Good Job, Brain! - 94: A Berry Good Episode

Episode Date: January 16, 2014

Orange you glad we're back for more in 2014? We put fruit facts into the limelight this week and cherry-picked some pretty juicy trivia. Colin gets to the core of fruit name origins, Chris grapples with a hybrid fruit challenge, and Karen puckers up to the miracle fruit. And don't just split yet, Dana's got an a-peeling quiz about bananas. It's a fruit party, so we're all raisin the roof. ALSO: Lynda.com teacher quiz, tweeting sharks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, perky pack of pals, pros, and packy durns. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 94, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your semi-serious but silly cerebral sirs and sisters. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris.

So here's a crazy headline that I saw and I'm like, oh, this, everybody has to know about this. Yeah, you text message it to us. I text messages to everybody. I'm like, you guys, sharks are tweeting now. Whoa. Apparently, so Australia, which is a country and a continent, located far away, they're attaching transmitters to the sharks that are kind of like near Australian beaches. If the shark gets too close to the beach, the transmitter will send out a tweet to a certain

Twitter account. And it is like, hi, I am a shark. I'm coming to eat you. Hashtag shark. I don't know what it is. It's like a warning. It says what kind of shark on it. It's like the opposite of following a food truck on Twitter.

It's like you'll use the other direction. It would be awesome if it had to. Instagram and you can see a picture of yourself like I see you. They've tagged 300 odd sharks so far and they're still tagging sharks, which will then be tweeting away. Now, if they get the sharks on Instagram so they can take hipster pictures of their food. This is so good. Yeah.

Yeah. Like they choose what filter by the way they wiggle their head. There's a picture of your leg with a sepia filter over it. Shark tweet tweet. Yeah. They can call them, yeah, they can call them shweets. call them schweets. Yeah.

And, yeah, like I just shweeted. Be careful now. Yeah. And then they can call the service. Wait, that's just moving. No. No. No. Moving right along. Shwitter.

Sweeter. Sweeter. Schwitter. Switter. Switter. All right. Carefully tread. All right.

Well, without further ado, let's jump into our first general trivia segment. Pop Quiz hot shot. It's been a while. I have in my hand random trivial pursuit card. I'm going to read questions. You guys have your barnyard buzzers and buzz in with your answer. Here we go. First question.

Blue Wedge for geography. What country is known as the land of poets for its two noble laureates in literature? Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. Basically, where are they from, I guess. Is it Peru? Incorrect. Oh, now I know. Is it Chile?

Chile. Yes. Yes. Yeah. New Nerrida. Who was the other one? Gabriel. Mistral.

or meat straw. Okay. Pink Wedge for pop culture. On what quiz show did Ken Jennings set the record for consecutive wins? Everybody. Jeopardy. What is Jeopardy? Nice.

Ken Jennings, super funny guy. Just follow him on Twitter. All right. Yellow Wedge. What file sharing company was sued by both Metallica and Dr. Drake? Chris. Napster. Napster.

Napster. Purple Wedge. GQ called a poster of whom, quote, the most influential piece of men's art of the last 50 years. It has to be Farah Fawcett. Yeah. That iconic 70s poster of her. I was like, what's it a picture of men's art?

Her 1976 red bathing suit shot sold 12 million copies. Wow. All right. Green Wedge for science. Okay. What are some wild gerbils in China fed in order to control their numbers? What? Birth control pills?

Oh, really? Oh, okay. It's like poison, corn. Yeah. I can think of a much more direct way. Right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Onions and garlic? What a weird.

Okay, okay. All right. All right. Last question, orange wedge. At the 1988 Olympics, what sprinter beat Carl Lewis for the 100-meter gold medal then was stripped of it for steroid use? That was Ben Johnson. Correct. Of Canada.

All right, good job, Brains. And we're going to start this year with, maybe I can find a relationship between this week's topic and, like, the new year. Well, we're surrounded by them right now. Oh, yes, true. We have a lemon tree out here in our backyard. And citrus, the citrus fruits really appear in winter. So we got back from winter break. And the tree, which usually has like a couple lemons on it, was like, oh, my God, lemons.

So many lemons. Every guest of... Lemon paloosa. Everybody on Good Job Brain today gets free lemons. I'd like to announce, you get a lemon. And you get a lemon. Lemons. Maybe New Year's resolutions.

People want to... Oh, healthy? Yeah. Oh, that's a good connection. Okay. Yeah. So there's some connections. Yeah.

This week, we decided to talk about fruits. Fruits. Fruits. So we busts into war. It's cherry pie at this point. She's my cherry pie. But it's time, but time to find surprise. She is my cherry pie.

Cool drink and water's such a sweet surprise. Taste so good. Make the homemade cry. Sweet cherry pie. I was actually, I started putting together a music quiz that was all around fruit. Oh, yeah? Cherry pie. I got like, it was one of those, I got like two or three songs in.

Strawberry fields forever. Yeah, but I mean, like that's. Lemon tree. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I get the her of aliphante. You know an apple? Yeah, I didn't do it. I was lazy. We're giving you all this good material.

