Hyperfixed - Hyperfixmas

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

This week, Alex goes full Scrooge -- visiting the ghosts of Hyperfixed past, present, and future.The first ever Hyperfixed Pledge Drive is going to be Friday, December 19 at 12 noon! Stop by to watch Alex bravely humiliate himself and stay up all night! Anyone who becomes a member during those 24 hours will be able to request that Alex play a song.Become a member:https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/joinFollow Hyperfixed on Twitchhttps://www.twitch.tv/hyperfixedpodWe got merch!https://shop.hyperfixedpod.com/LINKS:An's episode: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/only-to-be-consumed-in-canadaAli's episode: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/the-thing-about-losing-everythingEva's episode: https://www.hyperfixedpod.com/listen/hyperfixed/eva-needs-to-measure Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hey, everyone, this is Alex. So the other day I got an email from a very nice listener who basically said to me, like, hey, I like hyperfixed, I want to support it. It is hard for me to justify spending $60 a year on a single show. And, you know, as much as I'd like everyone to become a premium hyperfix member, I get it. And, you know, as the media landscape gets more and more inhospitable to creators, people are needing to choose what to support and when. and the idea of spending, you know, $60 a year on a single show isn't for everyone.

So, right now we are in the middle of the fall Radiotopia Fundraiser, and I just wanted to spot like that as an alternative to people who want to support not just my show, but a number of shows with a one-time or recurring donation. If you don't know what Radiotopia does for us, on top of selling our ads, they help us with promotion, they connect us with collaborators, They help us purchase ads for big stories. They help me with submissions for award shows. And, you know, Radiotopia is the home of some of my favorite podcasts of all time.

From limited run series like appearances, to ear hustle and articles of interests, Kitchen Sister, Song Exploder, Memory Palace, and, you know, of course, Yo-A-Shaw's proxy, with whom we collaborated a couple months ago. You can donate one time or monthly at any level to Radiotopia, and 100% of that money will go. go to supporting all of those shows, as well as Hyperfixed and dozens of others. Your contributions to Radiotopia are tax deductible, and from now until December 31st, 2025, every gift to Radiotopia will be matched one to one up to $50,000 by a generous PRX donor.

So if the idea of a premium hyperfixed membership is just not your bag, I encourage you to support Radiotopia because we wouldn't exist without them. You can go to Radiotopia.org slash donate to support, and thank you so much for listening. OMGS is a website that the New York Times Wirecutter featured as one of their most popular gifts and for good reason. It presents new findings from the largest ever research study into women's pleasure and intimacy. In partnership with researchers at Yale and Indiana University, they asked tens of thousands of women what they wished they and their partners had discovered sooner. They found the patterns in those discoveries and all that wisdom about pleasure and intimacy is organized as hundreds of short videos, animations, and how-toes. Wirecutter doesn't give recommendations lightly, and when you see OMGS, you'll understand why they featured it.

It's warm, honest, and has regular women talking about real experiences. It's truly eye-opening. I've spent a lot of time on OMGS, and it really does feel empowering to see these experiences and techniques detailed so openly. Without any blushing or shame, what they're doing is long overdue. I love OMGS. Wirecutter loves OMGS, and I think you're going to love it too. See for yourself at O-M-G-Y-S.com. That's O-M-G-Y-E-S.com.

Hey, two things before we start. First, on Friday, December 19th at 12 p.m. Eastern Time, I am going to go live on Twitch for the first ever hyper-fixed pledge drive. I will be on Twitch for 24 hours with all my music gear plugged in. And if you become a premium hyper-fixed member during that time, you will be able to request a song from me live, any song, and I will have to play it. That's 24 hours, starting at noon, Eastern on Friday, December 19th. Also, Hyperfixed officially has merch.

We have shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies and coffee mugs and hats, and you can order them all by going to shop.com. And if you are a premium hyperfixed member, you get 15% off. So yeah, 24-hour pledge drive, December 19th, and merch available at shop. hyperfixpod.com, 15% off for premium members. That's it. Here's the show. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman, and this is Hyperfixed. Each week on our show, listeners write in with their problems, big and small, and I solve them. Or at least, I try. And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. This week, Hyperfixmas.

