Good Job, Brain! - 184: Spice Up Your Life!

Episode Date: June 18, 2016

Secrete saliva with some succulent segments and stories about seasonings and spices! Find out what the most popular Japanese dish is (and it's not what you think it is)! Sail around the world with us as we dive into the spice trade and how it resulted in some of the dishes we now eat. Take our spicy music quiz and Karen finds out what the cinnamon challenge is. ALSO: horse racing primer, baby camel names Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, startling stars, starving for star fruits, starch and starbursts. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 184. And, of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your grungy, gregarious group of groupers grasping for gripping granules. I'm Colin. And I'm Chris. And no Dana this week.

No, Dana. She had a little stomach trouble. I'm not feeling well. Yeah. So sorry, folks. Hopefully she'll do better. By the time you hear this, she'll be all better. Get well soon, Dana.

Yay. And Chris, I saw that you found a bizarre headline to start the show. I found a headline. And I find a headline that I wanted to bring up because I thought that you might want to know. The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, they recently had a camel born in front of the public. It was the first camel born at the zoo since 1998. The first camel born at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago since 1990. Oh, my God.

I don't think I've ever seen or heard of camel births. Yeah, well, they do. They do have babies. Yeah, well, yeah. But the headline is that they've named the camel. Is it a, is it a pun of some kind, Chris? It might be a pun of some kind. Humphrey.

Oh, that's not. It's not Humphrey. Nor Joe Camel. Those are a little too long. Yeah, they're not going to do cigarettes. True, true, yeah. Humphrey's good. I like that.

Lumps? Camel. Camel. Caramel. It's not Caramel. Oh, man. This is like a laughy tap. I know, yeah.

Is it getable? It's getable. Yeah, it's getable. Spitty. Related to, uh, it's a, um, how about this? He's a historical figure. Named after a historical figure. Albert Camel.

Uh, yeah. A little bit of a reach, I suppose. Albert Camis and the Plaguey. Uh, oh, famous person. Historical. Historical. Historical figure. Is it a girl, a boy?

Uh, it's a boy. It's named after a boy. He has a first and a last name. You know, popular historical figure who may be enjoying a bit of a resurgence in popular culture these days? Alexander Humphalton. Alexander Camelton.

Colin got it. It's Alexander Camelton. You were too so focused on Humph, Alexander Humpington. You got me more than halfway there, Karen. That's right. That's right. It was really a team effort. But if we ever have a camel, we're definitely

going to call him Alexander Humpington. Why not Alexander Camelton? Two on the nose. Yeah. That's too easy. I guess I don't want to name anything with a pumping. Right. Also, we probably should not be given a camel.

But we can name one. Please don't send us a camel. Yeah, we'll gladly accept naming rights. Oh, right, right, right. I don't know if you guys know, but, you know, any, any time. Not any time. Any time. But when, when, like, zoos have baby animals and they call for names, I always submit.

Do you really? Yeah. That shouldn't surprise me. And they're just rant, like, you know, sometimes they're punny. Sometimes they're weird. I like that. Like Disney had a, you know, before they got rid of the petting zoo, they had baby goats. Uh-huh.

And so I wrote it in and suggest, oh yeah. And then another, I think Ontario, I posted this on Good Job Brain Facebook, um, had a bunch of litter of beavers, beaver kits. Nice. And we're like, we gotta name them. And you know how Dana, Dana signs up when there's earthquake? Dana's like the first to go, to report it, you know, in the, the, government website. That's you, but with baby animal naming.

Yeah. That's me. Yeah. Oh, Alexander Humpington. A missed opportunity. Should have called him Engelbert Camelding. He's so dumb. So we're recording this the week of June 6th, and which is very

close because the Belmont steaks are happening. This is part of our, you know, in pub trivia, we have a couple of, not blind spots. It comes up a lot. It comes up a lot. So much. And the only person who knows this is calling.

Like anything about the horses. And I've been to Churchill Downs. And I came and, you know, what is that? Kentucky Derby? Yeah, because it's in Kentucky. But like. You're talking about like which of the Triple Crown races. Like what the, yeah.

Okay. Here, let's do a primer. Chris, feel free to join this. Well, how about this? How about this? I'll tell you how I remember the order. How about that? What is the order?

of, so this is United States Triple Crown. The official name is Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. Right. This is the U.S. version. There are three major horse races. What are the order? So the, I hope I'm correct here, right?

Well, so the biggest and most famous is the Kentucky Derby. And that kicks things off, all right? So I just remember like, that's first, because it's what everyone heard of. Kicking things off. Oh, sure. I like that. I like that. And then there is the Preakness which is

the second race and then the last one is the Belmont steaks and so the way I remember it is like all right so Kentucky Derby

is just the first one because it's the famous one the preekness is like it's peaking the action the excitement is peeking in the middle

and then the Belmont it's like you're going for the bell the bell laugh the final like you're coming in and that's that's what helps me

remember the order okay Colin yeah Which race is the longest? I believe it is the middle one, the Preakness. Incorrect. It is Belmont Stakes, 2.4 kilometers, one and a half miles.

Okay. Which is the shortest, the Preakness. The shortest is the prequeness. Okay, I flip-lop those. All right. Yeah, so the last one is the longest one. Where are they held? What city are they held?

Well, so the Kentucky Derby, obviously, is in Kentucky. Louisville. Louisville. Little, Kentucky. I've never, I've never been there. Preakness is located in Maryland. Right, in Baltimore. And then Belmont Steaks.

Is in New York. Yes. Elmont, New York. So it's Belmont without the B. At the Elmont. At the Elmont. So if you're a horse, not if you're a horse, but like. When you're a horse.

