Good Job, Brain! - 128: Eat Your Veggies!

Episode Date: October 2, 2014

Vegetables are filled with nutrients but they're also chock-full of weird, weird, weird trivia. Find out why the odd history behind why we associate carrots with the color orange, and what vegetable looks like a severed human head. Quiz about two funny-sounding veggies: the artichoke and the rutabaga, and the common misconceptions and origin stories behind the jack-o-lantern.  ALSO: CHRIS KOHLER BABY WATCH 2014, weird new words that just got added to the Scrabble dictionary   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Welcome, superbly, super, super civilized, not superfluous or superficial, super fans. Yeah, take a breath now. This is Good Job, your weekly quiz show and off-beat trivia podcast. Today's show is episode 128, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your placid platoon of pleasant people, pleased to present plenty of pleasurable podcasting. I'm Colin, and I'm Dana. And no Chris this week, because we are on Kohler Baby Watch, 2014. He and his wife, Regina, are in the hospital.

We don't know what's going to happen, but baby's coming. I feel like just yesterday we did the wedding episode. Oh, yeah. I guess it was almost a year ago. Us three, and then listeners have witnessed major events of his life. From boy to man. Sunrise, sunset. We cannot wait to find out what the baby's name is because Chris has been very secretive about it.

Of course, we wish him the best. And hopefully by time, listeners, you guys, listen to this episode, the baby will be out and we want to have a name. And then Chris will be back and he can tell us all about the gross stuff that happened in Babyland. And the big question is, since we know it's going to be a boy, I believe, is the baby going to be a third? Is it going to be Chris the third? Yeah. So that's, so we've been theorizing. Chris Jr., we, I'm putting my money down for Chris the third. I think so too. I feel like we talked. about it. I was like, I put my foot in my mouth because I was like, it's kind of weird to just

name somebody after yourself, isn't it? And he's like, no, it's not weird. I went Mario Triforce Kohler. So, so we'll see. And a couple weeks ago, I did announce that we're having a bumper ad submission contest. And we're asking for people to make your own good job brain ads and send it to us and we might air in the show. So this episode, we're going to feature one of our listener-created ads, and that's going to happen in the mid-break. All right, without further ado, let's do our first general trivia segment pop quiz. Ha-cha. All right, here we go. I have a random Trivial Pursuit card, and you guys have your morning radio zoo buzzers. First question, Blue Edge for Geography. A Mahoot is a person who wrangles or drives what animal.

How do you spell that? M-A-H-O-U-T. Mahout. Mah-H-H-O-U-T. I think it's Mah-H-H-H-H-O-U-T. Would that be a camel? Incorrect. A moose?

It is an elephant. Oh. A ma-hut. That's a fun word. M-S-H-O-U-T. Elephant Rangler. All right. Pink Wedge for Pop Culture.

What O-T to a Feline does Phoebe from Friends compose? Dana. Smelly cat. Smelly cat. I was singing that the other day. That song is so sticky. And smell it. What are they feeding you?

Yeah. That was beautiful. It was kind of like a Gregorian. It was. All right. Yellow Wedge. What are the first names of Depression-era American folk legends Parker and Barrow? Oh.

That's Bonnie and Clyde. Correct. Purple Wedge. What pop musician is a descendant of novelist Herman Melancho. Melville. Oh. Moby Dick, right? It's Moby.

It is. Oh. Yeah. It's Moby. Wow. A note here says, his given name is Richard Melville Hall. Very cool. Oh, okay.

I gave it away. I was like, isn't it? Yeah. It's all right. He wrote Moby. Yeah. Green Wedge for Science. Oh, we had this before.

What mammal has the longest pregnancy? Oh, God. Dana. It's an elephant. Yes, also an elephant. I was second guessing myself. Like, it was Elevate, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

An elephant's pregnancy lasts about 22 months. Wow. Last question, orange wedge. What is a traditional karate uniform called? Karate. It's a ghee. A ghee. Yes, ghee.

G-I. Very good Scrabble word. I believe, wasn't that just added to Scrabble Dictionary? I think I saw on the news. Like, it had not been there before. Oh, you know what? Yeah, because I used to play Scrabble. I play that word.

I get challenged. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't come. up in the two-letter. It didn't used to. Yes, I just quickly checked here online. Yeah, it was just last month. The official Scrabble Dictionary added a bunch of words, but it included in those were

G-G-E-P-O-P-O-D-A. This is actually pretty interesting. So there are some of the other words that were added to the fifth edition of the official Scrabble Players Dictionary. Beatbox, Bromance. Wow. So I wouldn't have tried bromance. I would have tried beatbox. Chillax. Like chill and relax.

Chilax, yes. Chilax, bro. To calm down. Wow. Hashtag. Okay. Makes sense. Selfie.

Also, Sudoku added as a word. Oh. That's true. That is how you say it in English. Yeah. Okay. And webzine. Really?

