Good Job, Brain! - 218: Are You Worth Your Salt?

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

These trivia pretzels are making us thirsty because we are upping our sodium intake this week to celebrate the crystalline savory goodness that is salt. Learn how people absolutely and hilariously dunked on Thomas Jefferson and his quest for the mysterious and legendary "salt mountain." Take Dana's salty quiz, and take a trivia joyride with Colin across the Bonneville Salt Flats, and find out why car commercials are always being filmed there. And get ready for a truly wild, wild, wild origin story behind the humble barnacle. ALSO: World Porridge Making Championship, NACL word quiz Good Job, Brain is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. For advertising inquiries, please contact [e-mail]! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Salutation, salutary, saliently salivating for salsa, salmon berries, and Salvador Dali. This is Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. Today's show's episode 218, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your happy, snappy, strappy, yappy chappies. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

And let's jump into our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have our random trivial pursuit card. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's answer some questions. Here we go. Blue Edge, Virginia. geography, which actor was effectively banned from China after portraying Heinrich

Herrer in the 1997 movie Seven Years in Tibet? That was the horse Colin. I think that was Richard Gere. Is that right? Incorrect. Dana. Was it Brad Pitt? Correct.

It is Brad Pitt. From the movie seven years in Tibet. The card here says he was allowed to visit with Angelina Jolie in 2014 while she promoted one of her films. So as an accessory to somebody, it's okay. Band, except for when he isn't, yeah. That invitation is closed now, I would guess. Yeah, that's true. Right.

Pink Wedge for pop culture. Contestants on which long-running TV competition have one goal to outwit, outplay and outlast one another. I cannot take this from Chris. Oh gosh. I know. Chris, please. I've watched this show.

Survivor. It's Survivor. How many seasons are we in? I think 40. But ballpark number. 40-ish. Yeah, well, they do two a year. So it's been on for over 20 years.

So they've done 40 seasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, not 40 years. Like, you're like, it's been all my whole life. Yeah. Yeah. Fun fact, my father-in-law's realtor was one of the contestants in the first season of Survivor. Oh.

First season. I remember the first season. Who was it? Jenna. Jenna. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember first season people.

Everybody remember first season people. They all became like celebrities. Yeah. And or went to jail, right? Oh, right. Yeah. A different kind of celebrity. those are not mutually exclusive yeah yellow wedge which english monarch was on the throne at the time of

the american civil war oh cullen uh uh queen victoria right correct queen victoria yeah okay yeah yeah i was panicking there from me i was just i was just talking about this yeah okay yeah funny enough that was actually a question on our our good job praying monthly quiz packet for our Patreon pledgers. I knew it sounded so familiar, so your packet is already paying off with helping with trivia. I knew the answer to this.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so on Patreon, we have a tier. It's $10 or more. You get like a monthly quiz pack that you can print it home and run Pub trivia. Good job, brain style with your family, your friends, yourself, your dogs,

your cats, your lizards. And if your dog gets a question right, please write in and tell us. Great, Victoria. Roof. Uncanny. Oh, my God. A talking dog.

Purple Wedge. Weird one. What topped Lake Superior State University's 2016 list of banished words. Multiple choice. Okay. Okay. 2016. 2016.

Lake Superior State University list of banished words. Okay. Word number one. So. Like, S.O. Okay. Okay. Word number two, man spreading.

Word number three, vape. Gosh. Banned word. Banned, banished words? Well, the weird one here is, so. So. I'll just guess. I mean, I'm not going to buzz in or anything,

but I'm going to say I think that. Does anybody else want to just, we all want to just guess here and see what happens? I'll support that half-hearted effort. Yeah, I mean, I view to it. Why is it on there? It's conspicuous compared to the others, right? Yeah.

It would be a weird distractor. Let me put it that way if that wasn't the answer. So that was kind of like a window through our pup trivia team, how we talk it out. You are correct, Chris, it is so. Okay. Because that seems a little bit out of left field. And the reason is it's because the card says it's because so many people begin sentences with it. Oh, gosh, yeah.

Weird language policing kind of thing. That's terrible. So comes in more of a conversational type of language setting when we speak. I don't think anybody's writing, you know, typing out in papers, as oh. Oh, I do. I actually do. Really? When I'm in, I kind of became conscious of it.

I tend to write, especially in Slack, I tend to sort of consciously try to write how I speak just because I'm trying to convey. friendliness because some people do not, but I often find myself looking back on a bunch of messages I've just written in like every sentence starts with so. It's like, so I'm noticing that this is going on. So what I think we should do, so I'm just checking with you to make sure it's okay.

Yeah. It's also a subtle way of just establishing that these are threaded. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, they're trying to. I just want to kind of ease into that sentence, you know?

Just gently go into it. There was a, At my junior high school, there was a teacher who if you were, if you were answering something class and you said, like, you know, in the middle of, and he, like, the teacher would say, like, when you said it, they would just echo it right back at you. And that was it. And that was just they're like, annoying, subtle way, or not so subtle, I guess, I'm trying to correct you. And it went beyond comical to truly frustrating if you were trying to, like, actually say something. I just did it myself, of course, there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a speech impediment or you're nervous. guess what? You're going to get slapped down and publicly humiliated by the professor until you're speaking in front of the class. Ever again. Anyways, so let's move on to the Greenwich. That's fine.

Greenwich for science and nature. What is the term for a natural depression in a land surface formed by the dissolution and collapse of a cavern roof? Oh gosh. I'll say it again. What is the term for a natural depression depression in a land surface formed by the dissolution and collapse of a cavern roof.

Chris. How about a sinkhole? It is a sinkhole. All right. All right. Last question on this card. Which of the following is not a yoga pose? Multiple choice.