The Triple Crown is the series of races. But to get the Triple Crown, you must win all three. Right. When was the last time a horse won all three? Oh. We were just talking about it last year because we were on track for one last year. I don't remember.

And it was last year, 2015, American Pharaoh. That's right. Before that, it was 1978. It was the last one. And was that affirmed? Yes. Oh, my God. Affirmed?

I can only name Secretariat because they made that into a movie. They did. All right, so there's a quick horse racing trivia primer. This comes up on trivia all the time. It does. It does. And it's one and three, but most of the time we get wrong. All right. And without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot.

Colin versus Chris, I have a smorgas board of random trivia cards. I got Baby Boomer Trivial Pursuit. Love it. Silver Screen Trivial Pursuit. Love it. Genus 4 Trivial Pursuit and TV on. the go trivia card, which isn't even trivia pursuit. Here's random. You guys

have your Barner buzzer. Does the rooster buzzer have a fresh battery in? Oh, nice. Sounds good to me. All right. Right hand, left hand. Left hand. Okay. Colin, right hand, left hand. Oh, left hand. Okay. What is your method? Well, I just separate them. Oh, okay. Here we go.

TV trivia on the go. Oh, man. Oh, it's this one. I'm not a fan of these cards, but, But that's what we draw. That's what we drew. Okay. Here we go.

No, no, no, no categories because they're all TV. And multiple choice. What was Mary's brother's name on the Donna Reed show? Goodness. Was it? All right. Okay. Jeff, Rick, or Bud?

Bud. Incorrect. Given the general time period. I don't even know what time period this is. Incorrect. Jeff. Wow. Good old Jeff.

It's a very early Jeff. What is the Donner Reach? I have no idea. In what movie did Superman's George Reeves make his debut? Is it gone with the wind? Key Largo or the Maltese falcon? Chris. Key Largo.

Incorrect. The Maltese falcon. Incrank is gone with the wind. Now I want to see if we can do this for every question. if we can incorrectly guess two out of three. All right. Leonard Sly is better known as whom, Ed Sullivan, Milton Burrell, or Roy Rogers. Colin.

Roy Rogers. Correct. Because Roy Rogers sounds like a fake name. It does. Yeah. It really does. Yeah. Leonard Sly.

Leonard Sly. That's a good one. Okay. From what Tennessee Town did the best. Beverly Hillbillies come from. Oh, geez. Is it Possom Point? Hooterville or bug tussle.

Colin. Hooterville. Incorrect. Chris. Possum point. It is bug Tussle. No, man. I thought for sure, like I would have put money that if it wasn't Houtreville, it was Possom Point.

Wow. Bug Tusson. Man, I just, I never. I never watched that one growing up. I really didn't. Okay, now we're in a more, more recent era. Oh, so the 70s? 90s.

Oh, okay. Oh, hey, I'm surprised this is that new, frankly. On Beverly Hills 90210, who played Brenda Walsh's best friend Kelly? Oh. Oh, I'm not going to give you. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Go ahead.

I believe that is Jenny Garth. Correct. Oh, okay. Jenny Garth. Now, were the other two choices, also people that were on? Yeah, why don't you guess the other actresses? Shannon Doherty and... Gabriel Carteris?

Yes, Gabriel Carteris and... Tori Spellet? Tiffany Amber... Oh, okay. Tori Spell. All right. Who played Morg and Mindy's son? Whoa.

Sorry, I forget that these are... Yeah. I just, I know who... It was Jonathan Winters. Wow. Yeah. Good job. He played Murth, Mirt from Earth, who was son of Mork from Ork.

My goodness. Yeah. Wait, so Mork and Mindy had a kid? They had a kid. And again, I, so I'll show off my nerd side here. So I was a big morgue and Mindy fan. So, as you may recall, in morgue species, they age backwards. Oh, really?

So his son was born as like an adult Jonathan Winters. Right, right. Right. Yeah. Wise cracking just right from day one. Who is the producer behind many of the reality shows, including Survivor? Many of the reality shows. Of the reality shows.

Including Survivor and the. Mark Burnett. Correct. I wasn't giving you the names, but... No, no. As I said, Survivor. Chris is all over that one. The reality show.

The reality shows. Which is now all television. I really tell us carbs in the 90s. Wow, you know this one, Chris. Yeah? What was the name of The Lying Contestant on the original The Apprentice? Of the lying contestant? Yeah.

Quote, lying contestant. Oh, Omarosa? Correct. Okay. Who was the first female headwriter for Saturday Night Live? I think I know. I think I know. Okay, together.

Tina Faye? Correct. Okay. The other two names were Gilda Radner, fantastic, not headwriter, and Mary Gross, who was in our favorite movie, True Beverly Hills. Oh, Troop Beverly Hills, and Feds. Last question. I'm a big Mary Gross fan.

She's great. What nickname did Mr. Edwards give? Laura on Little House on the Prairie. I have choices. I'll gladly take the choices, yeah. Let's go choices. All right. Knee high.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Half pint or squirt. Okay. I was going to guess. I like squirt. I don't know why. What were you going to guess?

Garbage can. It is half pint. Oh, okay. All right. Yep. I bet Dana would have gotten that one. All right. Good job, Brady.

That was a weird, I mean, all these cards are actually hard. I'm sure they're all just terrible. Because they're all from a time long ago than we don't get. So, Colin, what are we talking about this week? Well, so as you guys know, you know me well, and I think our listeners probably do. I watch a lot of Simpsons. So this week's topic was directly, indirectly inspired by one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, which I was casually watching a few days ago.

