Good Job, Brain! - 19: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Episode Date: July 9, 2012

We salivate over bountiful breakfast trivia: cereal mascots, waffles, Pop-Tarts, and Cap'n Crunch. Dig into the historical facts behind bagels, Aunt Jemima, and the intense beef between Kellogg's & Post! Also: weird words, Chris' first Music Round attempt, and ...yogurt in uncomfortable places. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Greetings, group of great groovy grinters. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and off-be trivia podcast. This is episode 19. And of course, I'm your humble host, Karen. And we are your nimble and nifty, native. from the net nuts for narwhals I'm going to run out of these alliterations pretty soon send in your alliterations now friends I'm Colin I'm Dana I'm Chris I'm joking about

running out of alliterative intros I'm not kidding I'm right out of and what I do is I go to thesource.com I kind of look at there are only so many words you're all you're allowed to repeat if that yeah yeah I think I've repeated some but also on the source And Dictionary.com, they have a fun word of the day, that kind of stuff. So this one caught my eye, and it was inspired by Justin Bieber, who admitted that he liked to do this activity, which is glamping. What? G-L-A-M-P-I-N-G. This is like planking.

He likes to glamp. Yeah. What's that? What is that? Glamping is a portmanteau word of glamorous camping. And it is now defined as a form of camping. in which participants enjoy physical comforts associated with more luxurious types of holiday. And I also looked at some other words, word of the days.

And one of them is, as we know, Saturday Night Live is kind of the culmination of improv comedy. A lot of comedians and comedy actors came from improv group. One of the notable improv comedy troops in America is the one in L.A. called The Groundlings. Right, right, a lot of SMO. Do we know what a groundling actually is? I always thought it was like a woodchuck. I thought it was like birds. No, I thought the groundlings were the, this may be another metaphorical usage of it,

but in Shakespearean plays, like the groundlings were the, were they the people who sat way towards the front of the stage? Or were they? Couldn't afford a seat. They were on the ground. Yes. Is that it? Good job. Wow, you guys worked together.

It is a person who used to go to the Globe Theater to watch Shakespearean plays in the early 17th century, basically to pour for us. seat and so they would be on the ground sit on the ground stand on the ground Chris you actually looked up another word earlier today it was for Nerf oh yeah yeah I just thought it was a brand name right right right no apparently the word I was reading about Nerf toys and the word came from like hot rod racing to Nerf somebody was to bump your car into their car an effort to like knock them out or spin them out yeah so that's that's where they took the word from yeah where they came up with the word Nerf who know they did well yeah the yeah the

Maybe somebody knows, but the source didn't go back that far. Right. We want to feature another question from one of our listeners who have questions actually specifically for us. Jonathan Houston on Facebook asked, do you guys do a ton of research beforehand? Yes. Yes. Next question. Yes, we do.

I would say just to elaborate a little bit, yes, we do. And we do, I think I speak for all of us, we always try to verify what we're talking about. We're like multiple sources. We're not just go to Wikipedia and see what it says. Or, yeah. And actually, you know, the important thing is checking some of the Wikipedia sources because, you know, they source it, but the source material might be someone's blog. You're like, wait a minute. Right.

We're not, we're not that smart. But we just take joy in finding out crazy things and then regurgitating them back to each other. A lot of people don't know this, but Chris can't read. He only learns through regurgitation. So, yeah, let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop Quiz Hot Shot. Get your barnyard buzzers ready, and I have a trivial pursuit card. All right.

Blue Wedge Geography. In what country might you enjoy as a delicacy? A corn fungus called Queet la Coche. Mexico? Correct. And I want to explain this a little bit. This is one of those things. This is on my list of things that you should not Google image search.

Because it's basically a fungus that, in fact, It affects corn and turns these kernels into like elephant man-ish, giant bumpy kernels and black. Delicious. So you scrape it off or it's embedded in the corn? It's affected the kernels inside themselves. And it kind of looks moldy, kind of looks like. It looks like evil corn. Like if there was like a Satan-possessed corn, it would look like this.

You're right. It does. Frank-Cornstein. Yeah. Frankencourt. All right. Pop Culture Pink Wedge. What superhero shares a name.

name with a popular Black Sabbath song. Iron Man. Correct. That question was so easy, I couldn't even do it. I was like, what? Is it a trick question? Yes. All right, Yellow Wedge.

The birthday of what American Patriot is now celebrated as National Handwriting Day? Dana. John Hancock? Yep. Oh. Nice job. the Constitution. It's totally like the most legible name.

Yeah. It's a big, huge name. Purple Wedge. Of the Rolling Stone 500 greatest songs of all time, what is the only song not performed in English? Oh. Oh. It must be La Bamba.