Okay. Kite, torch, plow, or chair. All right. I'll tell you, I'll tell you right now, it's not chair. That's my least favorite position. Yeah, I know chair is one. Kite, plow, or torch is basically. Yeah.

Is there anything we can eliminate right off the bat like you do yoga and you've done this poet? I mean, chair is one. I know this. I should know this. I think torch is one. Yeah, like holding your hand like Statue of Liberty. I'll say, I say no kite because I think plow, they are plows in India where yoga's from.

but kites, I don't think of as Indian. I know there are kites in India, but... I like the reasoning. Let's flip the card. It is Torch. Oh, really? Okay. Okay.

I wanted to have little pictures of the poses on there. I know. Probably beyond the scope of the card. Because Torch seems like it would maybe be part of the warrior sequences. Yeah. Yeah. That's what? Well, you know what?

It's a good question. It's a well-written question because the wrong answer. answer was said it was such a suckery answer. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yep. Yep. Yep. And we have our listener extra bonus fun fact slash question. This is from our purple Patreon pledge. Steve Gill from Louisville, Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah. Covering all the bases.

So here is his question for you guys today. He says, Pluto used to be the smallest planet in the solar system until it was. downgraded to a Dorf planet. So we already know every planet is larger than Pluto, but can you guess how many moons in the solar system are larger than Pluto? That's the whole choice. Okay. Okay.

Two, three, five, or seven. How many moons are larger than Pluto? I'm going to go on the high side. I'm going to go on the high side. I'm going to say five or seven. Yeah. I mean, just because some of these planets have so many. any dang moons, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Also, and Pluto is really little. Yeah, sure, seven. I'll say five. The correct answer is seven, and here are the seven. Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Iyo, Europa, Triton, and everybody's favorite, our moon. The moon, good all moon. The moon is bigger than Pluto.

I don't think I realize that. Yeah, me neither. Now that Pluto's not the smallest planet in our solar system, what planet is the smallest now. Mercury. Mercury. Okay. Oh, okay.

Yes. An additional fun fact from Steve, Jupiter's Ganymede and Saturn's Titan. Both are larger than Mercury. Yeah. Yeah, there's some big moons out there. Yeah. Too many dang moons.

Too many dang moons on Disney Plus. That's when they start scraping the barrel for Star Wars properties to turn into TV shows. All right. Thank you, Steve. And I want to give a very, very special shout out to McScribeface. Scribe. McScribeface, which is the name of our good job brain, volunteer transcription squad. A bunch of people volunteer to start transcribing our catalog of 200 episodes. It's a small start. but you know awesome job thank you so kind stew thank you amber my mind's like nothing i say is worth writing down what are you doing yes thank you today's theme for the episode uh was inspired by a few things i want to share with you guys earlier this october uh the winner of

the 28th annual golden spurtle was announced and what exactly is a golden spurtle well what's even just a normal non-golden spurtle. Isn't that a Pokemon? That's what I thought. That's a porthal though, I think. Yeah, that's my only guess. This is the first time I've looked it up. A spurtle is a cooking utensil

healing all the way from Scotland. It's kind of like, it's kind of like a hefty wooden wand. Like it's a rod. And it's traditionally used to stir porridge. So instead of a spoon or a spatula, it's this, like, thick magician's wand. It's a very traditional tool. And as for the golden spurtle, well, it's also known as the annual world porridge-making championship.

Oh. And it made the news earlier this October. Miriam Groot from the Netherlands took home the honor of having the awarded the golden spurtle this year and it was a little bit different this year because they had to be held virtually and so people submitted their recipe and she just took the bite over at Zoom

she was like this is the best porous I've ever had seems like a challenge for a cooking contest I'm just going to say just looking just doing it through Zoom they're just like that's good ooh that one looks really good yeah can you hold it up to the camera a little closer Pre-pandemic times, the world porridge making championship is held in Carbridge, Scotland.

So two main categories. One category is OG regular porridge making. And then there's another category which is like specialty porridge where they can add things or make it into a different form. And so for this virtual version, they just did the specialty thing. They had to submit like a recipe and then they submit a video of them cooking it. So this year, Miriam Group 1, she made. Get this, Aaron Cheney out of porridge oats. So aren't chis are Italian, the deep fried risotto balls.

But she made it with risotto oats. Nice. And then also Halloween just happened. We also talked a bit about candy recently on the show, too. So I think it's time for something salty. So this week, are you worth your salt? So Karen, I have to ask, can you go back to your alliteration and read us some of the words that you used in your alliteration? I said, salutations, salutarians, saliently salivating for salsa, salmon berries, and Salvador Dali.

So at least a couple of those words come from the word salt. Yeah. Definitely, I think salivating. definitely salsa salsa for sure what? Salsa comes from yeah sauce

sauce the word sauce comes from salt it all comes from the Latin you know sal or salt salad goes back to salt salad comes from salt because the first salads were mixed vegetables

and they put a salty brine or the dressing over them the ancient Romans so that's where salad comes from was from the word salt and even sauce like sauce is a salty thing you put on I had no idea

salary comes from salt also um you know probably not because people i think people said like oh because they you know salt was so valuable that the you know the roman soldiers were paid in salt i think it actually might just mean like other people said it might just mean like it's your salt money you know it's your money to go buy salt and other things salt is just so fundamental uh it's so important to to sustaining human life right like we think of it now as like an optional condiment that we add on to things just like you know a couple hundred years ago like then past that the beginning of humanity people have always had to be thinking like where are we going to get salt very important um if you i had heard that it becomes more important

to get salt to get like rock salt when you start living in cities and because with hunter gatherers they would go kill a fresh animal and just like eat it raw and they'd get all the sodium that they might need from that but then when people started living in cities and towns and things like that it started to be like well we need salt we need salt put it on our bodies but then also we need huge quantities of it and certainly like britain in the american colonies to preserve our meat with because nobody has there's no refrigerator now there were salt mines there's salt mines in in great britain where they were getting a lot of salt like rock salt that was like under the earth and when they first started sending the first you know colonists like to you know modern day america

they were kind of hoping that like maybe they'll find some salt you know maybe they'll sort of Maybe there'll be a bunch of salt over there and they can start adding to the British Empire's... Commodities. Strategic salt reserves. Yeah, exactly. Because, like, if you're an individual, you're wondering, where am I as an individual going to get salt?

