Good Job, Brain! - 139: Season's Eatings II

Episode Date: December 22, 2014

ARE YOU READY FOR HOLIDAY EATAPALOOZA?!?!??!! Let us whet your appetite with scrumptious facts and trivia about holiday foods and eating traditions. Why does fruitcake have the most pathetic loser rep? Chris drenches us with the colorful and pungent origins of the fruitcake, who knew this poop-looking brick had such a wonderful stamp in history? Take the Goose/Ham/Turkey challenge to find out who's the real MEAT HEAD. We all become envious of Japan after learning about their Christmas tradition, and it's finger-lickin' good. And of course, the international phenomenon of the cursed HANGOVER - find out what actually is happening to your body after a night of drinking and other boozy facts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, zillions of zippy, zesty, zhe docs, zealz. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 139, and I am your humble host, Karen. and we are your ridiculously rad riffing and ranting ragamuffins. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. As you might be able to hear, we have another special guest.

Baby Chris in the house. In the ergo baby. Ergo baby. Cajito, Ergo baby. Yes. I want to thank everybody who responded to the magic trick that I did last week. Yeah. Some people said they were not fooled, but some people were shocked to find that the magic

trick worked on them. That's awesome. They probably almost ran their car off of brief. I was thinking Denmark kangaroo orange, too. He's a sorcerer. That's what a lot of people are like, you are a wizard, Chris. Go to Hogwarts.

Hogwarts. Hey. And I'm going to kick it off to Dana because you got something special for us. You got a word. Yeah, I have a word for you guys. It's e. No, you catastrophe. Me, catastrophe.

It's U-C-C-A-T-A-S-T-R-O-P-H-E. And it means a happy ending to a story. A happy ending to a story. Oh, okay. So the opposite of a catastrophe. So the U, like the U-Logy, right? Like good. Or euphoria.

Oh. Or U-Ridnics. Sure. Yeah. Yes. Very good, Chris. What's very good, Chris? Do you count it as a direct opposite?

of catastrophe. No, it's not really, right? Catastrophe means the end and it usually is negative. And then this is like a happy ending and it's specifying that it's a good, yeah. Like good job, brain. A good ending that could have been bad, but was actually good. Where your favorite, you catastrophe. Yep.

Not like that. Yeah. So for if you guys want more weird words or more uncommon, quirky words, you can find them at Words Are So Weird on Twitter. I post a new word every day, sometimes with a picture. free words please I've been paying for them wait what kind of scam are you running on me Dana

no you're part of the platinum club your words are so weird gold yeah you get special words all right without further do let's jump into our general trivia segment pop quiz hot shot you guys all have your

morning zoom radio buzzers and I have here a random trivial pursuit card and here we go. Blue Edge for Geography. For whom is Jules Undersea Lodge, an underwater motel in Key Largo, Florida, named

Colin. I'm assuming Julian Lennon. Jules Verne. Yes, Jules Verne, not Julian Lennon. Of course, Jules Verne, the author of 20,000 leagues under the sea. That sounds fun. I would stay at an undersea lodge. We talked about this before.

No, let's not. I don't. I don't. I don't approve. I veto. Would you even just go down to see what it's like? I don't know. I don't know. It's something about ocean and pressure. Like, it's really the pressure stuff that kind of freaks me out and getting the bends.

I don't know. That is really irrational. I don't think it's just, you know, just covered over the top by water. I don't know. Okay. What about an ice hotel? Would you do that? Yeah.

Oh, okay. You're not scared of it would collapse you on you? It just depends on the water. phases of water, yeah. All right. Pink Wedge for pop culture, on what soap opera can you find Jennifer Aniston's real-life

father? Oh. Oh, Colin. It was on one of the really long run. Was it young and the restless? Incorrect. You can just start with it. Is it the bold and the beautiful? Incorrect. All my children. Days of our lives.

That was going to be by the four guests. John Aniston plays Victor Correct. Curiacus. Curiacus. He was like, he's a bad guy, I think. Oh, really?

I believe so. Scandalous. All right, Yellow Edge. What flammable gas filled the Hindenberg? Oh. Everybody. Hydrogen. Is it hydrogen?

Hydrogen. Yeah, yeah. It is hydrogen. Okay. We've talked about this in, I think, one of our transportation episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Airships was going to be a big deal. It was going to be a thing. Of course, the note here says, the safer gas helium was hard to come by. It was hard for the Germans to come by. Yeah, it was, there was an embargo. Purple Wedge, what does Horton here? Oh. Everybody.

Uh-huh. Yep, Dr. Seuss. And Green Wedge for Science. Whoa. People with what hair color may need extra anesthetic at the dentist's office. Oh. Red. Red.

Red. There was a Mythbusters, though. Oh, really? Yeah. That it's not true. Yeah, they did a test, and they were like, no. Not true. No.

I mean, as much as I love Mythbusters and I do, I think that all their experiments, like, the biggest weakness is small sample size. Oh, yeah. Okay, okay. The note here says people with naturally red hair can be resistant to some anesthetics. Oh, okay. Well, that's a good reason. Not that, yeah, not all. Not that they have a low threshold.