Webz. Very 90s. Yeah. You know, they're a little bit of conservative. A little behind. Chillax, bro. So I'm going to share a little bit of a behind the scenes, the secret behind Good Job Brain. So before we record, I usually go to the supermarket and I would ask everybody, hey, what do you guys want to eat or drink?

And one of the things that I always bring is those veggie stick boxes or kits that has like celery and carrots and hickama, which is a-we've been on a hickama kick recently. Yeah, it's summer and it's chillaxing. It's very chillaxing. It's great for a bromance. So that got me thinking that we had a couple episodes talking about, you know, different types of food. And we also had a dedicated episode to talk about fruit. Why not have an episode to talk about vegetables?

And I know it's a touchy subject, not vegetables, not everybody's favorite. But definitely there is a treasure trove of trivia. So today we're going to make you eat your veggies. I'm going to keep well. My vegetables cart off and sell. My vegetables, I love you most of all. My favorite vegetable, all day of vegetable. So first I think we should probably get out of the way, right?

The whole fruit versus vegetable, which has been the source of many arguments around trivia tables. To be honest, it really depends on what source you're using. Yeah, the context. The simplest most fair answer that I found. anyone put it as like, it's really, it's a culinary distinction. If it's sweet, it tends to be a fruit. If it's more savory or salty or earthy, it tends to be a vegetable. You know, I mean, some people will account mushrooms as a vegetable, even though they're a fungus. Yeah. Yeah. There is a botanical definition of a fruit. Yeah. You know, so it's like, it has to be from a flowering plant. It has to contain the seed, you know, so that comes from the plant ovary. There you go. Exactly. It comes from the plant ovaries. Which is why things like tomatoes are from a botanical perspective, fruit. Yeah. And so are things like avocado, you know, like, but like in America, we don't really, I think

most Americans would call an avocado a vegetable, but it's a fruit. It's like cucumbers. Botanically. You know, cucumbers are technically fruit. They're gourds, pumpkins. So let's just sit that out of the way that when we say vegetable, we may be talking about some things that are botanically fruit as well. But we mean

culinary. Culinary. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, most chefs would say, like, a vegetable is you're eating like a stem or a leaf or a root. And it is interesting. I didn't do too much research into this, but there's a lot of legal wrangling around what constitutes of that.

For tariffs, you're right. Absolutely. Or for farm subsidies and all kinds of things like that. Yeah. So here's a fun case, actually, really quickly to illustrate the messiness of the legality. of fruits versus vegetables. Rubarb. We know rhubarb.

Kind of like a red, big celery. So rhubarb, you're eating the stock. It's like a celery stalk. And don't eat the leaves because those are poisonous. So rhubarb is botanically a vegetable.

In the United States, in 1947, the New York court decided that since it was used in America as a fruit for sweetened pies and desserts, that it counted as a fruit

for the purposes of regulations and duties. Yeah. So back then, tariffs were higher for vegetables than fruit. Right. So if you counted as fruit, you get a better deal. You get a better deal. So it's very messy. And I'm sure there's a lot of legal history behind every single vegetable slash fruit.

Which is why tomatoes. I believe that's why tomatoes are still counted as vegetables is for import, export purposes. Yep, yep, yep. All right. Well, with all of that said, I will kick us off here with a grab bag, vegetable quiz. for you guys. Mixed vegetable medley. A mixed salad, if you will.

So please get your buzzers ready. We'll have some straight trivia, maybe some true and false thrown in there. So here we go. Woo! Okay. This... Vegetabalus.

This popular vegetable is a member of the T-U-B-E-R family. Tuber, T-U-B-E-R. Karen. Like potato? It is. Oh, okay. We were like... Aren't there a lot of members in the...

Yams, sweet potatoes, all in the, all in the tuber family. You would have accepted all of those? I would have accepted those. I have potato in mine. I think certainly in America, I think potatoes are the most popular of those three, wouldn't you say? Yeah, yeah. The tuber I learned is from Latin. It means swelling.

Oh, sexy. It's a reference to the fact that, like, the tuber part that we eat, it swells up as storing the plants nutrients. Oh, okay. Yeah. Usually underground, doesn't have to be, most of our tubers. Is it tied with tuberculosis? It is related. It is.

It comes from the tubercle, a tubercle, like a swelling or a growth, tuberculosis. True or false, ounce for ounce, there is more vitamin C in broccoli than in oranges. Karen. True. That is true, yes. Yeah. Quite a bit more. In a 100 gram serving of broccoli has about 90 milligrams of vitamin C, the same size serving

of oranges, only a little bit over 50 milligrams. Orange just tastes better, though. You can drink orange juice. You can't drink broccoli juice. It's true. Do you also have calcium? Yeah. Broccoli is all around good for you.

Yeah. So if you feel a cold coming on, start chugging that broccoli juice, yeah. A few episodes ago, we talked about British and American English. Okay. So, as you guys probably know, a lot of very common vegetables have different names here and in Britain. So I'll give you a few here. We'll start easy. If you are in the UK and ask for an aubergine, what are you asking for?