Correct. Oh. Sorry. I got thought, I've seen about like, wait, the 500 greatest songs by the band Rolling Stones at all time. Oh, Rolling Stone. Yeah, me too. I'm happy you didn't say macarena because that was my first answer. That would have been terrible.

If that made their top 500 list, they would have a lot of explaining. Green Wedge for Science. What naturally occurring chemicals flood the brain to cause runners high? Is that dopamine? Incorrect. Are they looking for endorphins? Correct. Endorphins.

Orange Wedge, last question. And this is one of the picture ones. So I rewrote this question. What is the name of the game in which players use broom-shaped paddles to push weighted pucks, sending them gliding down a narrow and elongated court? Shuffleboard. Correct. So it was a picture of people doing shuffleboard.

It's like, what is this? Oh, what is this? Got it. Good job, Brains. Let's jump into our topic of the week. And, you know, I would have to say of all of our episodes, definitely the food. ones are the most popular. Oh, yeah. We had our big junk food show,

our bizarre, expensive food show, very popular. So now we have breakfast foods. All right. The most important meal of the day. I love my cereal. My cereal satisfies my appetite. It could be sugar-coated comb puff shaped in a flake.

One little handful is a little handful is a little. all it takes to make me feel good. Well, if it's breakfast, then let me ask you this question. Riddle me this. Where am I if I am breakfasting with an aristocratic nobleman, a reanimated human, a preserved human body, a werewolf and a specter? I know what you're kidding at. Yeah, like count chuck a little bit. Frankenberry.

Okay, keep naming them. The booberry is it? Oh, right, right. Booberry? Two more. Oh, what's the mummy one? What is the mummy one? That is an excellent question.

Now we have arrived at the most obscure of the General Mills monster serial mascots. We have Count Chocula, Booberry, Frankenberry. I don't know. A werewolf and a preserved human body. Mummy clusters, no. Mummy clusters would be great. It's yummy mummy. Oh, of course.

Possibly later Christmas 2, I think fruity yummy-mummy, but yummy-mummy, and Colin, you must know the last one. It's a werewolf. It's a discontinued cereal. Lupine loops. It's, whoa, that's good. That would be good. It is, in fact, fruit brute. Fruit brute, yes, I do remember fruit brute.

Beloved by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and referenced in several of his films. Now, okay, so let's have a serial mascot quiz. According to the official website, and that is going to be our arbiter on this. Okay, okay. This is our official piece of information, but according, and I looked this up to the official website, how many times has the Tricks Rabbit actually gotten to eat a bowl of tricks? Colin. I'm going to say twice.

You are correct. Here is the language from the website. Foiled repeatedly since 1957, the Tricks Rabbit eventually tasted tricks in 19. 1976 and 1980 following box top voting campaigns. They asked kids, should the Tricks Rabbit get tricks? And kids, thankfully, voted yes. I have to say, like, as a kid, I'd never understood why he was not allowed to have them. They would give it to, he would dress up in disguises.

He would be like, hey, kids, I'm a friendly local neighborhood fireman. Can I have your tricks? They're like, oh, yeah, sure, here you go. Whoever you want, I'm a house painter, can I have tricks? Oh, yeah, Mr. House Painter, who we don't know from Adam, who just watch into our house and is talking to us, even though we're small children. Sure, share our cereal. The second they found out he's a rabbit, they don't want to give him.

If a talking rabbit came into my house, they're like, yeah, take care of everything. This is a rabbit who can speak English and drive a car. And dress up. It's like, and you want to hang out with us? That's great. I don't get it, but yeah, twice technically. Now, of course, in the older commercials, he would have a bite of tricks and eat it and swallow it, and then they'd take it away from him.

So mean. Yeah. He was giving the bowl and allowed to enjoy himself, but twice. They call them names too Silly rabbit Oh my god It's just Oh yeah

No, it's racist Arrange these Lucky Charms Marshellons in the order In the order in which they were introduced into the cereal Okay Okay

Okay Okay Purple horseshoes Pink Hearts Blue Diamonds Okay Karen Hearts

I believe is One of the original shapes So I'd say Hearts Purple horseshoes diamonds Incorrect I am almost positive that the horseshoes were the last to be introduced on that list.

Diamonds were the first. I would say Diamonds, hearts, horseshoes is what I would say. Dana gets the chance to steal. Hearts, diamonds, horseshoes? Indeed, yes. Pink hearts were part of the original batch of Lucky Charms in 1962. Blue diamonds were introduced in 1975, and purple horseshoes came in in 1984. What popular cereal brand added these two new flavors?

in 2012. The flavors being peanut butter and dulce de leche. Oh, I carry. Cheerios. Yes. That's right. Yes. Dulcececee Cheerios also added in 2012 and multi-grained peanut butter Cheerios.