But they probably have a higher probability. of it. All right. Last question. Orange Wedge. On what birthday does a Latina girl celebrate her Kinsiera? Kinsera. 15. 15. 15. 15. 15. Wow. Trivial pursuit. You really dropped the ball. That was an easy card. That was a good card. Like if you're playing against people, you're like, ha ha. Well, if you get that card. Yeah, exactly. Good job, brains. So one of our, one of our more popular episodes that we've done in the past. Year one. Yeah, year one that we got a lot of fan email and a lot of, just, you know, people still kind of talking about it is our season's eatings episode. I mean, we're approaching the

holidays and, of course, everybody, you know, top of mind is food, family, and then food. We talked about on that show, Haggis. I talked about Easter eggs and the Easter bunny and superfeitation. Yes, that's right. Right, rabbits can get... Rabbits getting pregnant while they're pregnant. Yeah. Oh, man.

I had not thought about the haggis for a while, but that also, of course, brought us the tofaggis and the... The jaggis. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yeah, I think vegetarian haggis is probably the best name. Just keep it simple. So today, eat drink and be merry. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow and I'll be...

So I've brought something Can be merry For what tomorrow will die Because I'm tripping belly So I've brought something for you guys A little bit of a visual aid here I'll just go ahead and put this on the table Oh my God

Wow, that's like a brick It is like a brick It looks both gross and delicious At the same time It is a holiday fruitcake And let me tell you a little bit about this fruitcake. You may notice some things about it. Like it's denser than gold.

Like it's, like it's, well, it's actually the hostess holiday fruitcake. I didn't know they made that. Yeah. So, interestingly enough, this is the last hostess holiday fruitcake because this was made before hostess went out of business. It was made that last year. And we purchased it for fun. I think in the year. And you kept it?

Well, in the year 2012. Yeah. Well, it doesn't, you can't really tell that it's like a. three-year-old at this point. Piece of holiday cheer. No, it says sell by February 15th. But February 15th. What year? Yeah, it's about two, maybe three years old at this point.

As you can see, it's incredibly well preserved. Yeah. It's not moldy. At least it doesn't look like it is. It's not moldy. It still looks rich and moist and everything inside the plastic wrapper. And it is dense. It's about the size and weight of an old cell phone.

Yes. It is. Yeah. Hello? Hello? Yes, this is fruitcake. It's, yeah, and it's glorious. It's filled with all of the, what are now traditional fruitcake elements, which is to say, neon red and green. That's the weirdest part, the neon green. The cherries. Cherries or who knows what. You know, the fruitcake, much maligned in our culture. It's been, it's been coming back a little bit. I think Alton Brown did a whole episode of Good Eats about, like, how to make a fruit cake that's actually good. I actually really like fruit cake Oh yeah Yeah I don't know why what's the bat Is it just because it's brown and it looks weird

Well if you make it badly Then it's not very good to eat it I mean it's so dense It's so full of these nuts and dried fruits And packed so so tightly with them That it's kind of it's hard to It was like a punchline For years and years and years

I felt like it was like Apparently it started with a lot of people say It started with Johnny Carson I was just going to say I remember Johnny Carson Yeah joke about like the fruit cake is the worst gift there's only one, and people just pass it around, you know, year after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at that time, I mean, it did have this reputation of being something that you could age

and, you know, keep it around for a long time and redift it because it's, you know, so full of sugar and, you know, a lot of fruit cakes are so full of alcohol that they will preserve pretty well. Like this one, again, it's been unrefrigerated, but it doesn't look any different than it did. But it probably is also full of preservatives because it is a hostess holiday fruit cake. But here it is. a real family heirloom so of course someday little chris will pass this along to his children and their children and their children and they can all have it after i'm gone so it's definitely time for us to have a little chat about fruit cake to me it doesn't seem like a cake you know what i mean like cake i think it's fluffy and spongy it's like a candy or taffy almost yeah right a nutritional bar like you know it is it is like an energy bar right i mean that's kind of what it is um and that yeah that's that's basically the definition you know a a a baked good, but that it's just packed full of, like, fruits and nuts, basically. Fruitcake is, by some reckonings, very, very, very old.

Dare I say, millennia old. Wow. The story that I see all over the internet is that the ancient Romans had fruitcake, because there's recipes for, like, an energy bar, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, and barley mash. That's not a recipe. That's just a list of three ingredients, but I couldn't find the actual recipe. Like, how do you make it?

This, of course, is ancient Rome, so this is like BC, right? In the Middle Ages in Europe, you start to see these regional variations on fruitcake. Again, old and tied to the holiday season. Panfort. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 13th century. Stolen in Germany.

16th century. These cakes probably did not taste so great by our standards. Something really interesting about the stolen in particular. Like other fruit cakes, it was made because, of course, you had dry. Fruits in the winter, you know, they're fresh fruit. You had dried fruit that we left over. It was made during the run-up to Christmas when you were celebrating and you wanted to eat something sweet.

But in the Catholic world, Saxony, what is now part of Germany, the territory of Saxony, they were Catholic. And the Advent season, the days running up to Christmas, was a time of fasting. Oh. It was kind of like Lent. So they don't, they didn't eat. So, well, they ate. You can eat things.

But fasting in the calendar. Catholic world wasn't so much like not eating it was not eating certain things and in this

particular case chief among them was butter down from the Pope like you cannot eat butter

in the days running up to Christmas or you go to hell it's sin because it was like you were avoiding like things

that were too indulgent right exactly you're not trying to be wasteful too indulgent

it was too delicious however sometime the 14 60s 1470s somewhere

around there in Sax The head, the CEO of Mr. Ernst, Elector of Saxony, wrote to the Pope, maybe Pope Nicholas the 5th, or maybe somebody in this family. The timeline was all kind of messed up and weird. It said that there's, you can read things that say that this guy wrote to the Pope, but he would have been nine years old when he wrote to the Pope. It's like, no, no, no, this is messed up.