Ah, December, that time of year when people gather together to celebrate the coming new year and reflect upon the year that's passed. And here at Hyperfixed, that's exactly what we're doing. For the last couple months, the Hyperfix team and I have been reminiscing about the episodes that we produced this year. Our first full year as a show. Which, honestly, look, I'm pretty proud of it. I'm excited that we made a show, and we're still doing it. and we're doing it all on our own without any help.

I mean, you guys help. This is getting long. I apologize. All I'm saying is that we're very happy to be making the show, okay? Don't get weird about it. I know I'm the one who's being weird about it. And reset. By our calculations, we answered about 21 big and small problems.

And in the process, we found ourselves walking along some fairly unusual paths. Sometimes the problems we chased were so big that it meant learning about whole new worlds, like the time we investigated the cat drug black market, or when we discovered the meaning behind a mysterious gold-plated metal from the vaudeville magic circuit. Other times we tackled problems that initially seemed small and silly, like when we try to figure out why public toilets are so crappy, pun intended,

or why red delicious apples are so ubiquitous, despite the fact that they are so not delicious. And then there was that one where the word diarrhea was uttered 24 times in 30 minutes. And while that wasn't a goal of mine, I'm really proud to have accomplished it. So, yeah, it's been a pretty solid first year. We're all very stoked about the work we have ahead of us. But before we start talking about the future,

there's a few last things we want to take care of. Because the thing is that sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, our stories keep going long after we hit publish on the episode. Sometimes they keep developing. Sometimes we just can't stop thinking about them. And sometimes we realize there's something that we got wrong. So today, you're going to hear a little something from each one of those categories. Sound good?

Great. If it doesn't sound good, I'm sorry. But here we go. On, how are you? I'm pretty good. Thanks, Alex. How are you doing? You know, the same as always.

I always have something to complain about. But let's just say, for the sake of gravity, let's say good. This is On, the listener that prompted the only to be consumed in Canada episode, that we aired back in March. And if you're meeting them for the first time, congratulations, they are pure joy in human form. Ahn lives in Canada in a communal house with a bunch of other people

who plan and do adorably creative activities together. For example, when we spoke to them in November, they had just started a film noir screening series that they were calling noir femur. So all movies that were directed and or written by women, which is fun. Because a lot of the classic noirs have, you know, problems. So it's fun to experience a feminine perspective on the similar problems.

See, I told you they're cute. In addition to movie nights, they do communal music nights, communal art nights, and communal cooking nights, which is what they were doing when they made the discovery that led them to write into us. Now, if you didn't listen to that episode, pause and go do that right now. But if you did listen to that episode, here's a little refresher. Last year, Ahn and their housemates were gathered in their kitchen for an evening of holiday cookie decorating. They had tubes of Betty Crocker icing and special nozzles for piping it onto their cookies.

And then the middle of the holiday merriment, Ahn noticed an odd label on the back of the tube of icing. It was written in bright red capital letters, and it said, only to be consumed with other foods. And that seemed strangely ominous for a product as seemingly benign as decorative icing. So naturally, I'd had some questions. Like, how much other food do you need to have proportionally before you are consuming it on its own?

So I'm not running afoul of this particular disclaimer. And to find the answer to those questions, we spent months ping-ponging between customer service agents in the Betty Crocker conglomerate until eventually we learned that Betty Crocker doesn't even make Betty Crocker icing. It's made by a company called Signature Brands. And when we finally reached the top of that should, Bureaucary Bureaucratic Mountain, the CEO of signature brands, Joe Enz, answered

On's question about the label. Joe told us that he was equally confused by this language, and he assured us that there was nothing dangerous about the icing. He also said that he was going to ask his marketing team about revising the language to be something a little clearer and, you know, less terrifying. But the thing is that when we published that episode, we still didn't know what language the marketing team decided to go with, or if they were actually planning on following through with this change. That is

until one month ago when we reached back out to Joe Enz. And when we got that information, we wanted to tell on about this new label that they single-handedly inspired. So very quickly, I wanted to give you a little update, which is why we reached out to you, you know,

nine months later. We reached back out to Joe ends and he told us because of you, because of your concern, they made the change. They have made a change to the packaging. That's so exciting. And I'm going to share with you. Wait, Alex, before you share the image.