Right, right, right. For another time. So, again, piles of lemons all around us. Did you know that the lemon is actually a hybrid? Yeah. The lemon is a hybrid fruit. Of what? It is a hybrid of a citron and a sour orange.

Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I just learned that, like, the citron is like the master fruit in the citrus family. Oh, right, right, right. I always always say, like, lemon, you picture it like the top. The great grandfather, the patriarch of the family. Can you buy citrons at, like, the grocery store?

I think you can still get citron. What do they look? They look like little hard, bumpy lemons. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, just to get the old brain juices. Fruit juices. Flying grease.

Yeah. Right, right. After a long absence, here is a quiz about hybrid fruits. All right. I will tell you the name of a hybrid fruit and you will tell me the two fruits. There is a trick question in there, too. Just I'm giving you the heads up. All right.

So be on the lookout for the trick question. Okay. Limequat. It's a real thing. Uh, lime and cumquot? I'll give it to you. It's actually a key lime and a cumquot, apparently. But, you know, which is slightly different, but yeah, uh, limequot is a key lime and a cum quad.

Nectopulm. Uh, Colin. A nectarine and a plum? It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nectoplum. All right. Like, ectoplasm.

We're increasing slightly in difficulty. Pluot. Dana. A plum and apricot? Yes, plum and an apricot. Okay. Those are delicious. Plot.

Pluat. Pluat. Oh, you don't pronounce it. How do you speak. I don't say. Plot? Plot? Oh, yeah. Is that hot? Oh, I don't know.

It's Piquot. I don't know. It's Pekotum. Whoa. Pekotum. Peacotum. Peacotum. I hardly even know them. Oh.

Colin? It was a peach and a tomato? I don't know. No. I don't know. It's not weird off the rails. Peacotum. It's actually three fruits. Oh, wait, hold on. Karen.

Pear? No. Peach. Peach. Apricot? Apricot Oh, plum Plum

Plum Piquot and a plum Piquotum That sounds good I feel like After a while They all kind of taste the same

Like pluot Or piccottom Yeah Yeah well you know Because they can Because you can Because you can Because you can

Because you can Because you can Yeah Tangelo Oh Dana A tangerine And a

Oh I was about to say In a tangelo Is it an orange No Tendrian Is a tangerine And a pommolo? Yes

A pomolo A tangerine and a pomolo Pomelos are related to grapefruits, but there's like different kinds of pomolos. Some of are really similar. I call them Pamelo, too. I think they're Pomolo. I think it's actually pronounced pummelow, which is an older kind of fruit. You're thinking of the basketball player, Pomelo Anthony.

Is that Carmelo Anthony? Okay, I know basketball too. Lemonade fruit. What? Marketing. Yeah, it is. Definitely is. Lemon.

What would you do to a lemon? to make it sweeter. Make it sweeter. So something sugary or sweet? Like something to taste lemony that you would just be able to eat.

Lemonheads. Colin. Lemon and orange. Yep. Oh. Something called lemonade fruit which is a hybrid of a lemon in orange. Marketing.

Yeah. Wasn't that one of the thunder cats? It's tango. It is. It's Liono's best friend. Tangor. Tangor. Okay.

So tangerine. Yes. And it orange? Yeah. Tangerine and orange. Tangerine. Tangerine, they cancelsore. Tayberry.

Tayberry. Tayberry. Tayberry. Tayberry. Tayberry. Tay-Y, and then berry. Tangerine. And this is one of those weird berry, like raspberry and blackberry.

It is. It is blackberry and raspberry. So there's many, like, you can combine a blackberry and a raspberry, and depending on, I think, the way that you do it or the types of berries you start with, can get all various results. Yeah. And so there's the Loganberry or the Boisenberry, but then there's also the Tayberry, Blackberry and raspberry.

Okay. Yeah. Grapple. Oh. Colin. These are the apple grapes. They're apples, but they're not really hybrid, right? Aren't they, like, infused with grape solution? Yeah.

That is correct. A lot of people, that is a trick question. A lot of people think that the grapple is a hybrid apple grape. It is not. It is an apple that has been infused with or injected with or injected with or soaked in. I think they're soaked in. Grape flavoring.

Grape juice. I think it's, I think it's grape juice. But yeah. So, not a hybrid. Finally, the Cabernet Sauvignon. Oh. Is a hybrid. Wine.

Grape. Cabernet Sauvignon grape is a hybrid of what two grapes. Wow. Cabernet and Sauvignon. A purple grape? Champagne grape. No, Dana is close, but those are the names of the... The Cabernet Sauvignon Grape is a hybrid of the Cabernet Franck and the Sauvignon Blanc.

Oh. The Fronk and the Blanc. Frank and Blanc? Yeah. Yes. Yep. Wine Valley cop show. So that is a good thing to know.

That is a good one. That's fruit trivia and wine trivia. Cabernet Frank. Cabernet Frank. Sauvignon Blanc. And both of those, you can have both of those as blunts. At their own wines, right? Yeah, okay.

Yeah. All right. I want to take you guys on a journey. All right. Imagine yourself in Japan, in Tokyo. Chris, I don't know if you've ever been to this place. Namco, the entertainment company. Makers of Pac-Man.

Makers of Pac-Man. Big entertainment company. In addition to video games, they also do a lot of like arcades, carnivals, and in that business in Japan. So they have something called the Namco Namja town, which is an indoor theme park. Not Namco, indoor theme park. It's not like Mall of America or anything. There's no crazy roller coasters. There's some little bit rides, but it's more carnival-y, and there's like all these different

places to eat. There is a special cafe there. And this is probably the only place in the world where you would pay a pretty penny for really bad tasting food. It's beautiful. They have like all these desserts and they're delicate and there's curry, but the curry is bland and the cakes are bitter and they're sour and it's like, why would anybody pay extra money to eat weird tasting food?

Here's the trick. I think I know where you're going with this. Okay. So before you start your meal, you get a little cup and in the cup there are two berries. And what you're supposed to do is you eat the berries, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, and then you start eating your gross food. All of a sudden, all of these weird bland desserts and pears, and. bitter curries or whatever, tastes so good.

It's magical. This place is called the Miracle Fruits Cafe, and the berries you get are called Miracle Fruits. You guys have heard of Miracle Fruits. So Colin and I, we used to work together, and for our, I think it was like a white elephant Christmas party, I ended up with a pack of Miracle Berry tablets. They're freeze-dried berries, crushed together into little pills. If you eat the pills, pulverize it with your teeth, and you coat your tongue, anything that is sour will taste sweet. Anything that is bitter will also taste differently.

It will taste good. So I didn't believe it. I looked at this. It was like weird tablets. I was like, why did I get this for Christmas? Yeah. So I was like, oh, Colin. All right, let's try this.

So we're at the office kitchen and we sliced ourselves lemon, actual real lemon. We ate the pills. And we ate the lemon, and it was, it was, like, candy. It was like eating. It was amazing. Yeah, you could literally bite into the lemon like an apple. Yeah. And it's, what did it taste like?

Like lemonade, like delicious, sweet lemonade. It was, it was, it blew my mind. It really was. It was one of those things where your mouth is at odds with your brain. How much could you eat before it wore off? Uh, it wears off probably. Like 20 minutes, right? It's 30 to 30 to 60 minutes.

It depends on your personal chemistry. You know, we were eating so many lemons that our mouths were like... Puckered and... Yeah. It was all kind of burning. Right. Because it's still, it's still acidic. And it's still all the things that make it taste bad are still going on.

It's not tasting them. You're just tricked. That's what they say miracle fruit can be a little dangerous because, like, you'll put tons of, like, food into your body that you ordinarily wouldn't because it all tastes so good. and then you're like, I have a bad side. Yeah, or like, I can't feel my lips. Yeah, or that, yeah. So the miracle fruit, you know, when the fleshy part of the berry of the miracle fruit is eating, the molecule binds to the tongue's taste buds, causing sour foods to taste sweet.

So the active substance that does this weird transformation is called Miraculine. Miraculine rewires the sweet receptors to temporarily identify acids as sugars. And... Whoa. Yeah. Yeah, so it has been suggested. The theory is the protein, the miraculous, it's a protein, morphs the shape of your taste buds. So as a result, the sweet receptors are activated by acids, and it thinks acids are sugar.

That's so, oh, okay, I totally had it wrong. I thought it, like, blocked the other taste buds. No, so, I mean, it also had the effect of, like, we would try things that were already a little sweet and acidic. Like, orange juice, for instance, was super sweet. Yeah. It was too sweet because we had, I think, because we had all the original sugar and then this added, as you say, the acid tasted like sugar. Right, right, right. And because a miraculous as a protein, you can't heat it up or you shouldn't eat hot foods because it denatures the protein.

So it wouldn't work. Oh, okay. You get these things on Amazon. Yes, you can. And they're a little pricey. Yeah. I mean, it's a fun party trick. It's a fun novelty thing.

It's a fun thing to try. And because every year, the plant itself doesn't use. yield that many berries. That's why it's a little bit more expensive. In addition to having a fun party trick, I mean, this is very useful for diabetics or people suffering. They actually do use miracle fruit for a lot of cancer patients through treatments. Sometimes food will taste weirdly metallic or like minerally. And so having miracle fruit makes food go down a lot better. It tastes better. However, here's the interesting thing. Currently in the United States, It's the FDA that has a ruling that miracle fruit can be grown legally, but it cannot be used in food.

So there are no companies that are releasing candy bars that has miracle fruit. That might explain why, like, when I see it online, it's always packages from Japan or Taiwan. Or it's just the miracle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The pill or the chewable tablet. So they can't, they can't just put it in food. I mean, have there been long-term studies of what happens if you eat it? every day.

Like, maybe it's not good for you. Well, apparently the fruit itself is harmless. I mean, people have been eating the plant, the miracle fruit plant is grown in West Africa. And a lot of the tribes, you know, for centuries have been eating this fruit. There was drama that happened in the States with businessmen trying to make miracle fruit a thing. And the FDA, I'm not going to go into that because it's a little bit conspiracy theory. We don't know what happened. You know, people are like, oh, the sugar giants of America.

But the thing is, miracle fruit, it works, it's available that you can buy from Amazon. You can try it, and it will change your life for like five minutes. It's so trippy. It is incredible. I feel like I remember there was one or two people at our work, though. It didn't work on them, right? Like, I don't know if there's some, I don't know if there's some genetic companies. Yeah, two people were like, oh, I don't taste it.

Yeah, and we felt so bad for them. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were. It's wonderful. You guys. Everybody else is just like running around the office. Eating lemons.

Yeah. It's like, want, well. We were so loud. Like, when we first ate the lemon, we were like, I was. I was like, oh, my God. Get more sour and bitter thing. Right, right, right. What else can we eat?

Yep. You have all those lemons. We have a lot of lemons. We can eat a time. A little lemon. No, I want to do it. I want to go get some miracle fruit, but I want to, like, prepare first. And, like, I'm sure there's, like, lists online of the things.

Oh, yeah, Guinness. Guinness, that's what I hear. Tastes like milkshake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just sitting there, pound of Guinness eat a lemon. That sounds like trouble. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Kohler, all the enamels on your teeth, but your scurvy has been cured.

It sounds like gastrointestinal distress type. Yeah, we were drinking beer, lemon, the orange. I remember Todd for Waiashi's like, dude, we could like, we could like chug some vinegar, right? We're like, you don't think it works that. Todd, I don't think we should. It's like, I guess you could. You just stare at a bottle of vinegar and think,

gee, I wish I could just drink the whole thing. Apple cider vinegar is so good for you. You're supposed to try to drink some every day, but it's very difficult. Maybe miracle fuel. And it kills funguses and stuff too, right? You're supposed to use it? Yeah, it really is a miracle thing. birth control.

Well, I have a couple... Try that on some wild gerbils. Lemons in Guinness, so they're farting and sterile. I don't control your pet population. The farting sterile gerbils of China. Well, you guys know, I love word origins and word histories, so I have cherry-picked some fun. A fruit name origin of us for you.

I see what you did there, come. I feel like I'm obligated, too. If I'm going to make that bad pump. I have to start with cherries. So let's quickly talk about... Oh, you're actually going to talk about cherries. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is a fun one to me.

I love this. So our word for cherries, it's ultimately from Latin. In French, the word for cherries is cerise. And in Spanish, it's Ceresa. These all come from Latin, Ceresia, which they think may have come from Greek Cerasian. All for the same fruit. All talking about the same, largely unchanged over the years, you know, the little cherry pit. You know, we know what they look like.

Everyone loves them. Every culture loves cherries. Pac-Man does, too. Yes, Pac-Man does, in fact. This is an example of one of the, to me, a really interesting linguistic shift. So as I mentioned, it came from Latin, the old French word for cherries was Cherries. Okay. C-H-E-R-I-S-E, very close to, so he's current.

And as the word was moving into English, so we're talking about Old French, Middle English, this was one of kind of a handful of words that was mistranslated as a plural. So as it was moving into English, they were thinking, oh, cherries is plural, because we add S on to plurals in English. So if it's cherries is the plural, one must be a chri or a cheri. So in French, it wasn't a singular cheree, plural charis. It was a singular cherries and then plural cherezes, although you wouldn't pronounce the last six. And this is sort of the same thing that happened with peas as well. Like, you know, you talk about like peas porridge, it's P-E-A-S-E.

Right. And as it moved into modernizing English, they think, oh, if the collective is P's, then a singular one must be a P. A-P. And that was not how the original word was. Yeah. Even today, singular, plural, different in English versus French and all the other languages. Further, it is not related to Montchari. All right, I have also cherry-picked a story here for you guys about pineapples.

You already used that pun. You don't have a new pine? Pineapple picked. I've pineapple picked. Yep. I was a little fan on the research department. Pine applied to some selection. Pryneple.

Pineapple? So, what did you say? Pineapple, but I said, it started sounding like pineapples. Pine nipples. Please see your doctor immediately. Pineapples. Pineapple is interesting to me.

It's also about word change, but this isn't about the word shape itself changing. It's about that. the meaning of the word changing and co-opting. So the word pineapple is pretty old in English, in fact. There are references to it as far back as the late 1300s. So it's an old, old, old word. And however, it originally meant something different than what it means now. I'm going to wonder.

I was like, where they kept pineapples from? So what they would call a pineapple in 1400 England is what we today would call a pinecone. Oh. It totally makes sense. And you look at it, you're like, oh, yeah. Totally makes sense. Like the pattern on the outside? Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's enough like a fruit that it was like, oh, the pine cone is the apple of the pine tree. They used to call apples as the name for a fruit or anything. Sure. In French, like a potato is apple of the earth. Right. Just whatever. Right. There's also road apples, which are entirely different things.

What are road apples? You've seen those if you live in a region where there are a lot of horses. Horse poop. Oh, okay. Don't eat the road apples. kids. So in England, they were in the old and in Europe they would call pine cones

pineapples. And so now again, keep in mind, this shouldn't surprise you. Pineapple is not an old world fruit. It is a tropical new world fruit. Yeah, there are no pine trees. So they had not seen pineapples until European explorers came to the Americas and saw them growing there. And of course

they made the same connection right off the bat. Hey, these looked like things we already have called pineapple. So we'll call these pineapples. And eventually they realized, well, we need another word to replace the old one. We were kind of lazy with word creation. Yeah. Like Indians and Indians. Like, whatever. The tupee word,

tupey language groups were spoken by some of the indigenous peoples of South Americas. The tupe word for pineapple is nanas. And that's very close to the current French word for anana. For pineapple. So they kind of took the French, slight twist on the original tupe word for it. And we get our word pineapple from substituting the English old word for pine cone. So pineapples used to be. pine cones or depending on how you want

to get. This kept coming up over Christmas vacation of my relatives not knowing that pineapples don't grow on pineapple trees. They grow from a bush. They grow from a bush. Yeah. People were saying, oh, do the pineapples, you know, do they like fall out of

the trees and hit you on your head? Maybe they're thinking of coconuts. Yeah. I think they're doing the classic pineapple coconut tree. The Pinia colada tree. Right. Yeah. It would be such a great. Nuccaladas and getting hit on the head. It's interesting you were saying, oh, apples were just another word for fruit,

because in some other cultures, bananas were like the fruit. Like when you, the ideal fruit or the, according to the Chiquita banana website, bananas were in Egyptian hieroglyphs. But I have, I couldn't find it. But I was like, Chiquita banana is a big company. Right. Why would they make? I'm leaving it with them.

I'm saying that they said they were an Egyptian hieroglyphs. Maybe they were. Maybe they're confusing like a boomerang or some other shape that kind of looks like a banana. I mean, I would need to see the picture. Like if it's like peeled and you can see that. Anyway, so I have kind of a quiz for you guys about bananas. In 2003, they were the most valuable fruit crop in the world. They're the hugest import.

People eat them all over the world. They're very cheap to grow. They're kind of cheap to grow. but they grow in very specific bands around the world. They also have a lot of nutrients. They have six different types of nutrients that you can't get from, like, any other fruit. So they're very unique. They're very...

They're like nature's candy bar. Nature's power bar more, like nutritional supplements. Yes. Here are a few questions for you guys. You should have named this quiz, I'm going bananas. I did, but I forgot to say it. I think we're on the same page. Dang it.

You're right. I should name it that. I was like, what's my idea? All right. We'll start with the basics. How are bananas botanically classified? And out of tree, shrub, vine, herbs, what are bananas?

Oh. Like the tree? I will say tree. I'll guess tree. What do other people are? I think it's like a palm, which is a tree. Okay. Shrub.

They are herbs. No. Bananas are herbs. They're the largest plants without witty stems. Without witty stems. Witty stem is like a tree or a shrub or whatever, but they don't have witty stems. They're also simple fleshy fruits. Into which subcategory do bananas best fit?

Are they palms, berries, hesperdarium, or droops? Oh. What was the first one? Palm. Yeah. I'll go with palm. They are berries. Bananas are berries.

Bananas are herb berries. Our herb berries. Ridiculous. Isn't that crazy? That's bananas. That's bonkers. Yeah. What do agriculturalists call 10 or more bananas growing together?

So not a cluster. Like a huge grouping. Not a bunch. Isn't that a song? A foot bunch? Yeah. That is a thing. But what's the technical term?

A technical term for what is it eight to ten bananas growing together? a hand Yes Because it grows They grow upwards Yeah Did I stop on a question? No you do not

But that is not why But that's not why But they grow upwards In their fingers Like I have a hand Like this I'm putting my hand up And that's sort of a rude gesture

Well in Arabic The name for a single banana Is known as a finger But the Arabic word for it Is a banana And so they think that that's That's where the word banana came from Although I saw

On Wikipedia It said it was from East African word, but I saw on the Chiquita Banana and other banana websites. It was from Arabic. What does Banana Enthusiasm magazine have to say? I couldn't, yeah.

Who doesn't love bananas? Banana aficionado. It just fits so well. Banana aficionado. Yep. Each issue has a celebrity with a banana coming out. The magazine with appeal. I'm done. Get out.

Oh, I liked it. Thumbs up. So speaking of Deo, which is also known as the banana boat song. Yes. What was hiding in a beautiful bunch of ripe bananas? It's the deadly black tarantula. Yes. Black tarantula.

Right. That's a real danger for banana pickers, I imagine. Actually, spiders do live in bananas. Yeah. Yeah. There was a story recently. You can open up a banana and just a million spiders will pour out. All those eggs.

There's a one and a hundred chance to happen. Are you kidding? Because I'm being serious. I'm kidding. I was kidding. I'm probably exaggerating the chances. There was a recent headline that someone brought bananas back and opened it, and there was a deadly spider, like, eggs in it. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Burn all those down.

I know. If it's never happened to you, that means that you're due. No, no, no, no. In terms of political science, what's a banana republic? Oh. A banana republic is, like, they would use the example of, like, South American countries where another power. basically comes in and props up the government there, right? Isn't that? That is half of it. Okay.

There's this other half where... Oh, is something to do what they have to have, like, there's a reason for them to be valuable, right? They've got like a valuable crop or something to be exploited. Their economy is largely dependent on an export of a single limited resource product. Got it, got it. So they only make bananas, and they're being exploited as for bananas. Bananas were officially introduced to the American public in the 1876 Centennial Exposition,

This exposition also introduced two major communications devices and one classic American condiment. What were they, the two communications devices in the condiment? Well, I know the communications device. That was the year that Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. The telephone? Yeah. Condiment. Mustard.

No. Helmand's mayonnaise. Is it ketchup? Ketchup. Hines ketchup. So ketchup, the telephone. And the bananas. Bananas.

But one more communication. Oh, two communications. Two communications. The Blackberry. Close. Close? I mean, not so far. It's not the telegraph.

It's not a telegraph. It's the Rimmingston typewriter. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, similar. Texting device. Yeah. Yeah. If you will.

Ketchup. Banana. Banana. Typewriter. Yeah. Wow. What a time to be alive. Matt, so most big things came out.

Apparently they were selling the bananas wrapped in colorful tinfoil and people would just kind of unwrap them. Right. Right, right, dip them in ketchup. Dip them in ketchup. The classic American combination. And then text their friends about it. Yeah.

The city of La Trobe, Pennsylvania takes credit for being the home of what banana-based dessert? Oh. Chris? Bananas Foster? No. That's New Orleans. Oh. Banana bread.

No. Banana's flambay? No. The banana split. The banana split. There we go. All right. Huh.

And then a couple years later, and entrepreneur in Boston also came up with a similar recipe, but he didn't peel the bananas in his recipe for a while. And then he realized people liked it better when you take the peels off when you make a banana. Savvy, savvy business man. Cook him years. It's like, God, this is not catching on. But they need the peel, don't they? The peel is so important. How will they know it's a banana if I don't leave the peel? Yeah, yeah. Should I wash the bananas first? God. So most bananas come from the tropics. What is the only European country to grow bananas commercially?

Oh. European country. Huh. To grow bananas commercially. And I'll qualify this. This is physiographically European. And another hint, this is not an equatorial country at all. Yeah.

I don't know. It is Iceland. Oh. Wow. Yes. They have. banana crops grown in biospheres or greenhouses heated with water

from the geothermal springs. Whoa! Snow bananas. I wonder if those bananas taste different because of the mineral years. Yeah. I don't know. I wonder. If somebody has tried Iceland bananas, tell us. Yeah.

Icelandanas. Cool. Good job, you guys. All right, you guys, we're going to take a break and add break. And I have prepared in honor of our sponsor, Linda.com. I've prepared a quick quiz about teachers. Oh, all right. And learning.

Right. So, here we go. Man, classic question. Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. Who came first? 100% Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Yes. In that order. Oh, yeah. Spa. Spah. Spah. That's our team mnemonic. They all hung out and learned together in the spa.

Okay. Not pass or. Asp. Not as. Don't introduce bad mnemon. Oh, sorry, sorry. We're just thinking of other anagrams. Speaking of Socrates, there's the Socratic method. What is exactly the Socratic method?

Chris. It's teaching by asking questions. Yes. That's a really nice way of putting it. Define here as discovering new truths by relentlessly asking questions until a satisfactory answer is reach. That's what I was going to say. It's like a really. annoying process.

Right. The lie. You're like, please, it's dancing my gosh. Yes, also known as the two-year-old strategy. Yeah, but why. All right.

So the idea or the phrase, miracle worker, has entered in common parlance. And the phrase was coined by Mark Twain, believe it or not, to describe one particular person. Helen Keller's famous teacher.

Who is she? What's her name? Oh, God, what's her name? It's, uh, Of course, Anne Sullivan. Yes. And Sullivan.

You got to remember this. Yeah, this is a... It keeps coming up. Yeah, but like individually, not as a group. Together.

We all make noises until we figure it out. Damn, I need another last name. Anne Sullivan, teacher of Helen Keller. Point by Mark Twain. That's a great trivia to.

Yeah. Coined by Mark Twain. Describing her. Huh. Just her. Wow. But now, you know, we say,

you know, that person's a miracle. Right. Those berries are miracle. Is it a miracle worker? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, if somebody, I mean, if somebody makes my mocha correctly, I'm like, you're a miracle worker. Right.

This person received a degree in drama from the University of Georgia and began his career in cinematography and film production. I have even, hold on. But I'm so excited. But he's best known for teaching the wonderful world of food science on TV. Chris. Elton Brown. Alton Brown. Alton Brown.

Did some cinematography work for a couple of music videos. Yeah, R.I.M. Also from Georgia. Last question. Before he became a makeup-loving rock star, this guy got fired from his post as a sixth-grade teacher in Harlem. Mainly because school administrators didn't really appreciate the fact that he was teaching students about Spider-Man instead of Shakespeare. Is this Alice Cooper? Close but incorrect.

Jane Simmons Yes Gene Simmons Mr. Simmons Sixth grade He wiggles his tongue at them That's inappropriate Mr. Simmons

He's like Yeah I'm gonna teach my kids About you know Spider Man Stuff of Shakespeare And got fired That's good because he went on Well today you'd get teacher

of the year for them Yeah So reaching out to the kids Yeah Yo teach Can we let's rap Kids Can we rap about English

You guys No, Shakespeare was the original rapper. Why do people know about that trope? Because it happens. Because it's a real thing. Because it's a really, really happening. This is embarrassing. Yeah, you're embarrassing both of us.

All right, there you go. That's our teacher teaching quiz inspired by Linda.com. So visit linda.com slash good job brain to try linda.com free for seven days and learn something new in 2014. Are you dreaming about becoming a nurse, or maybe you're already in nursing school? I'm Nurse Mo, creator of the straight A nursing podcast, and I want you to know that I'm here for you. I know nursing school can be challenging. I've been there, but it doesn't have to be impossible. Sometimes the key to succeeding in nursing school is to hear the concepts explained clearly and simply,

which is exactly what you get with weekly episodes of the straight A nursing school. podcast. Each Thursday, I teach a nursing concept or share tips and advice to help you succeed in school and at the bedside. My goal is to help you improve how you study, get more done in less time, pass your exams, and feel more confident in clinical. And if you're already a practicing nurse, these episodes are for you too, because as nurses, there's always something for us to learn. So, subscribe to the Stray Day Nursing podcast, and I'll see you on Thursday. day. 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. But you can start your morning off right and be ready to get stuff done in just a few minutes with the Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day podcast. You'll hear advice on everything from how to build confidence to how to get the best night's sleep. New episodes drop every weekday, and each one is fine. five minutes or less, so you only have to listen a little to get a lot more out of your weekdays.

Listen and subscribe to Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Inc. Productivity Tip of the Day, wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Good Job Brain. Smooth puzzles. Smart trivia. Good Job Brain You're listening to Good Job Brain And this week we're talking about fruits Fruits.

Fruiting stuff. So we talk about hybrid fruits, or I talked about hybrid fruits, and this is probably more about hybrid fruits. So the grapefruit, which is a hybrid of the pommelow and an orange, you might be aware that the color and thus the taste of grapefruit

It's kind of actually very pretty significant. Yeah. You can have a white grapefruit, like with the white flesh inside that's like super sour. But then you can have the ruby red grapefruit. What a good name. Wonderful marketing. You open the grapefruit up. The flesh is super, super red.

And the redder it is, the sweeter it is. And people just, people prefer that. Most people prefer that. Some people like those sour grape fruits. Most white drinking people prefer. The majority of people, Ruby red grapefruit is very, popular. The white one's not as much, but I'm not here to judge. Grapefruits started out more on the white sour side. And around the turn of the century, the grapefruit was originally found in the

West Indies. And it's one of the few like citrus, citrus fruits that didn't end up coming from like China or Southeast Asia. It was originally the hybrid was kind of traced back to the, to the West Indies. Around the turn of the century, they started growing grapefruits in Texas. Some enterprising, go on. What area is exactly the West Indies? The area that Columbus landed in. Oh, okay. You know, when he was looking for India and he landed in a bunch of islands in the Caribbean.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Barbados, I think, is specifically. But, you know, that's their best guess. So a few entrepreneurs started growing grapefruits in the great state of Texas. And they had some success. And the grapefruits would be, they'd be white, and then sometimes they'd get a little bit pinker. a lot of sort of natural variation in the fruits that show up. In the 1920s, somebody found, you know, some grapefruits hang on a tree that were like pretty red. Like, wow, this one's,

this one's kind of red and kind of figured out like, this might be desirable. So let's attempt to grow just red grapefruits, which you do by like you take that grapefruit and you try to plant it to help the process along using the techniques of the 1920s, you know, as best you can to try to get desirable attributes to the fruit. And they were pretty successful. In the 1930s, they patented the ruby red grapefruit in Texas. And over the years, they just kept trying to get it redder and redder and redder. And now there's actually these trademarked varieties called the Rio Star Grapefruit and the Ruby Sweet.

And these trademarks are owned by a company set up by the state of Texas so that when you... Oh. If it's called a Rio Star, then it's a certain... type of grapefruit that was uh you know come up with and made in texas now they've been getting these things the the rio star and the ruby sweet pretty red and the way that they actually got these particular types as red as they are is is the same way that they turned the incredible hulk green radiation bombarding them with gamma rays no yes this all started after world war two Remember that the nuclear weapons of World War II were developed, you know, like the Manhattan Project, they were developed in secrecy.

Yeah. And the average person didn't really know what was going on with them. What people knew about nuclear energy post-World War II was that it had created the most horrific weapon of mass destruction that humanity had ever unleashed upon itself. It did not have a sterling reputation. But now that we were in peacetime, the United States basically wanted to like revamp the image of, nuclear fission of like nuclear atom splitting technology such that it could continue to develop stuff and kind of like put a nice little happy face on it. So President Eisenhower introduced this program called Adams for Peace. It basically the idea was let's all get together and try to find

some like happy uses for atomic energy. Not just for killing people. Yeah. Right. And so one of the various programs was the idea of the atomic garden. They set up. One of the earliest ones was set up in Brookhaven National Labs, which was a nuclear research facility on Long Island. Basically, what they would do, so they would create a big, perfect circle field, big high walls to prevent the radiation from getting out. And then in the dead center of the field, they would build this mechanism, like a pipe, basically, a raised platform. and they'd be able to take a chunk of radioactive material, cobalt 60, and they'd be able to raise it up into the garden on a raised platform above all the crops.

If people ever had to go into the garden, they could lower the material into a lead-line chamber beneath the earth. So they would take all of the plants that they wanted to experiment on, because they already knew they had known for a while that if you bombard a plant with radiation, you can cause rapid genetic mutation. Basically, you can cause DNA to change, which will change the very nature of the plant itself.

You grow extra eyeballs and stuff? Right, yeah, exactly. Right. Extra eyeballs. I'm sorry. More than the starting. Normally it come on the fruit. It was a circular garden because in a certain wedge, they do one crop of plants that have wedges

with different types of plants and fruits and vegetables. And they would plant them at increasing distances from the little bit of radioactive material. And then watch what happened. So what would typically happen was the plants that were the closest to the Cobalt 60 would die. They would just die. The plants that were a little further away would get horrible plant cancer. Like they'd have like tumors and they'd be super ugly and just like all kinds of weird stuff would happen to them.

And the plants that were the furthest away would be unchanged because there would not be enough radioactivity to really cause a change. But there was basically, there was a sweet spot somewhere in the middle where the plants would, to the naked eye, they would look like the plants that you see every day. But then inside of them, their DNA would be kind of shifted around. But the thing is, it would vary plant to plant. What that would be. Yeah.

So each little individual plant, they're not all getting affected the same way. they're just going, they're undergoing mutations. Something that would happen in nature over time, but like over millions of years, but just all happening scattershot in front of your eyes. It was basically, it was, so just mutant plants all over the whole thing. Like what? Well, inside the X-Men greenhouse, if you will. I mean, this, from a scientific perspective, this was very, this is a blunt instrument.

This was a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks kind of approach. It was totally random. but it actually did lead to major successes. One of the big successes that they talk about is a peppermint, a mutation of peppermint that was resistant to verticillium wilt, which was a fungal disease that affects all kinds of different plants. That even to this day, there's no, like, cure for it. But they were able to get a wilt-resistant, fungus-resistant type of peppermint out of these experiments. And I could only find one source on this. I couldn't corroborate this, but the source says that most of the peppermint oil that is in use today, like in toothpaste or gum, they grow this specific type of wilt-resisted peppermint now.

Yeah, so thank you to radiation. So in the 1970s, they irradiated grapefruit, and they picked out the ones that mutated and turned into, like, super, super red grapefruits. Now, it's safe. They're not, the fruits today have no radiation in them. They irradiated. The genetic results from. Exactly. Yes.

Now, do they still do this? Yes and no. Mostly food scientists have moved on to more sophisticated techniques. The metaphor that kept coming up in my research was their ability to recombine DNA now is more of a scalpel versus the sledgehammer approach of the atomic garden. But there is, there is at least one atomic garden still in operation in Japan. Whoa. Yep. That is pretty cool.

So you're eating all kinds of radiation mutant plants that cyclops and. rogue of plants I think you're mixing your superheroes you said Hulk first Yeah yeah A movie on X-Men How did X-Men become X-Men? Was it Radiation? No, I think the X-Men became X-Men

from random Genetic mutation So the X-Men are more natural Oh, natural And Hogan is the Was the irradiated, yes I'm glad we talked about it now Because

He is the Hulk Not Hulk Did I say Hogan? He might have been irradiated too If you look at his skin, he's been, yeah. There's 30 other hoagings that did not turn out quite so well. Burn. All right.

Well, that's our show, everybody. On that note. On that note. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. Hope you learn a lot of stuff about fruits. You can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and on our website. Goodjobbrain.com and check out our sponsor.

at linda.com slash good job, brain. And, okay, one last pun. See you later. That was the pits. She set you up. Dana told you to say it. Oh, bookline singer. Spend less time staying in the know.

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