But anyway, somebody at Saxony wrote to Pope Nicholas 5th, and please, for the love of God, let us use butter in our Christmas cakes, because they're using oil. And it was even grosser than gross. Yeah. And the Pope said no. And then five popes later, eventually, Pope Innocent the Eighth. Now, Ernst is already dead at this point. Never lived to see his dream.

Right. Never lived to see his dream of butter. Pope Innocent the Eighth wrote what is now famously known in Germany, because stolen is this like national treasure. Yeah. Just like there's beer laws in Germany. They're stolen laws? They're stolen laws.

I don't know if there are laws, but there's definitely regulations on rules of doing it and, like, you know, organizations and families that have done it for X number of years. And, yeah, the Pope Innocent the Eighth in 1490s writes what is now infamously known as the butter brief, booth or butter letter. Wow. The butter letter in which, in which he says, by order of the Pope, that it is cool to use butter in your Christmas stuff. Oh, he must have been so popular. If you paid the Vatican some money. So every time you wanted to use butter, you had to give, I think some sources said like one-twentieth of a gold piece to the church.

And this was, of course, they called it the butter penny, paying your butter penny for the right to use butter during Christmas. You give me some money. I preemptively absolve you of the sin that you're, it's a sin and you'll burn in hell. but you give me some money first and then go ahead and do it and it's like the most low level indulgence I've ever heard of yeah so this is selling of indulgences and this is when Martin Luther from Saxony nailed his 95 feces to the church door and he was like we don't like these things about the church one of the big ones was the selling of indulgences of like it's a sin unless

you pay me and then it's not a sin anymore and but they paid the butterpenny for like you know 20, you know, years and more, until Saxony solved their butter problem entirely by going Protestant. Wow. So the fruitcake brought down the Catholic Church. Yeah. Long story short. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Martin Luther did he specifically mention fruitcake in the 95 Theses? He did not. But it definitely was a, it was a problem. Now, the history of your modern day fruitcakes here is really, really. the history of Europe and the history of sugar. Why are they packs so full of fruit? Because that is the only place from which they could derive sweetness, right? So you pack it full of fruit.

There was some sugar in Europe at the time, but it was like, it was like, it was like saffron today. You know, you pay a lot of money for a teeny little bit of it. And then it's only, you know, you know, director of Saxony gets to have it and that's it, right? Or the Pope. But what starts happening in the 16th, 17th centuries to Europe? Imports. Not even so much imports, they get on boats and they start colonizing the Americas. And they get there and they're like, oh, you guys grow all this sugar.

Well, what ends up happening is, you know, in like places like Barbados in Jamaica, they were already making sugar and now they're sending it back. And people circle and, I mean, imagine never having sugar. And then suddenly the price drops where you can have sugar whenever you want, you go a little sugar crazy. You're like, oh, man, this is the new thing. Jams and jellies and cocoa and sugar in your tea and chocolate and, you know, everything they could cram sugar into. And it got to the point where, like, by the 18th century, like, if you were in Jamaica, all you did was make sugar. Like, 90-some-odd percent of their, like, GDP was just making sugar and sending it to the UK. And so the fruitcake becomes even more decadent, and they just try to figure out ways to create.

More sugar, more. More sugar in there. Candy the fruits and, you know. Oh, I see. Now we're making rum out of the sugar, so let's soak it in that. As much as you can cram into a fruit cake. So, like, before the fruit cake were, like, dry fruit, really literally just dry fruit, not, like, added, you know, like delicious dry, like, got it. So they jelly the fruit candy and the fruit.

Like, you might be able to put, like, honey in it or something like that. But even that, you don't have a whole lot of it. But now there's a cheap cane sugar just getting shipped over by the boat from. Now you can make these intense. Some people were saying that fruit cake was actually outlawed briefly, like prohibition, because people felt it was so indulgent and so over the top. Moral panic. And not make it.

That did not last. It's like taking somebody's drugs away. It doesn't work. And so all the sugar and the alcohol, I mean, it really does preserve, you know, fruitcakes can really preserve them well, surprisingly well. Sometimes people will make a fruitcake and then deliberately age it. And they said, well, you have to age it before you eat it. And on November 28th, 1878, Fidelia Ford of Berkey, Ohio, made a fruitcake in her, fired up the old wood stove and made a fruitcake in the farmhouse, right? Uh-huh.

To age it for a year. So she'd age it for a year, November 28th, and then they eat it the following Thanksgiving day. They'd eat her fruitcake. Well, the fruitcake made it, but Fidelia did not make it to next Thanksgiving. And the family, in her memory, couldn't bring themselves to eat it. The fruit cake. So they just held on to her fruit cake. They held on to a fruit cake for about 125 years.

Oh, my God. The fruit cake is still around. It is the oldest documented fruit cake anywhere. In 1964, one of the family members, Uncle Amos, Uncle Amos was in his 80s, and the cake was just a little older than he was. The cake was 86 at that point. He was maybe a little younger than the cake. He was just like, you know, it's darn shame.

Nobody's eating this cake yet. And they were just like, eat some. So he hacked off a piece and he ate it. And then in 2003, which is when the cake turned 125, so it's actually like 136 now, they took it on Jay Leno's show. And Jay Leno ate a piece of this fruit cake on the air. And he's okay now. He didn't die. He's okay.