And it is the episode where they go to the chili cook-off. And while they're at the chili cook-off, Marge is off looking at a craft booth, actually run by Lenny. The name of the craft booth is a little bit of Lenny. I don't even watch a show, and it's funny. And so she's looking at some of Lenny's handmade crafts, and she sees a spice rack.

And I'll just, I'll read it for you. I enjoy a re-associated. So she looks at, oh, look at that adorable spice rack. Eight spices. Oh, some must be doubles. And then she picks one up and looks at it. Oregono. What the hell?

So that's one of my favorite just marge scenes. I just cannot fathom that there could possibly be more than eight spices in the world. Right, right. Oh, and just as a side note, I was going on the line to make sure I got the, the wording of the scene exactly correct, because, rest assured, somebody would let me know if I didn't. Yeah. And I found out many, many, many, uh, Simpsons fans who live in England, uh, or other, uh, commonwealth countries, they, they were, they all chiming in saying, like, it was years

before I actually got this joke because in British English, uh, you do pronounce it Oregon. And so the, the joke is that Marge, of course, having never heard of it, doesn't know how to pronounce it the American proper way oregano. Yeah. So a lot of British viewers were like, oh, I didn't get the joke for the longest time. Oh, I didn't get it either. Yes, oregano, not oregano. Yeah, the joke being that Marge has never heard of oregano. Right. Orregano.

So that got me thinking about spices and herbs and things of that nature, and I thought that would be a perfect topic for good job brain. So this week, spice up your life. People of the world All right It's like to the leg Or anything is a Shake it to the vine

To be in the fire Oregono, it's It is a plant And it's like the dried You know Leaves of Like an herb It's an herb

Right Or if you are speaking British English Herb Herb Orogano the Herb Oregano the Herb Yes Well this is a good question

Actually And I can see this I don't want to hear anything about how we're too quote unquote America-centric anymore, okay? Let me ask you guys, what is the difference between herbs and spices? What's an herb and what is a spice? I feel like Chris knows.

Yeah, I mean, herb is a leaf of a plant, and spice is made from, I think, ground seeds or berries. Well, what's cinnamon then? Cinnamon's bark. Cinnamon is bark, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like... Is that herb or a spice? It's not an herb. Cinnamon's a spice.

Sinan's a spice. Yeah, you got it. You got it. I'm going to jump in just, yeah, you, you've pretty much, you can give me the, you've got the spirit of it. No, it's pretty much it. Yeah, herbs are, the difference between herbs and spices, depends on what part of the plant it comes from. Herbs are just the leaves or the green, the green part of the plant, and spices are basically everything else. Yes, seeds, bark, roots, like the woody portion, right.

And you also sort of touched on it, like not always, but generally. Generally speaking, most spices are dried, whereas herbs can be either dried or fresh. You can have fresh herbs. For the most part, most spices, cinnamon, you know, anything like that, they tend to be dried, ground. Yeah, so you got it. That's the difference between herbs and spices. Species. Yeah.

But we don't call it an herb rack. We call it a spice rack. That's right. Yeah. Just one of the big injustices in the kitchen. I have nothing to add for that. Yeah. I mean, if I have you guess, I'd say that it probably started.

out like you just had spices on your spice rack, and then herbs were in your garden. Yeah, I think you're right. And then the modern drying technology gave us the jar of oregano. And there are, of course, you know, there are, of course, some plants. Now I don't know what you really call this thing. You can call it either one. In America, America's oregano. Yeah.

There are, I mean, there are, of course, some plants where we do both. Like famously, you know, we get this one in trivia a lot. Oh, coriander? Exactly. Like the cilantro, like the cilantro plant. Like, if you use the leaves, it's, where we do it. it's cilantro. If you use the seeds, it's coriander. But they come from the same plant. And there aren't a whole lot of plants where we use them in both ways like that. But that's a good example. I did a lot of spice. fell into a spice hole getting ready for this episode. You know, I was reading about the spice root and how, you know, really like the desire to find spices drove so much of early exploration. I mean, it was. Spices and died. Oh, man. I mean, you know, just there were there would be literally ships going out with gold trading them for peppercorns.

and bringing them back, you know, at one time. It was really valuable. Do you guys know where the Spice Islands? So the access to the original Spice Islands was huge. Back, way, way, way back. You know, we would get nutmeg, cloves, mace. A lot of things only grew in the Spice Islands. Go ahead, Karen.

Where are these spice islands today? Okay, so Spice Islands, they have a lot of these plants. Yeah, yeah. What part of what modern-day country? Fiji? Indonesia. Oh, okay. Well, there are a lot of islands.

Yes, there are many, many islands. Yeah, but I had always heard that term. Like Java, like Java, that's old areas. Yeah, yeah. Specifically, I guess it's the Malacca's or the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, which is sort of the original ancestral home of many of these spices that we now have on racks. Man, food must have been bland. Food was pretty bland.

Food was pretty bland. They're ready to send out ships filled with gold just to make things spicy. I have an interesting... Just to make things taste like things. Yeah. Yeah. I did read.

I read one historian was saying, you know, like... No, crack the book out. Let me clear this cool little anecdote I found. Who brings a book to a trivia podcast recording? Colin. Who has books about spices... Spice trivia. ...Colin.