Dana. Eggplant. It is an eggplant. In the UK, they call a courgette, what we call. Dana. Zucchini? It is zucchini. Yeah, corgette.

Zucchini. This one's a little trickier, but you guys may have heard this one. In the UK, this vegetable, commonly referred to by the French name, Mange 2. Mange 2. Eat all of it. Eat all. Eat all. And that is a clue to what it is. You eat all of it. Salary. You eat all of it. Why would you need to clarify? It's like, oh, you don't need to unwrap this fruit. You don't need to take it out. It is snap peas. Sugar peas.

Oh, you eat the pot. Eat the pot as well. Mange 2. Eat all. That's right. True or false. Celery is a negative calorie food, meaning your body expends more energy processing it than you consume. Dana. True. Karen. Well, I guess both then, right? Well, there's an asterisk, I feel like. Okay.

So, one stock of celery is probably about six or seven calories. Pretty close, yeah. So the whole theory is when you eat the celery, the chivalry, the charge. chewing and the digesting, you're actually using more than six or seven calories just to digest it. But I think that is a myth. She's taken a long way to get to the answer here. Because your stomach or your GI system actually is very efficient.

It will not take that much. So it is a common misconception. So false is what you're saying. You are correct. You are correct for the reasons you're listening. I'm so glad you asked. What if you chewed for a really long time? Yeah, that's true.

I mean, what if you flexurized it? And you ran. By that definition, though, any food could be made negative. Like pumpkin pie could be, you know, if you chew at it, yeah. You have to chew for a really long time. Yeah, you're right. A stalk of celery is somewhere in the five to seven calorie range. And your body is extremely efficient.

It only takes about half a calorie of energy to digest that salary. So there are, there really are no such things, strictly speaking, as negative calorie foods. Your body is so efficient. Now, the reason that you can lose weight if you go on to some of these so-called negative calorie foods is they're bulky. They're mostly water. They fill you up. They're high in fiber, and you just substitute them for high calorie foods.

Most scientists and nutritionists agree, the only truly negative calorie item of food or beverage that you could consume would be ice water because your body has to expend energy to warm it up before it can pass it through your system. Oh, interesting. Yeah, but even you know... Scientifically. Yeah, yeah. Used as a base for numerous types of soups and sauces and stocks. Mirropois,

Mirropois is a mixture of what three common vegetables? Karen. Onions, celery, and carrots. Absolutely correct. Yeah. Do you know where the name Mirapua comes from? No. What does it even mean? translates to it. So I started down the

of like, oh, let me find out what Mirupois means in French. It doesn't actually mean anything in French. It's not named after it. It is from a long tradition of naming food inventions after the estate from whence they came. So this is a very French, as you can imagine, tradition. So what this means is that the cook, who first came up with this mixture, or popularized it anyway, worked for the Mirroix family. Family. In fact, it was Charles Pierre Gaston. François de Lévi, Duke de Lévi-Mir-Pois. Wow. So it was named after his land, like the Duke of Mirroix.

Or like a Waldorf salad or something. Yeah, yeah. All right, this one is a check of how closely you guys pay attention to movie credits. Okay. All right. What? Producer Albert Broccoli helped create more than a dozen films in what world-famous movie franchise?

Oh, Broccoli? Dana. James Bond. It is. Whoa. Is that a real name? That is the family name. Broccoli?

He really brought James Bond to the screen. They were responsible for the first half dozen or more of the James Bond movies, and he was associated with them well into the 90s until he died. Yes. And that one always jumped out at me as a kid watching the movie. I'm like, Albert Broccoli. That's what I sounded like as a child. Sounds great.

Okay. Last one. We will wrap this up here. Tell me, this is a true or false. True or false in the early. in the early 1980s, the federal government passed regulations that classified ketchup as a vegetable for the purpose of school lunch nutrition guidelines. You said the 70s or 80s?

1980s. I feel like that happened recently. I know. Like, this is a very famous incident. I say yes, because nutrition's always been. Nutrition and government is always been. Is it false? It is not exactly true. But it's more true than I thought.

This one was always like famously used, like in the Reagan administration, like, oh, did you hear Reagan wants to classify ketchup as a vegetable? You know, can you believe what we've come to? It's more complicated than that. So there were indeed several cuts to the federal budgets that supported school provided meals in the early 80s. And as part of this, they had the idea like, well, we'll give school administrators a little more flexibility, local school districts to classify things differently so that they can still meet the nutrition guidelines with less money. And so they The USDA's Food and Nutrition Service put forth several regulations on what you could and couldn't do. Like, you can't call this a bread, you know, if it's not enriched or things like that. And they said, quote, you could credit a condiment such as pickle relish as a vegetable. This went on to be widely ridiculed. People are like, well, pickle relish is not a vegetable. The backlash was strong enough. They struck down those regulations.