But did it taste good? No, it tasted like nothing. It was described by one of the family members who also had a piece, I think, on the show as like just, just. like going out and like harvesting wheat and just like taking some wheat that's just chewing on it. Oh, so it's not even sweet or not dry. But it's just they put it in this, they didn't really, they put it into a baking or a serving dish, you know, with a glass cover. And then of course they put a little copy of great, great grandma's obituary in there with the fruit. It just, you know, the climate, the fact that it was reasonably airtight, the fact that it was probably soaked so full of fruits and alcohol and everything, it preserved it. It never went moldy. And it never, it wasn't refrigerated. No. Oh, no. We'd just sit on the table. Oh. I would try some. I would try some.

So we could pass this, this hostess thing from family to member to family. Like, I would lick it. I would not eat it, though. You would lick it? Look it's like eating it. It couldn't possibly be worse than the 30-year-old gum that we got out of those trading cards. You guys didn't. That was bad. That was probably, that was probably a lot more harmful than the fruit cake. Because it had actual chemical. Well, we know how the fruit cake was.

stored. That gum, I don't know where it's, yeah, those, those chemicals might have broken down into poison. All right. For the, okay. Okay. For the season, no. You can do what, do the MPR voice. Yeah, you can totally do a NPR delicious dish voice. So for season's eatings, I was thinking about my family's traditions of what kinds of meats we eat for, for Christmas. Like, my mom loves the holidays. Thanksgiving is her favorite because of all the pageantry and, like, you have to make turkey, but she's also pretty into Christmas. I don't know what you guys eat. Do you guys eat a specific meat for Christmas?

We used to go to my great aunt's house, and she would do kind of, she would call it traditional British style. So we would have, like, you know, roast beef, and then we would do, like, the Yorkshire pudding and all that stuff. So I guess roast beef would be probably. Yeah, I feel like we always did, like, we would go somewhere for Christmas and grandma's house or whatever and have ham, probably ham. But then in recent years, we've started doing prime rib.

This is less of a tradition in more of a prime rib is delicious. Yeah. From what I know of what I think American culture is, you eat turkey for Thanksgiving. Yeah. And then you eat ham for Christmas. Yeah. Or the goose, right? It sounds about right.

Christmas goose. I think goose is more like UK. Yeah, yeah. So you guys named the three major, the three major meats, turkey, goose, and ham. Oh, okay. So this quiz, I wrote a quiz for you guys about turkey goose or ham. Oh. The answer is always about.

Turgusum. Turgusum. Yeah. So you guys can buzz in with your answers. All right. So first question. Starting off with the BuzzFeed question. According to BuzzFeed, in their poll of readers, what did the majority of readers say they were going to eat on Christmas?

What kind of meat? Chris. Ham. Ham. Oh. I was going to say turkey. It's so close to Thanksgiving. Yeah, you've already done the turkey.

You've probably been eating Thanksgiving leftovers until like December 12th, right? Yeah, I feel like people are more health-consciousness. now, like, maybe, like, white meat. Speaking of health conscious, according to Calorieking.com, a four-ounce serving of which meat has the most calories. Turkey dark meat with skin roasted, goose roasted with skin,

or ham-cured, boneless, regular 11% fat, roasted. Karen. Goose. Goose. Yes. Goose is fat. So rich. The goose is getting fat, et cetera, et cetera.

And plus the skin. Yep. Goose is 345. calories for four ounces. Turkey, dark meat with skin, roasted is 206 calories. And ham, even with regular, with 11% fat, is 201 calories. So it's slightly less than dark meat turkey. It's the skin, man.

It's the skin. That's all fat. Delicious. Okay. What did Scrooge buy for the Cratchett family at the end of a Christmas carol? I've got to go ahead and say a goose. No? No.

A ham. Turkey. No. It was a turkey. The turkey? It was a turkey. Tiny Tim, right? He's like, go fetch me a turkey or something.

Yes, yeah. And there was the prize turkey, the biggest turkey in the butcher's window, the one that, comically large turkey. That's what he bought them for this. Novelty size. The novelty turkey. I wonder if the turkey was more rare at that point in the UK. That's part of it too. It's like exotic, extravagance.

Right. So, like, don't just eat the goose. I'll get you the biggest turkey in all of London. Enjoy. Smithfield Farmer. was famous for feeding their animals peanuts in order to make the meat fattier. What kind of meat? Colin.

Turkey. Ham. It's ham. Oh. Yes. Peas nuts to the pigs. Yes. Pork and peanuts are really related to each other.

Huh. It's big in the South. Oh, okay. That sounds very, yeah. Lucky pigs. Well, yeah. Up to a point. I mean, to an extent.

To an extent. All right. So which one has the most. Google search results. Christmas turkey, Christmas ham, or Christmas goose? Chris buzzed in? I'm going to go ahead and say Christmas ham. I'm going to say turkey.

What did you think, Colin? I was going to say ham. It's turkey. Yeah. Christmas turkey. The fact that you specified Christmas, if you just said otherwise, I would have guessed turkey because everyone's looking for recipes. And also there's a country named turkey.

Like there's a lot of things named. Oh, like Christmas in turkey. Yeah. But then I feel like turkey is trickier to cook. Hence, you need to look it up and look for, like, the red, you know, because you don't want to poison people, whereas ham's already, like, cured and, you know, you're not doing it at home. You know, but you're still got to buy it. You still got to find out where you can buy one. If I were going to buy Christmas ham, I would start by Googling Christmas ham.

I would just go to a grocery store. Which one is the fastest animal? Oh. A turkey, a pig or goose. Turkey. I say turkey. I say turkey as well. So on the ground, turkey is the fastest.