Colin. I have a fun little anecdote. here from the Bill Bryson book At Home. He's talking about the Birth of the Spice Trade. Quoting here, when the Goths threatened to sack Rome in 408 AD,

the Romans bought them off with a tribute that included 3,000 pounds of pepper. Oh my God. Yes. Wait, pepper. Just pepper. Peppercorns. And this one, for his wedding meal in 1468, Duke Carl of Borgonia ordered

380 pounds of black pepper, far more than even the largest wedding party could eat, and displayed it conspicuously so that people could see how fabulously wealthy he was. Check out my... Yeah, just a pile of peppercorns, not gold or jewels, but peppercorns. They are berries, right? They are, I believe, yes, technically a berry. I wonder what they taste like when they're not dried up.

Pretty bitter, I believe. Probably pretty bad. Yeah. When Johan Rawl received the letter on Christmas Day, May 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was, was a warning, delivered to the Heshen Colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack

his forces. The next day, when Rawl lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pockets. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there. Oh, well, this is the Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world.

Find us at Constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. So I knew exactly what I was going to talk about. as soon as, as soon as, as Colin said, spices. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm all about this topic. Um, you may already know, you might already know about me. Certainly you guys, uh, here, here in the Good Job Brain Studios, um, you understand my, my passion, uh, for the dish known as curry rice in Japan. Oh, yes.

Japanese curry as my absolute favorite food of all time. Not just normal curry. Not just, well, there's, well, there's all kinds of different, uh, regional variations on the dish known as curry out there in the world. But my absolute favorite is Japanese curry. It's more like comfort food. Like when most people think about curry, they think about like Indian curry or Thai curry and it's a like it's a really hot, you know, make you sweat kind of like adventurous food that you might be eating. Japanese curry really the sensation for me is like, you know, like eating macaroni and cheese or something that's like warm, comforting, sweet.

kind of food. I'll tell you, people outside Japan do not understand like how popular curry rice is as a dish in Japan. There was a survey done by S&B, which is this company that really for the entire history of Japanese curry has been making curry powder. That was like the original Japanese curry powder. It's still sold today. They did a survey. People in Japan, on average, eat curry 78 times a year. That's one and a half times a week. Four or five days.

Yeah. It is, I mean, it's more popular than sushi. It is, it is by some measurements more popular than ramen. You know, so we in America, we eat a lot of, you know, people eat a lot of ramen and we think, oh, that's a very typical Japanese food.

We get a lot of sushi. Oh, that's a very typical Japanese food. Curry, which is not nearly as popular outside Japan, is like head and shoulders above those foods as one of the most popular, well-liked, and most often eaten foods in Japan. Well, how did that happen? Yeah. How did that come to be? It's a really, Japanese curry is really strange dish because certainly when I first moved there, I'd go to my, the school cafeteria, and I'd get a plate of curry rice.

I'm like, what is this? Oh, this is pretty good. And I took my chopsticks and I ate it. You know, I was able to do it pretty well. It's, you know, it's a, the plate is half white rice and then half this sort of brown curry sauce. And everybody was like, oh, you eat it with a spoon, which is the weirdest thing. Even in America, people don't understand what to do sometimes with curry. That, like, at a restaurant, they'll give you a fork, a spoon and chopsticks.

And people who don't know, who don't know about curry, well, first they'll start with the chopsticks. Right. And then if that doesn't work, they'll go to the fork. But the last thing they'll do is sit there with this plate of rice and sauce and maybe even a pork cutlet, like a breaded piece of pork on top of it. They're not going to take a spoon and eat that, but that is how you eat it. I eat it the wrong way. I just learned I eat it the wrong way. Wait, you don't eat the meat with the...

I use the fork, and I guess I've been doing it like a chump. You were supposed to use the spoon for the whole thing, and everything they do is made so you can eat it with the spoon. You're supposed to be able to cut the pork cutlet right in half with the edge of your spoon. Yep. Japanese curry and in terms of the flavor profile, I mean, it does use the spices that are often found in curry dishes. Like if you were to take curry powder off the shelf, it can taste like a whole lot of different things. Japanese curry is usually sweeter than spicy curry. It's really just hard to describe what it tastes like without actually.

For me, I think it tastes, it's sweet and it's spicy and it's salty. It's like a brown gravy. Yeah, it's kind of like beef stew or something like that, but with more exotic, like curry spices. But it's also creamy at the same time. Yeah. It's like an Asian version of Mule, almost. It's so many things together. Yeah, it's an interesting comparison.

Right, right, right. And it can be a lot of different things. I mean, you can have really bad curry and you can have really good curry. So, okay, well, let's talk about curry, as in, you know, the spice mixture and the dish in chair. Oh, yeah. What is curry? And it means sauce. Hmm.

But it's specifically come to mean a meat and vegetable stew sort of concoction that uses certain spices, but it's like meat in sauce that has been heavily spiced to be very aromatic. Oh, okay. Yeah, but the word itself originates just from the word for sauce. Like salsa. Like salsa. Just sauce. What a salsa?

Oh. Just means sauce. Yeah. Just be really clear. There is no such. spice as curry, right? It's a curry powder. You go to the supermarket and you see, you know, oregano, and then you see curry powder.

Right. That's not like a spice. Curry powder is usually, I mean, so some common ones are coriander. The spice coriander is very prevalent in a lot of curry powders. Human and turmeric is another spice. I grabbed, I went to the pantry, and I grabbed some curry powder, and I grabbed some curry powder, and I grabbed some garam masala, which is the spice mix that they use in like chicken ticam masala, right? So the curry powder had coriander, fenugreek, turmeric, red pepper, and onion, like powdered onion.