That's hyperfixed producer, Amor Yates. On, I'm curious. What do you think the change is? I want this to be a total flate of fancy. Tell us what you think happened. Tell us what you think happened. I'm very curious. I mean, I think,

they should just write Do Not Glurp on it, and then we'd be all good. If this joke means nothing to you, definitely go back to listen to our Betty Crocker episode, which we will link in our show notes. Maybe, like, this is intended for use as a decoration element or something like that, just to be clear that you're supposed to put it on something, but not to say, like, only for use, because I think the only was a really big part of it. All right, are you ready? I'm ready.

Okay, let me just figure out how to share my screen now. This will take two seconds. Here we go. What it says is, use on your favorite dessert. It could not be more diametrically opposed to the way it originally came out. The way it originally came out sounded like a threat. This sounds like a damn party.

I like that they've also made it, like, black, and it's at the bottom. It's not in the, like, red text that looks like warning. Yeah, the red text says, refrigerate after opening store in a cool place, use it room temperature. This just wants you to get down and have a blast. It's, like, such a sharp difference in tone, I think. But I really do feel like if they were trying to calibrate this to seem. not so threatening. Use on your favorite dessert, with an exclamation point at the end, way better.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing on is we reached out to Joe and asked if we could interview Joe because, obviously, we put in that call to action before, and he declined. He said he doesn't think our audience would be particularly interested in the marketing and packaging details at signature brands, but I just felt like that was worth mentioning to you because we were hoping to. go fully on the inside at signature brands and talk to who exactly was the person who decided you is on your favorite desserts.

It makes me feel like he didn't actually listen to the episode, because if he listened to it, he would know that our listeners are exactly the kind of people who want to hear the inner workings of their marketing strategy. I would love to hear the inner workings of the marketing strategy, and I appreciate y'all going the mile to try and make it happen. You hear that, Joe? the people simply need to know. So as the person who came to us with this problem,

do you feel satisfied with the rewording? Does it feel like what you wanted? I mean, you didn't want anything. You just wanted to understand it. But now understanding what they meant, do you feel like they have gotten closer to what they meant and what it should sound like? Yeah, I think this is actually a great rewording

because it is clearly, clear about the intended use, which is, I think, what they were trying to be clear about. But it's not kind of scary to look at or disorienting to look at. Yeah, I think, like, I couldn't imagine a better wording. That's great. That's a ringing endorsement. The only other thing I should mention with regards to the use on your favorite dessert label is that it will not hit the shelves until summer of next year. So, you might still go to the store and see some not to be eaten.

What is, wow, I don't even remember what it's only to be consumed with other foods. Thank you. Only to be consumed with other foods. But it will be fixed. And it's all because of you. This is really great. I look forward to decorating some cookies one last time with the only to be consumed labeling on them this winter. And then never again.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, On. Yeah, thank you so much, John. We really appreciate it. After I got off the call with On, we had another call that we wanted to make. Not because we had any new developments on our end, but because we wanted to hear about any new developments on their end. And that phone call was to a listener named Allie, who appeared in an episode called The Thing About Losing Everything.

Ali initially wrote to us about a problem that was fairly easy for me to solve. She asked if I could help her access some music on an old iPod, music from her younger years growing up in Colorado. But the reason why this music and her ability to access it was so important to her was because earlier this year, during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January, Ali lost her home in the Eaton fire. along with everything in it. In one night, all the objects and heirlooms and records that helped shape her life and identity were just gone, forever. And during our intake interview, Allie described to me what it felt like to be living

with that singular type of grief while simultaneously juggling the logistics of trying to rebuild her community. And I think about that conversation all the time. So I wanted to see how she was doing several months later. Headphones, no headphones. We don't care. We do care. Don't care. Whatever's comfortable for you. Recording in progress. Thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it.

