Good Job, Brain! - 118: It's Legen-DAIRY

Episode Date: July 15, 2014

Hope your ear aren't lactose intolerant because this week it's all about the wacky fact-filled world of dairy. Find out how music helps cow produce more milk - and just what kind of music gets them into the mood? Weird trivia about breast milk and why "nipple" is a funny word. Dana falls into a wiki cheese hole, while Colin gulps down the history of the milk container. And no, mice actually don't usually go for cheese. ALSO: Solution to our Music Puzzle Challenge Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, lively, lucky, and loyal listeners. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz Joe and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 118, and I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your happy, and harmonious hosts hoping to harp about happenings and hullabaloo. Hello, I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And no Chris this week, he is at another video game event peddling his fine wares.

He's selling his... Hawking, hawking his used video game collection, so hopefully he's making some good money from it. So we did not have a full episode last week. We had a minisode. And that was because usually we record on Sundays and we had our meetup that Sunday so we couldn't do a full show. But did you guys have fun? Yeah, that was great. That was a lot of fun.

It was great. It was so many just cool people, like the first meetup we had. I think for the Vegas meetup, we had 30, 40 people. This meetup was 100. Yeah. My whole family came. Yeah, they were so cute. Someone brought his parents.

His parents were visiting from India. And he brought them along. It was, I was just, I was touched. They were really cute. They were cute. The mom was like, we were supposed to go to Monterey, but I think this was much better. Oh, it's so cute. I felt bad I couldn't talk to everybody, but everyone I talked to, it was just cool.

I had a great time. Yeah, my math teacher was there. My seventh grade science teacher was there as well. It was really random. There was an impromptu Harry Potter trivia contest. Yeah, Scarlett won, and let's see, we had a couple of things. people who are doing some Disney races, which I was very excited. I was like, oh, yay. Karen made this awesome poster of a beaver looking over its shoulder in a very come-hither

kind of way, and you stick your arm into its butt. The prize hole. To pull out a prize. Yeah. I hope everybody liked that. That was my favorite product. I think that was one of the highlights of the day. You said the people at Kinko's were laughing. I had, I ordered that. It was a giant board. And so I didn't know if it was ready or not. So I called FedEx office. A.k.a. kinkos. And I was like, hey, guys. I was wondering if one of my print jobs is done. And they're like, are you Karen? And I was like, yes. And they're like, oh my God. They propped up the beaver butt in like their snack work room because they thought it was so funny. I was like, I don't know why you made this. But we thought it was really funny that your beaver had a very distinct butthole. And I was like, oh, okay. But anyway, so it was great. Thanks to all of you guys who showed up. And hopefully we'll be. doing these more. So last week, because of that, I had a mini episode. And I actually, in our mini episode, I made a music puzzle. And now it's the time to reveal the solution. I'll give a recap of what I did. So it was a music puzzle. And what I did was I played four clips of

songs. And I said that was an order. The answer should be a two-word solution. And I'm going to do the walkthrough. This is how you would solve the puzzle. So first you have to identify the songs Either you can shazam it Or you can type in the lyrics In the final songs The four songs in order are Basket Case by Green Day

Right here by Justin Bieber Tomorrow is a long time by Bob Dylan And my name is Jonas by Weezer And so I had a couple of hints In the episode And also I posted some hints on our site as well The first hint I said was The fact that I had to triple reference

something about the songs using Wikipedia, iTunes, and Amazon. The second hint was that it's in order and the third hint was zero equals A. So here's what my triple reference clue came into play.

After you identify all the songs, you think, well, what kind of information would those three services provide for the songs? And why would I need three of them to triple check something? And a lot of people got it. It was track length. It was songling.

And what I didn't know was that there is no database that tells you how long. You can't search songs by songling. There's no database. And sometimes it'll even subtly vary. Exactly. And that's why I had to fact check with three different sources, because on iTunes it would list as three minutes, like 300O. But now on Wikipedia would say 301.

So solvers probably knew they were onto something because they would notice that the first and third song had the same. same track length and the second and fourth song also had the same track length. So it's 301 for the first song, 324 for the second song, 301 again for the third song, and 324 for the fourth song. And now this is where the second clue came in play. These songs are in order. So when you write out all the track lengths in order, you get 301, 324, 301, 324. 0.0 equals A. So then you sub in letters, 0 equals A, 1 equals B, 2 equals C, and so forth. So then, you know, 3O, that means it's D-A.