15 miles per hour. But goose can fly. When they're just cruising, it's 40 to 50 miles per hour. Ground speed. I didn't say ground speed. Oh, that's tricky. What a tricky mean. Well, if a pig was on an airplane, then a pig would be really fast.

Yep. Well, Usain Bolt holds a goose. All right. Last question. In National Lampoon's Christmas vacation. Yes. Yeah. They're at the table.

Chevy Chase is standing at the head of the table. Yep. He's about to serve the holiday meat. What meat? It is a turkey. It is a turkey. It is a turkey. Yeah, it's beautiful on the outside.

And it is completely gone dry on the inside. It's like, p. Yeah. It explodes. Yeah. I was going to ask more questions about what people served on TV for Christmas, like, which are those meats? It was almost always turkey.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Just like, visually. A Christmas story. The bumpus hounds eating the Ralphie's turkey. Yeah. Yeah.

I think visually it's more, there's more parts. It's easier to understand. Yeah. Whereas meat is like, or ham is like a hunk. Like a ball. Cool. Good job, you guys. Hey, thanks.

Now I am hungry. I kind of wants some meat. I don't know if this is interesting or not, but George Washington in his first Christmas as the president had all three meats. He had like all the meats. He's a meat baller. On the public's dime. Thanks, Washington.

Oh, meatballer. I just got that. Yeah, I got a meatballer. That's good. I like that. All right, let's take a quick break. A word from our sponsor. There are really many reasons to listen to our podcast, Big Picture Science.

It's kind of a challenge to summarize them all, Molly. Okay. Here's a reason to listen to our show, Big Picture Science, because you love to be surprised by Science News. We love to be surprised by Science News. So, for instance, I learned on our own show that I had been driving around with precious metals in my truck before it was stolen. That was brought up in our show about precious metals and also rare metals, like most of the things in your catalytic converter. I was surprised to learn that we may begin naming heat waves like we do hurricanes.

You know, prepare yourself for heat wave lucifer. I don't think I can prepare myself for that. Look, we like surprising our listeners. We like surprising ourselves by reporting. the new developments in science, and while asking the big-picture questions about why they matter and how they will affect our lives today and in the future. Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right? No, I guess that's a point.

So the podcast is called Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host. Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us. We hope you'll take a listen. From the terrifying power of tornadoes to sizzling summer temperatures, ACUweather Daily brings you the top trending weather-related story of the day every day of the week. You can learn a lot in just a few minutes, stories that will impact you, such as how a particular

hurricane may affect your area, or will that impending snow event bring more than just a winter wonderland? Occasionally, there are weather-related stories from the lighter side, like how a recent storm trapped tourists inside Agatha Christie's house, a setup perfect for a plot of one of her novels. And if there's a spectacular meteor shower or eclipse coming your way, we'll let you know if the sky in your area will be clear to check out the celestial display. You see, AccuWeather Daily is more than just weather. It's AccuWeather. Listen and subscribe to AcuWeather Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. That's AccuWeather Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. Talking about meats, I did not grow up with eating goose, ham, beef, whatever.

I grew up eating fried chicken for Christmas. Okay. And this is a very common thing. Very common in Japan. The Christmas tradition in Japan and other countries, but really mostly from Japan, is you eat not only fried chicken, you eat KFC for Christmas. China is the second largest market for KFC, and Japan is number three. U.S. is obviously number one. So KFC has a really, really strong presence in Asia, and Christmas isn't a national holiday.

It's celebrated in the marketing sense. Right, right. Pictures of reindeer. But, like, especially... It's the commercial part of it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, Christmas is Japan is like another Valentine's Day, basically.

It's like for couples and you, like, get a Christmas cake or you, like, go out on a date and get dinner at Christmas. Only 1% of the Japanese population is estimated to be Christian. Right. So they're not really celebrating the religious aspect of it. So how did this start? The legend is when a group of foreigners or expats or Americans who were in Japan on Christmas Day couldn't find turkey because you can't really find turkey, they decide to eat fried chicken instead. And then that kind of started becoming a thing. so a lot of foreigners on Christmas Day would get chicken.

And then KFC is like, wait a minute, this is an obvious, like, this is an obvious, like, opportunity that we should really take advantage of. So in the next several years, they really pumped up the marketing, really make it clear. It's Christmas. Christmas equals Kentucky fried chicken. Yeah. And this was in the 70s. It's not a, it's not like, you know, recently. It's, it's been in people's minds for, like, 40 years.

at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or sorry, KFC now, Christmas. So you know, like a whole generation of people who grew up knowing nothing but that. Yeah, exactly. The year when they first did the marketing campaign, they actually, it was the bucket of fried chicken and wine. Like, it was kind of a packaged deal. I'd see why it's for couples. How romantic.

Yeah, you can get alcohol at a lot of Japanese fast food places. Chicken and wine. And it sold at that time probably about $10, which is kind of pricey. And this was in the mid-7. So today, if you go to KFC for the Christmas chicken dinner, now it comes with champagne, and Chris mentioned Christmas cake, and it's about 40 bucks. That's worth it. Yeah. For like a family, you know.

That's awesome. That's all of your Christmas meal done. Done. You got your booze. You got your sweets. You got your chicken. And it's just because there are no traditions attached to it was like this sort of open, you know, for anybody to rush in there and like make it about them. A little bit of corporate history behind KFC in Japan.