The garam masala had coriander, black pepper, cumin, cardamom, and cinnamon. So, but, I mean, any curry you have might have any combination of those spices. I didn't know that. I thought there was like one thing that had to be in there. to be called curry power. You know, so coriander seems to be the common ingredient between these two, but I believe I was reading, somebody did a survey of many different recipes for chicken ticca masala and found out that the only ingredient in common was chicken across all of the recipes.

A mixture of spices in some kind of sauce with meat or vegetables and you have curry, wide, wide range of different experiences throughout the world. So the first step on curry's journey from. like the Indian subcontinent where it was sort of invented to Japan is through Britain because Britain had of course, you know, colonized India for a few centuries and you had people going from countries like India and going and living in the UK and like, you know, cooking food there. You had a lot of British people going and living in India and eating food there and you got that cross-cultural like, oh, curry is a thing and they started really enjoying

it. And so curry got very popular in Britain. especially around kind of the turn of the century in the 1900s when you actually had more like Indian or Pakistani or like Bangladeshi, like restaurants are going to open in. Yeah. Chicken tega masala. That wasn't invented in India. That's, that's a UK invention. It was possibly invented in Glasgow. Yeah.

By a Pakistani chef who, yeah, who claims to have invented chicken ticamasaa in Glasgow, Scotland. Yeah. It's not like a traditional Indian dish. But, of course, it comes from that. I mean, the story that I read was the, you know, classic potato chips story where the customer sends the food back because he says, oh, your curry chicken is too dry.

And the guy goes, well, dump some tomato soup in there, and then it'll be wet for him, you know? And then the guy's like, I love it. You know, that kind of thing. That classic store. The classic potato chip story. Yeah. All right, so how to get from England to Japan?

In the Navy. In the Navy. So, Japan and Britain in the early part of the 20th. century had an alliance and uh their respective navies hung out together a lot because the ships would go from japan to britain britain japan etc and so i only found one source for this uh it may have been attacked it to get the japanese navy to be healthier because there was a this is a website wrote about this um called tyken japan is the name of the site but they were writing about this this part is definitely multiple source uh many japanese people including some of the sailors in the

Navy, we're getting a disease called Barry Barry, B-E-R-I, B-E-R-I. It seems like a really cute name for a disease. It's for a bad disease. You could lose a lot of weight. You could have nervous system problems, like debilitating disorder. It was not good when people got this. And at first, well, they noticed that the British, you know, the British people don't have it.

It's like, why don't they have it? They were like, oh, it must be endemic to Japan. It must be some sort of genetic thing to Japan. No. Turns out it was a very. Turns out it was a vitamin B1 deficiency because all the Japanese dudes ate was white rice. And the white rice is rice has been stripped of the hulls and the husks and everything and all the stuff that has the vitamins in it. So they were not getting enough vitamin B1 and that's what Barry Berry was.

It was a vitamin B deficiency. It's the scurvy for vitamin B. It's scurvy for rice basically. And so there was a doctor, there was a Japanese doctor who had kind of trained in Britain and hypothesized that it was a, you know, vitamin deficiency. and they were like, oh, we need to start giving these guys different foods. And one of the things they landed on was the guys in the British Navy loved eating curry. And I'll tell you, Japanese curry is actually very similar in terms of the flavor profile to if you go to an Irish pub or you go to a British pub and you get curry chips, like French fries with curry. That is actually the closest thing there is to Japanese curry.

That's so interesting. Yeah. Right? I think I had always just assumed that it came with like, like, boo-hmm. Buddhism, you know? I mean, like, it followed the path from India into Asia. Like, it makes a lot of sense. That's what a lot of people think. So we come over with the Buddhist monks. Yeah.

Absolutely not. No, it went through Britain. Yes. And that's why you eat it with a spoon because it is considered, it's considered a Western food. It's very recent. It's, it's the 1920s-ish when this was all happening. Wow. Yep. And so they add British dishes to the Japanese naval menu. And it catches on in a big way. And so, in fact, even today, the Japanese.

which is now the Japanese Navy is now the maritime self-defense force, right? Like Friday, it's curry day. And every ship in the Japanese Navy now, they have perfected their own curry recipe. It's like a chili cook-off. Absolutely. It is unique to their ship. And they're all very proud of their curry recipes. And they have a yearly Navy curry cook-off.

That's awesome. Yep. So when are we going? Yeah, yeah. And again, it trends towards sweetness. So some of the ingredients you'll find in the Navy curry are like chocolate, honey, red wine. Apples. Like a moly.

Like you said, Karen. Apples are very popular. Parmesan cheese in one. Instant coffee is sometimes used to really give it a really rich depthness of flavor. So, you know, the Navy goes home to their families. They bring back the fact that they love curry, kind of. So curry powder at this point is an excessive. expensive British import, right?

You still, even though you love curry, you still can't necessarily get the spices if you're like a poor Japanese family. Two major events happen to make curry the sort of culinary powerhouse that it is today in Japan. Number one, I'm going to quote directly from the Japan Times, because this is beautiful. The great curry powder scandal of 1931 in which unscrupulous dealers were caught selling cheap domestic curry powder as expensive crust and blackwell powder from England. This escalated to an international diplomatic incident leading to several arrests,

but it ironically gave a big boost to domestic curry powder manufacturers such as S&B foods, since people discovered they couldn't really taste the difference. So, yeah. Event number two, 1954. is the intro of how, if you've had Japanese curry, if you've made it at home before, how you probably made it, which is the introduction,

the bricks, the curry bricks. So, I mean, to make curry, like, you have to go through a lot of processes. You got to, you know, melt down some onions. You got to, like, you know, make a rue with butter and flour. There's a lot of technique. There's a lot of things that can go wrong,