Like they rescinded the recommendations. So, have you guys ever heard of veggilet? Vigilet? I've heard of Vegeamite. I've heard of veggie omelet. So it's not related to either. This is a way to sneak chocolate into a show about vegetables. Vigilet.

V-G-E-L-A-T-E. Oh, like chocolate, but V-G-E-L-A-T, like, late. Yeah. V-E-G-E-L-A-T. Is this vegetables made from chocolate or chocolate made from vegetables? It is chocolate that has vegetable oil in it. In the EU, in the European Union, there was a lot of controversy since the 70s about, what do you call chocolate that has vegetable oil in it? Because chocolate's usually, the fat in chocolate, like a chocolate bar is usually cocoa fat.

It's cheaper to make chocolate that has vegetable oil in it, right? And so they were like, we don't want to import your chocolate that has vegetable oil in it. And so it was kind of a publicity thing to make people be disgusted with the idea. Yeah, probably, or to be like, you have to label it, vegetable it. We'll import it, but you're going to call it. Yeah, you cannot call it chocolate because chocolate does not have vegetable oil in it. This went on for 30 years. There was a lot of debate and controversy over whether or not you can import chocolate

into certain European countries if it had vegetable oil in it. The countries that did not allow vegetable fat in chocolate were Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Germany, Greece, and Holland. they would not sell imported chocolate. Those are countries famous for their actual, like Belgium. A proud of chocolate tradition. And also, like, Denmark is a very sweet oriented nation as well. So is this so-called Vigilet, like, is it coming from us?

Are we the one sending it over there? Where is it? No, it's coming from inside the house. Like, it's cheap. It might be from us, but it might be from the UK. It really stretches out your chocolate. You know, you can make more chocolate. You make it cheaper.

There's a lot of, they would say it's like chocolate-flavored candy, basically, right? In the U.S. chocolate-flavored candy means you have to call it that if there is vegetable fat present in the item. Interesting. So a lot of, like, coating, you know, like yogurt pretzels or Hershey's Kissables used to not be, used to be called chocolate. And then they change the ingredients. And now it is a chocolate-flavored candy. I don't think I ever noticed that. Interesting.

So it's like the equivalent of cheese-flavored sauce or something. Yeah. Interesting. Vigilet. That name was meant to be disgusting on purpose. I think it was trying to prove a point. So in English, if you're importing this chocolate, it's called family milk chocolate. What?

So it's not just, it can be called milk chocolate in the country where it originated from, but if you're importing it, it's now called family milk chocolate. Okay. And in French, it is called Chocolat de Manage Alley, or household milk chocolate. Huh. I wonder what, oh, because like what you're strutting it out for a big family and you want a cheaper alternative? We don't know. It sounds positive. Like, it sounds like the result of a negotiation where they're like family milk chocolate

doesn't sound like poison. So it sounds fine. Anyway, yeah. So they just decided, or just, I'm so old. They decided this in 2000. That was 14 years ago We have listeners who weren't born then Oh, this was just recently

It was in the 2000s of 14 years ago I was insane I feel like some enterprising company would You know, appropriate that and like call their product Yeah, we're proud that it's Vigilin Especially that we live in the Bay Area Like it's organic Vigilin When you said Vigilite I thought it was going to be like

Fortified chocolate with vegetables Like carrot flavor chocolate or oh Celery chocolate that has vegetable oil in it. Have you ever used like the chocolate fondue fountains? Yeah. And like if it gets too gunky or too thick, vegetable oil in it. I'm going to continue our kind of theme of funny named vegetables or things by,

I'm going to start off with this story. As many people know, I did grow up in Taiwan. And I think this was around Chinese New Year, which is a big, big event in the Chinese, and Taiwanese culture, lots of food, lots of eating, lots of preparation. You know, it's kind of like our Christmas almost in terms of like scale. And so I think I was maybe four or five. I was heading to the kitchen and I was like, oh, I'm looking for a snack. So this is during Chinese New Year. You know, my mom bought a bunch of groceries and the whole refrigerator is jam packed with

things. So I was like, oh, I wonder if we have any ice cream or popsicles. I opened the freezer and a black ball rolled out. And it looked like a severed human head because your mom cuts off. Because I saw hair. It's like a mess of hair that was frozen in a human head size shape thing. And I freak the F out. As it turns out, obviously it was not a severed head. But I was right in terms of my childhood assessment that it looked like hair. It was what in Chinese you call fattzai. Anglicized term is fatt choy, which is kind of Cantonese, and the actual English names, it could be black moss or hair moss. It is a type of algae that grows in black strands, very fine like hair.