It was a joint venture between the American KFC and Mitsubishi Corporation. All successful, like, when Japan is so kind of closed off, you have to, like, partner with a Japanese company to, like, make your product a success in Japan. Yeah, even, like, Disney, Tokyo Disney is technically done with a joint venture with a Japanese company. Get your entry into the market. That's the one where we had, we like, we know a lot of Disney employees. That's the park that can't get you into. Yep. Because it's just a separate company basically that runs it.

So at the Osaka World Expo in 1970, they debuted a store, a test store of K of, sorry, at that time it was still Kentucky Fried Chicken. Yeah. Right. Before the name chain. And it was obviously really successful because it was fried chicken. And also it was American. It seemed really American. Yeah.

They have the Colonel Kentucky. Yeah. Right. Very, very homey. Since it was a hit, they've decided, yes, let's go in and let's open up some stores. So the funny thing is, the U.S. counterpart of Kentucky Fried Chicken, they're like, we should do what has been successful in the States is you open up KFC stores in the suburbs. Because then, you know, they buy it for family.

It's an alternative to family dinner. Right. However, the big cultural difference between the two cultures at the time is that America's very car automobile. At that time, Japan wasn't that into, you know, like not a lot of people would drive out to the suburbs. They'd tick the train or something. Yeah. And even now. Restaurants and things are clustered around train stations. Yep.

And big department stores. You do all of your stuff in one trip, kind of. The Japanese counterparts, like, no, we got to hit the bigger city centers. So what they did was they did open some of the suburban stores and they failed. Yeah. They lost money. And so they're like, okay, you know what, let's listen to the people who live there. Yeah, people live there.

And there is no, there's no like, oh, the family, we're the family, we're going to go out to dinner and go to a family, you know, restaurant. Like, that tradition of taking the whole family out to dinner is not as much of a thing. Right. Yeah, right. Like, mom probably doesn't work. Mom makes dinner at home. KFC now kind of slots into that, like, students, they just got out of school, you know, out of high school and they're not going to go home for dinner for a while, so they're going to go to KFC and eat. Or, like, you know...

Urban, young professionals. I'm, you know, I worked really late, and I'm going to stop at KFC before I go home, that kind of thing. So Japanese KFCs have delivery. Oh, they will deliver KFC to your house. That's right. All these people in scooters with a little hot KFC box, and they come in and they deliver KFC to you.

And KFCs in Japan and in Asia, other parts of Asia, they really are super primed with efficiency and customer service. Oh, yeah. Even, like, the, you know, uniform. Like, everything is very friendly. And they do have a lot of fun with the icon of Colonel Sanders than we do. It's almost like Hello Kitty in a way. They dress him up in different, like, seasons. So every Japanese, every or almost every, everyone that I've ever seen, Japanese Kentucky Fried Chicken has a statue, like this poly-rosin kind of statue life size of Colonel Sanders out

in front of the door, which we don't have in America. And they would dress them. up for different seasons. A little Santa hat. A little Halloween costume. It's a cute character. Whereas here we're kind of like, oh, it's an old southern dude. Yeah, it's a mascot. You know what they call him in Japan, Colonel Sanders.

A lot of people call him Kenta Koon is what they kind of, how they, Kentucky. And then Kenta is a Japanese boy's name. Oh. And then Koon is like San, but for like, you know, little kids or like your pal. Yeah, so they call him Kentak, Kentak, Kenta Kuntakun. Like Kentucky pal. A little Kentucky pal. But your little Kentucky Bell is an old man.

But if you asked him, like, what is this guy's name? They would either say, I don't know, or, oh, you know, Kentucky. Oh, not, Colonel Sanders. They would not necessarily know that, yeah. You'd have to be deep into your KFC. Otaku lifestyle, which, to be fair, some people probably are. But, yeah, so there you go. I mean, that's, I do have a very warped, warped Christmas tradition in terms of eating than most people.

I actually don't mind eating fried chicken for Christmas. I want some right now. I want them to deliver right to this table. 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 Habsburgs, 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. We're getting hungry here. I think it's time for our last segment. Colin? Yes. Can you go quickly so we can go eat? All right. I'm getting some fried chicken. Not fruitcake? Not fruit cake. No takers. Over the next couple weeks, people, listeners, you'll be getting together with family. Maybe you'll be having office holiday parties, many occasions to get together, and whether you love your

family and your co-workers, whether they cause you stress, one thing works in both cases, alcohol. It amplifies whatever feelings are already there. Yes. And if you have enough of it, it'll just shut you down completely. And in fact, if you have too much, I think all of us at this table have probably had this, you wake up the next morning, and you are hungover. with a holiday hangover.

Yeah. That happened to me recently. Oh, yeah? It's been a while for me. I'm knock on wood here. I haven't been hung over in a while, but... My head was throbbing. I can't tell if I'm, like, really hungry or if I'm going to throw up.

Oh, this is TMI. I'm sorry. Well, no, this is good. Well, we're older now, and it's like... Now it's sort of like I have like a couple of drinks, maybe, and then I wake up and I'm like, oh, my God, that I get punched in their head? What had happened? Yeah.