However, some letters are represented by two digits instead of one. So N is 13, 1-3. So after decoding, you get dance, dance. And that is the solution. A lot of you guys sent in the correct solution on day one. I think it was just hours after that episode got published, and we never underestimate our listeners. Yeah, like I was thinking I was like, man, I might have made it too hard, but congrats to you guys.

Good work. Special congrats to the first 25 who wrote in with the right answer. You guys all won a prize that I will be sending out. So yeah, I hope everybody enjoyed that little brain buster. Nice. All right. Without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have.

a random trivial pursuit card, Dana versus Colin. You guys have your morning zoo radio buzzers. Here we go. Let's answer some questions. Blue Edge for geography. What Sanskrit greeting means I bow to you. Oh, interesting. Is that namaste?

Yes. Oh. Namaste. I never knew what that meant. I thought it was something like Aloha, because people always say it at the beginning and into a yoga classes. I was like, I don't know. Hello and goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. I bow to you.

Very literal. Yeah. Okay. Pink Wedge for pop culture. What chart topper was sung by a group of musicians who dubbed themselves USA for Africa? Oh. Colling. That's, we are the world. We are the children. That was a good video.

It was like a star-studded video. Man. Star-studded project. It really, it's hard to overstate how big a deal that was at the time. Wasn't Dan Aykroyd in it, too? Was he? I think so. It was like not, everybody who was somewhat famous.

Yeah, they were definitely non-musician singer. Whoever was famous in that time frame was in the video. All right, Yellow Wedge, what member of OJ Simpson's dream team said, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Johnny Cochran. Yes. Oh, Dream Team not. No. His dream legal defense team.

Legal dream team. All right, Purple Wedge. What fictional pirate goes by the nickname Barbecue and C. Cook? Fictional pirate. It must be like a food product or something. Barbecue. Fictional pirate is it barbecue? Are we on the right track?

Is it something food-related? I mean, how many kind of, actually? It's kind of food-related. It probably, yeah, it seems like maybe a barbecue sauce of some sort. Oh, no, no, no. This is a fictional pirate name. Oh. Just name fictional pirates, you know.

Long John Silver. Yes, Long John Silver. Oh. Which is a name of a chain. So I was like, well, it is kind of food related, but that's not why. Long John Silver, he appears in Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Oh, he was originally a cook. Long John Silver was originally a cook.

Oh, okay. So the fast food franchise is maybe. Kind of right. Kind of, yeah. All right. Green Wedge for science. How long does it take a human blood cell to make a complete circuit of the human body? Multiple choice.

One minute, five minute, or ten minute. Minutes. That's a complete circuit of the body. One, five, or ten? Like, I'm trying to imagine how far it moves every time my heart beats. Five minutes. Incorrect. Ten minutes.

Oh, I was going to say. Uh, one minute. One minute. What? Really? Wow, that doesn't, that does mean fast. Yeah. Blood moves, baby.

That's nuts. That's fast. All right. Last question, orange wedge. What brand of sneakers did Sly Stallone? I don't know why I just didn't say Sylvester Stallone. Sorry. They're trying to be cool.

Yeah. What brand of sneakers did Sylvester Stallone where, as he ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Rocky? Oh, man. When he runs up and he's like, yeah. I did it in the montage. I'll never watch that movie. I'll guess Adidas. Incorrect.

Reeboks. It's very iconic. Iconic. Nike? It is Converse. Okay, okay. They were high top black Chuck Taylor. That makes so much, it's just so blue collar, so Americans.

Okay, makes sense. Yeah. Regular old athletic show. All right. Good job, brains. Disclaimer, everybody. Usually before we record every episode, Good Job Brain, I will down an energy drink. Today I did not because I got- Karen, she calls it her go-go juice.

Yeah, my go-go juice. This is why I'm very energetic on the show. But today I have not energy drink, but these are energy chocolates I got called Energems. They're like large M&Ms, and they come in a box. Three of them equals a cup of coffee. And I had four. I've had three. I've had three.