And if you're a government or, you know, a world power, you're wondering on a macro scale about salt supplies. I found this story that I'm titling Thomas Jefferson's Salt Mountain. Because this was fascinating. So the colonists get to America and they realize, you know, they're set up shop on the East Coast. There's no salt. They're not finding vast natural quantities of salt. So they end up importing their salt from grape rate.

Really? Yes. So America imported a lot of its salt. And they also found that Native Americans did not actually use, generally use salt to preserve their meats. They smoked them. So their traditional method of preserving meats was smoking over a low fire. Then, like around 1776 or so, becomes kind of difficult for the colonies, which now an open rebellion, to import salt from Great Britain.

This is when you see a lot of salt works opening up on the coastal states, essentially. Is that just like drying? Exactly, drying, drying it out of the seawater. This became a popular military target for the British Navy. Oh. They would go find the saltworks and try to destroy them. salt was tough, you know, for the colonies during the Revolutionary War. It was tough to get your hands on.

And so once the war was over, America starts up importing salt from Great Britain again. But still, it's like, how can we be salt independent? Where are we going to get some salt? So enter Thomas Jefferson, one Thomas Jefferson, who you've no doubt heard about from the smash hit musical Hamilton, played to perfection on Broadway by DeVee, indeed, indeed. was in fact a real person and was serving as the third president of the United States. How about that?

1801 to 1809, Jefferson was in office. And Jefferson, as you may know, was super hot for Western expansion. He wanted to continue to move west across the North American continent and take that land for America. And famously, Jefferson, of course,

wanted to and did the Louisiana purchase. Yep, yep, yeah, yeah. Buying from France the rights to the middle of the modern United States of America. Just a huge, huge chunk of land. A huge chunk of land, and a huge chunk of land that France didn't even, they never even went there.

Like, it was, like, France had established New Orleans in what is, like, modern-day Louisiana. And then they're literally just like, uh, and all that stuff up there is ours too. We've never been there or anything. We don't know what's up there, but that's just ours. That's ours now. Okay. Jefferson, when he did Louisiana,

a purchase he was buying outright the you know the lands that france had was actually occupying and they're like we'll leave but then the rest of it was like we are we are paying you to agree that we are going to go in there and try to take it you know you're not when you're not going to stop us meanwhile there's people living in there that would have been very surprised to find out yeah to learn that their land had been claimed not not once but twice not some guy who's never been here just so my land to somebody else who's never been there. Oh, man. The other funny thing with the Louisiana purchase is that it was, at this point, it was

kind of an open constitutional question as to whether the president of the United States could even just buy a bunch of land, could spend, you know, at the time, $15 million, whether the president could even just unilaterally do that. It's like, well, shouldn't Congress kind of get involved? You know, remember America's very young, you know? It's like, should Congress be doing this? Can the president do that? Well, he did.

He went ahead and bought it. Congress did end up ratifying the treaty, but Jefferson had to convince Congress or wanted to try to convince Congress why that this deal that he signed was good and that they should ratify it. So in the summer of 1803, you know, France and the U.S. signed this treaty. And then after that, Jefferson goes to Congress with this big report of information that he had had assembled, like all about Louisiana. and Louisiana at this point literally referred to modern-day Louisiana State and then straight up just a big old chunk of the whole thing. And this was in the report. Here we go.

One extraordinary fact relative to salt must not be omitted. There exists about 1,000 miles up the Missouri and not far from that river, a salt mountain, exclamation point in original. Exclamation point. Exclamation point, italics and exclamation point, a salt mountain. Wow. This mountain is said to be 180 miles long and 45 in width composed of solid rock salt without any trees or even shrubs upon it. Salt springs are very numerous beneath the surface of this mountain and they flow through the fissures and cavities of it.

So this was in this report that Jefferson said to Congress. I guess I have to explain how unbelievable this, like how fanciful and this sounded like cities paved with gold, like, because the sheer value of it, like a fairy tale. And this was picked up on by especially a lot of the newspapers that were opposed to Thomas Jefferson at this point. The New York Evening Post wrote an editorial about this. It was like, we think that it would have been no more than fair if the, if the. traveler who informed Mr. Jefferson of this territory of solid salt to have added that some leagues to the westward of it, there was an immense lake of molasses. And that between this lake and the mountain of salt, there was an extensive veil of hasty pudding,

stretching as far as the eye could reach and kept in a state of comfortable eatability by the warmth of the sun's rays. It's a candy land. This is a Pulitzer Prize for sarcasm. Yes. I was like, is this where Big Rock Candy Mountain came from? It may have. It may have.

Oh, no, no, no. I mean, there were other newspapers asking, where was the sugar mountain? Tell us where the length of whiskey is, you know? And as far as I can tell, this was the Dan Quail misspelling potato of its day. Like, if you didn't like Thomas Jefferson or his policies and a lot of people did not, or especially if you thought the Louisiana purchase was like a big waste of money, which a lot of people did. You run a clown on Thomas Jefferson.