Well, I mean, the thing with, like, holiday parties and family dinners is you're usually in one spot for a long time. Often you show up before food is served. Often you're nervous or you're chatty or you're just feeling jovial. And you end up drinking more than you thought you were going to drink off on an empty stomach. So let me ask you guys, what causes a hangover? Why are you, why, if you drink too much one night, you wake up the next morning and you feel

like crap. I want to guess dehydration. Mm-hmm. Well, there's dehydration. There's, I mean, there's toxins in your system that your body is, like, flushing out, like, in the process of removing from your system and you're... There's a mixture of correct and, yeah, overblown in there. There's some long and true in there. The, well, so, I mean, it's several things. There are several things going on, but really, sort of the two biggest problems are, Karen, you say, it's the dehydration, is the

single worst part of drinking. Oh, because, because it's, it's, the way it gets the toxins out is by using water and making you pee them out, right? Well, alcohol, it's not so much toxins per se. It's that alcohol is a diuretic. Alcohol makes you pee more. And especially if you're not filling back up with water as you're drinking, you are just going to be dehydrated by the time morning rolls around. It does also mess with your blood sugar levels, having too much alcohol, which, you know, if your blood sugar gets low or out of balance, you'll be fatigued, you'll be weak, you'll be dizzy. It's not so much toxins per se as it irritates your stomach. You know, I mean, your stomach lining is not meant really to process large, copious amounts of alcohol. And so when you

wake up the next morning and you're nauseous or you've got cramps or just stomach's feeling bad, it's because your stomach's been irritated. Do you mean nauseated? Sorry, yes. I believe it is an acceptable second meaning in the dictionary. And right behind dehydration is inflammation. Like, it just, it produces an inflammatory response in your body. And those, you know, most people who study, and there are people who study hangovers, they agree. It's the dehydration, the inflammation. And so what part?

Your whole body. Oh. You just, an inflammatory response all the way around, obviously a lot in your stomach, but just. So why people get red in the face. That's why some people get red. Well, it increases blood flow. Or it opens up your blood vessels, which also contributes to headaches. That's one reason why you get headaches when you've drunk too much.

And then on, you know, sort of a lower level, you know, people like, oh, man, I slept so well. Like, I crashed it, you know, when I get 10 hours of sleep, why do I feel so bad? It's because even though you may pass out, you don't get restful sleep. When your body's processing alcohol, you may be asleep, but it's not restorative, restful sleep the way a normal night's sleep, right? And so, you know, Chris, you mentioned toxins. Alcohol, it's not toxins necessarily, but alcohol has things that are called congeners, C-O-A-N. G-E-N-E-R-S in it. And what a congener is is basically, or congener, if you prefer, it's basically anything aside

from the actual alcohol. It's like, it's everything that's in alcohol or liquor that makes it smell, taste, look different from other alcohol. Got it. And those in particular, so these are things like tannins, esters, you know, you've heard of these kind of things, and they're present in different amounts. Those also contribute to making you feel hungover the next morning. Interesting.

True or false? True or false? You may have heard these before. True or false, darker liquors and darker alcohols cause worse hangovers than lighter alcohols. True. False. I think false. It is true.

It is true. Because you just said all the other stuff outside of the alcoholics. Karen didn't get thrown. Yeah. The darker liquors have more congeners in them, and they have been shown. This is so bourbon will make a worse hangover than gin. Red wine will produce a worse hangover. over than white wine.

They have studied this empirically. There was a reading about a study, of course, on college kids, you know, because if anyone knows how to drink to excess, it's college kids. I just routinely just sort of, my brain just likes to reject any and all, like, of the received old wives' tales of wisdom of beer before liquor and this and that, and it's like, no, it's just all the alcohol you're drinking that makes your hangover bad. But okay, I can see that. So you wake up in the morning, you got a hangover.

What are your remedies? What do you do? These, this is probably one of the most fertile grounds for folk remedies. Sure. I mean, some people will tell you to go on. Just talked about hair of the dog before. Yeah, but that's not actually. True.

Right. That is a very common one. In case you've never heard the expression, the hair of the dog that bit you, it's basically drink more in the morning. Yeah. Right. You know. Which will cause you to feel something.

Water. Ice water. Drink lots of water. But of course, what everybody tells you is that you have to go out and eat the greasiest, it's most ridiculous. Oh, it's a hangover cure. It's three beef patties and, you know, two eggs and it's all covered in mayonnaise.

It changes the bad that you feel. Right. It changes the kind of bad. It redirects the bad. My stomach hurts and you slug them in the shoulder. Is it hurt now? I don't think I have a hangover anymore. Right.

Now my stomach hurts. Yeah. Those are kind of the two big ones, at least in America. Yeah, the hair of the dog that bitch you drink more, Bloody Mary or a mimosa or something. Right. Some people swear by it. It may minimize some of your physical pain,

but it's actually not going to get rid of your hangover. by introducing more alcohol into your system. Right. The greasy food one, I always heard that one a lot. And again, you know, people swear by it. And if it works for you, great. There's no physiological mechanism by which greasy food will counteract a hangover. But it tastes fantastic.

It's just a really good taste. Well, I guess I better go get the Grand Slam breakfast then. Curly fries. Yeah, right. They're a mess. Yeah. Or people will go the other direction entirely of like, oh, just, you know, oatmeal or like porridge or just something that's really mild.

on the stomach. You know, if you have the presence of mind to do this, drink as much water as you can before you go to sleep. Yep. Give your body a few hours to kind of get it into your system. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, you have the inflammatory response. So anti-inflammatories really are very good for hangovers. So things like, you know, ibuprofen, you know, Advil, those kind of things that are designed to be anti-inflammatory. Not just taking the pain away, but it's the inflammatory aspect. That's right. That's right. It'll reduce the overall. And then you want to be careful with this, too, you know, because you have too much, you know, over-the-counter pain.