The first ever singing radio commercial. In effect, the first ever jingle was performed for what cereal in 1926? Let me read you with the jingle with the name of the cereal blanked out. Okay. Have you tried, blank? Their whole wheat with all of the bran. Won't you try, blank? For wheat is the best food of man.

Karen? Raisin bran. No. Dana. Shred wheat? No. Colin. Sports guy.

Oh, weedies. Yes. Wheaties. Who was the first athlete ever pictured on a Wheaties box? Oh, man. It was in 1934. Was it, uh, uh, uh, Johnny Weissmuller?

Not quite. Who was that? Yeah, he played Tarzan and he was also an Olympic swimmer. Oh, okay. No, the first athlete ever pictured on a Wheaties box was Lou Gehrig. Oh, okay. Who was the first woman athlete ever pictured on the front of a Wheaties box? Oh.

Dana. Mary Lou Retton? Yes, man. Mary Lou Retton in 1984. It certainly did, yes. Who holds the record for the most appearance. is on a Wheaties box. Looks like Karen.

Michael Jordan. Who is second place? Oh, Tiger Woods? It is. In fact, Tiger Woods is second place. Nice job. All of these cereals that we've just talked about, what do they have in common? Loads of sugar.

Besides that. Besides the fact that they're cereal. Yeah, exactly. General Mills. They are all General Mills cereals, yes. Wow, that was good. I'm hungry. I totally want some cereal now.

Oh, I know. Talking about breakfast foods always make you want breakfast foods, as a matter what time of day it is. I want to ask you something in return, Chris. Okay, I mean this buzz are ready. Do you know what is Captain Crunch's full name? He has a full name. Can I guess? Sure.

Is there a Cornelius in there? That's what I wanted to say, too. Cornelius is actually the name of the cornflakes rooster. Oh. Oh. It is Horatio Magellan Crunch. Ah, okay. Captain Crunch, very, very delicious.

The flavor was really of the squares, not the berries, but just of the usual squares. What is the flavor of Captain Crunch? It's supposed to be brown butter and sugar. It was very sweet. It was inspired by like an old tiny recipe. And it's one of the corn-based ones, right? That's why it's so delicious. There's some interesting revolutionary technology associated with Captain Crunch, actually.

And, you know, we would say Captain Crunch is one of the best tasting cereals because of, you know, the sweetness. and very crunchy. Other cereals, they have powdered sugar or flavoring with dusted flavor and whatnot. And so when Captain Crunch came out, it was one of the first cereals that used oil-based flavoring. Interesting. And that's why it is very, very delicious. It is.

And Captain Crunch also, in a report released in 2009 at Yale, gave Captain Crunch Crunch, CrunchBerry's edition, the worst nutritional score of any cereal marketed to families and children. Yeah, because it's like fat and sugar, right? Exactly. Oil, flavor, sugar, and crunching. That's why it's delicious. That's why it is. Do you guys know what Crunchmouth is?

Oh, yeah. Well, I was going to say, like, that must be the phenomenon. Captain Crunch, in my mind, is also known as the worst offender of shredding the roof of your mouth. You eat, like, you finish a bowl, or if you're like me, four bowls of cereal, and then it feels like someone took a piece of sandpaper to the roof of my mouth. Oh, no, there's a technique for eating it. You have to suck all of the milk out of each piece of Captain Crunch, and then it's soft enough to crunch the crunch.

That's the secret to not getting crunch mouth when you eat. You should have asked me. I didn't know it was a special skill, but no. I have some other interesting breakfast food trivia, too. Do you guys know what frothal is? Raffle It sounds like Fried waffle

Oh I was going to say like if the fragles Open to Waffle It's like a falafel waffle Froffle F-R-O-F-F-L-E-S It is a portmanteau word Frozen Waffle When you eat two

Correct Frozen Waffles It is the official name of Eggos Before they became AGO It was the name of Frozen Waffles

Market and sold That's horrible Yeah It sounds like one of those Marketing meetings Where they went with the first idea they had. Yeah, frozen waffle.

Froffle, done. What's next? It's a cute fun word. It's madman era. They're all drunk. And basically people were eating frothals and it tasted eggy. So people started calling them

eggos and it kind of caught on, in my opinion, much better name than frothal. Oh yeah. So they officially changed the frothal name to agos. Speaking of waffles, do you guys know what the difference is between American waffles and Belgian waffles?