So my mom just had a big ball of it, you know, for our New Year meals and stuff, and she stuck it in the freezer and just rolled out because it was packed so tight. It was super traumatic. Can we go back? So fat choy, is that like Gong He fat choy? Is it? So this is why I prefaced it with Chinese New Year. So in the Chinese culture, there are a lot of foods that we eat because they're auspicious, because they're lucky. And the reason why they're lucky is because in Chinese, they, in the Chinese language,

there are a lot of hominims or sound alike. And the Chinese are really into eating foods that sound like good words. So, for example, fatai, which literally translates to hair, vegetable sounds like fattai, which is becoming wealthy or becoming rich. So that is one of the foods that we cook in Chinese New Year, and it looks like, and you've probably seen it before it. Is it like in soups and stuff? It's in soups, it's in sauces.

I think I may have had this. It's little black strands of stuff. You really should not eat this vegetable. It is not healthy for you. What? Eating black moss could lead to degenerative diseases. What? Such as Alzheimer, Parkinson's, and dementia.

Wow. It is not lucky. Not lucky at all, which is so weird because it doesn't stop people from buying it during Chinese New Year. Hong Kong and other parts of China have been trying to ban. Really? Uh-huh. Selling and eating this stuff because it is not healthy for you. They've actually tried to make synthetic fake fatai, but it has compounds that lead to other stuff.

The funny thing is, this organism is very related to spirulina, which you see all the it's like algae. You see that as smoothies all the time. Totally. Who knows? But there is research saying that could lead to degenerative diseases. Happy New Year. I feel like.

Happy New Year. So there you go. That's permanently embedded in your memory. That is. Like sometimes I will still have nightmares of opening up the freezer and finding a severed human head. Oh, wow. And with that warning, let's take a quick break, a word from our sponsor in our listener-submitted bumper.

It feels really good to be productive, but a lot of the time it's easier said than done, especially when you need to make time to learn about productivity so you can actually, you know, be productive. But you can start your morning off right and be ready to get stuff done in just a few minutes with the Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day podcast. You'll hear advice on everything from how to be able to. build confidence to how to get the best night's sleep. New episodes drop every weekday, and each one is five minutes or less, so you only have to listen a little to get a lot more out of your weekdays. Listen and subscribe to Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. History never says goodbye. It just says

See you later. Edward Galeana was right when he said that. Events keep happening over and over again, in some form. And that's the reason I produced the podcast. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics. What is it? We take stories of history and apply them to the events of today to help you, perhaps, understand them better.

We are also part of Airwave Media Network. I've been doing the program since 2006. That's a long time, and the show has a long name. My history can beat up your politics. Find me wherever you get podcasts. As a man who begins many of his sentences with the phrase, Did you know that? I'm frequently punched in the face.

However, once my assailants have tired themselves out, after hours of repeated blows to my... tender, bruising visage, I fill them in with facts that I learned on Good Job Brain. It's my offbeat trivia podcast. Thanks to Good Job Brain, not only do the punches smart, but my punchers are too. Thanks, good job, Brain. Awesome. I love that he was like on the edge laughing.

He has a good voice. Yeah, very good. That's good. Thank you, Evan. Thanks, Evan. And of course you're listening to Good Job Brain And this week we're making you eat your veggies Or actually not eat some

Because I just talked about like Don't eat the hair We're making you eat your veggies And or issuing vegetable advisory alerts All right, I've got some seemingly obvious Quick trivia questions for you guys What color is an eggplant? Purple

Yeah, purple I will accept albergenin What color is a carrot? A lot of color. I've seen one. white ones and purple ones. But mostly, I mean, orange is the classic. Yeah, orange is the classic default color. Right. And let's talk about carrots. All right. Let's wrap. Yeah. If you go by, if you go by like children's books or menus or cookbooks or clip art, if you Google picture of carrot, they are virtually always, always, always shown as orange. And I think we've talked way back

about beta carotene carrots. Eating too much of it. They do. Right. They get the orange color from a lot of beta carotene. Beta carotene is, in fact, named after carrots. Carotene comes from carrot. They are so closely associated with that orange color. But yeah, as you say, they do come in other colors, you know, especially now at like fancier restaurants or more, I don't know, organic or back to. Rainbow carrots.

Yeah, you'll see the rainbow. Purple, white, yellow, red. They have black carrots even, which are, they're really just like super dark purple. Yeah. But they look almost black. So why is it orange? Why is the orange one? How did they get to be the defining color?

When botanists and historians, they look at the history of carrots, it seems like the original color of carrots, the wild carrots, is purple. Like by default, most carrots out in the wild, you know, if you saw like the wild carrot today, you would, it doesn't look a whole lot like our modern, you know, long traditional orange carrot. But you'd recognize it. They were a little more bitter. You know, like, there's kind of like that stringy core at the middle of a carrot. That part was a lot thicker in wild carrots. It's always the gross, terrible part that you have to breed up. Yeah, and that's like that's what the beauty of human farming, right?

It's like we can select for the sweeter ones. It was like all of that. It was like all of that. Yeah, it was. And not so much wood in the middle of my carrots. Carrots roots go back to Afghanistan, Iran, that area. That's where they think sort of the er carrot comes from. Proto.