So Thomas Jefferson gets just ratio over this. Just guns gone every day. The Boston Gazette wrote a poem about it. I wish I will read to you. Hero status of old to eternize his name set the temple of Diana all in a flame. But Jefferson lately of Bonaparte bought to pickle his fame a mountain of salt And another

paper said commenting sort of in a meta way on this whole thing was like that this quote has called forth more queer remarks

puns and epigrams than anything which has come to light under the present enlightened government in scare quotes This is a meme It was a meme

He's a meme Pomus Jefferson and his salt mountain So, where did this come from? Well, a lot of explorers who were out in the Louisiana territory were sending information back to the U.S. government. They did say that there was like they'd found a bunch of salt out there and they'd sent back samples of salt. And it seems like maybe somewhere in the translation, you know, like a whole lot of salt became like a whole mountain of salt, which then became in somebody's brain a literal, you know, mountain of salt. It seemed like it was a game of telephone that unfortunately ended with the president who just believed the final thing.

So when Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark out to explore the Louisiana purchase in 1804, he said like one of the reasons that he sent Lewis and Clark out there was that he wanted them to find the salt mountain because he really wanted to, like his rep was on the line and he wanted them to try to, he's like, tell me anything you find about salt. I need to know. So Lewis and Clark, two years later, come back in 1806, and guess what, they did not find in the Midwestern United States a giant mountain. Well, I mean, Karen, if they had found it, you would know, because there'd be a big salt mountain, you know, in America. So Lewis and Clark found nothing. And they came back, and they're like, we didn't find a salt mountain. And then apparently it all started up all over again. Oh, no.

Now that the newspapers are, we do not learn that Lewis confirmed. the account given by the president a few years since of the huge mountain of salt. Therefore, we conclude that it has dissolved. What? So, Jefferson leaves office 1809, Salt Mountain,

or anything like it had not been discovered. Now, fortunately, in May of 1811, after Jefferson has been gone for a while, left office for a while, there was an explorer whose name was George Sibley. He was a traitor at Fort

Osage, which is right by modern day Kansas City, Missouri. It's actually in the town of Sibley, Missouri, if you want to know how important George Sibley ends up being to that area. That's where the U.S. government had set up to trade with the Osage tribe of indigenous peoples, right? So he gets it in his head. He wants to go exploring, and he specifically, he wants to try to find Jefferson Salt Mountain. Now, the Osage tribe, what they end up showing him, is now considered to be probably what everybody had been talking about. And it is now known as the Great Salt Plains of Oklahoma. So, and that's, it's about a five-hour drive today from historic Fort Osage to the Great Salt Plains of Oklahoma, if you want to know how long they walk to get there. So it's a whole

bunch of, it's planes. And then underneath the plains is saline groundwater, salt groundwater. Probably just, there probably used to be a massive ancient sea there millions of years ago, but there's still salt round water. What happens is when the water level rises, the water level gets up to ground level, and then the sun bakes off the water. And it leaves salt. It leaves a big crust of salt all over the, all over the plains for miles and miles and miles. And indeed, this was, of course, this was all known to the tribes in that area. they used the salt they fought over there was a war over the salt you know yeah right uh so what's what uh sibley ends up writing is um after a long series of very hot weather this section is nearly all covered with

a solid rock of salt from five to twelve inches thick and immediately around the springs because there's salt springs that are kind of popping up too um a kind of hollow cones of salt are formed more than two feet above the general surface at one of these I hewed out with my tomahawk a block of salt 16 inches in thickness the quality of the rock salt is unquestionably superior

to any that I ever saw it is beautifully white and so yes they chunked off a lot of this salt they sent back specimens yes some of the salt did eventually get back to Jefferson so he did

eventually get to hold in his hands a chunk of salt from what turned out to be not a salt mountain, but salt plains. You might have heard of like the Bonneville salt flats also where they go, they set land speed records. Like that's the same thing. It's just salt from rising up from the ground. So the interesting thing today, so today you can visit the Great Salt Plains State Park in Oklahoma. And what people typically do there is, yeah, there's usually like a layer of salt over

the dirt. People don't really take home. I don't think they take home a lot of salt. But what's actually underground, a couple of feet underground, as crystals of a material. And material called selenite it's a form of a gypsum what you do is this is this is interesting it sounds like fun you dig a hole like two feet by two feet you know wide and deep well um big and in so doing and digging that hole you're probably actually destroying a lot of the crystals because they're very fragile but you can go do this for free because there's tons of these things you dig a hole you wait for it to fill up with water and then you take the water and you splash it gently against the sides of the hole you just dug to sort of it erodes the dirt away but

that leaves the crystals intact. And so you splash on the sides, and you get the crystals, and you pull these crystals out. And apparently it's the only place in the world you can find these. They have formed with an hourglass-shaped inclusion of clay inside them. So you look at it, and it's like a flat crystal with an hourglass of clay inside of it. And so that's the cool thing about going, I think, to the state park now, not so much the salt, which you can just get.

but yeah um you just go buy salt now you don't have to go we don't have to go find it out in the wild you know people from hundreds of years ago they're just they're just like us they say dumb things to congress and they get clowned on but the it's not the 24 hour it's not the 24 hour news cycle though it's like the two year news cycle where it just keeps going yeah it's not over it in a day or two can't get on top of it no you literally have to send out lewis and clark and be like find the salt mountain i'm getting killed out there Yeah, he's like, listen, you guys build me a salt mountain if you have to. It's like an episode of Veep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Dina, your turn. All right, I have a quiz for you all about salt. Basically, the answer to everything in this quiz is salt-related. It's all salt-related stuff. Farthingard buzzers ready, please? and let's get it started. Okay, the name of this lunchmeat comes from the Latin word for salt.