and it takes a long time. The introduction of the instant curry bricks, which combined the spices, the thickening agents, all into a, it looks like a bar of chocolate, but I wouldn't eat it. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe a fancy soap. Like a dove chocolate bar. You break off some bricks, you toss it into some hot water, and you will get a thick curry. The important thing with this is, this is actually when Japanese moms make curry at home, like generally, this is what they use. Like, it's not, you know, people will make curry from scratch, sure, but it's like,

this is how you actually, like, get dinner on the table. Right, right. importantly you you start with the brick your base start the recipe and then the rest is what you do with it you know adding honey to it and like doing more stuff with it over the course of cooking it yeah meat chris when you say that you're a japanese curry expert go on what are your accolades have you have you been in in a magazine let's say it's funny that you should mention this because if you were to go and purchase which i don't think you can anymore the april 2016 issue of of GQ Japan, that's actual GQ with a Japanese version.

There is an article called Obsessed with Curry, 15 people's curry lifestyle. And it's like Japanese actors and comedians and one crazy America. And one. Mr. Chris. And that is me. They were showing me the layout of the magazine, and it was like a placeholder photo.

And it just was captured like, Mr. Chris. He is eating happily with curry. Um, yeah, and so, uh, that's now on the, if you go to Fumi Curry in, uh, in Bernal Heights here in San Francisco, they put it up on the, not only they put it up on the wall, they put it up on the window facing outside, uh, into the street. Nice. So you walk by the place. You'll see, you'll see my smiling face with a spoonful of curry. The proper way. You can all, you had a GQ photo shoot.

I had a GQ photo shoot. Wow. Not a lot of people can see that. That wasn't even on the bucket list, but I put it on the bucket list and then cross it off immediately. I want some coffee curry. That sounds pretty good. Well, I mean, it all kind of... Yeah, kind of that, the coffee, chocolate-y, I can see that.

Yeah, caramel with me molasses kind of burnt. Like some Guinness, maybe, some Guinness curry? That could work pretty well. You know the Guinness stew? Like, you get at Pops? It's very similar to Japanese curry. It is, it is, yeah. All right, let's take a quick break.

We're getting hungry, and we'll be right back. On August 1st. May I speak freely? I'd prefer I. The Naked Gun is the most fun you can have in theaters. Yeah, let's go! Without getting arrested. Is he serious?

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The book will be in both paperback and a book versions. And you can even pre-order the paperback version on Amazon today. See you on the Toilet. Welcome back. You're listening. Good job, Rain. This week, we're time about all things that are spicy. I have a music quiz for you guys. Oh, is it all Spice Girls? And no, in fact, it is not all Spice Girls.

I'm going to win. The answer to every song is Spice Girls. Yeah, so well, usually, you know, when we do these music quizzes or at Pub Quiz, we get the songs and you've got to tell me the theme. I'm going to invert it here. I'm just going to tell you outright. The theme is spices and seasonings and herbs and herbs and all in that. Yeah, seasonings.

Yeah, herbs, herbs, spices, seasonings. And that is the theme of this music quiz. So it could be in the artist's name or the title song. Could be in the artist's name, could be the name of the song, could be in the lyrics, could be some other, hopefully not crazy connection somewhere to Spices, herbs, seasonings. So here we go. For each track, tell me who is the musical artist. First track. When you say you will, it always means you won't.

You're giving me the two, baby, please, baby, don't. Every night you stay. Leave me all along, Mickey. I'm thinking what a bitter, you don't understand. You take me by the heart when you take me by the hand. I'm thinking you're so pretty, can't you understand? A guy like you, Mickey. Oh, what you do, Mickey, too, Mickey.

Uh, both of you, Buzz Dammit. I think Chris is a little quicker. Uh, Tony Basil. Yes, Tony. I would say Basil personal. Well, the British. Yes, again, the British English distinction. Yes, Tony Basil, yes, correct, with Mickey.

Yes. I look this up. You may not surprise you to know that Tony Basil is a stage name. But this is where it gets... Why does she choose it? This is hilarious. This sounds made up, but I swear it's not. Her real name is Antonia Christina Bezalada.

It really is. Bezalada, yeah. I guess she can... That's very 80s. Yes, very 80s. Italian? Yes, Italian. And Tony, a Bezalada, that won't fit on a 45 record label.

Now you, Tony Basil, kid. I can see it now. Hands are 50 bucks. You're in the music business. Well, I guess she came from a performing family, and her father was an orchestra leader under the name Louis Basil. So she's, you know, it wasn't the first one in her family to think, you know, this is going to be a little more, yeah, cut that down.

All right, next track. I'm sure you guys have heard the song before. but who is this artist? Both of you guys at the same time. The, are we saying? Yeah, go for it. Both of you. I'm just going to give it to you because I, you know, we both plus it at the same thing.

Yeah, go ahead. The Archies. Yes, it is the archies. The fictional musical group. And it's the Archie comic people, right? It is the Archie comic people, right? I mean, it was created for the Archie show and presented as if it was the Archie character singing the song.

I didn't know how big of a hit that song was. It was the number one billboard saying. single for 1969. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. It was on top for many weeks. And then it charted again in 1970, covered by Wilson Pickett, of all people.

Yes, a proper musical cover. Good Life for Sugar, Sugar by the Archies. Next track. Tell me, who is this band? to kite, there will be a show tonight on trampoline. The Hendersons will all be there, late of Pablo Frank is there, what a scene over men and horses, poops, and guarders lastly

threw a hog's head of real fire. Oh, Chris. This is Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, as memorably portrayed by the Beattles. Ooh, what a fantastically worded answer. I love it. Yes, yes. I would have accepted The Beatles.