I'm not going to keep you too long, I don't think. No problem. All right. Well, my first question is, how have you been since we talked last? The last time I spoke with Allie was back in May. Her episode aired on June 5th. And surprisingly, Allie knows exactly what she was doing that day. June 5th, I had COVID for the first time ever. Really? Yes, because I was in, I remember, I was in Colorado visiting my parents.

I got COVID from my friend's book release. And then this episode came out. And I think like my mom or my husband listened to it, people in my family listened to it before I did. I was so sick. It was brutal. So, yes, that's why I know exactly that on June 5th I did have COVID. Yeah. Well, okay, now that you don't have COVID.

Catch us up because, like, things were crazy then. I can imagine that they probably have not slowed down much in terms of craziness. They haven't. They have shifted. The weirdness of fire recovery has shifted. So I think the recovery landscape has become a little bit more clear in terms of, like, all of the debris has been removed from the burn zone. For the most part, there are some commercial properties and maybe some like multifamily housing properties that the debris has not been removed, but the majority of

the debris has been removed from the area. So even just driving back up to home is a little less. It's disturbing in a different way than it was before. What does it look like now that all the debris is gone? I can't even really describe it. It's a little incomparable to anything I've ever seen, because it's not just like empty land. It's not just like a field of nothing. It's still, it's like remaining trees. It's trees that are like partially burned but are going to survive. There's a lot of fencing that people have put up to like protect their lots.

There's a lot of like contractor signs and stuff like that. My husband goes up to the lot more often than I do, but we go up there pretty regularly to water the trees that survived. So we got like a hundred foot long hose because you don't have a front and back. of the house anymore where there's like a hose bib to plug into. So we have the hose bib in the front of the house where the water meter is. And then we had to get this like massively huge hose in order to reach the trees in the back. I know that these two things aren't remotely comparable.

So I wanted to apologize in advance before I said this out loud. But when I was a kid, my parents would take me every year to a cottage on Lake Michigan that they would rent. And it was basically eminent domain by the government. Like they were like, hey, you know, we're going to turn this into a national park. And you guys are allowed to keep it for X number of years, and then we're going to tear it down. And part of what was striking about the landscape, at least for a while after they did, in fact, tear it down, was just how barren, like how the absence of the thing. There were all of these markers of where the houses in this area used to be, but they were all gone. Are there, like, pieces of what resembles civilization there that are now gone?

Yeah, it's so like when the Army Corps of Engineers takes debris after a fire, they don't take everything. They take just what is in what they call the ash footprint. So just basically like where the house had stood and then like a certain perimeter outside of that in case, you know, like our roof burned off and like flew maybe like five feet south of where our house was. So they like, you know, take that stuff. but our cinder block walls that line our property were heavily damaged and they took part of those walls but only to access other neighbor's properties not really yeah so there's like parts of walls parts of fences they don't take driveways and like pools people's pools are still there with fences around them so yeah it's just a it's weird it's like it's hard to know where you are

because I feel like usually we sort of instinctively move through space based on visual markers that are familiar to us. Yes. People I know who are like third generation Altadina are like, I get lost up there now, like when I try to go. That's so crazy. Because I can't. There's no like that one house on the corner or, you know, like all you have left are street signs. But most people, if you're really familiar with a place, you're not paying attention to the street signs. You just know where to go based on just these like visual cues that you sort of subconscious.

internalizing. All those cues are gone. It's disorienting, but people are coming back. There are some houses that are framed out, some houses that have the like Tyvec plastic kind of stuff on them. Some roofs are up. We have a neighbor up the street whose house is pretty much done, pretty much rebuilt. That's really exciting. Yeah, it's complicated. It's like the people who are able to rebuild quicker, seem to be the people who have the financial means to not have to wait for insurance. And it also kind of makes you feel a little behind when in reality, like, you kind of have to move at the pace of the bureaucratic systems around you, especially if you don't have those financial means. And then, you know, people who are moving slower, I mean, like, trauma

impacts everybody in different ways. I think some people's trauma was like, I have to rebuild this right now or I'll die. Like, I think that was like a feeling people are having. And then other people are like, I can't even think about this. And, like, just now I'm getting calls from neighbors, like, all right, I'm ready to think about rebuilding. Where do I start? How is, uh, I mean, I know that, you know, healing is not linear. What is your emotional state like around all of this? I think I'm sort of getting used to it more.

We've been in this apartment now for, like, I honestly don't know how many months since January. so almost a year. It still doesn't feel like our apartment. We went on a big road trip through Northern California in August right before the new semester started. And it was very weird to feel like, okay, I'm ready to go home, but to not feel like there was a home to go to. You know, like usually when you go out of town, like for me, I don't love to travel a lot. So like I like, I like the feeling of like, oh, I'm ready to just get back to my home. And that feeling was very confusing this time because it was like, well, I don't want to go to that weird apartment where like none of my stuff is.

I mean, we have a ton of stuff now, but like it's all new stuff. So it still doesn't feel like our stuff. But it's also the only stuff we have. So it does feel like our stuff. I think that's part of the complication of it at this point too. It's just like, what is all this? Oh, this is mine. Right.

Okay. Are there like bright spots? Or moments that feel like life is returning to what it used to be in some ways? I mean, I think I'm more surprised by the fact that I feel normal most days than, like, the level of distress that I felt in the first week, two weeks, I don't really remember that time cognitive. Like, I can't really tell you much of what happened during that time. I know we got a lot done during that time because I know that in those two weeks we found a place to live, we bought a new car, we filed insurance claims, like there's a ton of stuff that we did, got clothes, all that stuff, but I don't like remember, I only have the physical evidence of having done that stuff. I don't really remember like making those choices or doing that stuff. So that has subsided a bit like I'm a little more conscious and present. I do think like the PTSD is setting in a little bit. Like I did have a pretty severe trauma flashback. the other night where I kind of like, I don't really know the language, but just was like not in the present moment and was fully back in that like first day after.

What does that feel like or look like? What was the experience like? If you don't mind me asking, because I know that's a lot. Yeah. No, I don't mind. It was weird. It was like I felt a little like agitated all day. I couldn't really describe it. Maybe a little like energetic or not necessarily bad. But then as the day went on and as the night went on, we were like watching the Great British Bake Off because it's a soothing thing to watch in the evening. And I just started to get more and more uncomfortable. And I paused it. And I just started kind of pacing around.

And I was like, I don't know what's wrong. I feel really weird. And then the next thing I knew, I was like upside on on the couch with my weighted blanket on me, like trying to like come back to reality. And just feeling like I don't like looking around. You know, like when you have like PTSD episodes, there are like certain sensory things that you can do to bring you back, like smell something or like turn your head from left to right, you know, the like name five things you can see and four things you can smell all that stuff.

Then my husband was really trying to kind of get me back online and I just couldn't. But then I heard mariachi music coming from the neighbor's house and it like, that was music that was played a lot in the neighborhood I kind of spent my adulthood in. And so that sort of like weirdly brought me back. I was like, oh, I know where I am. That's great, though. I didn't know where I was. Yeah, that is terrifying.

Yeah, but the mariachi music really, like, came in and just floated kind of through the window. And I was sort of like, oh, yeah, because that, I mean, my neighbors in my old neighborhood, they would, I mean, multiple days a week, but especially like every Sunday, there was like ranchera music and mariachi music. And so it's just kind of like familiar in a way that nothing else around me was familiar in that. moment. Right. What is the bureaucratic situation for you right now? Like, where are you at with the rebuilding of your house and all of the things that you've been going through? Yeah, it's going fairly smoothly as much as I could have hoped. So we hired a design build firm that we like they, it's an architect working with a builder. And so we go through the design process where like the architect and the builder are kind of both there for the whole process so they know what

our budget is based on what our insurance payout is, which is our insurance is, you know, quite a bit less than what it actually costs to rebuild the exact same house that we had. Yes. That's the case for many people. In Altadina, I would say most people are underinsured. And so there's like this government disaster loan you can get at 2.5%. So it's like a good interest rate. it is additional debt that you take on

on top of whatever debt you already have and you have qualified for it. They frame it like it's a solution to these problems, but in reality, if you are like a fixed income senior or, you know, for whatever reason, like if you were like maxed out on your mortgage

spending every month, like you can't really take on additional debt. Right. You also can't use that money for anything other than exactly what you had. And that's tricky because a lot of these people's, a lot of houses like ours were built a long time ago with sometimes with materials that are actually like much higher quality than exist today right um like growth wood which is much more expensive now but was more readily available

and much and much sturdier right like it's much sturdier much much much sturdier yeah much like less impervious to to termites and to all kinds of stuff um so it's like this tricky thing where they want you to insurance and the sba want you to rebuild the house that you had and for most people, that's great. We just want the house we had back. Like, we're not trying to do. Some people, you know, want to make some changes, but the majority of us are just like, just give me the house I had. But the house you had was made with materials that are priced very differently now. Sometimes, like, those things have depreciated. Insurance measures them as having depreciated because they were old. When in reality, like, if I try to get vintage 1960s bathroom tile,

which is what we had, maybe insurance considers that tile, like, less valuable because it's old. But, like, maybe interior design specialists understand that that's, like, a rare kind of tile that is really hard to get. So it's going to be really expensive. So if we go to just build exactly what we had, like, do I just buy, like, cheap, crappy tile that exists now, or do I try to get the 1960s vintage tile? You know, so it's like all these weird kinds of considerations of how much something is worth. And then insurance will only pay for what they think your house was worth. And then the SBA disaster loan will also only pay for, like, replacing what. what you had. So I think that's the challenging part of the bureaucracy is like, we don't even

really know our budget because we don't even really know what money is actually going to be available to us in terms of what insurance will approve and what the SBA will approve. But we did just, honestly, we're just going ahead and trying to figure it out as we go and trying to figure out like, I mean, how are we going to pay for this? How are we going to, I don't know, but we're just taking it one step at a time. Allie tells me that once all is said and done, the zone permitting stuff is sorted, and their building plans are approved, they likely won't be able to break ground until spring, and that construction on her home won't be done until the end of 2027, hopefully, because that's also when the rental coverage on their insurance runs out. Is your rental unit paid for at least partially by insurance? It's paid for fully by insurance, because like when you own a home, you have a mortgage, and then when your home burns down,

You can't live there anymore, but you still have to pay that mortgage, and then you have to rent somewhere, presumably, I mean, to live. Right. And so insurance has what's called loss of use coverage, and so they cover or additional living expenses. I think it's called loss of use technically. But, yeah, they will pay for a comparable to what you had living space to rent. The tricky part is in Los Angeles, we had a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house for a huge. huge lot. So the place we live now is half.

It's an apartment. It's half the size of our house square footage. There's no real yard and it's the same price as our mortgage. Jesus Christ. So we could get a bigger place. Insurance would allow us even if it was much more expensive than our mortgage, but then we'll run out of that money

because they don't just cover it indefinitely. You have like a limit on that. Yeah. On how much spend. So. The other question I had, have you been listening to the music that we recovered from your iPod? I haven't been listening to music.

Interesting. Why not? I don't know. Okay. Okay, what I have been listening to is hyperfixed. And it's just so great. Yesterday, I was listening to the like bonus episode with the guy you interviewed about nostalgia. And it was like blowing my mind because. he was talking about how, like, objects and, like, content, media, whatever are the thing that, like, allow us to kind of access the past in a way that kind of allows us to have hope for the future. And when you lose everything that was a reminder of your past, it's like you, like, can't access that nostalgia to an extent anymore.

And so there's this, like, absence of the things that allow me to connect to my past, which then disallowed. me from sort of imagining a future. And music is something that would allow me to connect to my past and something that still is accessible, either through my iPod or through streaming services, but it's almost like I can't go there. It's like too, it's like too painful to have like these pockets of my past that can exist when like the rest of it doesn't. That makes a lot of sense, but I'm really sorry to hear that. That also sounds really agonizing. It's tough. do you envision and this is an impossible question to answer I just want to get out ahead of of that because I'm asking you an impossible question but do you like envision a time at which

you will feel able to access that stuff again I mean maybe not through physical objects but through you know just like the trauma that will have sort of subsided enough that you will be able to think about the world of the past, even though there isn't a physical archive of it anymore. Or are you just like, are you starting as a person from scratch? Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Most days it doesn't even feel like I'm starting as a person from scratch because it doesn't feel like I'm starting as a person. Like my sense of personhood is still relatively absent. I feel like I'm a being that moves through the world and does the tasks I need to do. I, you know, meet with the architect and I go teach writing to my students at my job and I call my mom and I, whatever, but I go to the grocery store. But like, that sense of like who I am is still missing. Is there a point at which you think it would be good to check back in with you? So it's going to be like a, at least a three-year process for just like just for our home to be rebuilt.

Like from the day the fire started to when we move home, I imagine if it's the end of 2027 and the fire started at the beginning of 2025, that's like three years from like when we lost the house to when we move home. You know, I don't know how long hyperfix is going to run for. Hopefully you get like, you know, a 30 year. this American life length run out of you. Hopefully. I would personally love that. But anytime the next 30 years

if you want to check back in, I'm sure I'll have updates for you about rebuilding a town post fire. Sounds good. All right. Well, I think that's all the questions I have. I really appreciate it, Allie. I'm glad that you are

making progress, however, slowly. And I am really hoping that you find your way back to you know, find her way back to yourself, I guess. Yeah, it's great to talk to you. I'll be here rebuilding and fucking everything. After the break, we have one last update for you. An amendment, or correction that we need to make to one of our very

first stories. So, stick around. We'll be right back. You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies. in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name,

decided to call it, business history. You know why? Why? Because it's a show about the history of business. Available everywhere. You get it.

Your podcasts. Welcome back to the show. So before the break, I mentioned that we're doing things a little bit differently this week. In honor of the holiday season and in celebration of this, our last main feed episode of the year,

we are looking back on problems that we've solved and checking in with some friends we've made along the way. But the truth is that there's only one story we've needed to correct, almost as long as it's been in the world. That story is called Eva Needs to Measure, and it was the second story we ever released.

The story of that story began with a woman named Eva who moved from the U.S. to the UK when she was just a little kid. And although she had taken on the accent in the mannerisms of her new home country, there were still one piece of American culture to which Eva feels intensely devoted. It's baked goods. The cookies, cakes, and sweet little squares that line American bake sale tables. Eva loves them all. But the thing is, Eva is also a scientist, the kind of person who's very precise about measurements.

And it's those two things, her love of American baked goods and her affinity for scientific precision, that led her to a problem. The problem is that obviously in America, things are measured in cups, and that's a volume. And in England, we measure things in grams. And the problem starts when you're trying to make an American recipe in England and you need to look up, okay, so this recipe says it's a cup of butter. How much does a cup of butter weigh? And then you look that up and you find out that according to different websites, there are about five different answers.

So Eva came to us because she wanted a number, one precise, exact measurement for the number of grams in a cup of butter. to ensure that when she baked an American peanut butter cookie or whatever it is that she happened to be baking, that she could feel confident in her calculations and know for sure that what came out of the oven was exactly what was supposed to and how it was supposed to. But what we discovered was that number evil wanted was truly elusive. And when we reported back, we told her that volume measuring devices, like measuring cups and spoons are often unreliable. There's no governing body that comes through to assess whether or not each cup is truly

a cup or if it's just in the ballpark of a cup. And the same is essentially true for weight measuring devices like at-home scales. So between those two variable measurements, we told Eva, it seemed nearly impossible to ensure that she would ever get a perfect conversion of cups to grams. But folks, that is only a small portion of the answer. There was one other thing that we learned in the course of our reporting on that episode. Or should I say, there was one thing that we were told about, but for whatever reason we didn't internalize it, and we didn't report it back to Eva. And this thing plays an even more consequential role in the struggle to convert cups to grams.

I would say the difference in the recipes when she's working with an American recipe, that recipe is made usually with an American butter, which is 8. standard is 80% butter fat. So the USDA regulates butter at 80% in the United States. And in Europe, it's regulated at 82 to 90% butter fat. So that's the big difference. I mean, huge difference. This is Claire Robinson. You might know her as the longtime host of the Food Network show Five Ingredient Fix, but she's also a French-trained cook who is low-key obsessed with butter. And what she's saying here is that the biggest issue with trying to convert an American cup of butter for use in a British kitchen is that the butter itself is different.

By law, European butter is required to have a higher percentage of butterfat. Sometimes it's up to 10% higher. And that difference can have a massive effect on your final product. So when you're baking with a higher butterfat content, you're just going to get a denser product at the end. So your cookies will be more buttery. Now, it doesn't, it's not that it doesn't work. work. It'll still taste great. As a matter of fact, it'll probably taste better. What's going to

change for her will be the texture. And fat content is not the only difference between American and European butters. We learned from a researcher named Gina Mode, who works at the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The flavor of these two butters is different as well. So the majority of European butter is cultured, while the majority of American butter is not. And cultured butter is when live bacteria cultures are added to pasteurized cream and it's fermented before the churning process begins. So the bacteria consume the lactose in the cream, producing lactic acid. And this results in an aromatic, tangy, acidic flavor similar to sour cream. And this is also going to have a slightly softer body.

And Gina told me that this isn't the only variable that's going to affect the flavor of the butter. It's also impacted by what the cows that produce the milk that's made into the butter are eating. So European butter tends to be from cows that are fed more grass, while the majority of American butter is from cows fed more hay and total mixed rations. And what the animals are eating affects the butter. So a grass-based diet will give butter a more yellow color, some grassy flavor notes, and a softer body compared to the total mixed ration diet. So what this means is that those higher fat, bolder-flavored butters are going to work great in dishes where butter is the star. But if you want your butter to take a back seat to the other flavors in the dish, or if you're simply trying to make the most faithful recreation of an American peanut butter cookie,

your best bet is to go with a more neutral American butter. Unfortunately for Ava, however, there isn't a lot of this neutral, uncultured, hay-fed American-style butter getting imported to Europe. But at least in terms of fat content, Claire Robinson says she can get something close. So what she can find in England would be 82% butterfat. So her butterfat is going to range between 82 and 90%.

So 82 to me is kind of that standard where it's a perfect blend, it's balance, right? So you get more fat, more creaminess, more, like, richness, more texture. But you're not going to make it so dense that you're going to ruin the recipe. So I go for 82% butterfat in the United States. I would do the exact same thing if I was in the EU or in England. So there you have it. That's the end of 2025.

It's been an incredibly exciting year for us full of amazing weird stories and we have plenty more in the chamber for next year. But before we go, I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of myself and Emma and Amor and Sari and Tony. It is an incredible privilege to get to wake up every day and make this show for you.

And it absolutely wouldn't exist without your support and your kindness people have donated their time and their energy to helping us solve problems in ways that I truly never imagined would be possible. And I just feel very lucky to have the community around the show that I do. And I hope it continues to get bigger and weirder and more fun all the time. So, see you in 2026.

Thank you. Hyperfixed is and edited by Emma Cortland, Amory Yates, and Serious Offer Sukkenek. It was engineered by Tony Williams. The music is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and me. You can get bonus episodes, join our Discord, and much more at hyperfixedpod.com. And, as I said at the top of the show, we have merch now. Shirts, sweatshirts, hats, mugs.

You can get them all at shop.hyperfixedpod.com. That's shop.com. com. Premium members get 15% off. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, creator-owned, listener-supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia.fm. Thanks so much for listening.

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