Is it the height? Like, Belgian waffles tend to be... In terms of ingredients. Oh, yeah, I thought it was just the size of the squares. I always thought it was the Belgian waffles had the big sort of indents in them that you could fill up with syrup and melted butter. They were kind of like tortilla shells for taco salad. It's a vehicle, really, just for butter and... Yeah, syrup delivery.

It's a dish that you can also eat. So this is a good trivia question. In American waffles, it's leavened with baking powder. And in Belgian waffles, it is leavened with yeast. And so Belgian waffles actually taste more... Breadie. Breadie. Huh.

So I wonder if I've gone to like, you know, a holiday and express and used their Belgian waffle maker, but it's actually just like American waffles with baking powder. It really is the batter. I'm not really eating Belgian waffles. No. Not a style. It is not the hardware. It is basically the dough.

You know, it's funny. Today I looked at Belgian waffles because I went out to brunch with some people and the waitress insisted that Belgian waffles come with whipped cream and strawberries. And we're like, huh, I didn't know that about Belgian wold. That's what a Belgian waffle is. It comes with all this. She is wrong. She was wrong.

We didn't correct her that. She's bringing our food, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, those big indents, you can fill it with saliva and you wouldn't know. I looked up on Tamima, and I don't know if you remember those bottles that I'm shaped like a lady, like kind of like a slave lady, to be honest. Yeah, she was. And Jamima is the company that makes syrup and pancakes. It's pancake better and flour.

Yeah, and then she's the little picture of her on the, on the, on. the bottle, yeah. Never seen this before. So, Aunt Jemima's shape is a little bit controversial. So this company formed in 1889. It was after the Civil War, after slavery. But they decided they were trying to figure out a way to get rid of all this flour. There was a big flower glute.

And so they were like, oh, we'll put it in plain white packages and sell it as pancake batter. But they needed a hook. And so one of the founders went to a minstrel show, like a vaudeville minstrel show. And he saw this. It was really a white man in blackface dressed up as this character called Aunt Jama. There was a song called Entomima. He was like, oh, that's a perfect spokesperson for the pancake batter. And so they ended up getting a woman named Nancy Green, and she was a former slave.

And she was the face of Entomima pancakes. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, from 1890 to 1923 when she died. Wow. Yeah. Did she get paid? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

I don't know how much. I don't know. There may or may or not have been exploitation involved in the relationship. But yeah, she was... But somebody was actually modeled on a real person. It wasn't just... They picked her because she looked like the white man and black face from the... Weird.

So she was the spokesperson for like 30 years. It got bought by the Quaker Company. A few years later, they got another Aunt Shama to be the person. And so if you see her, it's a woman, a black woman, and she's wearing a handkerchief on her head, and she's wearing an apron. Very homey. Homey, but it's based on a slave stereotype. It's based on the Mamie's stereotype.

Right, exactly. And so on the 100th anniversary of Onchama, on or 1989 they changed her image they took the handkerchief off her head and they gave her pearl earrings and like a nice nice little hairdo she's in like a like a like a like a suit right right and i remember that was a big deal of them moving away from sort of the mammy imagery which had always been anywhere from mildly to outright offensive depending on it was explicit yes it was it really was and and it wasn't authentic but i like how it sort of made the twist of here you know here's the woman who might be preparing your paint takes to she is buying it for herself and her own family

I mean, there's sort of the shift behind the scenes of what that imagery means. Or she's the person who owns this company. Yeah, exactly. She's the business owner. She's not, yeah, right. So now their website talks about how, like, mothers from all sorts of diverse backgrounds want to take care of their families and they serve. Yeah, so it's like, how do they take the existing name Aunt Jemima and spin it?

Like, why is this called this if it's not like a house slave? But when I was a little kid, I, you know those frangelico bottles? It's the picture, the monk. Like, I used to try to make him marry. No, it makes total sense. They have so much in common. They're both bottles. Yeah, exactly.

They're made of glass. We're both glass. We're both glass. But let's stop denying our true destiny. No frills, delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders. Now at no-frails.ca.

This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. We're not going to find it in the news because the police covered everything all up.

On August days. This is where the story really starts. We started off the top of the second when talking about all the cereals and the general mills. And, you know, certainly there are like sort of the big three in terms of serials, right? You got your general mills, post, and Kellogg's. I think we would probably agree. Kellogg himself was a pretty interesting character. John Harvey Kellogg. He was a seventh-day Adventist doctor, physician. And he really was on a mission to just sort of save everyone's souls through healthy living. He thought the two greatest evils in the world were eating me.

meat and masturbation. And that these were the causes. Whoa. Right. Well, presumably one led to the other maybe. The meat turns you on. So in 1876, John Kellogg basically took over control of a health institute in Battle Creek, Michigan, which was sort of upstate in the country.