Chris. Salami. Salami. Salami is the lunchmeet with salt in the name. How about this? In 2017, chef Neustret Gukchi became known as this when his flambloient seasoning technique went viral. Think, Karen. Salt Bay.

Yeah. a salt bay. You could eat at his restaurants. They're very expensive, apparently. It's okay. Just as long as you don't, I think, order, like, the gold-covered steak. You're going to be okay.

Yeah, sure. This rural doll character shares her name with a wart that appears on the bottom of the foot or toes. Oh. Colin. Well, I mean, I can think of only a varucca salt. Verac salt.

I did not know the connection to what is, a plant or wart some type of. of a, what is it? Oh, that's good. Oh, that's such good. That's good. Yeah. The only difference between a greyhound and this cocktail is the salted rim.

Oh. Oh. You heard a horse, Colin? It's a salty dog, right? A salty dog. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cute.

It's a cocktail with Bob Carriage gin and grapefruit juice. And it's a greyhound if you don't salt the rim and if you do with the salty dog. that's such a cute name it is it makes me want one but okay anyway how about this formed in 1985 this group featuring

Cheryl James and Sandy Dinton is one of the best selling rap acts of all time oh Chris Salt and Peppa featuring Spinner that's what I saw them live

like a couple just three years ago oh yeah they're still out there yeah they're so good I was, I had actually, I, I thought of, I tried to look into salt and Peppa as a potential, you know, like either trivia thing or something like that. Actually, really, I was looking into, um, salt because her name, I, I feel like, I could see somebody getting the nickname Peppa and then, like, if you hang out with them enough, they're going to start calling you salt, but I really, but I don't, I don't know if that's how it happened, but that's my head canon, you know?

I like your fan etymology. There's already a Peppa. Yeah. And then they're just like, well, then I guess you're salt. Right. Well, it's funny because I think Sandy is actually Peppa, and I feel like that matches salt better. But it's a line from a song. They had a song.

And then they were like, ooh, that's a good name. Yes, because they had a different name. Yeah, yeah. And Spinderella. And Spinderella. And Spinderella. You know, she was 15 when she joined them. What? Wow.

I mean, you go back and you look and see so many celebrities start out. You're like, wow, they're so young, man, teenagers. I remember her, but I was like, oh, she's a grown-up, but I was a small child. So 15 is like a grown-up. Yeah. How about this? Until the 1990s, Mr. Salty was the mascot for what type of Nabisco product? No.

Oh, interesting. Until the 19. Okay. Oh. They retired him in the 90s for a bit. Saltine? Oh, that was my guess. Oh, really?

It's not, is it, is it writs? No. No. Oh, that's a good guess. Mr. Salty. He actually looks like the food that he is the mascot of. Okay, okay. It's not the, not the peanut.

Mr. Peanut. He's a, like a gingerbread man, but of this type of snack food. Okay, okay. Oh. Not, okay. Oh. Karen. No.

That was maybe a goldfish With the sunglasses I feel like I know this You guys are going to scream when you're Oh, it's in the punch bowl, Dana, what is it? Okay, pretzels Mr. Salty's pretzels And now they brought him back

And like there's a special handy snack With Mr. Salty presents But they cut it Literally coated in He looks like a gingerbread man But made out of pretzels Yeah, but with salt tumors Yeah

How about this? This St. Patrick's Day staple gets his name from the salt curing process it goes through. And the name includes a reference to the salt. Colin? Is that corn beef or corn beef and cabbage? Yeah. The corns refer to salt corns, like big old chunks of salt. Oh, my God.

Yeah. So it's just like salted beef. That makes so much sense. Yeah. Okay. This New England style house is known for its distinctive asymmetrical roof shape. I just learned about this in carpentry class. Oh, yeah. It's, uh, we're taking carpentry now. It's called like a, like a saltbox house, right? Or is that what it is? Yeah,

saltbox. It's called a saltbox. That's a style. It's like a kind of a short, a short angle and then a long angle. And it's, yeah, it's one of the first American colonial style of houses. All right. Last question. This one, I think, is tricky because I didn't grow up with snow. but I think that people might know this. Only Chris grew up with snow. We'll see. We'll see. This word is derived from hell, the ancient Greek word for salt.

It is known as rock salt. It's another name for rock salt. Chris. Haylight. Yes. Hey, light. I saw a fact about salt that I thought was really interesting. It was that more salt is used for salting, like, roads and highways than for people to,

Oh, I bet. Yeah. That's true. The volume of it. Anyway, good job, you guys. Some salt trivia. Well, sort of related. This gives me a great chance to shoehorn in a salt fact that I might have otherwise had to sit on for this episode.

I didn't want to mention that in case it was in your quiz. So this is, I will tell you, this is a trick question. What makes kosher salt kosher? You guys have all heard of kosher salt, right? They cut its neck. No. Yeah, right. The way that they drain the blood from the salt.

Yeah, yeah. Growing up, growing up, I was, I was always like, yeah, what makes kosher salt kosher? Wait, isn't all salt kosher? That was the size. Yeah. It is, it is, so there's sort of a split answer to this. One, there is such a thing as salt, which is kosher, meaning like follows kosher dietary guidelines.

But really, when they say that, all that means is it was prepared in a way that it didn't come into contact with non-coacher ingredients. It's been certified or vetted by a rabbi, you know, who specializes in that kind of thing. But there's nothing inherent to the salt that would otherwise be non-cochure. So that's one answer. The other answer, the main answer, and this is so simple. It was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. It's called kosher salt because it is salt used for koshering.

Kosher, you know, it is the process of salting meat. To make the meat kosher. The salt is what you use in producing a kosher product. You put the salt on, it draws the blood and other fluids, but it draws the blood out of the meat to make the meat kosher. And I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. It's the tool for kosher. That's right. It's a tool for koshering.