Right. And that's really where the wild carrot was kind of first cultivated, domesticated, taken over, and this is something we want to grow and make more tasty. It was most likely the Moors, who, like many other things, brought the carrot to Europe by way of Spain. That's kind of how it made its way from the Middle East into... All down around Africa and back to Spain. I mean, the connection from the Moors and into Spain and then into European and culture. I mean, we could fill a whole show with the things that were introduced to Europe.

And even then, even by the time I got to Europe, this is probably around the 8th century, it was still predominantly purplish, reddish was also very common. No orange carrots. They don't have any reference to orange carrots until the 16th or 17th century is how new a phenomenon this was. And this is really the result of the intersection of farming and politics. So let me ask you guys a question. What country is most strongly associated with the color orange? Ireland? Scotland? No. The soccer team. Netherlands, right?

Yeah, the Netherlands. The Dutch. The Dutch. It is the Dutch. They are, yeah, at any, like, world sporting event, like the Olympics or the World Cup, just look for the fans all covered in orange. Those are the Dutch fans. Orange is, it is the national color for the Netherlands.

And it is mainly the national color for the Netherlands because of William of Orange, who was the predominant figure in leading Dutch independence, the fight for Dutch independence, hundreds of years ago. And he was a hero in many ways to many Dutch people over the years. So because of him, Orange really became the national color of the Netherlands as far back as the 1600s. And it was a way of showing your pride. It was a way of, if there were, you know, political factions, it was a way your way

of showing, oh, I side with the House of Orange. I side with William of Orange and his legacy. And his legacy, in fact, is still connected to the current royal family of the Netherlands. Dutch farmers were the first ones to create the orange carrot. Oh. By cross-breeding, most likely purple with white or yellow and getting down to the exact shade of orange that they were. Wow. And it is all traced to the original long orange Dutch carrot variety.

It would have been called a long orange Dutch. And if you were in, you know, the 1800s talking about a long orange Dutch, like, oh, yeah, that variety of carrot, that is so popular. Totally. In the Netherlands. You see why they're so popular. Yeah. That is the Dutch style. That was the Netherlands style of growing carrots.

And here's where it gets interesting. I had heard this trivia fact before. I dug into it, you know, a little bit just to find out how much of this is true, how much is not true. And overwhelmingly, all the historical evidence is true. This was traced to Dutch farmers, and it gets a little controversial. Some historians don't think it's quite as overt as they weren't showing political support for William of Orange. They just liked orange, and it was the Dutch color. So it made sense that they would sort of push toward that color.

But what is indisputable is that it goes back to the Netherlands. Their national color is orange. Orange carrots. Marketing, it could be political. There are stories. I did read some anecdotes that over the years that, you know, at times when, and the House of Orange's influence was maybe waning or they weren't doing so well that they would either remove orange carrots from sale.

I read that sometimes they were outright banned. Whoa. So exactly how political it is is perhaps up for debate, but the nationalist aspect of it is absolutely undeniable. Just the color it's on. We owe our orange Western carrots to Dutch farmers loving the color orange. I just looked up because I was like, I don't think their flag has orange on it, and it's red, white, and blue, but at one point it was orange, white and blue.

Yes. So every time you're having a carrot, just raise it, just tip, tip the carrot. To the netherlands. Just a tip of the carrot to the netherlands, yeah. Colin, I also want to get to the root of some root vegetables, if you will. I will. I will. I have to preface this with, you know, especially recording and researching for good job brain.

One of the things I love is finding something that almost all cultures share. You know, whether if it's a food item or like a similar folk tale or a lore, you know, like how every culture has some sort of a sandwich, of their own interpretation of a sandwich. Or a dumpling. Or a dumpling or a stuffed thing. I think that is so fascinating. Like all these people corners of the world, yet there is some sort of tie in. And this is also Chinese New Year related as well. One of the days, Chinese New Year is actually like a weeks and week celebration.

One of the days is the lantern festival. And you've probably heard of the lantern festival. A lot of kids come out with like different animals, especially the year, whatever the animal of the year is. And they have all these lanterns. And part of the festivities is, and you guys will love, is they're lantern puzzles. They're like riddles on lanterns. And it's kind of like family fun that you try to solve them. You eat Tang Yun, which is like glutinous rice balls and a soup.

So it's a celebration. And it's very cheery, very fan. oriented. There's so many different tales of how and why we celebrate Lantern Festival. The more common mythological story is that there was the heavenly stork, some sort of celestial bird, came down to Earth because some sort of snafu situation. The people on Earth killed it. The celestial gods got angry, decides to punish the whole town or the village, and they're going to set fire to the whole village and burn everybody. Wow.

And so what happened was one of the gods came down in the village to warn them and be like, you know, it's going to let's think of a way to solve this. And so the way they solved it is let's make it look like our village is already on fire so that they would not, you know, actually set fire to the village. So there are a lot of red lanterns, lots of fire and candles and lamps and lanterns to kind of be like, oh, well, at night, it's like already kind of like bright and blazing. Well, I said it more on fire. It's like we should be a waste of our effort.