And there were a number of these sanatoriums and restful places at the time. And so he took over and started running a lot of his own... Bizarre beliefs. There you go. Belief. He didn't have a lot of scientific backing for a lot of his therapies. But they were incredibly popular, and it was a very upscale place where you would come to sort of recuperate and whatever was ailing you. So you would stay there for days or weeks or months at a time.

It's like vacation. It was kind of like a vacation. And it was. I mean, it really was very high class. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt stayed there and John Rockefeller stayed there. So he was catering to a pretty upscale, you know. Oh, I also have more celebrities who stayed. Oh, really?

Yeah. Amelia Earhart. Ah. Henry Ford. Mary Todd Lincoln, Abe Lincoln's wife. So there you go. I mean, really, the upper crust of society at the time. So, you know, he had a lot of these treatments.

You know, if you were underweight, one of the regimens was up to 26 meals a day. You were confined to your bed. And his reasoning was, if you're underweight, you can't afford to expend a single calorie. So you were confined to your bed, fed. They had attendants who would brush your teeth. So you would not be expending the physical effort to brush your teeth. He was just kind of crazy. But he had some other good things, too.

He was one of the first places to introduce yogurt. He had the Bulgarian milk preparation known as yogurt and really help popularize yogurt as a health food. There might be rumors, and this is not really proven or disproven, but some of the yogurt is for eating, and some of the yogurt is used to put in your butt. How do you keep the two straight? John Harvey Kellogg, he did a lot of healthy things, right? Definitely go out, take a bike ride, some fresh air. Right.

No alcohol. No, yeah. And he described his sanitarian system as, quote, a composite physiologic method comprising hydrotherapy, use of water, jacuzzi tubs, and also up your butt as well, phototherapy, which is light, thermotherapy, electrophotherapy, which we're getting a little bit crazy, mechanotherapy, which is kind of exercising, moving around, dietetics, physical culture, cold air cure, and health. train. I mean, and you know, then as now, things that were exotic, a lot of people was like, oh, it must be good. It's exotic. And he was wildly successful running it. But he definitely was a big proponent of things up your butt. Calonics and edemas. He really was, yes. He was obsessed with the idea of perfecting a breakfast cereal. And he, you know, there are a lot of stories about exactly how he created it. And we even talked about this in episode four of the podcast, actually.

It's a little murky exactly how much was accidental versus intentional. But he really was on a to create a healthy breakfast cereal. So he would boil some wheat, roll it out, bake it, and then flake it, and serve it. And it was a very popular, very popular dish in his sanatorium. Patients who he served... Not up the butt. Yes, not up the butt. Just to clarify.

Talk about his mouth. My goodness. Crunch butt. One of the patients who was at his sanatorium who he served the flakes to was a young man named C.W. Post. Wow. It is the same post, in fact, who went on to found post cereals. He left and really was like, this is great. He saw dollar signs.

He's like, we need to sell this. People are going to buy this. This is going to be awesome. Kellogg really wanted no part of it. He didn't want to license the recipe. He just wasn't interested in kind of cashing in and post, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, was basically like, all right, well, I'll do it myself. A lot of imitators, I guess, sprung up in and around Battle Creek, Michigan, cranking out

cereals and they were really popular. And they were all marketed as health foods. You know, this wasn't like a breakfast treat. It was something like whole grains, and they had names like Food of Eden and Corn Cure. That's with 2Ks, by the way. Sometimes they would even just go outright rip off. There was also grip nuts. Well, you have to keep in mind, before breakfast cereals, what did people eat?

The rich people ate eggs and meat and fat, and the poor people ate gruel or grains that you have to cook and labor. And just stew them for hours and hours. And so this was a giant. revolution in how people ate things. It was fast and it was healthy. But one of the things that Post included in every pack of grape nuts was a little leaflet entitled The Road to Wellville. And many of you may remember that there was a movie named The Road to Wellville, which is, which was based on a lot of these real-life events, based on Kellogg and Post. Kellogg eventually, eventually got into the business himself, but way after a lot of the other ones.

His first cereal was cornflakes, which he came out with in 19. So like Colin said, the Battle Creek Health Facility was pioneered by John Harvey Kellogg. Most people know there are two Kellogg brothers. There's John Harvey Kellogg and also his brother, W.K. Kellogg is more of the business partner. To go back to talking about Post, when they started making the flake cereal, you know, John Harvey Kellogg, Grandpa Paul of the Sanitarium, he's basically like anybody who's interested can see how we make this process. And his brother, W.K. Kellogg, was like, hold on a second. He might be able to market this. Hey, let's keep it a secret.