Yeah. But I do need to have the little asterisk there that there is such a thing as salt, which is itself then kosher. Yeah. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. It feels really good to be productive, but a lot of the time it's easier said than done, especially when you need to make time to learn about productivity so you can actually, you know, be productive.

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So come give us a listen, we'd love to have you. Go to Explorespodcast.com, or just look us up on your podcast app. That's the Explorers Podcast. I'm at a grade school in Chicago. We're going to find out if these teachers listen to Good Job Brain. Emperor Quincy Huang ruled China until his death in 210 BC. How did he die? Oh, it's definitely C. He was crushed. Mercury poisoning, D. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. No way.

Way. Debbie White or penicillic. Which came first? No, penicillin. That's crazy. So you would learn all of these things if you listen to Good Job Brain. I should. I will. And we're back. You're listening to Good Job Brain, and this week we're all about salt.

And speaking of salt, our normal salt, do you guys know what is the chemical name for salt? Well, for table salt, you mean? Common table salt. Common table salt. Sodium chloride. And the symbol. NACL. NACL.

Here, I have a very quick word game quiz. I will give you a definition of a word. and you buzz in and tell me what word I'm looking for. Each of the answers have the letters, N-A-L in order. They're not a lot, and they're all very, very similar in terms of... I think once you get one, you're like, okay, all the other ones follow that pattern. So here we go, N-A-L in the word, in order. next each other not spaced out or you know Dana's going to dominate this

I'm just like yeah yeah you're already going through all right here we go this word means a temple or a place of worship that was Chris tabernacle correct tabernacle guess what every word in this quiz will rhyme with the knackle knackle all right this is the spire at the topmost of a building or something of great height oh Colin the pinnacle pinnacle pinnacle pinnacle pinnacle the spire at the top or now known as like the apex or the highest point all right next one next word this word means metal restraints for hands Chris Manicle

Manicle Manicle All right we're off to some of the harder vocab words now

showing up at your They don't take the SETs anymore huh Okay anyways

Here we go This word means the structure that houses the compass of a ship Ooh Ah

Oh In a Is it the Spinnacle Is that thing Spinnaker Spinnaker It is

It is binnacle Binnacle Pinnacle and binnacle Interesting That's good Disney sidekick twin names Benical Yeah

This word means This is actually the proper name of the room where the last supper was held But it also refers to like A group of writers or a click of people Proper name of the room where the Last Supper was held.

Maybe you art history people know it. Right now? Hold on a second. Ends with knackle. Yeah. Yeah. This is called a senical. C-E-E-N-C-L-C-L-E with the big C.

That is where we've seen many, many paintings for The Last Supper. That's like the room where it's held. It's an upper room, usually like kind of roundish ceilings. Seneca. It's funny that a group of writers is a cynical, but it's spelled out. Cynical. Cynical. Cynical.

Yeah. All right. Last word. Here we go. These are small crustaceans usually attached to rocks or ship hulls. This was the one I thought of first was Barnacle. Save the best for last. It is Barnacle.

And let me tell you guys something. And I hope I do it. justice because it blew my mind when I was researching this. And I hope I can, I can convey that awe and that jaw-dropping feeling and share this fact with you guys. Why are barnacles called barnacles? I was like, oh, maybe I should look this up. You know, because I'm kind of like cross-referencing. I was like, oh, I make sure my definitions for that quiz are accurate. So I was like, oh, let's look at the etymology of barnacles. I need to tell you the wild story. This is a wild story. So originally, in the 13th century, the barnacle is not the crustacean animal.

The barnacle is a name of a goose of like a water bird. Those are called barnacles. Now we call them the barnacle goose just for clarification. But back then, when you say barnacle, that means the waterbird. This is from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English language. And I quote, because the barnacle, the goose breeds in the Arctic, No one at that time had ever witnessed the bird breeding. So as a result, it was thought to be spontaneously generated from trees along the shore or from rotting wood.

What else would it be? There's only one possible explanation here. The wood gives birth to this goose. The birds just emerge from the rotting wood. This is a simple conclusion that any child would come to. Wait, when was this? When did this happen? This is a 13th century.

I mean, it was believed for quite a while. Adding to this, there is a type of barnacle that had very similar, like, striking black and white coloring. Nowadays, we call that the goose barnacle. So now we have the barnacle goose, which is a goose. And we have the goose barnacle, which we have the goose barnacle, which. which is a barnacle. So get this. Okay.

People believed that the goose barnacle, the crustaceans, would grow into trees that would bear the fruits that become the barnacle goose bird. Now, wait a second. They have chickens. They have chickens and eggs. Why would you overlook the obvious, I mean, equally absurd, equally absurd. But obvious, they just grow from the barnacles right into the birds. Like, that just seems to be able to be...

No, Colin, that's ridiculous. I guess I'm just being naive. That's patently ridiculous. How dare you even suggest that? Or that the eggs come, are just in the tree. Because I'm sure they've never seen a barnacle fruit hatch a goose before. They've never seen this fruit, this giant fruit that has been. This belief.

This is known as the barnacle goose myth. people in history have documented and claim that they witness this barnacle goose tree I'm gonna share it we're gonna share it on Twitter we're gonna share it online there are medieval drawings of trees that bear the fruit

and it's just like it's not even an egg it bypasses the egg it's just the goose that forms into a fruit and it drops onto the ground multiple drawings in bird books in science books I cannot believe it this was wildly believed

during Lent you know the Catholics they abstained from eating meat they made it so that you can eat this barnacle goose because technically because it's a fruit

free for a much because it's a fruit and so now what we know as barnacles the crustaceans is named after the goose that came from the barnacle goose tree. Wow.

