Good Job, Brain! - 9: Finger Lickin' Good

Episode Date: April 30, 2012

DOH! You might end up getting a food coma just from listening to this episode. Greasy and sugary origin tales behind junkfood and outrageous snack finds: donuts, maltballs, Cheetos, and other delicious offenders. ALSO: Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, double-letter quiz, and new listener challenge! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, happy and happening hooligans. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode nine. And of course, I am your humble host, Karen. And along with me, our. our tribe of trivia treasuring troubadors, our co-host contestants. I'm Colin.

Dana. And I'm Chris. Woo. Nine episodes. Nine episodes. Hard to believe. Hard to believe. We're going double digits next week.

Woo. You're almost a big kid now. Speaking of episodes, back in episode six, which is our word episode, Dana shared a very interesting word. If you haven't heard that episode, please listen to it because it's your new favorite word. It's snar. And it stands for bird, what happens when a bird and an airplane collide. Oh, right.

Or the name of it doesn't stand for it. Bird smoothie. Bird smoothie. And last night, I was watching Indiana Jones in the last crusade. You guys remember that? Great movie. Yes. There was that scene, and I totally forgot.

I mean, last time I saw this movie, I was a kid, you know, I'm rewatching it now. And there's that part where Sean Connery shoes all the singles. Oh, right, with his umbrella, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And totally killed down a Nazi play. Because all the Seagulls came and, you know, I guess interrupted the engines. And also they broke the windshield or all that. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Crazy. Death by snarch. Yeah. And I saw that scene. I was like, that's snarge. And I have some cool last crusade trivia tip bits really quickly.

It was the first movie where an insurance company underwrote the world's first insurance policy with a thousand rat deductible. Is that scene? The rats are flooding the catacombs, right? So the first thousand rats, they're on their own. The rest of them have insurance, yeah. And the rats were actually especially bred. They bred those rats for that scene. And, you know, obviously, when you're working with animals, especially with a thousand of them or more,

days' worth of shooting would cost so much money. So they have to make sure they got it right. Yeah, especially if the rats are unionized. Right. right little picket signs well they were shooting in Europe too

and I mean European labor laws with rats good good luck firing one of those guys that's where American rats yeah

last crusade was the first Indiana Jones movie to receive a PG-13 rating because of Temple of Doom Temple of Doom

the second Indiana Jones movie was instrumental in actually the development of the PG-13 rating I remember that yeah I remember that

yeah I'm not really sure maybe it's the baby snakes coming out of the mommy snake or the heart.

I think the heart among the other thing is the most intense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, because originally it was G.PGR, right? And it was just like, yeah. Everybody. Yeah, that's right. Everybody, but, you know,

parents should probably be aware of some things and like, no kids. I seem to remember, and I'm sure someone's going to correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that Red Dawn was the first PG-13 movie.

I think I remember that little nugget of information. Starring Patrick's Wazze. If I'm wrong, Mayaculpah. Yes. And Jamper Gray, their first movie together. So, if you guys listened to last week's episode, you know that I issued a challenge towards the end after our final quiz. Let me just restate that question. I challenged all the good

job brain listeners to submit the answer in the comments thread. So the challenge was, take the name of the family dog from a popular cartoon series of the 1980s and switch two of its letters, and you will get the name of a family dog from a popular cartoon series that started in the 1990s, give us the names of the two television shows. And the answers, or the answer was Inspector Gadgett. With Brain. With Brain and Family Guy. And the family dog, of course, is Brian.

So the answer was Inspector Gadget and Family Guy. Awesome. But yeah, thank you so much to everybody who participated. Good job, everybody. Good job. All right, it's time for a pop quiz hot shot. Everybody get your barnyard buzzers ready. I got my random Trivial Pursuit card.

And let's go. So, Blue Wedge, Hong Kong, Singapore, in Taiwan, all use what unit of currency? Chris? The dollar. Correct. Not the U.S. dollar, but they call it the dollar. Right. All right.

Pink Wedge for pop culture. Oh, easy. Finish this sentence. Hello, my name is Enigo Montoya. You killed my father, Blank. Chris. Oh, he buzzed in early. He buzzed early.

He buzzed in totally early. I defer to whoever wants to take it. Colin. You kill my father. Prepare to die. Correct. From the beloved princess bride. Yellow Wedge.

Name three of the six U.S. presidents with the first name James. Chris. James K. Polk. James Garfield. James Madison. Correct. Wow. Good job.

Those were three. I was going to say. Are there any more? You said there were six? Yeah, six. So Madison, Monroe, Polk, Buchanan, Garfield, and, of course, Carter. Jimmy Carter. Oh, James Carter.

I never would have said that. That's good. Clever. That's a good one. All right, Purple Wedge. What long-running Broadway musical was based on an epic French novel published in 1862? Colin. That is Les Miserables.

Correct. Less miserable. It's how it. Less miserable. Green wedge for science. What kind of pencil has flatter sides to prevent it from rolling? We've seen them before. What are they technically called?

Wait, what are they? What kind of pencil has flatter sides to prevent it from rolling? Is it a drafting pencil? Incorrect. That's what I was going to say. It was against like a draftsman's pencil or something to that effect. It is called Carpenter's pencil. Oh, Carpenter's pencil.

Yeah, of course, because you want to put it down, you don't want to it to roll away on you. Right, right, right. Orange Wedge. If yuppies are young urban professionals, what are dinks? D-I-N-K-S, dinks. Dinks, I remember that was like an 80s one. That's double-income, no kids.

Correct. Nice. Double-income, no kids. All right, we have our Kickstarter back of questions as well, and this one is from Troy Branch from Graham Washington. And guess what? It's another Blade Runner question. Oh, dear.

Let's try and get this one right the first time. What are the chances? Keep getting Kickstarter-Backer questions dedicated to Blade Runner. All right. In Blade Runner, the top of the police headquarters building is part of what mothership? Oh. What mother? Is it Millennium Falcon, right?

Incorrect. But it is from another movie. Okay. Somebody made fun of me on Twitter for not watching Blade runner he was like oh you have to watch play i was like oh we've had all the trivia questions we've exhausted surely we're done with that it's a spaceship from a movie yes yeah from around that time from another movie um is it from alien incorrect man all right i'm out of guess the mother ship is from close encounters of the third kind that's right that's right that's right

that's right that's right right for me that's the jeopardy from so not the close encounter song and uh Troy picked this question uh because Blade Runner is his favorite movie, one of his favorite movies. All right. And obviously we are behind on a... I'm going to watch that movie. Well, if only because this is what all the backer questions are. Yeah.

For the audience. For the people, I'll watch Blade Runner. You've got to study up. Good job everybody's brains. Let's jump into our topic, which is an awesome topic because it's something that everybody loves, which is junk food. Woo! A little bit harmful for me if I shoot by jelly. base have to eat them all in just once a day everything it seems I like's a little bit sweeter

a little bit fatter a little bit humble for me and oh man junk food is so great I love junk food I mean I think by definition you have to love junk food that's called junk food that's why you wouldn't eat it otherwise because there's no other redeeming qualities so what are some of you his favorite junk food and some info behind it i love cheetos actually um i asked this question to our our facebook uh page and a lot of people say cheetos they're what about it what about it so alluring i love the color i love that the the neon orange gets on everywhere everywhere so you feel like you you really the food has an impact on your life for the rest of the day your fingers are a little orange.

It's a visceral. I love it. Dana's cat pretty much glows orange now. Her nights are just chomp, chomp, chomp, pet, pet. Well, the other thing with chitos, too, like, there's no question that you're eating junk food because there's nothing in nature that has that color. That color or that shade. Color is offensive to nature.

It's perfectly. I found out, though, and the cheesy flavor, the cheesy deliciousness didn't test very well in China. So actually, the flavors that they have are American creamy sauce. And, and, uh, and, and, uh, and, dusty Japanese steak. And then, um, in Japan, they actually have strawberry flavored Cheetos, which is, but with no cheese, right? Yeah, it's a plain Cheeto. And then they put, it's a corn flavored snack with, just dusted with something.

No, no, not dusted with. It has strawberry icing on it. Oh, whoa. Whoa. That sounds good. It's a yangan stick or a pocket stick, really. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I want to go to there. They're supposed to be delicious. That's what I've heard. Oh, man.

I don't doubt it. Cheetos are awesome. I can see the savory, the beefsteak. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Well, Cheetos are, they're savory. I didn't even try Cheetos with strawberry icing, out of curiosity.

I really want to know what American creamy sauce is. I know. Besides on Urban Dictionary. What could it be? That's what you see. Like tartar sauce? No. I'm thinking maybe just like...

Barbecue sauce. Country gravy, maybe. Oh, okay. American creamy sauce. Man, all right. Anybody out there listening knows. Oh, sweet. Savory American cream.

Savory American cream. In my mind, it's American cream. That sounds like gravy to me. Oh, I see. Okay. Gravy Cheetos, no. Yeah, for me, it's like my biggest junk food weakness is French fries. Like, just love French fries ever since I was a kid. Every form, I mean, curly fries, steak fries, sweet potato fries.

Curly fries. Curly fries are probably the best, season fries. It prompted to go do a little bit of researching. You know, my favorite anecdote about French fries that I had always heard before was that they were introduced to the U.S. by Thomas Jefferson. No. Yes.

Oh, because he hung out in France. Well, yeah, he was essentially the, I mean, they didn't call the ambassador. He was the, I guess, the minister to France for five years before he was president. And, yeah, one of the things that he brought back with him and kind of popularized and is generally credited is French fries. And he served them at a White House dinner as potatoes fried in the French manner, which sounds so elegant. It does. But this was the interesting part that I didn't know. I guess they weren't called French fries until, popularly, until after World War I.

And the Belgians and the French hotly dispute who invented them. But that's where we got the name was after World War I. I wonder what Thomas Jefferson would say about freedom fries. Oh, gosh, I know. I wonder if when he did have his fancy dinner parties and they served French fries as this kind of gourmet thing. Like, did they eat them with their hands or do you eat them with like a knife and fork? I would imagine with the hands, but that's a really good question. Right?

Yeah. Seems like that a fancy dinner at the White House. Are you eating with your hands? That's a good question. That's a good question. I mean, at the time, I guess a lot of people still were convinced that potatoes were poisonous and that you had to just, like, boil the hell out of them to get them to be safe to eat. So it was somewhat of an adventurous snack, I guess.

My all-time favorite snack is a malted milk, but especially malt balls. Like woppers? I actually, well, I grew up in Asia, so we had the British version, which were called Maltisers. Have you guys ever heard of that? No, but okay. Maltisers. And it's a portmanteau of malt and tea. That whole concept of using malt in candy and a milkshake is kind of interesting to me because

it's like when I think of malt, I think of boring grains and cereal and I never think to combine that into sweets. Or maybe beer even. Yeah, yeah. So Maltesers were created by Mr. Mars himself, Forest Mars, of the Mars Candy Company, and in the 1930s. And they were originally called and described as energy balls. Yeah, yeah.

Energy balls. Just like Guinness was a health drink and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, and it was aimed at slimming women. How did that work out? Well, okay, so this is their claim. They got real fat. I used to have cocaine in it. Ephedrine in the center.

Chocolate-coated ephedron. I'll never tell. But the basis of this claim is pretty dumb because they're like, oh, it's seven times less fat than your normal chocolate can. Sure, yeah. That's because it's air. That's what they say. Well, that's what they say about three musketeers now.

It's like, oh, it has less fat. It's like, yes, because you whip air into the filling. Right, right. Yeah. Marketing, man. And so, malt, I don't know if you guys know where actually malt comes from. I thought malt was a specific type of grain. No.

It isn't. It's like a process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's any cereal grain that's germinated, and then there's stop by pumping hot air. So they would germinate a little bit, and the starch gets broken down to sugars, and then that becomes the, kind of sweet sweetness of it. It's got that really distinctive taste.

I love malted milkshakes. Oh, delicious. So good. Like the nuttiness, the whole using malt as like a sweet substance was actually pioneered by Mr. Horlicks himself. There is actually a James Horlick who made the Horlick's malted milk. And before malt was kind of given to children, especially in the working class in England, because it has a high nutritional value.

It has a nutritional supplemental, yeah. And so a lot of the kids ate malt extract. James Horlick developed an improved version where he added in and patented with dried milk. And so that's where malted milk came from. He became a patron of Antarctic Exploration because of his products they can store. They don't go bad like real milk. So he had to find a way to fund people to use them, basically. Maybe he was also a fan of Arctic and Arctic exploration.

And, you know, the famous explorer Richard E. Bird actually. named a mountain range in Antarctica after Mr. Horlick. Oh, he loved it. He was a fan. So I really actually kind of had a hard time with this topic because, I mean, I generally I don't eat a lot of junk food. I stay away from candy and ice cream and cookies and all that kind of stuff. Stop judging us. But I know. Well, no, I love it. I mean, I think it's delicious, right? But when I kind of made the decision to stop eating a lot of it, ever since then, I've liked it less and less. But I thought to think to myself, okay, well, when I go

off my diet, you know what I mean, when I decide, okay, I'm just going to eat whatever, whatever I feel like, what is it that I gravitate towards, right? And I realize that the thing that, like, makes me go crazy I think is incredibly delicious is fried foods. Like, that for me, like, I don't, when I look at ice cream, like, oh, yeah, ice cream is is good, candy is good, whatever. I don't go nuts for candy and ice cream, you know, or Doritos or whatever, but fried, just hot fried foods straight out of the deep fat fryer.

Like, that is what makes me go completely insane. So good. I love it. So I thought I'd start us off with, you know, fried breakfast foods. So I started researching a little bit about the donut, the humble donut. And where did this come from? Donuts. Now I'm hungry.

So, like, so many, I love donuts. And I don't eat a lot of donuts. You know, I will have, like, a donut a year maybe. But I think they're the most wonderful things on earth, especially when they're, you know, just right out of the, right out of the friar. What's your favorite kind? Oh, man. Like an apple fritter, you know, sometimes. Oh, like a bear claw kind of.

Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing. or a Boston cream donut, which every now and again I'll be known to eat a Boston cream donut over at, like Dunkin' Donuts when I'm back on the East Coast. Filled with American cream sauce. Filled with American cream sauce, exactly, yeah. Donuts, like many desserts, it turns out, were actually brought here by early Dutch settlers, which who were also brought like apple pie and things like that, right, to America. Oily cake, or however you pronounce it in the original language, you know, literally meaning

a cake soaked with oil. As advertised. And they were kind of like, I want to say they were kind of like munchkins. Like donut holes. Interesting thing about munchkins, which is what we call them on the East Coast. You call any donut hole, right? I've never heard of that. You've never heard of this because that's the brand name of Dunkin' Donuts version.

In Canada, the name Timbits has kind of become genericized from Tim Hortons. So in Canada, a lot of donut, I'm sure someone from Canada is going to say, I don't call them that. But apparently in Canada, it's sort of become a little genericized thing where in the East Coast they call them Munchkins. up there, they call him timbits. Donut holes do not actually come from punching the hole out of the donut. Listen. Yes, yes. Dreams shatter.

It's its own little thing. This brings up the question of how did the donut get its hole? Because the donut with the hole in it is very much an American invention. There is a, there was a sailor. So from the old Dutch ones, they were just kind of like a block of bread. They were like the fritters. Yeah, like fritters or like donut holes, like small cakes. Got it.

fried and eaten. There is an American sailor who lived in the early part of 20th century named Hanson Gregory. And he claims to have invented the donut with a hole in it. And it is not, as the urban legend goes, because he was sailing his ship in a storm and took his donut and put it on the spoke of the ship's wheel to hold it steady in the torrential winds. No, it was because when he cooked donuts. He didn't like how the center wouldn't get cooked, right? That wouldn't get fried.

So he's like, well, if you make it a ring shape, then I won't have that issue. Now, did he steal this from somebody? Was he just trying to puff himself up? Who knows? But he did claim to newspapers who reported it at the time that he had, in fact, on that guy. Higher surface to mass ratio, man.

That guy's a smart dude. I had heard that as well, but I thought it was because it got too greasy in the middle. But I mean, I guess it's all the same thing. Too doughy. Oh, okay. Just not cooked enough. That's my my understanding. Could be too greasy, too. There are reasons.

There are good scientific reasons for cooking a donut with a hole in it in that sense. It makes sense. I mean, I would imagine whatever physics make a bagel being in a torus shape or sort of similar. I would imagine, and this is my own crazy world, I would imagine why they would have holes in bagels and donuts is because, like, if they're street vendors back in the day they're selling them, they just put them all in a stick, like through a stick. They just have a giant kebab of donuts and you can like, here you go, here you go. Yeah, it must be nice to live in your world. Everything is so wondrous. Did they sing?

Yeah, it's donut, too. You have your finger up in the air, and a donut lands on it. Okay, Homer. Well, it's some of our favorite junk food. You know, I looked into some other crazier versions of junk food, Since I grew up loving teenage mutant ninja turtles, I have a weird obsession with different types of pizza. And also, you know, I grew up in Asia where the pizza flavors are very, very different from the American pizza. We put corn and crab and mayonnaise on our pizza.

It's really weird. But recently, I don't know if you've guys seen this, it was a commercial released Pizza Hut in the Middle Eastern market released a special edition of a pizza. And here in America and maybe other countries, we have the type of pizza. Instead of having like a normal crust, the crust is a little bits of stuffed dough balls with cheese in it. Yeah, right. Sure. Cheesy crust. Cheesy crust.

Sure, right not. This new Pizza Hut invention goes a step. Well, not a step. Like leaps. Leaps beyond the line where they baked in to the crust sliders. Yes. I saw that. I saw a picture of that.

It is insane. It's beautiful. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a pizza with a. with a ring of cheeseburgers around the outer edge. Yes, yes, yes, that's right. It is crazy, and it's not just normal burgers. It's burgers baked into the pizza crust.

Crazy. And then my... Is this kosher for Passover? Who is the market in the Middle East for this? It's how do you eat it? Like, you cannot... I think you have to start from the outside end, right? But you can't hold it.

You maybe pull it off. It's like you can... What do you mean you can't hold it? You just pick up the camera. It's got a cheeseburger as a crust. There's no handle. Give me a cheeseburger and a piece of pizza. Oh.

So you put your thumb in the middle of meat. You're right. You're right. Did you also know that they're in the Middle East there's ones with chicken nuggets on the side? What? In the UK, they just started baking hot dogs into the crust. That is beautiful. Like pigs in the blanket? Yeah.

We've clearly run out of food ideas. We're just, all right, what two foods can we combine into a new third thing? No, no, Colin. No. I feel like America is lagging behind. Nice. I feel like they're light years ahead of us. Macaroni and cheese crust. I will eat that. I'll eat that. Macaroni and cheese crust pizza. I, you know, so again, going on the fried food thought train here, I thought to myself, okay, people fry all kinds of crazy, crazy things, right?

And I tried to figure out, okay, well, where did this actually begin? Was it at some state fair in Minnesota, like some people seem to think, or, you know, where did this trend of just dropping whatever? Whatever you can think of. Twinkies, Oreos, candy bars, Coca-Cola. There is a thing called fried coconut. And beer.

Beer, fried beer. Fried butter. Pickles. Somebody actually has done one of the more recent winners of the Texas State Fair of most innovative was fried frito pie.

They came up with a good combination of chili and fritos and cheese. And that's called a fido pie? Frito pie. Well, yeah. Which is a traditional Texan dish. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Karen and I have had this down in Austin, Texas, and it is a wonderful thing. It really is fritos and chili on in a pie crust. In a pile of a little paper boat thing. Oh, yeah, well, some people insist that you're not really getting frito pie unless you buy it off of a food stand. And it's literally a bag, a fun-sized bag of fritos that they open up from the back

and just put chili and cheese right into the bag and you eat it with a fork. But in fact, they served this in my junior high school in Oakland. And that is why Childhood Obesity And we've figured out the cause of childhood obesity is Frito Pie But we had it in Texas with pulled pork Which is not what you're supposed to do But it's a more scale version of too highbrow But yeah, chili and cheese on top of Fritos

It's wonderful It's incredible But that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about fried food So at carnivals in addition to things like Funnel Cake which is another fried food They you know they'll do fried candy bars And so I wanted to figure out like

Where all this started As it turns out, it started in a chip shop in Scotland. There was a, the craze started when the board proprietors of a fishing ship's place. We've got all this boiling oil. You know what? I totally get it. If you, if there's a cauldron of boiling oil in front of me, I will try to fry everything. Yeah.

Well, that was, just to see what happened. Why not? It was called the Haven Ship Bar in Stonehaven, near Aberdeen in Scotland. and it was around, it was in the mid-1990s, and they had, at that time, started taking Mars bars, and Mars bars were very popular candy in Europe. They have Mars bars here now, like they used to have them here, then they discontinued them, and they brought them back.

The Mars bar that's here is basically like a Snickers with almond, right? In the UK, a Mars bar is basically a Milky Way. It's slightly different, but it's caramel, nougat, covered in chocolate. So they, very popular more in the UK. They fried Mars bars, turns out it was delicious. They started giving them to kids, and this got picked up by the newspapers. It's like, people are frying candy bars and selling them. Why are we getting so fat?

And this trend spread throughout the United Kingdom of fried Mars bars in chip shops, because there were a lot of chip shops, right, fish and ships, kind of popular in England. So they can very easily kind of replicate this, a little popular. May have heard of them. This then directly led to the introduction of the popularization of the fried Twinkie. Right. Because there was a chip shop in New York City, and the point of this New York City thing was to sort of replicate the UK chip shop experience. So, of course, they did fried Mars bars, and then they sort of experimented also.

Now, look, before anybody actually writes in, I'm sure that at some point, somebody before this put a Twinkie in a fire, right? What I'm saying here is this is where the trend began. This is where it first got no variety. Yes. Well, these are the first people to do. Like, the New York Times reported on these guys in 2002, chip shop in New York City. city doing fried Twinkies and did not say anything in the report that anyone had ever done it. And so from there, then it sort of spread to the state fairs in Minnesota and everything,

and then we get fried everything from that. But it was a fairly recent invention, which got started in Scotland. It's funny that you talk about it, you know, sort of reaching critical mass when a newspaper covered it because sort of, you know, there was something that I came across that was really interesting. You know, we're talking about just crazy junk foods. You guys here have heard of the Luther. Yes? Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. What is the Luther? The Luther Vandross Burger. So there's the Luther, and there is a related sandwich called the ham dog. Wait, what's the Luther? All right, so let me just a little bit of backstory here. So in, so both of these concepts kind of burst onto the scene in 2005. The Chicago Tribune wrote an article about a restaurant down in Decatur, Georgia, called Mulligans,

which sadly apparently is no longer there, or they closed. So this is the considered the birthplace of both the ham dog and the Luther. So I'll start with the Luther. The Luther is a bacon cheeseburger. on a crispy cream donut that's been sliced in half and grilled instead of the bun. Indeed.

So that's the basic Luther. I thought that was the Pala Dean. So now here's where it gets interesting. So Mulligan's, it was famous locally for the Luther, which was named after Luther Vandros. Now, the owner swears that it was named after Luther Vandros because he enjoyed them.

Now, the origins are a little murky, but everyone agrees that it is named after Luther Vandros. Luther Vandross being the famous American soul singer. A famous American soul singer who perhaps ironically, perhaps not, died of a heart attack and also had had a stroke a couple of years. The thing is the thing with the Luther is, and I've never actually had one. One of these days I'm going to rectify the situation and actually eat one of these crazy things. Bucket list.

Yeah, bucket list. Which hopefully at the tail end of the bucket list, yeah. Maybe it's the last thing out the door. Well, here's the thing. It sounds like, oh, my people. There are people out there who are, I'm sure there's a lot of people going, oh, my God. God, how could you eat something like that? It's like, actually, you know what?

If you take a regular bacon cheeseburger and take ketchup, which is mostly just sugar at this point. Don't try and rationalize this, Chris. Don't try and make it sound like something normal. It's not, you know, it's not normal, but it's, I mean, putting a lot of sugar on a burger really is it. But really, it's not, it's not as horrible as like, I mean, it's bad, but most things people eat are actually pretty bad. I think the classic pairing of something sweet and something salty is we've, like, people dip their French fries. milkshakes. No, I mean, certainly, yeah, the sweet and salty, and it's all kind of greasy goes together. Yeah, I suppose it's not terribly outrageous. I'm not saying it's not bad.

Right. I'm saying that people eat things that are worse and never think a thing about that. And they look at that and they go, I would never do that to myself. It has anywhere, depending on how you prepare it, it has anywhere from 800 to 1,500 calories. That's not that bad for a donut burger. Anywhere from 50 to 90 grams of that. How many calories did that one milkshake at Coldstone creamery have? Like 2,200. Yeah, yeah, right. The P.B. and J. got to have it. size, the worst drink in America.

They take you to the hospital when you're done. So what's a ham dog? So the ham dog, which actually I guess was their more famous sandwich, the ham dog is a hot dog wrapped in a beef patty, deep fried, served on a bun covered with chili

and cheese and onions and then topped off with a fried egg and then typically served, it says, you know, with a handful or two of french fries. Yeah. With one single French fry. It's a token fry.

So, yeah, so this one place was birthed the hand dog and the Luther, but... I was trying to stall so you never got to the ham dog. I don't know if people really needed to hear that. But as Dana said, that's right. So Paula Dean, you know, I guess the year after this kind of burst onto the national consciousness, she also came up with her recipe that she publicized. She calls it the Ladies Brunch Burger, which is... No ladies eat out of brunch.

And it's basically... a luther. It's the same thing, although she has egg on hers as a matter of course, as opposed to an option. You can find variations of this in a lot of restaurants now. I'm not going to lie. It's gone worldwide. Oh, yeah. It's gone worldwide. I'm not going to lie, but the ham dog sounds delicious.

How can it not be? Yeah, exactly. It has all the delicious elements mashed up into one convenient item. I can enjoy chili. Oh, and some bread, and some ground meat. And an egg. And an egg. It gets all the four major food groups of chili, hot dog, egg. Self-loathing.

I just feel like it's going to taste like regret. Like, it tastes okay going down. And then you're just like, oh, man, I shouldn't have eaten that. Speaking of decadent fast food. How are you going to top that? With an egg. The ham dog. That's true.

The bacon milkshake. Oh, my. At duck in the box. Wait, this is real. It's real. You can go get it. Is it a secret menu? You know what?

They said it was secret menu on the internet, but I swear that at Jacking the Box, I saw it. They advertise at Jackin' Box, a bacon milkshake. It's a vanilla milkshake with the Tuscany bacon syrup in it. Oh, okay. And then people have asked if they will, like, chop up bacon and put it on their own. And they say no, they will not do that. They say no. So it's like bacon flavor.

Bacon flavored milk shake. It's supposed to be good. Hipsters. I know. Bacon on everything. Wow, if you do actually add real bacon in it, it's like the least kosher thing. Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine it being less kosher, right? What about a cheeseburger pizza?

Yeah, blend it into the milkshake. Add a donut. See, I would imagine the bacon milkshake in my little world again would like be a nice, like, old school cup. And then the straw would be like made out of bacon, like wrap bacon. You drink the milkshake out of the bacon straw. It's like the bacon tini. Yes, yes. maple, martini, and then you put bacon around the rim.

And then it sounds kind of good. I would have that. I would drink that. I would absolutely try it once. Let's go get it after that. Well, guess what you guys? I brought some. Delicious.

And then the rest is a podcast. I hate myself. This really must just be like the glory days for like the American pork council, you know? I mean, just like bacon I don't think has ever been more popular than it is right now. I made a little junk food quiz for you guys. All right. It's eclectic. It covers worldwide junk food trends.

So if you win the junk food quiz, are you actually a winner or are you a loser at heart? You're a winner. You're a winner to me. Until your heart, until your heart fails. Yeah, yeah. Starting off, which snack food came first? Corn nuts, Orville, Red and Bockers, popcorn, Pringles, or Lays potato chips. I'm going to guess Pringles.

What are you guys? With my reasoning being it's like ground up stuff. See, I think, though, that Pringles have to come after regular potato chips. I was going to guess corn nuts. I was going to say Orville Redenbocker's popcorn, because I do is old. No, so Laze potato chips were the first. They came out in 1932, then corn nuts were 1936. Orville Redenbocker's popcorn was 69.

Oh, wow. And Pringles was 68. Wow, I didn't know popcorn. It was Orville Redenbockers. Not just Popcorn. Just Orville Redenbocker. Yeah. That brand of popcorn.

Popcorn have been around for a long ago, but it's such an old-timey name. I thought it would be tricky. I fell right into the trap. Twinkie snack cakes are known for their especially long shelf lives. How long is the shelf life of a Twinkie? Is it one to two weeks, 25 days to a month, two and a half to three years, or 50 to 100 years? I think it's the two and a half weeks to a month. I bet it's one of those things where their shelf life is really exaggerated.

I actually agree with Colin. It's 25 days. Yeah. Wow. Now, Twinkies have been known to live longer than that. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's it.

That's in controlled laboratory circumstances. So Twinkies don't have any dairy in them. So that's why they don't go bad as quickly as like a regular doughnet would. Then what's the inside? Oil. Yeah. But it's like creamy and white. I thought it was like a cream filling center.

It's probably just like, yeah. It's American savory. Men will tell you all kinds of things. In 2010, KFC introduced the double down. What are the ingredients? On the double down. It's two fried chicken breasts, two pieces of bacon, and two slices of cheese. One more thing.

Sauce, special sauce, right? Oh, whatever. Yes, no vegetables, except there's a little relish in the specials. It's a touch of relish. For legal requirements. They open up the jar of relish, tip it towards the Vatican, close it again. In-N-Out burger is a big West Coast burger chain. True.

Okay. It's known for its secret menu. On that menu, what is the Flying Dutchman? Karen. Flying Dutchman is a normal burger but with no buns. I'll give it to you. It's two beef patties and two slices of cheese, so no sauce either. No lettuce, no tomato.

It's because people are giving them to their dogs. Oh. And so Flying Dutchmen, you can give to your dog. Okay. For all the listeners who don't live on the West Coast, If you ever come to the West Coast, and this is, everybody says this, but we're going to say it officially, you have to go to In-N-N-Out. Even though it's fast food, it's delicious. And it's an institution.

It is. It's not the best burger in the world, but it's the best cheap burger in the world. Yeah, best cheap fast-food burger in the world. We're not sponsored by In-N-Out. I just want to make that clear. Not yet, anyway. In-N-Out, you know where to find this. Which is not a potato chip flavor?

lamb with mint, Heinz ketchup, Twizzlers, Cajun squirrel, and Mountain Dew. There is no such thing as a Twizzlers-flavored potato chip. Yes, but there is a Cajun squirrel. Cajun squirrel. Twizzlers have no flavor. What, it tastes like wax? It's like cherry. I imagine that, like, they had regular squirrel flavor, and it just wasn't selling.

Right, right, right. Guys, how can we jazz up the squirrel? I know, Cajun squirrel. Cajun squirrel What were the other ones? There's a lamb with mint Which kind of sounds interesting That sounds good

Yeah, Hein's ketchup Yeah, that is a thing Yeah, I just saw that one Mountain Dew Uttes, Uttes does Heinz There's a Mountain Dew Dorito Okay, because they're owned by the same company I guess it's a corn chip

Oh interesting, mountain dude Is it sweet or is it salty? That just sounds weird Mountain Dew is not salty That sounds weird It does sound weird Are Pringles actually potato chips no they are not

do you know why they're yeah well they're like they're not cut pieces of potato they're made out of a slurry and then shape into that shape yeah yeah and in fact in the UK they've actually argued that because they're not potato chips they should not be subject to the potato chip tax and they say no they're just a you know they're a snack there's a potato chip

tax yeah they they raised the taxes on straight up potato chips in the UK and the makers of Pringles argued that and because it was not a potato chip it was not it was actually subject to a lot of the i mean yeah a lot of our food categories are basically just you know arbitrarily decided because of like tariffs and import laws and tax laws and things like things are classified as a vegetable just because they need to be for a tax purpose or something like that they're only 42% potato like actual potato so the rest is like stabilizers the rest is uh caged

squirrel so they so they're they can be called potato crisps and if they wanted to be chips they had to say that they are potato chips made from dried potatoes which doesn't sound that sexy on the package. They are based on the novel post by Saffir. Are corn nuts actually made with corn? I know they are, because I love corn nuts. You said it all southern, too. Corn nuts.

Is it true? It is true. Corn nuts. Well, they look like corn. You soak a whole kernel of corn for three days in water, and then you fry it. Fry the corn. No, Dana, I just go to the store. They sell them to me.

Or you can buy it out to the lunch. But do you know the difference between deer nuts and beer nuts? You know the difference between deer nuts and dees nuts? Please tell me the difference between deer nuts and beer nuts. I don't even know what those are. The difference between deer nuts and beer nuts? What are deer nuts? Well, beer nuts are a dollar, but deer nuts are under a buck.

I cared so mad. I thought I was getting a real answer. Eminem's the button-shaped chocolate candies were first produced in 19. 41. Since then, they've been filled with a variety of ingredients. In addition to milk chocolate, can you name four other types of Eminem fillings? Karen. Pretzels,

Krispies, almond, and peanut. Yes. Very good. I'm surprised you didn't say mint, which you're eating right now. The mint Eminem's like eating right now actually doesn't contain mint inside. It's the shell. They also have dark chocolate, do you say almonds? almonds, orange chocolate, coconut,

wild cherry cinnamon and peanut butter I remember the peanut butter once when they finally decided to just take on Reese's pieces head on okay last question according to the Taco Bell nutritional guidelines which has the most calories Doritos Locos Taco Supreme Double Decker Taco Taco

40 ounce Mountain Dew Baja blast or a half pound cheesy potato burrito I'm gonna guess the Mountain Yes. I'm with you on that one. I was going to guess that too. If I said 30 ounce, it would not be the most. But because I said 40, it has 10 more calories than the half pound cheesy potato burrito. I also just want to note that you can get 40 ounces of Mountain Dew at this restaurant. That gives 550 calories. Oh, my God. And there's 540 and the cheesy potato burrito, 320 in the double-decker taco, and a reasonableish 200. and the Doritos taco. Yeah. Things I learned today, Taco Bell has nutritional guidelines.

So really, if oxymoron, if you had a 40-ounce Mountain Dew and a Luther, that's pretty much your calorie requirements for a whole day. Yeah, you don't have to eat anymore. But to go back to the Luther, if I were to eat this thing and I planned it, I was like, I'm going to do something bad to my body, calorie, not that bad. Yeah, it's true. Not that bad. Yeah, I've got one trick question that can ask everybody. finalizing, finishing out my theme of fried foods. Where was the first Kentucky fried chicken opened?

Hmm. Tennessee. The way he's asking, it makes me think it's not Kentucky. Yeah. Where was the first Kentucky fried chicken opened? Man, I feel like I just read this. I don't know. The first Kentucky fried chicken was opened in 1952 in Utah.

Oh. What? Colonel Harlan Sanders, of course, started cooking chicken in Kentucky, but the first restaurant called Kentucky Fried Chicken was open in South Salt Lake in Utah. Interesting. And I believe he was not a real colonel. I think he was a self-styled colonel.

He was a Kentucky colonel, which is a civilian honor that the state of Kentucky can award to people. Yep. So he was not a military colonel, but he was a colonel. In his heart. Screw this. Let's go get some fried chicken.

Yeah. Woo! 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. Shop now at no-frails.ca. 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 what? why they matter and how they will affect our lives today and in the future. Well, we can't affect lives in the past, right?

No, I guess that's a point. So the podcast is called Big Picture Science, and you can hear it wherever you get your podcasts. We are the host. Seth is a scientist. I'm a science journalist, and we talk to people smarter than us. We hope you'll take a listen. All right. That is all for our junk food talk, man.

I don't know. I feel loggie. I just like... I feel hungry, but I'm also kind of sweaty. Just like I imagine all the oils coming out of my pores, just from talking about all of this. For our final quiz segment, Colin, you have a quiz prepared? I do, I do.

And this is a general trivia, but does have a theme to it. Do we have to guess the theme? You're going to tell us? No, I'll tell you the theme because it kind of helps bootstrap into the answers here. The theme is double letters. So two letters in a row, okay? For most of them, there's a double letter in the answer. For a few of them, it'll be in the question.

But you'll figure it out. You guys are all smart. Thanks, Colin. All right. This world famous basketball player was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindar Jr., but later changed his name to what? Karen. Karim Abdul-Jabbar.

Correct. Karim Abdul-Jabbar. That's right. That's right. It changed his name in 1971, the day after winning his first NBA championship. The logo. for this car manufacturer includes a black horse

against a yellow background. Sorry, I pressed early. Karen, emphatically. Karen. I'm sorry. A sob. Ooh, good guess, but incorrect. What? You're on the right track, though. You're thinking the right thing. It's a double letter.

Car manufacturer, black horse against a yellow background. And they are somewhat sporty cars. Oh, Ferrari. Correct, Ferrari. Also, interesting Porsche logo also has a black horse against the yellow background. God, I was tripped over. have double letters in it.

Yes. I was like, course she's not right. That's what I was. She was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. Oh. She was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state. She was assassinated in 2007. Oh, wait, no.

Cancel. False buzz. I'm looking for Benazir Bhutto, P-H-U-T-O. T-T-O. T-T-O. Oh. If we're using Roman numerals, which one of the following is not a valid number and why? So I'm going to give you four choices.

Okay. M-M-M-C-C-L-L or X-X. That was Chris. That's L-L because L-L would be 100, which would be C. Correct. L is 50. That's right. Speaking of L-L, we're all familiar with hip-hop star L-L-Cool-J.

I'm ready to buy. Karen is on it. What does L-L-Cool-J stand for? I'm going to get out to Dana. Ladies love, cool, James. That is right. Ladies love, Cool James. He was born, James Todd Smith.

The world's first registered trademark was issued to this UK brewery. Oh. Karen. Guinness? Incorrect. I think that was Chris. Bass? It is Bass Brewery.

That is right. That's right. The very first trademark issued anywhere in the world. registered trademark in 1876 for their in the world that's right that standard red triangle which has not changed since then 1876 just for the record there are other beers that know that they've used their logos longer but they weren't registered trademarks what does the BB in BB gun refer to Chris baby bullet that's clever I like that if it were made by Nintendo that's what it would stand for of course Dana ball bearing no that's a very common that's a very common that

what I thought it was. It's not. It doesn't stand for anything. It refers to the size of the pellet. So I guess birdshot sizes come in B, B, B, B, B, B, B. They also use numbers. And when they started making B B B guns, that was the closest size, was that size of birdshot. I said, I said refer to. I didn't say stand for. That's right. All right, here's a, you'll feel, this one's an architecture one, Karen. Oh. Okay. This Finnish American architect designed many famous modernist structures, including the St. Louis Gateway Arch. Karen. Serranen.

Correct. Aero-Sarinen. Seranin. Arosanin. And he's got the double, E-E-E-R-O, his first name. So he's got the, and then Sarenin, S-A-A-A-R-A-N-A-S-A-A-S-A-R-A-Serroman. I've been to his house. Oh, really?

Yeah. Not like I hung out with him. Like as a museum kind of thing. I had a feeling that you would get that one. Yay. Okay, last one here. This one is a little bit tricky, but I think you can get this. Within the last 10 years, there have been three years, there have been

three Oscar winners for Best Picture that have double letters in their titles. So in the last 10 years, three movies won Best Picture. Name them, or as many as you can. Dana. One is Slumdog Millionaire. One is Slumdog Millionaire.

Are these winners or nominees? These movies won Best Picture Award at the Academy Awards. Slumdog Millionaire is won. There are two more. I'll give you the years if you want. Sure. 2004 and 2010.

Oh, I'm just going to. A million-dollar baby. Correct. A million-dollar baby, 2004. Let's get the double. Yeah, million and millionaire. Last one, 2010, double letter in the name. That was just, just happened.

Not Herlocker. Oh, sorry. The King's speech. The King's speech. Yes. We got it. Eventually, we got it. We're awesome.

All right, good job. Good job. That was a little mixed bag there. And then we also have another carryover question. for you guys listening out there. So we're going to a challenge, a listener challenge. So we're going to read this one out. And you guys, we want to change it up a little bit.

Instead of putting them in the comments on the website, this time we want to ask you guys to email us your guesses or your answers. All right, this is a keyboard typewriter question. So I like these. And again, remember, this is in the theme of double letters. So there are two 12-letter words in standard English, not medical or technical jargon words, standard English words.

Two 12-letter words that can be typed using only the left hand on a keyboard or typewriter. I'll give you one of them. One of them is reverberated. What is the other word? 12 letters, standard English, and remember the theme of double letters. And we're actually going to randomly choose some of the correct answers, and we're going to send you a cool, good job, brain, swag, some trivial pursuit cards and some stickers and stuff. So write in and give us the answers.

thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys the listeners for listening in hope you guys learned a lot of stuff about junk food or is now on your way to go get some junk food after listening to this because I'm totally going to do that you're going to go get some bacon milkshakes yes you can find us on zoom marketplace on iTunes and also on our website which is good job brain com again if you want to email us the challenge answer is at jb.podcast at gmail.com

you'll feel so clever when you figure it out Dana's sitting there so happy I'm so smug right now Dana's so smug right now well see you next week bye bye Hello, this is Matt from the Explorers podcast.

I want to invite you to join me on the voyages and journeys of the most famous explorers in the history of the world. These are the thrilling and captivating stories of Vigelin, Shackleton, Lewis, and Clark, and so many other famous and not so famous adventures from throughout history. Explorespodcast.com or just look us up on your podcast app. That's the Explorers Podcast.