But John Harvey's like, no, everybody should see him. He was an idealist. Yeah, he was. And so this is how C.W. Post saw how they made this type of cereal and went off and started his own company. So W.K. Kellogg really had a smart for marketing, for selling. He is the mastermind behind putting the toy in cereal. boxes. And what a brilliant

idea. And so in 1945, the first form of, and you know, we have a lot of different serial toy types, right? There's like the mail-aways, and I don't even know what kind of crazy technology ones they have now with QR codes and point system. But the first

in-box cereal toy is for pep cereal, Kellogg's pep. The toy itself, you know, if they do this today, they probably would get sued. They're basically a pinback button. They're like, you know, oh, yes. I wonder how many kids ate it. Or how many kids stabbed themselves. Very cute pinback buttons in each box of pep cereal. The pins, I think they're about like maybe 90 different designs. And most of them are like army squadrons. Harrah, hurrah, hurrah, America.

And some of them were newspaper comics, like the Phantom and Superman and Felix the Cat. And it was, it was 1945 and they had these pinback buttons until 1947. Other companies follow suit and was like, wait a minute, let's put toys in the box too. But I wonder if he was copying Cracker Jack. Oh, I don't know. Because I think that was like 1912 when Cracker Jack started. I believe it was definitely inspired by the Cracker Jack between the turn of the century when cereals were really a health food thing.

And as you say, by the time we get to the 30s, 40s in there, they had seen this whole market of, hey, kids can buy these and we can market to children. The first cereal, inbox cereal toys were pins. Hey kids Sharp objects I went on eBay And I wanted to see if people still had them or something Because I want to see some pictures

I was going to ask you yeah What these go for And I ended up spending a whole bunch of money Buying some of those classic pins They're cool I mean they're just normal little pins But it just looks so retro And on the back on the metal

Actually does say Kellogg's pet That's awesome It's very very cool And you can buy I think as of last night The whole set of 90 is a little bit under $400. That's not as outrageous as I would have guessed. For the first inbox serial type of tour.

We should put some pictures up on the website once you get them. And I actually have more drama on Kellogg versus Post. Oh, yeah. In the form of the Pop-Tart. Years later, they're still at it, Kellogg v. Post. So Post adapted a new process of enclosing food and foil to keep it fresh. Right, they first used it for dog food But then they modified it

And they're gonna start using for this new breakfast food They were coming out with And it's like the new toaster prepare food Very quick and easy for the family with the toaster And so they announced that they're making this new product In 1963 telling the press They even have a really nice name It's called Country Squares

They revealed Country Squares Before it was ready And so Kellogg was like Toaster Pastries, huh? In six months, Kellogg developed their own... Pop-Tart. Yep, their own toaster pastry called Pop-Tart. It was aimed for the family, but still kind of more skewed towards kids. And they had, like, little animated characters to kind of sell it.

It became super, super popular. And actually, the original Pop-Tart didn't have frosting. Ah, it was all inside the thing. It was kind of like a plain pastry with stuff in it, mostly because they haven't developed the type of frosting That won't just melt sitting up against a heating Or catch on a fire, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, but later they finally found a frosting recipe or develop a formula that could withstand the toaster heat. Wow. Space Age polymers, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does country squares come out? Country squares did come out, and they renamed it a couple times. Other companies also jumped in, too,

just like the cereal craze. Right, right. Toastables, toast them, like all kind of variations of toast. Pep tarts. Yeah. So we've had this entire show so far, and we've talked about, I think, most of the major staples of breakfast foods, from cereal to pancakes, to waffles to eggs and sausage, to pop tarts now, we have not discussed my favorite, favorite breakfast food, which I actually

don't really eat anymore. No. Climmy cash. For health reasons, don't really eat that much anymore. But when I feel like being bad, essentially, the thing that I gravitate towards a bagel with cream cheese. Oh. My absolute favorite, you know, if you get a really deep.

delicious bagel, crunchy, crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, cream cheese over the entire thing. And you are a native East Coaster. I am, in fact, an East Coaster, so I did not understand that, like, I was growing up with, like, delicious bagels, and that they didn't actually technically have them, you know, elsewhere. And so it was very much, again, as I mentioned on our bathroom episode, I lived in Japan for two years, and those two years are very difficult, like, find it. You could not find a place in Japan that

will serve you. They will find places that have bagels. You will find places that have cream cheese, but to find a place that will, like, get a bagel and toast it and serve it with cream cheese. It just has not gone over there. They just eat them, I think. I don't really know. I don't really know with it. I've never watched a Japanese person eat a bagel. I decided I wanted to research bagels and just figure some stuff out. The first thing that I read was, so this sentence as of this recording was extant on Wikipedia. And this I really wanted to read out loud.