That's really fantastic. Wow. These pictures are so funny and so bad of like people's accounts. Oh, my God. No one wanted to be the one they say they didn't believe it. Nobody wanted to be the one that's like, I think those birds are just having sex, man. I think they might just be birds, like the other birds that look like them but are a different color. I think they might just be birds as well.

If this is not true, what are these things in my ship and where did that tree come from? Answer me that, Abraham. Where did they come from? Geese being fruit is like a real stumbling block. I would think that that would stop you. This is not the same experience. Other fruits don't turn into walking animals that honk. Other fruits aren't full of guts and like this. Like, bones.

Yeah, full on visceral. To Clever, I think they thought it was more like a fish related animal. I mean, this similarly happened to the beaver, right? Beavars were believed to be fish. And so. Manatees were mermaids. Yeah, yeah, yep. So you say coincidence.

I say goose tree. Yeah. All right. There are really. Many reasons to listen to our podcast, Big Picture Science. It's kind of a challenge to summarize them all, Molly. Okay, here's a reason to listen to our show, Big Picture Science, because you love to be surprised by science news.

We love to be surprised by science news. So, for instance, I learned on our own show that I had been driving around with precious metals in my truck before it was stolen. That was brought up in our show about precious metals and also rare metals, like most of the things in your catalytic converter, I was surprised to learn that we may begin naming heat waves like we do hurricanes, you know, prepare yourself for heatwave Lucifer. I don't think I can prepare myself for that.

Look, we like surprising our listeners. We like surprising ourselves by reporting new developments in science and while asking the big picture questions about why they matter and how they will affect our lives today and in the future. Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right? Oh, I guess that's a point. So the podcast is called Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host.

Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us. We hope you'll take a listen. And we got one last segment. Colin, are you feeling salty? I have a good segment for you all here. I hope that I had fun working on. And, you know, like a lot of good job brain segments, it's got a little science, a little history.

I remember really clearly as a kid. I was watching TV one night with my dad. We were watching some show or something. And, you know, it's 1980s, young Colin, I don't know what we were watching. Some car commercial comes on and it's a transam or something. And it's this sort of car zooming across this sort of futuristic, deserty kind of environment. And, you know, the horizon looks like it goes on forever and the dramatic music is playing. And my dad's like, oh, it looks like that was filmed at the salt flat.

No, the salt flats. Yeah, my dad's like, oh, you know, the salt flats. I'm like, I don't know. He just ruined your fantasy. Yeah, as if I would know. I mean, this is pre-internet. This is pre. Yeah.

So he's, you know, he goes on to tell me, my dad, about the salt flats, the Bonneville Salt Flats. And this, again, the 1980s, the first I'd ever heard of the Bonneville Salt Flats. And didn't hear about it a lot when I did hear about it. It'd be from my dad and kind of just sort of filed it away. in the back of my mind as young kid. You know, there was a car called the Pontiac Bonneville, and I remember we would see commercials for that,

and my dad would be like, oh, I bet that car is named after the Bonneville Salt Flats. Wow. This has some big Bonneville Salt Flats vibes to it. Guy who's only ever heard of the Bonneville Salt Flats was. So you all know that I love to go hiking and camping and visiting Utah. I was just there a couple weeks ago I think I talked about it on previous episode

I cannot shut up about it I love Utah Utah is great among many many other things Utah is home to the Bonneville That's where it is I've been sitting here guessing I was like I don't know where is it Utah home to the great

Salt Lake and if you head west from the Great Salt Lake out toward the border there are a number of salt flats out in that part of Utah and the Bonneville salt flats is the biggest of them what is a salt flat

Chris sort of touched on it earlier a salt flat also called a salt pan one way of thinking of it is just it's the remnants of a dried up lake sometimes they refill with water like the ones that our man Tommy Jeffs was looking for perhaps oftentimes they are just

totally dry they are the remnants of lakes inland seas that were there many, many, many thousands up to millions of years ago that have dried up and left behind the minerals, oftentimes salt. It is 12 miles long, five miles wide, the salt crust. Okay, now remember, this was, you know, water at one time in minerals, and it's evaporated. It's left behind a lot of salt, a lot of salt. It's five feet thick in parts as you approach to the middle.

No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of salt. of salt there. Yep. A petite person. If you could drown in the salt there at the middle, you could drown in the salt. It's pretty solid, though.

You won't drown in it. My dad was correct. I'm sure that car commercial was filmed out there. They film a lot of car commercials out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Why? Not just because it looks so cool because it's just, you know, this sheen of white, you know, seemingly out forever, miles in the directions. but it is extremely, extremely, extremely flat and regular.

And it's so flat and so big, you can see the curvature of the earth even. You can't, like, you can't see over the middle of it to the far side. It is very, very, very, very flat, one of the flattest parts of our fine country. So almost as far back as there were cars, people realized this was a pretty good spot to go out and race cars and drive her because there's nothing out there. You're not going to run into anything. You're not going to drive off the edge of a cliff. You're not going to run into trees. It sounds like people were racing and trying to set, you know, speed records there as far back as like 1912, even, you know, the early teens. But racing and auto sports and the Bonneville Salt Flats, they really go hand in

hand today. Wow. If you didn't know that, now you know. And I have learned that almost all of this history, it goes back to the results of almost exclusively one person, really kind of the father of salt racing, a man named Ab Jenkins, David Abbott, Ab Jenkins. It's such a great, such a great name, Ab Jenkins, yeah. Ab Jenkins was a native Utah. He grew up out there. He liked to race. He raced motorcycles. He raced cars. He raced kind of whatever he could get his, you know, body into. By the 1930s, okay, he had become a big, if not the leading figure in the racing and kind of car had seen out in the Salt Flats area in Utah in particular. And he started organizing races out there. He started inviting other drivers to come out and really kind of promoted it as this is the