It's flinchy on fire already. It's one of the origin stories of why we have a lantern festival. And one of the activities for kids, like I said, there are a lot of food items and vegetables that we eat or we use because of the auspicious sound-alike reason. One of the things that is very popular is the radish or the dicon, the white kind of plump, kind of like carrot in the same family. And why radish, or daikon, in the Chinese-Taiwanese word, radish is also known as Taito, which means vegetable head, which sounds like Taito, which means like a good

beginning, like a colorful beginning. So you eat it because you're going to have a good new year. The kids, I don't know why they make kids do it, because it seems a little dangerous. But you basically carve, you make it into a lantern, you hollow the turnip out, and you can carve little holes and drawings, you put a candle in it, put some wires, and you can dangle it like a lantern, and you have a candle inside, and it's, it's a turnip, it's a radish turnip lantern. But that's not as easy as like a pumpkin, right?

It's not, it's not hollow already. No, it's not. You have to hollow yourself. I would do such a bad job. Oh, I know would fall out for sure. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes when I was kid, I just stuck a candle on, on the radish. Yeah, yeah.

I'd be like, well, here you go. This is a deconstructed. Yeah. And also, or the flames would not. This is when kids were woodworkers and, like, craftspeople and they worked in fact. And we'd be in schools. You're like, here's some razors and tools. And here's like, radish.

Go at it. Here's a firm, slippery vegetable. I'm in second grade. And I was like, you need to carve this with great precision. And then I was like, wow, this is really similar to the jacko lantern. Yeah. It's also a holiday thing and that you're also carving out a vegetable. And I did some more research on the jackal lantern.

I want to tell you guys another folklore story. All right. So this story is about drunk Jack. I like it. I like it already. Also known as Stingy Jack. He made a deal with the devil. You know, the soul usually in exchange for something, seems like he has a debt.

And so when the devil comes to collect his soul, Jack tricks him by making the devil go up a tree and Jack draw a little cross on the tree so that the devil is trapped. Okay. And the devil can't come down. And then there's another deal. The devil's like, hey, if you take off the cross, then I will not take your soul. Because he's named Drunk Jack and Stingy Jack is not really a good guy. So if he dies, he'll never get into heaven. So basically, Jack was immortal because he could not go anywhere.

Couldn't go to heaven. But then he can't get in hell because that was part of the deal. So the devil grants Jack an ember from the fires of hell to light his way through the twilight. world where all the lost souls are kind of hanging out. Jack places this helllight into a carved turnip to serve as a lantern to light his way. This is one of, there are many, many stories about Jack of Lanterns. This is one of them. And it started as a turnip, not a pumpkin for a lot of origin stories. It's kind of the explanation of why, I don't know if you guys know what Willow Whisp is. It's a natural phenomenon. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's little flickering,

But the gas is flaming. It's in brave. Yeah, it's in brave. So it's always kind of thought as magical weird lights. Cool. And that's what those are our lanterns of people trapped. Lost souls. Yeah.

Leading the way. Creeps it. Creep it. So the commonly held belief of the jackal lantern is that it stems from an Irish custom. No actual scholarly research into Irish mythology or customs actually have any contemporary reference to the jackal tackle lantern practice. However, there is evidence that turnips, not pumpkins, were used to carve back in the day, was called a Hobarties lantern. Oh, Huberties. So, Hobarties in England at the end of the 18th century, not necessarily Irish and not necessarily pumpkin. It was a turnip lantern. So I just

want to share two completely separate cultures. About turning turrets into lanterns. Of turning turnips or radishes into lanterns. I kind of want to try this now. Oh, there's so many. There's some really pro ones, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Actually, people make little rose beds out of them. It's a lot easier to carve than pumpkin.

Nature's styrofoam kind of. Yeah, it is kind of like nature's styrofoam in a way. Yeah. I just think that is super cool. Just two different, yeah. Two different origin stories. Just independently came to it. That, yeah, it's just so random and so specific.

Anyways, this is why our world is so cool. Yeah. Throughout history, royals across the world were notorious for incest. They married their own relatives in order to consolidate power and keep their blood blue. But they were oblivious to the havoc all this inbreeding was having on the health of their offspring. From Egyptian pharaohs marrying their own sisters to the Habsburg's notoriously oversized lower jaws. I explore the most shocking incestuous relationships and tragically inbred individuals in royal history. And that's just episode one.

On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals explore royal family trees and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. I'm Lindsay Holiday and I'm spilling the tea on history. join me every Tuesday for new episodes of the history tea time podcast wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed and we got one last quiz segment to digest Dana what you got what's on your plate oh yes I'll give you a description of a vegetable and you tell me what vegetable you think it is and then and then we'll get going into like the body of the quiz but just as a warm up okay okay kind of like an early part. The Greeks and Romans considered them to be aphrodisiac.