Contrary to common legend, the bagel was not created in the shape of a stirrup to commemorate the victory of Poland's King Jan the 3rd Sobieski over the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Oh, damn it!

It was not a stirrup. I want you guys to just put that right out of your head. That common legend that we've all heard so many times. That trope. Yes, that old, that old canard. If I have to hear one more time about Sturgeoned bagels.

Now, that said, bagels are in fact traditionally oblong. They're not circular. So as far as anybody can tell, bagels were probably invented in Poland, came to New York City by way of Jewish immigrants. The other hotbed of bagel activity, as I found it, is Montreal. Montreal. See, I didn't actually know this until I started doing this research. Oh, Montreal.

Well, they also have a big Jewish immigrant community. With bagels, what makes them special is really the preparation. I mean, they're the shape, but the preparation. Mainly bagels are boiled first in a water solution and then baked. What makes Montreal bagels different is basically Montreal bagels. They are boiled in water, but the water is a special solution that has honey in it. So it's honey water. They're loosely shaped into a circle, but not perfect, baked in a wood fire oven.

Oh, that sounds good. So there's lobe as sooty on the bottom. It's kind of charred, but just very... That sounds delicious. It is so good. So versus American. Right. So here's the thing.

So Jewish immigrants went to Montreal and went to New York City. How did bagels explode from there? So it all, so it begins with Harry Lender, born at the turn of the century. He grew up in Lenders. Biggles. You see Lenders bagels. in the freezer section of your supermarket. Like, supermarkets sell fresh bagels

and supermarkets sell packaged bagels that are in the bread aisle, but lenders bagels predominantly are in the freezer. So he had his family in Poland, but, you know, increasing anti-Semitism in the early part of the 20th century caused him to first leave his family and come to New Jersey,

and then once things got better sent for his family and brought them over, he had made bagels in Poland and started working in a bakery in Passaic, New Jersey, and saved his money. And this is the interesting. thing, I had absolutely no idea, established his bagel bakery, his own bakery after a year in New Haven, Connecticut, the city right outside of which I grew up in. At that time, bagels in the U.S., this is the, you know, the 20s, 30s, were a local ethnic food. It was an ethnic

food. Yeah. This was the first bagel bakery in New Haven because he kind of called ahead. You know, we went to New Haven and he talked to people who ran stores and whatever. And they were like, oh, yeah, we'll buy bagels from you because there's nobody here that actually even makes them. And so they were traditionally, you know, they were eaten on Sundays in the Jewish community. So he went to New Haven, brought his family to New Haven. By the 1960s, the Lender family makes a name for themselves in New Haven. Everybody knows who they are. They're very popular.

But by everybody, I mean the Jewish community. Right. Because even by the 1960s, if you were like an Italian-American living in New Haven, you know, enjoying the pizza pie, which had, again, like, not originated in New Haven, but, like, New Haven was one of the hotbeds of pizza activity in, like, the 40s, 50s, 60s, you know, when, again, people around the rest of the country did not know what a pizza pie was, right? But if you were a member of that Italian-American community in New Haven, you did not necessarily eat bagels because they were a Jewish food enjoyed by Jewish families on Sundays, and you had to buy them in Jewish bakeries, and you just didn't go there. So what they came up with was freezing bagels. And apparently at first, okay, so they ate them on Sundays, right? And they were selling thousands of bagels on Sundays.

So what was happening was they were doing nothing during the week and then going nuts on Saturday to make fresh bagels. So apparently for like two years, they were freezing bagels during the week, thawing them out. Selling them on Sundays? And not telling people that they weren't, no, people didn't notice. Once they could start kind of putting them into like plastic bags, one of the new inventions, the plastic bag, then they could start selling them into supermarkets. And again, people didn't know what they were. So lenders had to get the frozen product out to supermarkets.

And then educate people about it. The lenders bagels bakery is credited for taking bagels from local ethnic food to something that is enjoyed around the world. Again, a triumph of marketing like Kellogg's, you know, and like post, you know, just like having that seat of inspiration like to take the little thing and make it big. You know, the thing is, there is no legal definition of, like, what a bagel is in the United States. So any, any, I think, believe it was called a torus, T-O-R-U-S of bread, cylinder wrapped into a ring, yeah, exactly.

