(15:36):
manipulation of public opinion in general. Yeah, but in his case,
I mean, there were obviously it's there are times when
he was he seemed to be trying to do things
that were, um not horrible, but then other times where
he was perfectly comfortable sidling up to people who were
doing things that were in fact objectively horrible pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, Well,

(16:00):
and some of his things that seemed more more positive
as far as a contribution to the world still had
this sort of UM. Underside to them were like his
work with the Red Cross was about increasing knowledge of
the Red Cross, increasing public support of the Red Cross.
The work that the Red Cross was doing during the
war was so critically important, but it was also about

(16:21):
making the United States and the Allies look good. So
it was like there was that layer of motivation to
it also. Um. There were a few things that came
up in the research for this that we didn't get
into in the episode. UM for a number of reasons. One,
when his mother and his father met, his mother was
disturbingly young. She was twelve. She was not fourteen yet

(16:47):
when she had her first child, and none of the
biographical treatments that I have read really discussed that at all.
But I was like, holy cow, I know married ages
have varied over time, but she was so young when
they met that he wasn't allowed to court her in

(17:08):
the parlor. He was teaching her Bible verses in the kitchen.
And that, oh, that all creaked me out a lot.
I UM, yeah, and that like we have no I
have no not if if her feelings on that are
really documented anywhere. I I have not ever been able
to find them. UM. Where I read about that was

(17:30):
in the only biography of him that exists, which was
written in the sixties after his personal papers were given
to Princeton. Before that, it was really hard for anybody
to find enough information on him to really write a biography.
Um that first press release. It's not really mentioned by
that first biographer at all that I found, And so
that seems like something that has been something a connection

(17:53):
that people made later on, possibly because that was written
in the nineteen sixties. And so I found it really
interesting that this piece that a lot of people are like,
this is a hallmark of his career, just doesn't appear
in his biography unless I totally missed it somewhere. Well,
it's possible to write, like, I wonder how much we

(18:14):
think about a press release as a an essential part
of any publicity campaign or pr campaign, Whereas then it
still probably would have been common, but not like you
can't do it without one of these. So it may
not have seemed as momentous through the lens of his
initial biographer does when we look back and see, oh,

(18:37):
now literally everyone does it, and you started it, yeah,
and uh, and newspapers printing stuff from press releases without
questioning it like that continues to be a thing that
happens today and continues to be a source of like
sekewed information coming out today. Yeah, for sure. The last

(19:05):
thing that I was trying to figure out how to
put into the episode and I just could not put that.
I couldn't find a good place for it to go.
He appeared before a lot of different committees and investigations
that was like, Hey, this huge incident happened. We're trying
to get to the bottom of what happened. It seems
like this Ivy League guy was maybe manipulating the press.
We should talk to him. And very often the questioning

(19:29):
started with what is your profession, and repeatedly Ivy Lee's
answer was basically, I don't know. Um like his answer
answered that before. Yeah, his answer would be uh, sort
of like, well, it's hard to describe, and then he

(19:49):
would kind of talk around what he was doing for
a little bit, and you know, I can sort of
I can. I can definitely see having that happened once.
But maybe as it became clear that he was going
to be called before a committee over and over again
over the course of his career, it might have been
good to put together a brief statement to describe his profession,

(20:13):
but he didn't want to because then they could ask
follow ups. Um At the transcripts for the the hearing
about his association with the with the Nazis and the
German government. Um, parts of it are like really just
trying to be like, what is your job though? Can

(20:34):
you tell us what your job is? Well? I advise people, okay,
but how? And then I don't know if anybody else
listens to the podcast maintenance phase. It's a podcast I
really love. And a thing that happens on that show
sometimes is that one of the hosts, Michael, will send
the other host, Aubrey Um, something to read aloud, and
Aubrey's voice sometimes we'll just have this like increasing escalation

(20:59):
of horror and bafflement at what she's reading. And that
was what my brain was doing as I was reading
a lot of his testimony, because it would be like
it would start out like, yes, I was working with
this Die Trust, and it would just get farther and
farther into something that was unacceptable. Yeah, I was telling
the Die Trust how to maybe make Americans stop boycotting them,

(21:24):
and my mind would just be like this increasingly uh
loud uh, and an astonished and horrified statement of what
was just apparently coming out of his mouth and seemingly
just not not really batting an eye over what he
was saying out loud in front of a congressional committee. Yeah,

(21:48):
I wonder, I mean, we'll never know, right, we can't
go back in time and interview him, And I wonder
if his is one of those cases where he maybe
got into the business true believing that he was going
to uphold that statement he wrote about, like no, we're
going to tell the truth, We're going to be transparent,
blah blah blah. But then you know, people become I

(22:11):
don't want to say people become jaded, because I think
sometimes some of those shifts in like your integrity can
happen in such tiny increments that you don't realize it's
happening over time, and then it's like too late, and
you've internalized it as a normalcy and it's just like, yeah,

(22:33):
I listen, I don't really know what I do. People
ask me to help, and I help, and no, I
don't know. Uh. Yeah, I think they hated Jews. I
don't know. I just wanted them to look good. To
the US, Like what like if he told that to
his original nineteen o six self, what would that conversation

(22:53):
have been. Yeah, it's a good question. I there I
read a couple of references that allow edged that he
told ig Farben that they needed to cut their ties
with the Nazi Party, which would not have been possible
for ig Farban to do. But I also was like,
I don't actually see that reflected in these statements there. Um,

(23:16):
there are a couple of things where I feel like
people really want to try to rehabilitate him because he
was such a foundational part of a whole industry that
still exists today, and that there are things that float
around about him that are like not totally accurate. Like
there are people that say, yeah, he was totally distributing
all kinds of Nazi propaganda in the US. That doesn't

(23:38):
seem to be true. Um, But at the same time,
I just do not agree that you can give him
a pass on representing representing the Nazi government via ig Farben.
That I don't think you can give somebody a pass

(23:58):
on that. Well it it's telling right in that testimony
what he says is I told them that like anti
jewishness would not fly in the US. Not this is wrong.
What the hell you gotta stop doing it? Oh? I
told him they couldn't tell you they do that, Like
that's a very different situation. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, many

(24:24):
years ago, I went to a Stuff you Should Know
Live show, and I think the topic was public relations, UM,
and he mentioned he being Josh or check I don't
remember which of them, mentioned somebody somebody in the long
ago history of public relations, and somebody cheered, and Josh

(24:46):
was like, you're gonna want to take that back anyway,
if you're publicist. This episode was not a personal slide
against you. UM. Anyway. So it's Friday. I hope everybody
has a great weekend lined up, whatever is happening on
your plates. I hope if anybody sends some spin your

(25:07):
way that is blatantly untrue, that you're able to see
through it. Uh. Send us a note if you like
for a history podcast that I heart radio dot com
and we will be around tomorrow with a Saturday classic
and Monday with a brand new episode. Stuff You Missed
in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio.

(25:29):
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