It's bad for your liver, bad for your kidneys. You do not want to take acetaminophen, which is Tylenol. You do not want to mix Tylenol and alcohol. Those are particularly hard on your liver. In any case, but especially if you're hungover. Have you guys seen commercials for Baraka at all recently? Barakas. Yes.

I know Banaka. This is, we apparently here in the U.S. are among the last in the world to find out about Baraka. So it's been available all over the world. It's extremely popular in Australia as a hangover remedy. What is it? So what Baraka is, is they sell it as a supplement. It's like a little fizzy tablet. You drop it in a drink, kind of like an airborne tablet or an Alka-Seltzer.

And it's got a ton of B vitamins. It's got caffeine and guarana. it's got all these other things that are marketed for immune health. And the company that sells it, they bear, they are aware that people buy it as a hangover cure. They cannot market it as a hangover cure for a variety of reasons. It's like, you know, these statements have not been evaluated. So, you know, they sell it as it's an energy support product. It increases your mental sharpness.

It'll give you a little energy boost. But they know full well that people are buying it as a hangover cure. I've never heard of this. They only just recently started selling it, you know, full bore here in the States. They had been trying some trial sales for a while to see if, oh, Americans going to buy this stuff after they noticed that a lot of people were having Australian or British friends coming back and like, oh, hey, bring me some Baraka. I need this for my hang over here. There's an opportunity there. Right.

And, you know, not to turn this into a commercial for Baraka, it may help alleviate some symptoms. The caffeine, you know, caffeine does fight headaches, so it'll address that. And the people do say that B vitamins, in particular, if you're going to sort of try and stock up on anything after hangover, B vitamins are actually really good to load up on. But, you know, it's probably mainly just the fact that you're drinking it with water. Yeah, yeah, it's forcing you to rehydrate. It's forcing you to get a little bit of caffeine in there. So if you see the commercials for this energy, you know, moodlifter, like it's, the subtext is, drink this when you've got to hang over. That's awesome.

All right. So as part of my research of hangover cures around the. world. I got into a side hole of what do people around the world call a hangover. Okay. And this is really fun to sort of the metaphoric. Do you know what it is in Japanese, Chris? Yes. Skaguiui. Right, which translates to second day being drunk. Yeah. Second day drunk or two day drunk. I like that. That's very kind of, it's very illustrative. In German, they talk about a catter or Dutch as well, cater. I've got a cat. You know, like the image is like, like I got a cat in my head kind of thing. Like, I'm doing with a cat the next day, right.

That's how I describe my cramps. You've got a cat. I got a cat in my womb. I like this one. I always picture a mean gnome. Is that weird? Yeah. Oh, that's so cute.

I always, whenever we get cramps, I think of a cat. I think of a cat with the pickax. Like, hey. Oh, I think it's like a crazy cat in my uterus. Oh, that's right. Dana, that's actually really right on point for some of these others. So, like, in Icelandic, you'll talk about you have a timberman, Timberman, meaning like a woodsman, as if there's a

like a little, like, woodsman in your head, like chopping logs or something like that. In Swedish, it's Baxmala. In Swedish, they'll say either Bachfila or Baxmala, which kind of has a double meaning. It's kind of like the back part of being drunk, but it also can sort of the implications, like, you're getting smacked in the butt, smacked in the back. You know, it's like, oh, it's still getting me the next day. It's a lot of, like, violence in the head. It's awfully, yeah, located.

It's clear where most of the pain comes from. And we'll come back to English here. So hangover the word, it has a meaning like holdover. You know, like they had that original sense. Oh, holdover from last night. Exactly, exactly. That's where it got it. But that only dates to around 1900 shortly thereafter.

Do you know, in English, what you would call the feeling of being hungover before we started using the word hangover? I am so pleased to be able to share this word with you. What is it? Up until around 1900, you would say you're feeling crappulous. Oh. That is the word for hungover, feeling crappulous. Is that where crap comes from then? We don't know.

It comes from Latin. That's an old word. That's an old, old word. It is. It really is. It comes from crappula. Ultimately, they think it comes from Greek, cripoli, meaning drunken headache. Noziah from debaching, hangover.

Crapulis. Crapulous. I was feeling crappulous. Yes, OED is some good examples of men who spend their evenings over their wine and awake crappulous in the morning. Wow. You know, if you said today, I would have thought it was a portmanteau of like, I feel like crap and ridiculous. It's like food delicious. Doesn't it seem like a made up?

Crapulous. It does. It does. Wow. Yeah. Some languages, they'll have some variation on this word, like in Finnish. like Crapula is the word for a hangover and it's just a direct

line from this original meaning I want to try and bring this back like listeners Let's drink this is not a dirty word It doesn't come from crap So the next day going to work or school I'm feeling so crappulous today We can do it

We can bring this word back Go forth Drink and be crappulous Awesome And that's our show thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys listeners for listening in hope you learn a lot of stuff about hangovers about meats of sorts uh fruit cake and fried chicken of course you can find us on iTunes on Stitcher on SoundCloud and on our website good jobbrain.com and we'll see you guys

next week. Bye. This is Jen and Jenny from Ancient History Fan Girl, and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romanticcy based on Alaric of the Bissigoths, Enemy of My Dreams. Amanda Boucher, best-selling author of The Kingmaker Chronicle, says, quote, this book has everything, high-stakes action, grit, ferocity, and blazing passion. Julia and Alaric are colliding storms against a backdrop of the brutal dangers of ancient Rome. They'll do anything to carve their peace

out of this treacherous world and not just survive, but rule. Enemy of my dreams is available wherever books are sold.