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. What was the song name? That is being for the benefit of Mr. Kite. Okay. So they're cosplaying as Sergeant Pepper. Well, the whole album. Yeah, that's the concept album.

The whole album is that they're presented as, yeah. Hence Pepper. Right. You know, obviously a big carnival circus atmosphere to that song. I learned this Almost all of the lyrics and the imagery from this song Were inspired directly from a circus poster That John Lennon had bought in an antique shop

And I mean it's just so whimsical But everything on there You know Pablo Fanky like everything on there Was straight from this poster Right wow really interesting I read Lenin When they were producing the album He told George Martin their producer

That he wanted to quote Smell the sawdust on the floor And I think he accomplished that that. Next track. Who is this artist? Can't fight the speed. Oh, Chris. Paprika Jones. Peppreka Jones.

I wish I could give you a star for Peppreca Jones. Hooter. Karen, you want to take a stab? This is a big 90s hit. Varuka salt? Yeah. Wow. I pulled that out of my butt.

Yes. I was like, what is seasoning pepper and has? Or has girl bands? You nailed it. You nailed it. That was in the punch bowl. Yeah, that is a seetheer, the biggest hit by far for Verrucassol. Of course, named after the character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Yes. I want it now. All right. Next track, who is this artist? This wasn't supposed to happen I was happy by myself Accidentally Used to juice me

I'm in love again Karen, right away Well, and it took me a while The Sugar Cube Yes, you got it there, eventually, yes York Yes, that is a York as lead singer of the Sugar Cubes That's, yeah, that's how I would have guessed

but I did not know about the Sugar Cubes connection. Yep, that is a hit, one of Iceland's most famous bands. Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I liked Sigeroz, too. Oh, yeah, Cigeroz. Yeah, that's why I said three more. All right, next track, this is a very... Well, I'm not going to give you any hits. I'm going to hit.

Next track, next track. Who is performing? The day that jumps right out at your 10-3-1-1-the-calendar. In Texas, all-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. the chainsaw massacre hills have eyes in texas kids stories about what next he did doctor slapped him on his asses his head's been round like exorcist bad enough for quarantine mess with him you're gonna scream they said he had to shine it he saw red rum and evergreen oman since he was a teen freddie grueger on the scene splicing up in peace

oh Chris Chris is gonna take a stab who we got is it the red hot chili peppers it is not the red hot chili peppers uh what was your hint though it's a the hint is uh this is a new track from someone who is famous a long time ago. Karen. Vanilla ice. That is Vanilla Ice. Yes. This is born on Halloween from his most recent album, WTF, released in 2011.

Also featuring Violent J on that track from Insane Clown Posse. Going for kind of a horrory theme there. All right. Last one. Last track. Here we go. A little bit of a novelty song here. Who is this artist?

Chris. Is that the Red Hot Chili Peppers? That is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That's a Robert Johnson song, Hot Tamales, parentheses, They're Red Hot. You are all over it. Absolutely right. Yeah, that is Their Red Hot,

written by legendary, legendary blues men Robert Johnson. That's right, from the 30s. Which was already sort of a novelty song when he wrote it. Red Hot Chili Peppers sped it up considerably. Yeah. That almost sounded like backwards. You do? Yeah.

Yeah. All right, well, that was it. I think you guys did a perfect seven for seven there. Good job. Well, done. Yeah, well, you know, there's only two of you, too. It's always a little trickier with No Dana. That's right.

All right. I'm going to close a show. Chris, you took on a journey with curry rice. I'm going to take on a journey with another food item, a spicy food item. And also, it's so weird, because I didn't know you were going to do that segment. So it just makes me think that this is why I love good job bringing because, like, there are things that we don't really vernacular normal things

and then when you like research more about it to find out why it is the way it is it's so interesting it's like oh the British and then the Japanese Navy it's like oh my God I wouldn't know and I just thought it was like a sauce you know let me ask you guys when you guys

go to a Thai restaurant a Thai restaurant a Thai restaurant yeah what what can you name me some food items that you see from a Thai Thai restaurant menu like dishes just list out things pad Thai Yellow curry Meat on a stick

Crette Crabb rangoons That's cream cheese in here But Colin you said a number one thing You think of Thai food Is probably Pad Thai I think certainly in America I think in America

Yeah for sure Most I'd say you know Western places You go to a Thai restaurant That's kind of That's the thing you get It has Thai in the name It's pad Thai

Yeah if you don't know where else to start Start with a dish that has the country's name in it. And Pat Thai, how would you describe Pat Thai? Uh, huh. I would describe it as, uh, wow, it's got a lot of ingredients. A little, a little bit sweet, a little bit tangy. Uh, you got some noodles, you got some peanut, you got some, uh, vegetables in there, some egg.

It's basically a hodgepodge, stir fry rice noodle dish. Yeah, your base is rice noodle. Um, it's in an orangey red sauce or spicy sauce, stir fry together with eggs, chicken, seafood, bean sprouts, just random things all in one thing and it's sweet and it's tangy. Pat Thai is a weird dish because you associate it with Thailand

are you not going to tell me this is nothing that was not also invented in the country. What's like invented in America like 50 years ago? No, not quite. Okay. Not quite. Sorry I don't mean to hijack your... No, no, no. I've just been so disillusioned. It is. It is. It's like, turns out wasabi is not real. Wasabi. You're like, oh my God. What are you doing in my food?