Any bread torus, right, you can just call it a bagel. But really, I mean, there's special things with the dough and the process and the boiling and things like that, yeah. Oh, my God, who's getting hungry? I think we have to go have breakfast for dinner. Oh, my God. So I have, in fact, I've always enjoyed Karen's music rounds, and I thought to myself, I've got to put together a music round of my own. And so to close this episode, I have, in fact, prepared a round of music for us.

All Fleetwood Mac. And all the Fleetwood Mac spectacular round. It's all Fleetwood Mac instrumentals. And you have to tell me the year. In fact, a theme to all of this. And so I invite you to enjoy this round of music. I'm so happy because now I can finally play. Yeah, you get to play the music round.

And the name of this is needle drops. Needle drops. Okay, all right. Thinking record. Let's go. I'm going to need you guys to tell me the name of the artist. Okay, okay. In this case, the musical group.

So here is number one. They say our love won't pay the rent. For it's earned, our money's off in spring. I guess... Sunny and Cher? It is, in fact, Sunny and Share. Yes. Okay.

Number two. Chuck Barry. Chuck Barry, indeed it is. Chuck Barry's You Never Can Tell. Me, famous in Pulp Fiction. Number three, name the group. And time goes by so slowly. I can never get the brother's street.

Colin. Is that the righteous brothers? It is, in fact, the righteous brothers. brothers yeah i know what you mean though it's like everly brothers eyesley brothers righteous brothers okay question four name the band name the group i told my mind on a jagged sky i just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in but I don't know, I can't, I don't know who it is. The musical group is

Kenny Rogers and the first edition. Oh, really? Wow, that's not just Kenny Rogers. Okay. Question five. Name the singer. Live six foot, seven foot, eight foot, bunch. Daylight come and we one,

four, six foot. Karen. Harry Belafonte. Yes, Harry. Bella Fonzie All right For the sixth and final clip

Remember there is a theme attached to all of these Name the band The Band Colin. That's Derek and the Dominoes. Indeed, it is Derek and the Domino's, the piano outro of Layla. Yes.

Oh, I know some of these songs are used in movies. Is it, I think it's not just movies, but is that they're all used in dance scenes in movies? No, not, not. It is not in fact that they're used in dance scenes and movies, but that in fact these are used in specific scenes, specific famous scenes in movies. Right. So, now we can go back over them and you can tell me exactly what was. happening in what was the movie and what was happening what's the movie

what's the movie is it groundhog day it is in fact groundhog day oh right right it's on the radio when he wakes up in the morning these are those these are those things where it's like oh my god I can't hear this song anymore without thinking of that scene in the movie it's the alarm clock it's when he wakes up in the morning it's playing on the radio in in punk satani

Chuck Berries, you never can tell, Karen, you already said was... Pulp Fiction, the dancing between... At Jack Rabbit Slims. Between Uma Thurman and John Travolta. Ghost bars. What scene made Unchained Melody popular again? Ghosts. Yes.

Yes. And the making out... Sexy Pottery. Sexy Pottery time. Patrick Swayze, Ghost, and Demi Moore. Indeed. I just dropped in to see what condition... Kenny Rogers in the first edition,

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in. That, I think, is the toughest one on here. Man, I can't place it. Uh, is it a Tom Cruise movie? It is, in fact, the tripping scene in the Big Lebowski. Oh! Really made that sound popular again. Yes, yes, yes.

And again, probably a lot of these movies cause these songs to pick up in terms of popularity, because it wasn't just that it was used underneath what was going on. It was that the song itself was so kind of high up in the viewer's consciousness. Like this song is happening, right? And the juxtaposition of what was going on with the song itself. Seven foot, eight foot, bunch. Anybody want to venture a guess on the famous movie scene that Harry Belafonte's Dale was part of? I know that.

You don't do. Yes, in fact. Finally, Derek and the Domino's Laylo is used to great effect in the closing scenes of Colin. Goodfellas. I know it's. Oh, your name is Colin Knight? I'm trying to spread the love around a little bit, Karen. Karen's just so excited she gets to play in the music round.

A needle drop, by the way, is the term for when a movie director drops in a well-known song specifically into the movie in order to create that kind of jarring effect with the audience. That's a good term That was a good reason around It was my first playable Thank you guys for joining me And thank you guys the listeners For listening in

Hope you learn a lot about bagels And also The dramatic rivalry between Post and Kellogg Over Pop-Tarts and cereal And Aunt Jemima And what is more likely to shred the roof of your mouth Captain Crunch or a pin

both of which you can find in a cereal box Captain Horatio Magellan I love that name you can find us on Zoom Marketplace on iTunes on Stitcher and also on our website which is good job brain.com

don't forget to join us on Twitter and Facebook and I guess I'll see you guys next week. See at the movies. 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 podcasts.