place to come do it. He, you know, Ab Jenkins really kind of saw, he had a vision there that Bonneville Salt Flats could sort of become the premier place. And it did become a great, place for racing. It also specifically became the place, the place to go set land speed records. Records. So from the 30s all the way into the 70s, the 90s even, this was the place. All right. So over the 1930s, Ab Jenkins himself and a lot of other racers on the scene kind of jockeyed back and forth setting speed records. And not, you know, they would have like endurance records of how fast can you average over 24 hours how fast can you go what's your fastest mile you know and you look i mean any any record category you can think of they would find a new way to do it and uh at one time in the

in the 1930s he was driving a racer uh that was dubbed the mormon meteor uh this car it was it was named by there was a writing campaign by the local uh salt lake city newspaper and that was the winning name for this car this no i i i hesitate to say car right i i i i hesitate to say car right I should use air quotes. It was essentially a race car body that had an aircraft engine dropped into it. Oh, my gosh. World War II came along. There were, as you probably know, a lot of resource intensive activities that the government curtailed during World War II.

And as you might imagine, burning huge amounts of gasoline and chewing up rubber tires out on the salt flats was considered maybe a little excessive. So they basically put a halt to all these kind of, understandably, maybe frivolous pursuits like auto racing and speed records out in the desert. So there was no racing going on for World War II. And Ab Jenkins figured, well, can't race, can't put on races. Might as well run for mayor. So he ran for mayor of Salt Lake City and won handily, it sounds like, just easily became mayor of Salt Lake City. Yeah, he was mayor from 1940 to 1944, apparently without really spending much time or money on it at all,

just like this is how one was at the time. Yeah. After the world was over, he went back to racing. Ab Jenkins eventually retired. He got into a crash, apparently, at 200 miles an hour, and was in his 60s and kind of figured, you know what, maybe this is the time to walk away from racing. Yeah, he was okay in that crash.

Wow, he was okay. that fast in a car that was made at that time. Yeah. It's really impressive. They're real casual with seatbelts, everything. Yeah, in 1951, I guess his car skidded and on a puddle of water. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I just want to say I'd have to look it up. The modern day seatbelt was patented in only 1955, four years after his 1951 crash.

I mean, I don't know how much a seatbelt would have done for him. a 1951 seatbelt at 200 miles an hour, right? But he did, he died from a heart attack. He was driving the pace car at a race in Wisconsin. And after the race came back and died of a heart attack. And it was sad, but he died shortly after doing what he loved, driving a car at a race. And he was so beloved in the world of racing and that scene that the next year,

when General Motors introduced the Pontiac Bonneville, It was in part in tribute to Ab Jenkins and him putting Bonneville on the map. Yeah, and making it a site for racing, speeding, all kinds of stuff. So your dad was right. My dad was more right than he knew even. Yeah. So I got to make it out to this place eventually. Yeah.

So as cool as the Bonneville salt flats are, it is not the only famous salt flat in the world. Nor is it the biggest. We've got to give that up to Bolivia. Bolivia is home to the Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world, 100 times larger than the Bonneville saltwater. Wow. It is surface area of 6,500 square miles.

Chris, for reference, your home state of Connecticut has a total area of around 5,000. 500 square miles, according to the internet. So this salt flat is bigger than Connecticut. It is a little bit bigger than the total area of Hawaii. This is a big, big old salt flat. Yeah, yeah.

It is so big, so wide, so flat, and at such a high elevation, all right? It's at about 12,000 feet. It has such clear skies that the Earth monitoring and observation satellites use it as a calibration check. It is so easy to target for them. They know the elevation that when they fly by, they just do, just do a check like, okay, here's our calibration on it. Wow, yeah, yeah. After a rain here in this part of Bolivia, if you get a nice layer of calm water on the Salad de Uyuni,

it is effectively the world's largest mirror. And if you look up some photos of it, you know, from Google Earth or wherever, You can look and see, you know, clouds and things back in it. I mean, it's so flat, so big, so reflective, so still. And, of course, Chris talked about taking salt chunks out. Yeah, they have, like, salt hotels out here, which are built out of, you know, bricks made of chunks taken from the salt here. Yeah.

Now, of course, I cannot go without mentioning. Something this dramatic, this epic, it sounds cinematic. It is cinematic. It has been featured in several movies. most recently slash famously, this served as the location for the planet Crate in Star Wars, The Last Jedi, the big final battle scene where, you know, one of the actors even kind of helpfully reaches down

and like, taste it, it tastes like salt. And like, yes, it is, it is in fact salt. Yeah. So, I mean, that was in Bolivia? Yeah. And minus, you know, I mean, Adam Driver and the little crystal foxes, it really looks like that. It really looks like that.

Yeah. So I had really, really, really no idea that sort of this offhand comment from my dad would spur all this knowledge of salt flats many years later. So thank you, dad. Cool. And that's our show. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learned stuff about salt, barnacles, salt flats, Tommy Jeffs.

And you can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and on all podcast apps. and on our website, Good JobBrain.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows, like Food with Mark Bittman. I know what scares you and investing for beginners. And we'll see you guys next week.

Sal be. Bye. So bye. So bye. So bye. So bye. What does Sputnik have to do with student loans? How did a set of trembling hands end the Soviet Union?

How did inflation kill moon bases? And how did a former president decide to run for a second non-consecutive term? These are among the topics we deal with on the My History Can Beat Up Your Politics Podcast. We tell stories of history that relate to today's news events. Give a listen. My history can beat up your politics wherever you get podcasts.