I don't believe anything now. So here's a story of So in 1938, a guy, military gentleman, Fibon Songkram, most people now in Western colleges just refer to him as Fibon, and he became prime minister of Thailand. Six years before this, he played a prominent role in a military coup. They have military coups a lot in Thailand. That basically stripped Thailand's monarchy from its absolute power. So this was back when Thailand was known as Siam.

In fact, he was the guy behind the driving force to change the name from Siam to Thailand. And so Fibon is both famous and infamous. On one hand, he helped establish a national modern identity for Thailand, but also was a fascist ruler and aligned with the Axis power in World War II. And so some quick background, just because Thailand is very interesting in history, especially, you know, Chris, you talked about India and colonization. In Thailand, in South Asia, Thailand or Siam back then, had never been colonized, never been colonized.

But around its borders are all countries with British and French colonies. You have Vietnam. You have parts of, you have India, you have Hong Kong. Like, all of, they're surrounded by these forces. And so Fibon, he was European educated. He wanted Thailand to have a strong, modern, unified, identity. Siam was a mix of hodgepodge of like local subcultures, different, you know, kind of tribal cultures with different dialects, different language, different customs. And also

Thailand had a lot of Chinese influence too. There were a lot of Chinese immigrants. There were schools. There people were speaking Chinese. And he wanted a real united identity. He was a nationalist. Part of his his rule, he passed a 12 cultural mandates. 12 cultural mandates that were new rules that people of Siam or now Thailand needed to live by. Sounds pretty fascist. Some of these rules seem very nationalistic. Like, here is the official anthem. Here's our national anthem.

And some of them were people of Thailand are called Thai. The language is Thai, you know, not Siam anymore. And then some of these rules were like, hey, you should wear hats and you should wear pants and shirts, because different tribal had different native clothes. Some of them, the women were topless. It's like a national dress code. Yeah, national dress code. There's also national, like, you should spend a third of your day working, a third of

your day with family. And, you know, like to that point. And one of them was buy and use and produce Thai products. Directly food. Food, food, food. Okay. Because Thailand, their main export was rice. And their whole diet was mostly rice-centric.

And rice is being sold to China, to other parts of Asia. And Fibon was like, no, we want to cut that connection. And so he thought, okay, Thailand needs a national dish that does not include rice. But at the same time, is nutrition enough for everybody and tastes good. Okay. That dish, the pat-tide dish, is actually a Chinese dish. It's stir-fried rice noodles The only Thai-tie thing is the spices that were put in

So it was called, you know, stir-fried noodles Thai style Interesting Just like in China, there's also in Chinese culture There's like fried rice Singaporean style So it really is a Chinese dish But he basically Co-opted it Yeah, co-opted it

This is our national dish It's like a national dish by Fiat It's exactly what it was It was propaganda. You will all eat this. It was, you all have to eat this. So then you have street vendors selling pat-tie on the street. It became like fast food because it was very fast.

It was just hodgepodge of things, stir-fired with rice noodles. That became the National Thai dish. And this is, this is in, you know, within the last century. Yeah, yeah. It did not come out naturally. Right, right. It was not a traditional, traditional dish. Wow.

What is the name, what does the pad and pad Thai mean? Nudels. So, okay. Or stir fried, yeah. Thai style. All right. Yeah. Yeah.

Huh. It's weird because it's almost like an oxymoron. It's like, we got to be more Thai. So this is our national dish. Yeah. Which is a dish, a Chinese dish that we're trying to cut connections to. Yeah. But also made out of ingredients that, you know, the only thing that we have is like the spices.

Yeah. Tamarind, pepper. Yeah, I definitely associate some tamar. Yeah. So that's kind of the orange sauce of it. But all the other stuff is, is just kind of. like what came to be different different places had different types of pat-tie pat-tie delicious propaganda delicious delicious delicious fascism i'm hungry i'm really hungry i get some spices let's do the

cinnamon challenge what's the cinnamon challenge what you don't know the cinnamon challenge oh my god this is never care never do this not maybe in your youthful days you might have it's like one of these like viral self-pranks yeah it's the cinnamon challenge is you you know of course you YouTube you yourself, right? But it's basically just, you're just supposed to eat a spoonful of cinnamon, but it dries out your mouth so quickly. Yeah, I bet it's not the spice.

That you, no, no, no, it's not the spice. It's, it's the fact that it's so dry that it just sucks all the saliva out of your mouth. You can't swallow without saliva. But you just, you end up basically like choking. Yeah, coughing. It's a bad time. It's a bad.

They all, all the videos end up with people coughing, eyes running, water, yeah. But the cinnamon just like instantly just like sucks up anything. moisture that was ever in there. Yeah, it's not, it's painful. And then you inhale a little bit of it. No, no. Right, right, right.

That doesn't sound fun or funny. So kids don't do the, yeah. Please, please do not. Yeah. It's dumb. So we'll go eat some food with some spices in it, is what we're saying. Yeah. And that is our show.

Thank you guys for joining me. I think you guys, listeners, for listening in, hope you learn a lot of stuff about the Japanese Navy. What are they called again? Maritime Self-Defense Force. Mm. Some Tony Basil. pet tie, Belmont Steaks, and, of course, our pet camel, Alexander Humpington.

You can find our show on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, and on our website, goodjobbrain.com, and we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. If you like this podcast, can we recommend another one? It's called Big Picture Science. You can hear it wherever you get your podcast, and its name tells part of the story. The big picture questions and the most interesting research in science.

Seth and I are the host. Seth is a scientist. I am Molly, and I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us, and we have fun along the way. The show is called Big Picture Science, and as Seth said, you can hear it wherever you get your podcast.