Until the 16th century, women were prohibited from eating them in many countries because they were still considered to have aphrodisiac properties. And then King Henry, the second's wife, Catherine de Medici, introduced this vegetable to France in the 16th century. She said, if one of us had eaten this, we would have been pointed out in the street. Today, young women are more forward than pages at the court. It was like that. Oh, is it?

you know Is it I have a guess Is it asparagus? No I I spinach is my guess

No Is it Is it Is it Is it That looks like A Yeah is it phallic

No Okay It is an artichoke Oh So in the spirit Of So in the spirit of vegetables and in the spirit of artichokes

I have Artichoke or Rudebaga So I'll describe I'll describe a facts about one of these, either an artichoke or a rudabega. You tell me, is it an artichoke? Is it a rudabega? To be honest, I don't know what a rhodebaga is, but I can guess.

It will, you know, I think over the course of this, you'll get a clear picture. Artichoke or Routabega. I picked Routabaga because I thought it was a funny name. It's a great common word. And then thumbs up, artichoke, thumbs down, Rudebaga. This is not a value judgment on either of those.

It's just binary. All right. All right. binary. All right. It's technically a flower bed that has not yet bloomed. I both say artichoke. It is an artichoke. Yeah. The name comes from old Swedish,

meaning ram root. Ram root. Ram root. Artechotechot. Ruta bega. Artechotech. Right? Like the animal?

Yeah. Yes. Both rootabega. It's a rootabega. Yeah, because they kind of grow wild and livestock, rams, whatever, can just eat them. Oh, okay. Kind of ram root.

Grays your rams on it. It is considered to be a cross between the turnup and cabbage. Both say Ruta Bega. Ruta Bega. It's funny in my mind, I was like, artichoke kind of if you squint, is a bit like that. Cabbage, like. Yeah. But turnip is underground, though.

Oh, okay. Turnip is underground. I assume Ruta Bega is underground, like a radish or something. And then artichoke is a flower butt. Because I remember, like, when you open up a raw artichoke, sometimes they're like the purple flower. Or is inside, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then you get stung.

Yeah. In 1947, Marilyn Monroe, still called Norma Jean, was crowned this vegetable queen of the year. Was it Rudebago or Artichoke? Where is she from? That's a good question. Yeah. Is she West Coast, Midwest? Oh.

Okay. So she was either Miss Artichoke or Miss Rudebaga. I say Miss Rudebaga. I'm just going to be different and say Miss Artichoke. It's Miss Artichoke. Oh. She was crowned in. Castroville.

Oh, okay, so she is California. All right, Ms. Artichoke. The leaves of this plant can be eaten as a leaf vegetable. Do you eat artichoke? Do they have leaves? Yeah, they do. I'm trying to picture. I mean, I don't think they...

Well, you eat carrot tops. That's different. Ruta Bega. I'm going to say Ruta Bega. I'm going to say Ruta Bega. Okay, yes. Last question. This one's maybe near and dear to the heart.

This vegetable is the primary flavor of the liqueur chienar. Whoa. Huh. I feel like of the two of those, I mean, Rudebaga is a little sweeter, maybe. Oh, like a beet. Maybe, yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's other ingredients in there.

Or, you know, like you eat all the good parts of the artichoke and then you're left with all that stuff. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh. Like you're left with all the, and then you distill that. Because you have to do something with it. Yeah. With the gross hair. I'm going to say Ruebaigua, I'm going to say Rudebaga, because they have beet wine.

It is artichoke. Oh. Artichoke lique. liqueur? It's a popular Italian liqueur. People mix it with orange juice a lot. Ew. Yeah. Does it, so it's supposed to taste like artichoke? Mm-hmm. That's weird. That's a little weird. You can tell there's artichoke in it. It's spelled C-Y-N-A-R. And I listened to a pronunciation and it was an Italian woman saying

Chinar. Chinar can be mixed with soda water. Okay, lemon. Okay, orange slice. Okay. Milk. Weird. Yeah. I wonder what other vegetables. liquor as there are. You should have a party. Yeah, a tasting party. I feel like as a species,

we've done a pretty good job of if you can make alcohol from it, we've done it. Yeah, I mean, potato, butchette. But actually sell it that you can buy it. Right, right. All right. And that is our episode. Thank you guys for joining me.

Thank you guys listeners for listening in. Hope you learned a lot of stuff about, that was a good range. From alcohol to poison. You can, of course, find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and also on our website, goodjobbrain.com. Thanks for our sponsor Squarespace at Squarespace.com slash good job brain. And hopefully Chris will be back next week to talk about adventures in baby stuff.

And hopefully we'll reveal the name, the long-awated secret name of his child. Horatio Magellan Kohler. That would be so good. I would be so excited. Horatio, a baby Horatio. Anyway, okay. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye.

Spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and more time actually watching and playing what you want with the IGN Daily Update podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies, and television with news, previews, and reviews. So listen and subscribe to the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. That's the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts.