Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Beans

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by writers/podcasters/directors Abe Epperson, Adam Ganser, and Michael Swaim ('Small Beans' network, plus Swaim works at IGN.com) for a look at why beans are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Beans. Known for being food. Famous for being farts. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why beans are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Three wonderful guests join me this week. Michael Swaim, Abe Epperson, and Adam Ganser are returning guests to this show. There are many wonderful things. They're also part of the Small Beans comedy podcasting network and Patreon and more.

Small Beans, please check it out if you haven't before. I think I talk about it on the show a lot, and I should please check it out if you haven't before. I think I talk about it on the show a lot, and I should talk about it even more, like right now. Also, you may remember Adam Ganser and Abe Epperson from the episode about Grapefruit, or you may know Michael Swaim from the episode about The Great Gatsby, or from he and I making an entire podcast about Kurt Vonnegut entitled Kurt Vonnegise. Anyway, normally I'd launch straight into where we're taping this. I also want to ease you into a change in where I am taping, because I've already given patrons a heads up about this and talked about it on my social media. But for those of you who

don't know, I'd like to let you know that I've moved cities. My fiance got a great new job in New York, and the move is great for me too, and this is the first ever episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating taped in our new location, New York City. Anyway, even with the move, this podcast keeps right on happening. I love making it, easy to make it here. There is one change right here, right now. I've gathered all of our zip codes for this taping and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. And I do want to say I've done some research on this area already for past guests who were here, and I'm excited to get

to do more as we get more settled. There may be more learnings to get into. Also lots to say in the future about the significance of the land I previously taped the show on. Anyhow, beyond my location, let's acknowledge that Michael recorded this on the traditional land of the Ohlone people, acknowledge Abe and Adam each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode.

And today's episode is about beans. It's a straightforward topic. It's also an incredibly vast topic. We're not trying to talk about every kind of bean or every cultural role beans have played. As always, we try to find some of the most interesting, shocking, astounding things about an enormous topic. And I think we had an amazing time doing it. I also found that with this show, it probably references more past episodes of the podcast

than any other episode has before. You don't need to have heard them. It just it's just that beans interlock with a lot of things, turns out. You can really, really mix them up real good. Anyway, that's all the setup you need. Please sit back, or sit over a big ol' bowl of rice and beans from La Isla de Cuchifritos, which is near the Knickerbocker Avenue stop on the M train. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Michael Swaim, Abe Epperson, and Adam Ganser. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then.

Michael, Abe, Adam, this is such a thrilling group for a thrilling topic. Any of you can start, but how do you feel about beans? Oh, boy. Isn't that just an invitation? Any of you can start. I mean, because when you mention beans, I surge with passion, so it's hard to hold myself back. I recently came to respect and appreciate beans a little more because I was on a very restrictive diet for two months, two and a half months, which included no beans.

And I got to say, there is stuff that you get over. Like, it's true that if you don't have sugar for a while, you stop craving it and you realize it's a drug that's put into all of our food. But I really wanted beans and it stayed true. And then I finally had beans and beans are good, man. Especially the refried bean. Oh, heavenly. So I love beans. I consider them a superfood, not in nutritional sense.

I just think, hey, they're super. They're great. And that was temporary and now you're back. Now you're in. All I eat is beans now. It's weirdly restrictive in the other way. Having a hard time, Alex. You know, I'm pretty indifferent when it comes to beans.

Now that I think about it, I thought I was going to be agree with Michael, but I'm going to actually say no, I don't care for beans. I don't think about beans. It's weird that we named ourselves small beans because I guess I always thought it was like, because if we are, we're going to be small beans until we be big beans, you know, it's like the idea is that we grow.

And, but I always thought of beans as like money, you know, like pennies or something like that. So I've no, like, you thought small beans was going to equate to a bunch of money. And to you,

that's beans. That's beans, baby. And I don't, I have some bad news for you sir i know it's like uh you know honestly beans as a food never been uh never been like way into them but i do i am pretty lukewarm on beans that's all i'm here but we did yeah we named a small business after it because we do see them as a symbol of growth.

I think that's what I think of when I think of beans. You know, in preschool, the little bean in the cup experiment you'd do. Yeah, I bet it's the first plant a lot of us grew as people. Exactly. Of any kind. Adam, where do you land on beans? I like them. I don't think they belong everywhere.

There's some places that people are sticking beans that I'm like, no. Like, for instance, nachos. Every time somebody puts a bean of any kind in nachos, I'm like, you're ruining this chip and cheese thing that I'm doing here. You know what I mean? So I have beans need to be corralled into an appropriate space is my general take. Will you do like a clean, shiny red kidney bean on a salad uh i will if that salad is dressed in vinaigrette but you put any kind of ranch on that bean and it's uh yeah adam's got very specific feelings that thing's an abomination to me folks you can't see but adam is rolling in a very large flow chart of being for and against decisions when you're cooking.

Listen, let me tell you what you can put on a legume. I like that the three of us have a very representative bean opinion of things. You know, lukewarm. We got a Goldilocks situation going on here. I'm also lobbying for the idea that coffee beans should have a different name. Yeah. Because I feel like coffee beans should have a different name. Yeah. Because I feel like coffee beans are a totally different thing. Like, why can't we just go with pellets or whatever?

You know what I mean? Like, that would make me feel better. Then I would feel, you know, feel better. Coffee rocks. Coffee nugs. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Coffee dirt.

Yeah, I love it. We'll talk about that in a sec, too, because the word bean gets used for a ton of seeds and fruits and other things where it's sort of fuzzy. And coffee bean is probably way on the end of it's not really a bean. It should have a different name. Right. It is very it's a broad category. Garbanzo beans give us hummus. Yeah.

Come on. The humble bean. Yeah. Love it. Good things. But I don't want a garbanzo i don't want a garbanzo in its entire form i want it in you want the milk toast refried beans you don't even feel the beans you just want the bean dip yeah that's right yeah just sneaking the beans in there yeah sneak it in there yep adam slapping the part of the flow chart where it says sneak it in there sneak it in there. Adam slapping the part of the flow chart where it says, sneak it in there.

Sneak it in there. He's bringing down a bunch of multicolored cellophane overlays, and he's bringing in string and thumbtacks. It's not a good time. It might be a little early for this, but I'd like to plug my bean cookbook. Just 80 pages of pictures where it goes, goes no you don't want to do that you don't want to put it yeah you don't want to be in that you don't want to be in that yeah it's it's half it's half cocktails none of them have beans in it just a picture of nachos how about nachos instead buddy here's how to roast a big duck

and it just never ever addresses that's our never addresses a beetle so i guess alex to to answer your question we encompass all possible feelings one can have about being so pick a direction alex because we're clearly going yeah the world's your oyster dude which one of us is right one of us is right i mean alex can you tell us who's right? Sure. Of all the topics on the show so far, it's one of the most vast ones. It's almost like asking, how do you feel about vegetables? And it's like, well, a lot of ways. Some of them are filthy to me, and some are my favorite thing to be healthy. There's so many beans.

Hard to pick just one. Green bean to kidney bean and everything else. So little time. And thinking of how coffee beans don't count and other things like that, I think we can get into the first chunk of the show. Because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that's in a segment called

Where the stats in the cradle numbers coming soon With little boy Schmidt and Michael A. Barnett in the moon When they're coming down, we all know when And we're gonna learn some stat facts then Oh yeah, we're gonna learn some stat facts then Thank you Ah, yes Harry Chapin's statistics period he went through

I don't know what it is about this bit But you've been doing it for like ten years And it always works for me I don't know what it is about this bit, but you've been doing it for like 10 years and it always works for me. I don't know what it is. I just love it. I love the singing. Love it. I've been mailing a decade of tapes to Adam Ganser. No one else gets them. That album's

coming soon. The album's coming soon. Yeah. That great idea was submitted by a wonderful patron, Caitlin Kochka. Thank you, Caitlin. And we have a new name for this segment every week. Please make a massillion wankings possible. Submit to Sipod on Twitter or to Sipod at gmail.com.

Straight into the numbers. The first one here is more than 17,000. And more than 17,000 is the number of plant species in the family Leguminosae, which is also known as Fabaceae. And either way, the source for that is a book called Beans, A Global History by Natalie Rachel Morris, who's a food systems instructor at Arizona State University. Tons and tons of plants are in this family includes a bunch of things we call beans also peas lentils clover alfalfa and some weeds so massive family weed is a bean a weed no not wheat yeah oh oh oh not wheat okay yeah i mumbled my whole world was coming too right democracy is a bean form of bean i know you were

confused about the wheat part but weeds are beans yeah she says there's a plate called vetch that's a good example that's a weed and i had not heard of it before but a lot of a lot of things that we just see as like sort of a random greenish plant that is in the way of crops that's actually from this family leguminosa because only a subset of them are actually edible yeah or of interest to humans at all that's how it all works yeah yeah pretty much 17 000 what's what's the unifying beanness to use a platonic term what is the beanness that unites them all? What is the form of bean here? Yeah, and that, with this episode, it's very fuzzy,

but we're basically gonna cover stuff that is scientifically a bean and also just feels like a bean to me. Right? Because, like, there's stuff like peanuts and peas and lentils and things that are legumes.

But I feel like they're just different and they're their own episode. But we're going to do green beans, which are sort of an unripe fruit of these plants, all the way to kidney beans, navy beans, black beans, everything else. Great. That's the beans for today. Yeah, that's the same. I love that. 17,000 sounds like a lot, but I wonder relative to how many kinds of potatoes are there? Aren't there many thousands of those?

I don't know. Right. Context. That's a number that means nothing to me contextually, but it's a lot. Yeah. It's also, I find it difficult to react to a large number when it comes to species because of how mythical the rainforest is in my mind from my childhood where it's like there are 180 000 species of undiscovered spiders in this like one square of the rainforest you

know what i mean oh man yeah i love that so it's a little it's a little hard it's a little hard to like is that a lot of beans it sounds like a lot it sounds like a lot of beans no it's so i thought there were famously a ton of potatoes and Google's telling me, uh, there are between like a thousand and 4,000 varieties of potato. So I think 17,000 is pretty impressive. Yeah. And I assume it's by the way in which it grows some characteristic of the growth process and the genetic kind of way in which it comes about and generates a bean-like thing that we go, that's like a bean that I've seen. And it, like the fruit part, right?

That's what the bean, usually what we eat. That's like considered the fruit part, even though they don't call it that. But it sounds like you don't want to eat veg beans. Or like the weed one. Like some are more like fruits like some are more like fruits some are more like seeds and there's also we'll talk about how there are old world and new world beans at the same time even though you wouldn't think that would happen like there's a lot of difficulty

in pinning down what a bean is or not and partly it's because people who named plants just called them beans even though a coffee bean is like a seed from a shrub or tree. Right. And a vanilla bean, like we talk about on the vanilla episode of the show, is a fruit from an orchid. It's not from the same thing at all. You know, there's a lot of random plants that get called beans. Very confusing.

This also raises the theoretical possibility of a 17,000 bean salad. Yes. United Nations, one of each bean. I would love to see you eat that from a chalice. That would really light up my day. Now we're big beans. We're doing it, baby!

Actually, that's one thing about beans is if you throw them all in a soup, they all can hang out. That is not a weird soup. Oh, this reminds your entire worldview on beans yeah maybe like like when they're combined they're sort of like captain planet where it's like yeah all right yeah you can all be a super thing sure michael michael if you see the part of adam's chart where it just looks like an amazing galaxy and there's just this whirl

of things happening that's that soups that's the soup part of the joke. He's acknowledging he's leaving space for soup, as you must. Yes. The supernova, as I call it. Anyway. Supernova. That was for you. Thank you. Thank you for the demo last week.

But yeah, so this will cover kind of as many beans as we can manage and again stuff like peanuts peas lentils they are leguminous but i think they're kind of their own episode because they just feel different to me which i know is not totally scientific but that's the plan that's what we're gonna do great and the next number here straight to beans that feel like beans the next number is three and three is that feel like beans, the next number is three. And three is the number of plants involved in what's called the Three Sisters farming practice, which is common in Native North America. Also going to link a great article by Professor Christina Gishill of Iowa State University about people doing it in the modern day. But the Three Sisters system is you grow beans and squash and corn all together, like in the same field, same spot and they just work together as plants when they grow oh wow i wonder how they discovered

that i want it must have been by accident right like they were growing those things together like oh this works what do you mean by works what do you mean by works what's the benefit yeah so they each like they each do a cool thing what happens is the corn is tall and then that becomes a trellis for the beans to grow up and then the squash leaves cast shade that keeps moisture and nutrients in the ground and that that helps the other two plants and then the beans return nitrogen to the soil which the other two plants can consume i think that last thing they just sort of discovered by it, things growing good,

but that's amazing. Yeah. I thought they were all going to be like complicated soil stuff, but I love that. It's just like, no, no, no.

The structural, like you probably could noodle that out. Uh, you know, Oh, I'm going to trellis my beans on this, on this corn. Oh,

Hey, it has these big broad leaves. I'll plant some ground cover. That's really cool. I was just visiting some friends on a working farm in upstate michigan and they just started doing this the three sisters thing amazing and i pretended i pretended to understand what it was in context and now i know i was just like oh yeah yeah yeah the three sisters sure yeah, yeah, yeah. Emily, Charlotte. The Brontes? The farming sisters. But now I know that that's what my pals in Michigan are doing. That's really cool.

Yeah. In hindsight, do you feel that you embarrassed yourself, or did you get away with it, you think? I think the Bronte reference was pretty hoity-toity. I don't know. If anything, I shamed them. Like, everybody sort of nodded at each other like, we understand. You're right.

We're people of the dirt. We don't understand literary references. I've read Little Women. It's the security of when someone's dropping knowledge and you feel intimidated, you have to drop knowledge back. I drop other knowledge. Just unrelated knowledge. Unrelated knowledge that you feel is superior.

It's like an intellectual samurai battle. You know, like, who's going to go lowest here? Who's going to break eye contact first? Folks, if you don't know the Bronte sisters, they're an amazing escape hatch for any situation you're in. Right? Just bring them home. That's what they're most famous for.

It's just a way out of conversation but on that that's uh that's amazing you've seen that i don't think i've ever actually been to a farm or where it's happening so that's very neat to know beans are a very useful crop across all of agriculture too because they can grow and be harvested pretty quickly and also they return nitrogen to the soil so it's a natural version of sort of re-fertilizing a lot of soil for a lot of plants if you want to is this the only arrangement where they sister beans together with other plants or is that like a normal more widespread practice in farming apparently it's pretty common also in agriculture where you do like an entire

crop of one thing and then plant some beans before the next round sort of thing but this three sisters is very special for everything at once together in the same spot kind of like a different approach to following uh where you follow the soil yeah i i pronounce it as fallowing but i've only ever read it so i don't really know i also did oh i'm a hick i just didn't want to i'm a hick make it feel like a hick but let's do it um but uh beans sound really clutch in this situation or almost like the universal donor i know re-nitrogenizing the soil is a very good superpower for a plant yeah highly sought after it's just amazing it's really good that so many of them can do it yeah speaking of helping us a lot next number here is 70 percent

seven zero and that is the increase in monthly u.s bean sales that we saw in march of 2020 uh of course stockpiling of course people were people were like burying it with toilet paper in their backyard oh that's what's going on okay march 2020 why the bean why the simple noble bean as the thing to hoard everyone turned to like 1890s america it was just like we got to get every single thing there is get the kerosene and the lantern bad luck to kill a sea bird what was the goya beans thing not to drop the mood but like was that involved at all or am i thinking of yeah is my time incorrect that was uh trump endorsed him like later in 2020 i think in the summer yeah oh okay yeah oh you're positing that maybe there was just a surge in bean sales because trump supported goya. Yeah. I think it's the hoarding Doomer thing.

It must be. Of course. They're a staple. It's just so weird. Yeah. Like, everybody ran back to this weird period of time where, like, this is what I'd have to do to survive an apocalypse. It's cans of beans.

It's toilet paper. It's kerosene lanterns. It's probably need to get a horse. How am I going to get a horse? I don't know. You know, like. Tiny horses. It's just so weird. lanterns it's uh probably need to get a horse how am i gonna get a horse i don't know uh you know like tiny horses weird yeah adam banzer's pocket bean chart so you know what to do with the beans when you make it through the you know which things not to put it in uh feed the horse the beans oh we forgot a can opener we die the chart takes up like most of the shelter you don't really have

very much food at all speaking of 70 percent yeah i also like the idea of someone at a high level bean factory being like hold on gentlemen we're all about to be rich forever this with igus waves never gonna hit 70 percent are you kidding me they finally figured out beans beans are the way we've been waiting we've been waiting it We've been waiting. It's the bean apocalypse. They just start chanting beans in the board of directors office.

Beans are in. That maybe a little bit happened because NPR is the source but they got this from a non-profit industry group called USA Pulses and pulse is a technical term for a dried bean. But like somebody at at least one bean group was like, look at this graph.

This is amazing. Like that, that kind of happened, I think in the industry. Yeah. I'm going to put my feet on my desk for a whole afternoon. This reminds me, didn't we used to have that bit where we would talk about how protractor

sales, like how if you signed on like September for protractor sales, it was like, holy shit, where everything's coming up protractors. Yeah. I think we made a protractor sketch. Yeah,

I think we did. I believe the sketch was in October where they're like tearing their hair out going, what's going wrong? Why can't we maintain these protractor sales? We're riding high. I developed a cocaine addiction. I don't know what to do anymore.

It's your standard bean boom bust economy. Yeah. And also this group said that sales stayed 30% above average by June of 2020. And maybe that overlaps with the Goya thing. But actually, at least some people ate their beans, I think. They didn't just stock up. I think it speaks to the bean. You eat the bean, you like the bean.

You want a little more bean. Yeah. I think some people are sticking around, re-appreciating beans. I think humans are pretty simple. They're like, all right, got to buy these beans because what if it's if it's really bad and I just have to, like, live off beans? Okay, now beans are in my house. Might as well have some beans. And then you start cooking with beans.

And then before you know it, you're like, beans are pretty good. I should buy more beans. That sweet, seductive starch got them coming back for more is what happened. Hey, everything's got, you know, yeah. Well, this leads into the next number here. Next number is 465. And 465 is the average number of baked beans in one can of British Heinz brand baked beans. They're usually just labeled Heinz beans with a Z. See, now, Heinz is a company that baffles me that they sell beans.

Heinz is a company that baffles me that they sell beans. I've known this before, but it's very hard for me to reconcile all the products that fit under the Heinz banner. Primarily because of beans. I'm not kidding. It's not a bit. Because they're selling soups and side dishes and stuff. And then they're like a bean factory also. And I can't get my head around that. In the UK especially.

Yeah. They're the main bean source. Because they jump from the condiment area of food. The fact that they have something of substance. You're like, Heinz, get your hand off the beans, man. Is that what

you're saying? Yeah, exactly. They were in mustard. My understanding is in the UK it's usually beans on toast. So it is kind of being used as a condiment. You know, it's like a jelly. They treat it like a breakfast jelly, like a savory jelly.

That's a totally separate nightmare that also upsets me. But I just like, I was okay with Heinz when they were ketchup and mustard and, you know, maybe relish if they wanted to get into that. Once they're like, but now beans too. Also maybe buns. And here's a cow that we just labeled Heinz on they were ketchup and mustard and maybe relish if they wanted to get into that. Once they're like, but now beans too. Also maybe buns and here's a cow that we just labeled Heinz on the side. I get a little bit upset about that. A little upset about Heinz. I got a little company called

Disney Marvel Pixar I should introduce you to. If beans are your major concern. Heinz is too grasping for Adam. They know there's power in those beans they know it now i want them to be like disney marvel pixar bushes it's like what why did you why are you also beans now it's happening again uh why not there's superfood they re-nitrogenize the soil have you heard of the three sisters farming take me disney marvel pixar push come on there's 17 000 types we gotta really dig deep guys to get

a piece of this action uh that's well also i because in my brain when i think of beans i'm like you never you don't see foods anymore yeah that are like where beans are like that's the whole meal like you don't see as much of that as you did even 30 years ago. Pork and beans or whatever is like that's a meal. I feel like you see a lot less of that now. Now beans are like a thing you get in a can to add to a food. Well, also maybe I'm really anomalous, but I will definitely for lunch just open a can of beans,

pour it in a bowl, microwave it, and eat beans. I've had beans for a meal. So I'll have bean meal. I think bean is meal. This brings us to the top of the flowchart, guys. Look. The deepest question.

Let me flip back a couple of pages here. Bean is meal. Question mark. Those Heinz heinz baked beans in the uk it's a super common like this is just a meal from the can here i go and mental floss got that average number of 465 per can in the process of covering a thing that happened in 2019 where a british uh it's a community counselor in bristol england went home to eat a can of beans opened the heinz can and there was a total of one bean in it it was just a bunch of fluid and one bean it was the liquid yes and he you know like the company apologized immediately and stuff but he got the the shocking surprise

of like time for an entire meal and then one bean is floating there that's it right and then he sliced it into three pieces for his junkyard cat friends i'm pretty sure that's literally what happens in like a disney version of uh the christmas carol right yeah it's like like the poor family slices one bean yeah yeah but they completely overlook the upside which is a delicious can of just like the hickory smoked brown sugar juice i would just be like i got the good can as soon as he opens it he goes like oh yeah and he just slips it all down he's like finally finally this is what the product should have been always

Heinz baked bean singular just like the slurpy of beans just pouring that into a chalice of some kind and throwing it back i don't know why it's because it's like viscous you know it's one of the things there's so many unsettling aspects of bean it's a delicious sauce i got no problems with the baked bean juice

maybe it's worth saying with this show that there's an entire world of wonderful bean meal traditions and i think the way i do this we're only going to talk about some weird things sure because the the last number here is 1903 and 1903 is the first year that the u.s senate cafeteria served what is called senate bean soup and if people have heard the ham episode with brockway and sean baby they've heard this i'm aware of this but uh since it's also a bean soup mainly i figured we could talk about it now. You're doubling down. Yeah. But they, every year since 1903, with only one day off because of World War II rationing,

the Senate cafeteria has served a soup that is just ham hocks and beans with an onion and a little bit of seasoning. That's it. And they're obsessed with it they try to have it every time and like how is it received like is it received pleasantly or it's beloved that's why okay they can't get rid of it i can't see all right if i'm recalling the ham episode correct is it like an in joke is it like a subcultural like in joke because i know that those exist where it's like

stands as tradition yeah where it's like we can't get rid of that we need to do it it's not that people love it or order it all the time but it's nice to have around and it and it gives them the feeling of uh constant continuity yeah i think if it was like gross though it would probably go away i bet it's pretty good i don't know man it's like ham water with beans what do you want and in the the pictures i could find of it the bowl is sort of dressed up like a souvenir like i think it said senate bean soup on it like it's kind of it is it's like abe was saying it's kind of a bit and kind of uh oh you're here you should do the the souvenir soup from the senate cafeteria right right less and less of a we always eat this

because it's good the most american thing we always eat this because it's good. The most American thing I can think of, because it's like nationalist in a way. Like it's the same kind, it isn't that, but it's like in the same through lines. It's about camaraderie, about like, we have such a high version in our minds of like what the union used to be and stuff like that.

It's very traditionalist Americana. And also there's conflicting origin stories for it, but one of them is that a senator named Newt Nelson from Minnesota really, really liked bean soup when he served in the Union Army in the Civil War, and that's why he had them put it in the cafeteria. There is. Like, it's there. There it is.

There it is. Now, here we go. If the recipe dates back to Civil War battlefields, I retract my statement. It's not about the beans at all. Yeah. This is like when you go to some. Like SeaWorld and you get the commemorative, like, Shamu cup. It's that.

Yeah. Yeah. Or, like, for instance, I spent a month in china and then we went to this like you know back alley bar and they had snake venom shots you know what i mean it was like very clear like blood and like snake blood and venom shots it's like the tour this is for tourists to have yeah yeah it was for tourists you know like they're not drinking it they weren't sitting there pouring each other glasses of that i guarantee you that yeah i'm glad i'm glad the story wasn't like and i didn't have it and all my friends are gone uh like they turned into snakes and slithered away into the night yes so they were

captured yep that'll be so good yeah just to give a 30 minute story on a podcast my friends are now snakes because of a miss a misfortune that happened i would love you so much i would i know i'm like not important more bean facts here we go uh look not interesting i agree get back to the beans. People want beans. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway. Before that, we're going to take a little break. We'll be right back. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And no joke, we do have three big takeaways about beans, so I think we can get into them. And the first one is pretty quick. Here we go into takeaway number one. And the first one is pretty quick. Here we go into takeaway number one. There is a simple scientific explanation for why some beans make us fart. Awesome. That is not really a made up thing.

It's actually a thing going on. You know, we got to get straight into it. Right. Beans. Yeah. Yeah. The musical fruit. I've been I've been trying to find the right way to talk about it.

Yeah. I'm so glad. Let's talk about farts, guys. Yeah. Let's spend a cool seven minutes on farts right now. right way to talk about it. I'm so glad. Let's talk about farts, guys. Spend a cool seven minutes on farts right now. That's about right. And I don't know if this is just a U.S. thing, but there was a song growing up about beans, beans, the musical fruit. I think it's the more you eat, the more you toot was the rest of it.

That is correct, sir. The more you toot, the better you feel. So let's eat beans at every meal of course yes yes oh which establishes clearly that beans are a meal yeah incidentally it's in trying you're right all songs all songs are facts you're right about that that's right adam finally gets it all right the bad mobile got away robin wheeled away actually one of the white boards because he decided he doesn't have to go into that. It seems we all are all in agreement. Yeah.

Yeah, no, we all know the common nursery rhyme, I guess. Yeah, and if your country out there doesn't have it, it's a U.S. thing, and we all, like that and the diarrhea song, those were sort of the songs about poop that we had as children, I think. That was it. Yep, that's all we had farting in it we did it we made do literally yeah nice and the key source here is a book i mentioned before it's called beans a global history by natalie rachel morris very helpful

for this whole show uh she leads off by saying that most beans are like packed with all sorts of nutrients. They're sort of up there with potatoes and being loaded with stuff that's good for you. They have protein, fiber, soluble fiber, complex carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, calcium. They also absorb in the bloodstream relatively slowly. So if you have diabetes or hypertension or anything like that, that is easier for you. They're an amazing food. And then also there's this thing that dried beans have, which is called an oligosaccharide. That's a specific type of carbohydrate sugar that the body needs to do special stuff to process.

And so your gut processes oligosaccharides with special bacteria that use a fermentation process to break them down that produces both hydrogen and methane and then you you release it that's why that's what's going on oh isn't it interesting that in a way your fart started life as the cumulative farts of because they are tiny living creatures and they're fart, and their farts all go together to form the one big fart that comes out of you, and we call that a fart. Yeah, the great fart, if you will. For them, the universal fart. For us, just a tiny little squeaker. Yeah.

Like, it's their life story as bacteria, is the journey of this fart, and we're just like, I hope nobody noticed. I'm on a couch, right? Great. And we're just like, I hope nobody noticed. I'm on a couch, right? Great. Pixar, we got your next movie. It stars a little.

Tiny sentient farts. Yeah, a little bacteria. A little gut bacteria. Gets a big bean delivery. And you know what happens next. He's got to find his way home. I no longer crave soup. You guys drove it out of me. Bean soups.

Wow. This conversation took a turn. When I talked about that senate soup in the ham episode i did not focus on the beans and the farting and wow now there's a different playlist of the senate i can see why they take so many days off boy boy but yeah so we we can break down chemically exactly why there's a real phenomenon where dried beans so not like green beans and super fresh beans but dried beans do make most people more gassy and uh it's also since it's been understood for a while there were a few scientists in the 1970s who tried to fix it and there was a team at berkeley led by food engineer benito DeLuman who tried to develop a so-called clean

bean that would be metabolized the same way as a fresh green bean. This is going to be like Pepsi, like Crystal Pepsi or some shit, right? It's going to be awful. Yeah, fix it implies there's a problem. What's wrong with farting after you eat a nice plate of beans?

Yeah, let it out. Genetically modify plants all the time. That's all of plants. Oh, I know. I'm just saying I don't have that desired outcome. It's not something I desire. It's not like a bigger tomato or something like that. I don't want a clean bean. I'll take a big tomato.

Sure. Sure. But a no-farting bean? Get out of here. You enjoy the fart process. That's part of the process. Yeah, just the joyful looks you give each other as you're eating the beans, knowing what will come later. My eyes are bigger than my stomach, and so I'm like, I'm going to eat this big plate of beans.

And then I eat the plate of beans. But then I'm too gaseous after. So I want to be able to dial it in, you know? Oh, yeah. Now, if they made beans where it was like this is how much you'll fart yeah like they quantified that yeah yeah decaf yeah yeah there is the other project i feel like was almost that this is a british researcher named colin leakey who developed what he called the prim bean because it's more prim and proper

it's very british right uh and it had low flatulence properties and he apparently sold a lot of them but then demand just kind of went away and i guess with all these projects most people just kind of said why bother like let's just eat our beans it's not the beans and fart and it's fine you're not farting like a cartoon character where you're like taking off or something you know it's just normal it's not don't tell me what i can't do okay i mean oh yeah like so many weekends got more boring after he sold that product too you know it's like think of all the fun that was lost they didn't have a nightmare man at that time i also feel like it draws more it seems to draw more attention to it that you're like oh oh, we bought the no fart beans.

It's like, why are we talking about this? Just eat your beans. Just eat the beans. Sneak your farts out. Let's not bring it up. Who cares? Yeah. Everyone's slowly going over to my side where everyone's lukewarm on beans.

They're fine. That just like sprung to mind. Isn't the flatulence reducer medical product called Beano? Yeah, Beano. You think so? Yeah, I forgot about that. That's a wild... It's wild that...

It's like a paste you eat that's supposed to make you fart less. And also that beans are putting up with that. You know what I mean? Beans are like like i guess this is how we have to as an industry we got to tolerate a product called beans no that's specifically defaming us yeah i don't know uh right so many things cause gas in people right right broccoli that's a real one i mean we're pretty gassy all around so we hate that about ourselves it's just it's just an aspect of humanity we're like god i wish we didn't have to do that but you can imagine a situation you're a bean farmer and your friends like you know comes over like oh i'm gonna buy some bino you just get it you fly into a range you're like there's other

products you know yeah do this gas sex yeah it's a real yeah it's a real larry david scene you know just like hey it's not just the beans man well uh i think we can go straight now into takeaway number two for the main show. Takeaway number two. The fava bean used to dominate half of the world and have a bunch of myths about it. Half the world. Oh, man. Fava beans used to be an enormous deal in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In a way, they are not today.

Used to be kind of the main bean. Is it like a Merlot situation where Silence of the Lambs just ruined the Farber bean? Oh, no, it was way before that, yeah. Okay, all right, okay. But that's a good question. I don't know if I've ever eaten them. I just know them as a movie reference, mainly. Right.

I've gone out of my way to eat them a couple times because of the movie, and they're just a bean. Just an unassuming bean. Does this go well with a chianti they're a nice they're a nice mild broad bean yeah yeah they're also known as the broad bean that's right and yeah and they're fleshy and normal and fine and and uh europe asia africa they had chickpeas and lentils and things as well. But apparently before the Columbian exchange, many of the beans that are popular today, like green beans, black beans, pinto beans,

lima beans, those were all in the Americas. And according to historian Ken Albala in his book, Beans a History, there's a whole different bean history book. He says that when the word bean is used in european texts prior to 1492 it is almost always referring to favas specifically because that's all they had or 50 of it at least yeah does anybody know what caused the decline of the fathers yeah basically the american beans were way more popular as soon as they showed up people like people do eat fava beans, but they were... Just like flavor and variety was awesome. Yeah, there's still plenty of people eating favas, but the American beans just super took off in the rest of the world. And so that's why they're not eaten so much. That's it.

The competition of the beans. Yeah, but there's evidence dating back to 6,500 BC of people gathering and eating fava beans. Like, first just wild. Apparently people used to just snack on wild beans off of plants. And then later we did agriculture and did it. So they're a very, very, very long-running food for, you know, several continents. So we've been farting forever.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We gathered to eat something that made us fart that provides my sense of continuity and history and legacy yeah war never changes right there we go that's the fallout of this i think is that time is a flat circle man what is uh i wonder what's most dominant today it's got to be the pinto right that's a that's a great question i don't actually know what the most popular bean is at all

yeah most popular bean in world chickpeas that makes sense to me yeah oh chickpeas okay i believe it yeah well and with the the favas in the old world, I mentioned myths about them. I find it really amazing that they were the main thing that people called a bean and people ate a bunch of them. But also there were a bunch of complex myths and religious practices that limited eating them. Atlas Obscurus says that in ancient Rome, the priests of the god Jupiter were not allowed to touch fava beans because they were associated with death and decay. Right. And then also ordinary Romans mostly only ate them at funeral feasts, which were called Scylla Serenum. Like you were you saw these

incredibly common popular nutritious beans as mostly death beans, mostly funeral food. beans as mostly death beans mostly funeral food yeah i remember when we're doing small beans like at the beginning we started i started researching beans for no real reason just went down a hole oh i remember reading that pythagoras the the man who gave us the formula or the the theorem the theorem uh you know he hated beans like had a very toxic relationship with beans he'd see a bean plant and he would like tear it up and stuff very hateful of beans like are are are beans the kind of thing where like are they sensitive with the way they're grown or whatever like could you is it a high likelihood you could eat a toxic bean man you know that's a perfect thing to bring up

because it turns out we'll get into a few more myths, including Pythagoras, but also some historians believe that an actual genetic sensitivity to fava beans is why a bunch of myths sprung up, saying that they're bad and dangerous. Because there's a genetic disorder called favism, and Atlas Obscura says it's more common in the Mediterranean than anywhere else in the world. And the myths I've got here are Rome, Greece, and Egypt. Like, they're right there. Right.

And people with favism develop hemolytic anemia from eating favas or from inhaling the pollen from the flowers of the plants. So they don't even have to eat it to get this thing. Just if there's a field of it, it could kill them, potentially. Oh, there you go. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And apparently people with favaism, about one out of 12 of them die of it today, even with modern medicine and science and everything else. So it's like a really hardcore genetic issue or sensitivity to these kind of beans.

Not just a silent fruit, a silent killer as well. That's probably why Hannibal Lecter likes to eat those, you know what I mean? It's part of his ritual. I wonder if the author was trying to play on that death imagery, although who in the audience would they expect to be like, ah, fava beans, the bean of death.

I see. How clever. How clever. No one, but the audience would they expect to be like ah fava beans the bean of death i see how clever no one but but that's the kind of reference yeah yeah that's the kind of reference it is though right like that's the kind of you write it in your novel and then you sip your chianti you know yeah uh yeah feels like then we should just like eat like the the analogous thing would be if we went to funerals and ate big bowls of peanuts because that's like that's the thing that still kills people, you know, or is a scourge. Yeah. It's interesting that it became mythological or they used storytelling to enshrine the idea of like, yeah, these beans are good. Don't don't have these beans. Sometimes it doesn't go well for you.

So like, yeah yeah but let's turn it into a bunch of myths and legends i love that there's a pain demon yeah like like tons of people still ate them and then also there were these specific things where like in rome they were seen as a death bean and a lot of ancient egyptian dishes relied on them but then egyptian priests were not allowed to eat them because they were seen as specifically for sacrificing to the gods and there's a record of the pharaoh ramses the third sacrificing 12 000 jars of fava beans to the god of the nile river it sounds like adam would have thrived in this environment of very specific rules around beans it Sounds like your dream, man.

I'm just going to put it to you this way. There's no time where I don't do that great. I do pretty great most times. This bean is important, but you can't touch it. It's for God, but it makes us sick. These are very complicated relationships to beans. I'm just that Robert Redford nodding meme when I listen to this egyptian story from jeremiah johnson uh is that what it's from yeah yeah he's a mike mountain man

yeah yeah i was gonna say on your point mike that i imagine that at some point because of the risk you have to like tell children like hey you know like like this is like i'm like trying to think like why would you make up a myth or something like that about this right when it could just be a fact and it's like oh well this is the way that you educate generations about these kinds of problems right is that you sort of instill a like you you you know that fact in the story i don't know that that's kind of bad luck yeah yeah that's just kind of fun we're not superstitious enough i wish we went we went around showing each other peanuts. Like, you showed me a peanut?

You want me to die? That's a symbol of death and decay. I have to bury a garlic clove and stay unclean for seven days? Yeah. In this modern age. And then the last myth here, because Abe mentioned Pythagoras. And this topic kind of brings in other episodes. But if people have heard the Triangles episode, we talked about how Pythagoras may or may not have been real.

But there was definitely a school around him and followers of him. But either way, the Pythagoreans specifically had a bunch of beliefs about fava beans being bad. He forbid his followers from eating them or from touching them. And they also believed that they had a connection to Hades and the underworld because the flowers of the plants have a black color to them. And so they thought it was sprouting from the land of the dead kind of thing. And then also other Greeks did not feel this way and just ate a bunch of fava beans and would like make fun of the Pythagoreans for this belief.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. Yeah. Are they sort of the, it was like a cult in that time. Is that the idea? It was like a big cult. It was like a cult and a philosophical school.

And they discovered a bunch of amazing stuff about music theory. I like to think it's a bunch of people are like really into angles and we're school, and they discovered a bunch of amazing stuff about music theory. I like to think it's a bunch of people are really into angles, and we're like, yeah, dude, our angle king. We stand by him, he ate a bean. We got to sport the merch. So it was a walk of life, you know? It was a way to be. And when other people are like, people like these being idiots over here

They get they get a little bullied sometimes. Yeah, it makes sense Just for fun guys have a you guys go ahead and calculate a hypotenuse You can't enjoy your beads Be helpful right now they don't contract Adam. Are you listening? That's that's them telling a different cause okay gotcha because i imagine there's many bean related like like kind of like a warrior situation the movie the warriors oh yeah it's a bunch of bean clubs and they're all like that's when i imagine ancient you know greece or rome or whatever this is it was just a bunch of like-minded

individuals roaming around being like, we hate beans. Well, we like math. Fine. We all have our own things. Just walking around the streets, really. Going to bathhouses. Doing weird Roman s***. That's history, baby. That's history, baby.

I teach history, baby. Yeah. That's history, baby. Look, I teach history at USC. No, I don't. It's like a variety show. Yeah, it's like the Rome variety show. Right. Anyway. Well, there's, we can jump to the modern day with one more takeaway for the main episode. Takeaway number three.

Beans have the potential to be a pivotal plant in the fight against climate change. And this is all beans, not just fava. We're back to all the beans. But they could be incredibly important even for being a regular plant because all of them help. And beans and rice together provides full protein. Like as meat becomes more difficult or scarcer if uh climate change takes us down that road i could see rice and beans becoming much more relied upon so that's cool to hear that beans are also helpful to grow like helpful growers exactly yeah there's such a

powerful and cheap and easy to do protein plants that just in that basic way we probably need more beans no matter what there's a lot of. And then another way they could help is that apparently it's easy to make them more climate change resistant, or at least more heat resistant. In 2015, Scientific American covered an announcement by a team of scientists that said they bred 30 new varieties of beans that are heat resistant. They said that the new heat- new heat tolerant beans could withstand a global temperature increase of four degrees fahrenheit and wow apparently we're looking at a situation

where it's like more than we can yeah kind of we'll all be dead and the beans will rule the earth just beanstalks like filling the cities yeah, that's it. The scientists said that more than 400 million people across the developing world depend on beans as part of making their diet happen. But they also said that the area suitable for growing beans could drop 50% by 2050 because of global warming. global warming but if these new beans can withstand a rise of three degrees fahrenheit which is less than they're graded for then that would take the amount of land loss from 50 to 5 i know that was a lot of numbers but it's exciting but that makes sense yeah but the gist is the beans can hang in there yeah as things get worse and worse yeah we can keep it up yeah and probably do even more if other plants can't handle it.

So that might be where we go. And if at any point we do decide to curb global warming, very casually, the beans can see us through that turn. Yeah, it's going to save a lot of lives. Yeah, exactly. Beans, the silent killer and the silent savior.

Savior. Wow. Beans, the loudest savior. It's like I'm just seeing one of them in a Rosie the Riveter bandana saluting us. Unfortunately, though, when everyone converts to eating beans all the time, then the farts create more global warming. It's a whole cycle. It's very difficult.

Saved by the bean, killed by the bean. Live by the bean, die by the bean. Why do you think I have that tattooed across my throat? That's why. It's a real conundrum. And then on my lower back it just says, bean is meal. Oh, I thought it said bean life. Bean life.

Used to say bean life. I got it tattooed over. That's good. We were all real nervous to ask about those, so that's good. That's good to hear. Really, he shows them to me every chance he gets. I kept saying, it'll come out naturally. it'll come out naturally it'll come out naturally and it did when the the one other way there's been an amazing study done where they sort of estimated what beans could do for us with climate change and with emissions if the United States replaced

all of its beef with beans. Oh, wow. If we made that single change. It's only one letter off. Yeah. So close already. No, it isn't. It's two. It's two. Oh, no. My lower back tattoo.

It says B-E-E-N is m-e-e-l but uh but yeah that's a good idea we should do that yeah i mean yeah yeah that would be smart much smart it's like comparing the thing that takes the most water, the most resources in order to create per gram of beef versus per gram of beans. It's like one of the best. And I guess what I'm saying is the good news to me is that a bean is not that undelicious. Like if the apocalypse is I have to stop eating beef and i have to eat beans instead it could have been way worse it could have been like yeah you just have to eat

these dry dusty wafers and that's like all that food is you know yeah the really resilient uh seeds things like you know maize and and beans i feel very lucky that i like them because that's what we're gonna to get more of. Right. Yeah, that will be the affordable food. It's tasty beans. Yeah. We eat them on purpose.

They're good. It's like we eat more of the things that have been staples for thousands and thousands of years, like rice and beans and potatoes and stuff. Yeah, amazing. Right. There's a recent study. It was covered in an amazing article by James Hamblin in The Atlantic in 2017. But there was a study by Dr. Helen Harwatt, who is an environmental nutrition researcher. She led a whole team of researchers who ran the numbers on what if the United States just switched from eating beef to eating beans?

So no other changes. There's still dairy. We drive the same things. We do absolutely nothing else about emissions. And they ran these numbers, and then they put them up against President Obama's 2009 announcement of a goal for reducing US greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And when they ran these numbers, the researchers estimated that this one change could accomplish anywhere between 46 and 72 percent of that obama goal all on its own if we just switched if we just stopped eating beef and started eating that amount of beans instead that's it yeah that's pretty good it makes a lot of sense yeah and it's like a few different layered reasons and if if you've heard the cattle episode with Katie Golden, cows do not fart, but they burp a whole bunch of gases

that contribute to climate change, so there'd be less of that. It does make a dent, yeah. And then also we grow a lot of our bean crops just to feed livestock, and so those could start being eaten by people instead. And then also we also clear-cut a lot of forests to make new grazing room for cattle. So we do less of that. Like there's some stacking things where we could do like they're estimating

like half or more of what the goal was for that climate change, uh, emission reduction, uh, by just having more beans. Yeah, that's it. I'll do it.

So cancel. So no more cows, right? We're anti dairy. He said there was still dairy yeah oh there's still dairy i was i was trying to read it really closely because i believe there would still be jerry like the article said we'd still eat cheese for example and i don't think they meant goat cheese i don't think their argument was march all the cows into the sea no more cows no more cows yeah but just the it takes so much energy and effort to raise a cow to be killed to be eaten as meat exactly do less that's why i only eat veal less energy has been you know input get it technically not wrong it's more conscionable

it just seems like the right thing to do to me. It seems like the right thing to do. Environmentally moral. Yeah, and they also say we would just have more land, because apparently if you free up the cattle that we're eating and also the beans that are going toward feeding them, this would free up almost 700,000 square kilometers of U.S. cropland, which is about 42% of all U.S. cropland, would now be stuff we can use anyways.

It's an astonishing estimate. That's a real number. You could just completely remake the United States if you switched to meat. Right, right. The real thing that's profound to me in that is just how much we use, how much land we use for meat you know base products yay uh all in that that's pretty crazy and this change is kind of inevitable right like like one way or the other it's a change we're gonna have to make it's gonna be yeah yeah i mean we're gonna

see how well that's such a large yeah i think it will become this is a whole broader thing than beans but i think the wealthy will keep eating beef and it will become a status symbol that's what i imagine distribution goes different i think that is a world that you know and i think that that's a preferred world because we're saving the environment while we're also redistributing wealth but that's a political podcast. But I think it could absolutely go that way. I do think most of the science is behind the idea that meat's about to get more expensive

in the next 50 years without question. Yeah. And I love the idea we found that you get to switch to beans and they taste good. We already like them. It's really cool. Except Adam, though. Well, and the Senators.

The Senators' soup will lose half of its ingredient. It'll just be bean water now. It'll just be bean water. We know one gentleman who will be happy. I mean, a good black bean soup that's just the only ingredients are like black beans and spices and water. Have you ever had a really cracking black bean soup? Oh god that's great that's right on my chart good stuff as a thing i like uh yeah okay so adam's now like i was always in the pocket i was always down with

i i feel that i've been clear about this point it's just many places beans are, they shouldn't be. But not all. But like, yeah. Way to get your way around that argument, Adam. Yeah! That's what I did, Abe! I was sneaky! You like that? But we know. And in conclusion, to just read it right off Michael's body, bean is meal.

Right? It's meal. It's meal. In conclusion. bean is meal right it's just a meal is meal in conclusion folks that is the main episode for this week my My thanks to Abe Epperson and Adam Ganzer and Michael Swaim for all piling into one Zoom full of beans with me. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the little-known astronaut Alan Bean and the mission Apollo 12. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost five dozen other bonus shows, and to back this

entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring beans with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there is a simple scientific explanation for why some beans make us fart. Takeaway number two, the fava bean used to dominate half of the world and have a bunch of myths about it. And takeaway number three, beans have the potential to be a pivotal plant in the fight against climate change. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Patreon.com slash small beans.

Abe Epperson and Adam Ganzer and Michael Swaim make a ton of great podcasts there. Swaim also makes stuff with IGN.com. Links to all of that, plus me and Michael's former podcast, Kurt Vonnegise. Those links are teed up for you in the show links. Or again, you can just punch in patreon.com slash small beans. I hope it's very easy to remember the name small beans after an entire bean podcast. I would think you can. Great job. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. And lots of books went into this one. One of them I especially enjoyed,

it's called Beans, A Global History. It's by Natalie Rachel Morris, who is a food systems instructor at Arizona State University. Another book I leaned on in particular for fava bean information is titled Beans, A History. So not Beans, A Global History, just Beans, A History. And that's by University of the Pacific historian Ken Albala. Leaned on tons of articles, too, in particular from Scientific American and from the writer James Hamblin at The Atlantic. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken, unshaven by the Budos band.

Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show about the astronaut Alan Bean. And thank you to all of our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.