Okay, we'll see how this goes. I feel oozy, a little buzzy. I'm glad I looked up how much taffina is in each one before I just had like a handful of them. Yeah, because they're like M&M's. There's peanut butter and there's mint and there's like a normal chocolate one. It's like a large M&M. So just giving everybody a disclaimer if later in the show we're like, wow, it's because

of the caffeinated chocolate that I got. So today's topic is kind of weird. I was inspired a couple of episodes ago. We had a weird headline about people put it. live frogs and milk to keep the longevity of the milk, I guess, and how there is science to back that up, that, you know, the peptides and whatever awesomeness is on the frog's skin or secretions do actually make milk keep better. So today's episode, I was like, oh, that's pretty interesting. Let's talk about milk and dairy products. We'll see. I'm not really sure

what we're all going to talk about because it's always a surprise. So this week's topic is going to be legendary Oh, my God. Get out. Hold on to your teeth. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours, damn right, it's better than yours, I can teach you, but I have to charge. My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they're like, it's better than yours. Damn right. It's better than yours.

I can teach you, but I have to charge. Well, I'll start us off here. I have a news story that led into some very interesting scientific research. That's not the frog. That it is not related to frogs. But it is related to milk production. Okay. And the title of the article that I saw, this was in the Independent, the UK newspaper,

Cows make more milk when listening to Slow Jams. Oh, yeah? Don't we all? I'm just kidding. Yeah, that's what slow jams are for. So naturally, yes, I had to learn more about cows making more milk while listening to slow jams. So with a little bit more detail provided from Modern Farmer magazine, the story, all it goes back, originally to a study from 2001, researchers at University of Leicester in England found that slow music played in a dairy farm environment could

increase cows milk production by up to 3% and with scale I mean 3% you're like oh that's not that much but with scale if you have like a large dairy farm and it's being produced by an animal in particular and so it turns out that like this is not this in and of itself uh is kind of anecdotally well known among dairy farmers around the world that not necessarily specifically slow music or slow jams but a lot of dairy farmers will say oh yeah we play music for the cows it kind of calms them down. It soothes them. At the most basic level, it's as simple as, well, you know, dairy farms can be noisy places. It kind of covers up background noise, machinery, or other people or whatever. And it does. It also calms them down. And a cow under stress produces less

milk. And, you know, dairy farmers understand this. I can kind of see that. That music can calm them down. But what kind of music is best? Did they try it with different genre? This is the part where they had never really scientifically undertaken a look at what exactly... Holy cow! So I'll jump to the chase here. I think I gave it away in the headline. Slow music turns out to be better.

And it kind of makes sense. Just slow music or slow jams. Yeah, slow jams is a very specific type of music. Like, that's like... Is it like Barry... DeAngelo? Yeah. I'm so glad you asked, yes.

It's not... As I looked into it, it turns out it's not really slow jams. I think the way that the three of us would call, like, a slow jam. It really was just slower music in general, kind of more melodic, a little bit slower, a little bit easygoing. And it makes sense. It's more soothing. So the University of Leicester researchers, they tested out a lot of different songs from different artists. Apparently, REM's Everybody Hurtz was cited as a particularly effective song or increasing milk production.

Wow. The cows are like, yeah. The cows are like, tell me about it. Everybody does hurt. Yeah. That was their most sighted. Yeah, they also said, I guess, bridge over troubled water again, Simon Garfunkel, highly effective. Yeah, these cows, like, really want to feel the struggle.

Should have played some Elliot Smith in the scene. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, being scientifically minded, they also tested out fast songs, like club hits and, you know, like Euro club songs. And those had no increase in production. Yeah. The article I read, they specifically singled out the song Horny by Moose Tea and Hot and Juicy did not appreciably increase cow's milk production. And then a little bit more recently, there was a somewhat related, not quite so scientific,

but there was a study, it was really a contest undertaken by the British Columbia in Canada, the British Columbia Dairy Association. In 2012, they ran a contest called Music Makes More Milk as part of a promotional campaign. Kind of just to raise dairy awareness. And it was sort of silly, but they had a good method, I thought. So what they did is they set up a website and they asked the public to come create songs. They had like a little interactive music sequencer with different instrument sets. And you would go on the website, you would create your tune.

And the idea is create a song that you think is going to be conducive to cows. producing more milk. That's pretty cool. So people came on. They created a bunch of songs. The first round of sort of voting or nominating was done by humans. So they had the human panel that that whittled the list down to the top five. Like what were the top five vote getting songs that all the people voted on? And then they put it to a jury of cows, a jury of Holsteens. And they played the cows each of the five finalist songs. And then they measured their milk production. And they tallied the winner of out of all the fans submissions a song called a moo down milk lane came out on top

now i'd like to just play you guys just a few seconds if i may i really want to hear a moo down milk lane all right hopefully we won't lactate yeah it makes everybody make milk And that is what the cows judged to be the winner. Oh, can we put, do they put lyrics to it? I don't know if it's been lyricized. Yeah. Oh, mo, mo, mo, mo, mo, mo, mo, mo. Oh, that's so cute.

Yeah. So I, it kind of opened my eyes that this has been such a research topic. But it sounds like there's still a lot of. of room left for experimentation. So listeners, if you are a dairy farmer and play music for your cows, we want to hear what music you play. I want to hear if, like, somewhere there's got to be some rebel cow, you know, and she's like, no, I prefer Megadeth, man.

Yeah. All right. So I totally didn't realize this until this morning, Colin, when you told me. So just to prepare everybody, my segment is on breast milk. Okay. All right. Some couple of cool stories and facts. But I realized, Colin, you told me today that dairy, the word dairy, is a very specific term.

Yeah, I was talking about this with my wife and she's like, is breast milk dairy? And like, she had just been looking at something like, hmm. And it turns out, no, like dairy has a very specific connotation. It's not just anything milk. It's something that's farmed or produced or processed for human consumption. And not mechanized, that's the wrong word, but there's a process made out of it. And a function. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I was like, well, technically every milk is type of breast milk, to be honest. And for this section, I'm obviously going to talk about human breast milk. So my first approach to this topic was, I was like, well, okay, you know what, nipple's a funny word. Where did nipple come from? Oh, yeah. It is a funny word, yeah. Agreed. It is.

I don't know if it's because, I don't know if it's because the nipple. body part is funny or giggle worthy, but the word nipple sounds funny. It really does. Stipple is funny too. Stipple is funny. Yeah, it's a weird sounding word. I just kind of, in the back of my head, I thought it was like something with nipping, you know, like biting or interesting. Puppies nip. I never thought about it. Yeah. Maybe it's because babies nip when, when they're drinking milk. Okay. Is that where it came from? It's not. Nipple, the old version of the word spelled N-Y-P-E-L-L-N-P-E-L-N-P-L-N-P-L. It's an old word from like the 1500s.

Uh-huh. And it was probably a diminutive term of neb, which means bill or beak or snout or any body protrusion. Okay. So a small neb, nepple, nipple. You're a little nubbing. I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And here's a fun fact. The slang term back in the 16th century for a woman's nipples was charylettes.

That sounds so much classy. It does. Like little cherries, charylettes. I thought that was very funny. So do with that what you will. Diving into the world of breast milk, I found this headline, which I thought was fantastic, says, Gene Doctors, milk mice, yield human breast milk protein. I just imagine a tiny little.

like milking machine with mice hooked up to it? It is exactly that. Here's some context. It's not like they just decide to milk mice. Just for the thought of it. Yeah. There's a experimental farm in Russia, and this is from the National Geographic. There is a protein called lactoferrin that breastfeeding women, humans. Human women. Human women make and it protects babies from viruses and bacteria while the infant's immune systems are still developing. So, this protein is really key to nourishing newborn babies. And so the aim and the goal of this research is to extract lactoferrin from milk and use that protein to use in baby formula.

So it's not like we're going to feed our babies mice milk. They're trying to mass produce or get more of this lactoferrin from different sources other than humans to hopefully incorporate into baby. B formulas. And so this is the difference between how much lactoferrin human makes and mice make. So breastfeeding human mothers typically produce five grams of lactoferrin per liter. Modified mice milk has 160 grams per liter. Five versus 160. Something about the mice and the proteins and the way they produce milk makes more. And this is, of course, you know, modified mice. Obviously

we're in early stages because these are mice and it's very inefficient. There is actually a picture. There is a mouse on a palm and what they have to do is they have to anestize the mouse and then put little tubes like Colin said

on its nipples and then milk the mouse milk that way. It must be a pretty low yield. Yeah. Super inefficient. I want everybody to go look up that picture. It's very funny.

It is this one mouse that is asleep with all these little tubes coming out from his nipples. Her nipples. From her nipples. That's true. Wow, they really modified this mouse. Amazing.

And he's listening to everybody hurts. By R. Yeah, bridge over troubled. We got to combine these experiments together. Then we get super mouse milk. And then my final kind of a breastfeeding fact. I'm sure Chris, if Chris were here,

he probably have heard of it because he is about to be a father. Do you guys know what witch's milk is? Witches milk? Witches milk. Is it like, it's like pseudo milk or like fake milk? It's real milk. Do you think Chris is making witch's milk?

No. I was like, why would Chris know about this? Okay. There is a phenomenon when a mother is pregnant, Obviously, the mother has hormones, you know, going nuts in her body. So a lot of these hormones will cross over through the placenta into the baby, right? And so the child is taking in the same chemicals until the baby is born and then these hormones are cut off.

What this means is while a mom is pregnant, the mom's breasts are preparing for feeding. And so it's making these hormones and it's getting ready. The pre-born baby is also soaking up the same hormones. So when the child is born, it still has estrogen running in the baby system, which means sometimes the baby has a bit of breast milk in its boobs. Really? Regardless of gender. Yeah. Men can lactate.

Yeah, men can lactate. We got all the right equipment. They're just going to wire it out. It's some hormones. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of newborn babies, they will generate and have milk in their baby breasts. And that's the witch's milk. And that is known as witch's milk.

I could see that being the topic of superstition. And be like, whoa. Yeah, yeah. Where did that come from? So there you go. Wow. Breastfeeding. Fun facts.

Man. Woo. Did you know that putting cabbage in your bra if you're nursing, if you have too much milk, it'll help dry up your milk? That sounds like an old wife's tale, really? It's real. Wait, does it soak it up or does it just stop? It helps stop it.

Why am I touching my boots? I know. It's like empathetic. It's hard on why I like. And then if you get hungry on the subway, you got like a little salad, too. It's cool, guys. I got some cabbage in my bra. I'm about that age where a lot of my friends have babies, so this is the kind of stuff.

He learned. I've been waiting for my moment to tell you about cabbage. I'd never heard that before. I have never heard that. I've never heard that. With lettuce work? Or kale. They're very specific about cabbage.

I don't know. A couple Brussels sprouts, maybe. Interesting. Yeah, maybe for a future show, we'll verify that. Now, are we talking red cabbage or? No, it's like a litmus test. Yeah. It's like a litmus test.

Red cabbage juice. I go one green, one red. It's acidic or is it alkaline? Anyways. All right, let's take a quick break. A word from our sponsor. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go Network.

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit BMO.com slash Viporter. to learn more. Welcome back. You're listening to Good Job Brain, and this week, we're utterly fantastic because we're talking about dairy. Moo. We're milking it for all its words. Yeah, there you go.

Oh, good. So in trying to figure out what I was going to talk about for a dairy episode, I looked around, there's all sorts of little facts that I found. Like, the winners of the Indy 500 have been offered milk since 19. That's the first drink they're supposed to have. There was one year where a guy won and he had an orange grove. So he had orange juice. And then they were like, ah, it's not cool.

You can't break the legend just because you have an orange grove. And so he drank milk after. I don't know if he drank it immediately after because orange juice and milk. Orange juice and milk back to back, not good. Wait, so it's tradition that all the winners drink milk? Yeah. Is it a photo op thing? Yeah, it is.

And the cameras are all there. And sometimes they'll like pour it over their heads and they'll, yeah. But it's because there was. There's a racer in the 30s who would always request buttermilk at the end. Oh. And people, the milk, the dairy, the local dairy, didn't know that it was buttermilk specifically. So they were sending milk because this guy won like three times in a row. And so they were like, oh, you should have milk just like this guy.

And it became a tradition. It's a tradition now. I'm pretty sure what they do. I've seen this on some sports sites before is they ask all the drivers ahead of time, what's your milk preference in case you win? so they have this like master spreadsheet of this guy likes whole milk this guy likes non-fat this guy likes low fat this guy likes butter milk yeah what about chocolate milk has anybody drank chocolate milk that's a good question Wikipedia did not list that is one of the options for milk but that would be a good twist still milk yeah so there's someone has lactose intolerant that seems a little yeah they wouldn't give you soy milk this is like a local dairy yeah they just mix up some elmer's glue and water yeah just drink this it's fine It's non-toxic.

Another one was Louis Pasteur, the man who kind of discovered pasteurization. How do you process milk to kill the bacteria in it that would have hurt people? Figured out about pasteurization or discovered pasteurization when he was working on figuring out why beet root wine was going bad. What? Wine made from beets. Yeah. Okay. All right.

They were like, oh, it's very sour, this beet wine that we've been drinking. So like it was turning? Yeah. And so he looked and he realized that. There were microbes that, microbes in the bad wine that are the same microbes that are in a lot of kinds of vinegar. What if we heated at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time? And so he figured out pasteurization and then they applied that to milk.

Because milk was a big transmitter of TB for a while. Oh, yeah. Then another tidbit I saw about Monterey Jack cheese. So it's named for Monterey, California, the place, there were Franciscan monks who figured out how to make this soft white kind of cheese. I love Monterey. Jack. It's delicious.

I love Jack cheese. Jack is named for a guy from Monterey who bought basically the whole town and was a terrible landlord and he owned all the dairy's. His name was David Jack. Wait, Jack was his last name. Jack was his last name. Monterey Jack cheese. He had a bunch of dairy, so he named the cheese after himself.

And then it kind of just became Monterey Jack cheese. He was an A-hole. He was a worst landlord. He was very exploitative. He was taking advantage of people during the land dispute stuff with. with Mexico and Spain and California. And the cheese is named after him? The cheese is named after him.

Still delicious. I don't think I, or I definitely did not know it was his last name. I assumed it was like Monterey Jack Carlson or Monterey Jack Rodriguez or something. But it's David Jack. He was Scottish. Wow. Monterey Jack. So when you're eating Monterey Jack cheese, namesake of an A-Hull.

Yeah. And then other interesting thing I saw about dairy was in Milwaukee. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they have really cold winters. They're also a huge cheese producer in America. So now they're experimenting with spreading cheese brine in the streets to help melt the snow. Because cheese brine has a lower freezing point than salt brine. And also really cheap because they have a ton of cheese brine left over. Oh, I see.

So it's just like the salt water they have, the cheese gets soaked in. But usually they just throw it out. Yeah, they would just throw it out. But they're like, oh, maybe you can use this. it's maybe better for the environment mozzarella and provolone are the best apparently the brand for those cheese yeah

so does that mean your whole street smells like cheese a little bit not a lot but a little bit and I was like oh what about the mice did you know mice do not really like cheese that was another thing I found out they have been lying to me

they have been lying yeah mice like sweet things or oats or grains that's what they really want and I was looking around people are like peanut butter mice will go crazy for peanut butter Or cheese, not so much. If there are other things that are like in the oats or fruit region of food? Like, they'll go for that.

They don't really want cheese. This maybe came from medieval times. Sorry, I did a lot of cheese research. I fell down the cheese hole. I fell down a cheese hole. During medieval times, maybe cheese was the only food that mice could get to because the meat was salted in hanging. And then their oats were in glass jars. And so, like, the only other food that people would see mice eating was cheese.

And it was like, cheese are starved. And I was just like, what are you going to do? Yeah. It's like I read that, um, cats don't drink milk. I mean, cats like milk. Milk taste good to animals, but usually it's not good to give milk to cats because they are lactose intolerant like many animals in the world are. They like the taste, but they're not going to like how it feels afterwards.

Right, right. I don't know what to believe in anymore. I know. I don't. Boom. Mike drop. That's all of the things I learned about. cheese and milk

today. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Shop now at nofrills.ca. And we have one last segment. Colin, what you got? All right, let me ask you guys a question.

Do you know what a gable top carton is? It's a milk carton, yeah? the specific name for the shape of the classic square milk carton. Oh, the paper? Yep, with the little angled, and you fold it back. It's called a gable top, like a gable on a house. Oh, okay. It looks like a roof on the house.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. And so I got really interested thinking about this because, you know, you go to the store, get a container of water. It's usually round. You get a container of beer, usually round. Can of soda. Wine bottle.

Like so many of our liquids are round, but milk for many, many, many parts of the world, and especially in the U.S., is square. And, you know, in the last few years, like, you get juices and orange juice and stuff and square cartons, but for the longest time, this was just the province of milk, that classic square shape. So it's really interesting to me, like, the history of milk packaging in a lot of ways is kind of a microcosm of our changing views on hygiene and sanitation and automation and industrialization.

Let's just lay out some facts here. Americans drink a lot of milk. America, we'd like milk. And we always have, like, going back, and, you know, we're not the only country. Early on, you know, if you lived on a farm, obviously, a farm with cows, that is, it's a lot easier to get your own milk. You know, going way back even to the earliest days of cities, the further you get away from the farm, you need someone, you need milk. You have to find a way to get milk. And that's why, you know, the occupation of milkman is one of the oldest occupations in modern society.

oldest profession. Hey now. But, you know, the original milkman is maybe not what you think of when you kind of picture the classic, you know, milkman carrying the bottles of milk. Yeah, with a shirt. Yeah, the bow tie, a little hat. Yep, yep. Very 50s.

As late as, as late as like the late 1800s, you know, here in the States, the milkman was the guy who drove around a wagon, came through the neighborhoods, and carried the milk in big buckets, like those large size, you know, milk cans that. you would see. They weren't in individual packages. You know, he would come up, pull up at the curb, whatever, and you would come out to him, pay him, and you would have your own container. And

the milkman would ladle out the milk to you into your container. That's why people got TB. You would pay for what you got and... And no refrigeration in the truck. He would go on his way. I assume. Maybe it's cottage cheese by the time you get... Certainly not as much refrigeration as they have now. But yeah, we get your warm milk

ladled out to you and, you know, pay as you go. All right. And This was mostly fine, but yeah, as you say, Dana, there were a lot of disease vectors source to milk and sort of this communal aspect of it. So in 1884, in Potsdam, New York, there was one Dr. Henry Thatcher, and he was out about the town one day, and he noticed the milkman coming up to the side of the street to do a delivery. So the milkman wagon pulls up, and as the milkman's busy with a customer, Henry Thatcher notices a little girl, she dropped her doll. like her rag doll into the can of milk and so

the milkman kind of you know fishes it out oh here's your doll little girl you know and then just goes on about his business goes on to lip finishing his rounds

that's so gross well the thing is he got caught that time but like who knows what up what's dropped a dead rat yeah just laid a little out

this little rag doll who knows what you know where who knows where that thing has been been hanging out with that I think fair to say Henry Thatcher's reaction was essentially

Ew. There's got to be a better way. And he was. He really, this just sort of set him on the course. He's like, this is crazy that this is how we deliver milk. And there's got to be a more hygienic, more stable way of doing this. And he designed the first milk bottle. I mean, it seems like such a simple thing now.

The first glass bottle. He came up with it. There was not such a thing up until this point. There were no bottle. There were bottles, but they were for, you know, ink or perfume or, I mean, there were glass bottles, but nobody distributed milk in this way. You either lived on a farm and got it yourself or, you know, had the milkman come out and ladle it out to you. Oh, man. So he designed it himself.

There was no preexisting thing. He came up with, you know, you know, I mean, if you saw it today, you would recognize it as a milk bottle. But he had to have it specially made. I mean, there was nobody close by that could do it. He eventually found a manufacturer to make his glass milk. jars, milk bottles, and like so many other inventions we've talked about on the show, he had a hard time getting

people to adopt it right away. I mean, it was just one more process, one kind of bulky thing. And then there was the whole... Was his vision, the milk man would distribute the milk in the bottle, or that the bottles are given out to families and people who

live in the cities and have them catch the milk? That's a good question. His idea was like he would deal with the dairy farms and the milk dealers. So he would go to the milk dealer and say, here, I'll sell you X number of bottles. You put the milk in. And you sell the milk in it. And you, you know, presumably raise your rates a little bit to offset the cost. He also wanted some royalties for it. And it was a tough sell at first. He had a tough time getting some of the, some of his first customers. And, you know, I mean, to be honest, his earliest, earliest designs,

they weren't quite perfected yet. You know, they had like wooden plugs. And so they leaked a little bit. You know, no one was really sure, like the ideal way to transport them. Yeah. He had one customer who by you know he spilled so much milk that he had to go back to his uh you know he had to go back and refill them again uh one of his initial customers uh wrote him a letter and said my dear doctor you must think a man is a fool to be driving around the streets with milk and glass bottles it is a failure and will never amount to anything well i can see that though you got to have the holder the bad world yeah you need the tray you need the tray and you know as actually the the lid was a big improvement. He finally settled on before too long. It was just like a paper

disc, like a little waxed paper disc. They'd stick inside the lip of the bottle. And so, yeah, it did eventually catch on once he kind of got the design perfected and realized like, you know, as we're getting a little bit more modernizing, you know, moving into the 1900s, people kind of liked the idea of a glass bottle. It seemed more sanitary because it was more sanitary. But by the 1950s, it was the square wax carton started to take over. It makes sense. Why, if you're, you know, a milk dealer, like, it's lighter, it's cheaper. If it drops, it's not going to break and shatter and get glass all over the place. But the first, the first milk square milk cartons had some problems.

The first problem was they were hand folded, hand glued, you know, they were coated in paraffin wax. And related to this, the other problem was they would deliver them to the milk dealers and the dairy farmers pre-made. So they were already formed. You just had to put the milk in and then seal them up. And you can imagine, like, that takes up a lot of space to have all these cartons, right. It's all a wasted space and slow. So, of course, leave it to another industrious American. John Van Wormer had the patent on what we would recognize now as the forerunner to the modern square milk carton.

He called it the pure pack, P-A-K, of course. And he solved the two main problems. One is that he had developed machinery to assemble and fold the cartons together. and he struck on the idea of, I'll deliver them flat, you know, the same way like at a pizzeria, they've got all the boxes flat and they'll fold them, you know, a little bit at a time. And that really solved the problem. You know, this was like, you know, the late 20s when he kind of came up with this process. By the 1950s, he was making 20 million cartons a day.

Wow. Oh, okay. Probably a lot of money is all. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yeah. And that was really kind of the big switchover from glass bottles. And, you know, I mean, we've talked about on the show like kind of the rise of supermarkets. That played a part as well.

But the cartons, you know, again, they have the major advantages. They're thinner. They're lighter. They're cheaper. Here's the one biggest advantage of all. You can store more milk in a square carton than a round carton. Than a round carton. For the same amount of width on a shelf or a truck or wherever, you can get more in there.

And for something that people are buying so frequently, it just made more sense for them to be able to store more and more. and more. Really, the only other major innovation to that, you know, since the 1950s, was when they started putting the cap. The screw cap. That's right. For those of you who are too lazy to fold back the pieces of the carton. That was a dicey proposition. Like, sometimes

that thing would get shredded. You would do it perfectly, and it would not... And then your milk pours lopside. Or, like, you throw it too hard. It's like a bad infomercial. Setting you up for failure. Like, wow. Or you do like, you're like, you open the wrong side. You know, because there was a right

side to open and a wrong side. Yeah. And then it's just all like ragged paper and it gets all soggy and gross. Yeah. But aside from the cap, they don't line them with with paraffin wax anymore. You know, they'll use either foil or, you know, polyurethane or something like that. That's about the only other major improvement. Yeah. They took the pictures off of them, the kids. Oh, do they, they don't do that anymore? They don't do that anymore. Oh, the missing children. Yeah. Because now they're better ways to find out. The internet. Yeah. Because the internet. Yeah. That's true. So that's our episode, our dairy episode. I know we just skimmed the surface of the world of dairy. Obviously, we talk about food a lot on the show. So it'll come back up, whether we're talking about butter or yogurt or... We talked about yogurt before.

We talked about yogurt shampoo. We have. We have. And the buttermilk, yeah. Buttermilk shampoo as well, yeah. Who knew that there'd be dairy connections in our bathroom episode. Oh, well. Thank you guys for joining me.

and thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot about cheese, about slow jams, about how to milk mice. Yeah. And you can find our show on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and on our website, good jobbrain.com. Thanks for our sponsor, Audible, and we'll see you guys next week.

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