Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Burritos

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why burritos are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Burritos, known for being a food, famous for being Mexican food. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why burritos 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. I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of burritos?

So I grew up in San Diego and we have a lot of amazingly good Mexican food because of our proximity to the border and of course, like a very strong immigrant community. And so yes, we've got really, really good Mexican food. I love so much of Mexican food. Interestingly enough, I'm not a big burrito fan. Like that's just not the, you know, there's so many things I like tacos, fajitas. You know, burritos are not so much my dish. I will potentially eat them if they've got ingredients that I like and if they're from a good restaurant.

But I don't really like mess around with Taco Bell stuff. Like the kind of like fast food burritos is not, in fact, fast food, Mexican food in general is not really my jam. There's also, I don't know if we're going to cover this at all, but there is a certain ingredient in non-fresh tortillas, like store bought tortillas has like a preservative in it that has a very acerbic taste and some people can taste it and some people can't. And I'm one of the lucky ones who can taste it because of taste buds shenanigans and it really tastes very strong and sharp and it's not a good taste.

Yeah, it's just kind of hard to make a burrito and make homemade tortillas every time or if I go to a restaurant or like a fast food sort of fast Mexican sometimes they'll use like that tortilla that has that preservative in it. And it's just a very it's like it's hard to it's like a very sour taste that I can taste very strongly, but it's apparently one of these things that tastes like butthole. I don't like it. You're too powerful.

It's like, it's like you're trying to walk down the street, but you see a matrix code and you're like, ah, it's the matrix, dang it. Right. And everybody else is like, oh, fall, cool. Hey. Except it's just me licking a tree going like, it is autumn now. Yeah.

Yeah, this is all very allied with what we'll talk about today. And we'll touch on tortillas, because of course, that's what you wrap everything in, and then get into the rest of burritos from there. And also thank you to username burrito on the Discord for suggesting the topic of burritos. No relation. Yeah, just a random association. Yeah, I think this is the first meal we've ever done as a topic. Also, we'll begin to talk about Chipotle at the end. And also across this episode, we'll talk about burritos being many different things in many different situations.

And so there's a level of experimentation and evolution that's exciting. It's very hard to limit the definition of burritos, which is neat. I do call my dog a little burrito when I wrap her up in a blanket. So that is also a type of burrito. Yeah, they have become a term for coziness, which is just, this is a very exciting topic to be sitting down and talking about. It is. Getting to say the word burrito for a whole episode is going to be great.

Burrito is a great word. I mean, ito is just, it's cute. Like the ito, because I think it's like, I hope I'm not doing this wrong, but I think in Spanish it's like a diminutive, like ito means a small thing. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it just sounds like that too. And then like burrito, it's such a lovely sounding word. Also, have you seen the blankets that are

in the shape of giant tortillas? Yes. It's good stuff happening there. There's good things in this world. There's good things in this world. There's good things in this world, like blankets that are giant tortillas so you can become a burrito yourself. One kind of fun thing here is most of this week's stats and numbers are about tortillas. That's like a foundation.

And let's get into them. We lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called, We're getting down down to a statistics song and bringing you a bunch of numbers. We'll be your number one favorite podcast. A loaded episode statistics and numbers. And that was Weezer, everyone. everyone. I'll never learn music, Alex. Right. The titans of great music. That's right. Fall Up Boy is from kind of the same suburbs of Chicago as me. And I know somebody who saw them at, it's called Enchanted Castle. It's sort of like a Chuck E. Cheese. Like they were on the little stage of Enchanted Castle very early in their career. That name was submitted

by XKarex on the Discord. Thank you, especially for the regional specificity to me. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Missillian wacky event as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com. The first number for this week is two. The number two, because the native people of the Triple Alliance, also known as the Aztecs, the Triple Alliance developed two ways of turning maize into a foundation for meals. Maize, AKA corn. Corn, yes. So the Triple Alliance made corn into tamales and they made it into tortillas.

I love tamales so much. Oh Alex, I live in Italy now and it's so hard to get. Oh man, it's so hard to get Mexican food here. I don't know what's wrong with Italians guys. It's so good. You gotta, I don't know. I think it's just that there's not, this is the thing is I think there's not a ton of immigration from Mexico and Central and South America into Italy. And that is the key to getting good cuisine.

Immigration is good guys, not just because we're all humans and borders are silly, but also food is really good when you let people from other cultures into your country. And I miss tamales so much. They're so good. Anyways, continue. I'm just going to cry for a little bit. Realizing this might be torment to an American in Europe.

I'm so sorry. This whole episode, it's combining food history with general history. And a key source for that is an amazing book. This whole episode, it's combining food history with general history. A key source for that is an amazing book. It's called Taco USA, How Mexican Food Conquered America. The author of that is Gustavo Arellano, who is an amazing journalist in Southern California, a nationally syndicated columnist. He says, as far back as we can find in the history of people in what's now Mexico,

they have been pounding cornmeal into a masa dough that they make into tortillas. They also developed tamales, which is a cornmeal shell that's stuffed with food and steamed. So I just kind of assumed people know going in, this is a highly specific to Mexico topic, and we're glad to be talking about it. Yes. Corn and things like tortillas have also been part of other parts of Latin America. And then for this burrito topic, it's pretty Mexico specific. The foundation of tortillas becomes this food. Yeah.

And also as far as an invention date for burritos, it's sort of foggy because we'll have some specific stuff for the modern Mexican and US style burrito, but in a broad sense, people have been wrapping stuff in a closed tortilla for many centuries. There's no start date of that. So it's both a specific time we'll talk about it also for a long time. But such a universal human cuisine kind of thing. Like every single culture has some kind of wrapped thing, whether it's like a tortilla that's wrapped around stuff or dumplings or basically hand pies. There's always something where it's like,

we've got some kind of grain that's turned into a container and you put stuff in it and hey, presto, you have a little sack of food, but you can also eat the sack part. In fact, that sack part may be the best part about it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Not that I'm an important decider of what makes a good burrito, but I never really eat burrito, but I never really eat burrito bowls. I want the tortilla. It's great.

I love it. I'm not a big burrito eater, but that's the same thing I feel about tacos is like, I could just eat the inside ingredients, do some kind of keto diet or whatever. But no, I like the carbs. A freshly baked tortilla is just transcendent. It's wild. Yeah. With terminology, maybe the most amazing number here is the mid-1970s. Gustavo Reina says that in the mid-1970s, English speakers coined the term breakfast burrito in restaurants of the US Southwest. But that term is way newer than

the action of wrapping breakfast in a tortilla. And he says that a Spanish speaker in Mexico would have just called that breakfast for a long time. And then it became a specific concept and niche in US restaurants. Yeah. I guess it'd be like saying breakfast Yeah. I guess it's like, it'd be like saying breakfast pastry or something where it's like, you don't have to have a pastry at breakfast, but a lot of people just do. Yeah. Like a breakfast donut. Like, okay, sure. I don't know. Were burritos mostly a breakfast food or was it basically kind of any time of

day, maybe the fillings would change? It's any time of day, but especially lunch, in a way we'll talk about in a little bit. They were a very big portable lunch item. That makes sense. There's two major shifts with the Colombian exchange that set the stage for the rest of assembling a modern burrito.

One of them is just all the crops and meats from the rest of the world that came to the Americas. But the less obvious shift is wheat. Yes, to make flour. Yeah, and the flour tortilla. I mean, still, we still have corn tortillas and flour tortillas. Yeah, we still love both and flour tortillas tend to be the burrito one because of the flexibility.

Yes. Yeah, they can be... It's easier to be larger without being more brittle. Corn tortillas are delicious, but they can break apart a little more easily. That's right, or calcify in a good way. But another key source this week is Jeffrey M. Pilcher, professor of history at the University of Minnesota. He did an interview with Smithsonian magazine and he says that the initial push for wheat in the Americas was a cruel win by Spanish invaders. They not only conquered Central America, they said that native foods and crops are less good,

European foods and crops are superior. Those butt heads. Yeah. That pitch didn't really win people over, but humans do like wheat in addition to corn. There were grasses along the biological lines of wheat in the Americas, but they hadn't really been grown as crops in a European and Asian style. Spanish cuisine prioritized wheat and sparked the creation of tortilla technique, but with wheat flour and you generate a flour tortilla. One more set of numbers about tortillas.

The next number is November 27th, 1985. Wasn't born yet, don't care. Same. Yeah, moving on. That is the date when Rodolfo Neri Vela became the first Mexican person in space. Oh, wow. And Rodolfo Neri Vela, not Mexican American, he was born in Mexico from Mexico, but he trained with NASA and became an astronaut and represented his country in space.

That's fantastic. Do we get to have some Mexican cuisine in space. That's fantastic. Do we get to have some Mexican cuisine in space then? Is this where we're going towards? Yeah, he sparked an entire trend that will probably dominate human spaceflight and already is. I'm so excited. Because the thing is, Vela is from the Mexican state of Guerrero, trained in Mexico and in England, specialized in telecommunications and engineering.

He went to space on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1985, partly to set up a Mexican satellite in space. And on the way up before they went, he said, hey NASA, can you include flour tortillas in the food supply of the shuttle? And NASA did that, and then all astronauts loved it. And so to this day, there's like a really huge demand for tortillas in space. It makes so much sense though, because in space you have the added complication of your food just floating away from you.

Yes. You got to keep that in a nice little wrap, wrapped around in something delicious that you can also eat. And so I think that as humanity, maybe the most lasting sort of thing that will have, like long past, once we've evolved into some kind of noodle brain creature, we're still gonna be eating burritos because they're so convenient and they're so cleverly constructed such that we could be floating in some kind of space void

and still be able to have a full, complete nutritional meal of beans, rice, lettuce, and chicken. Exactly. And it's more designed for space than the other starchy carby foods, like breads and other crummy things. Crumbs get everywhere. They don't retain the filling so well. Yeah. Apparently also the other reason tortillas are popular in space is Houston, Texas. Like just a lot of NASA operations and some of the launches

start from a place with great tortillas locally. And so they have developed a super special preservative that you probably wouldn't enjoy, Katie, for like long haul supplies of tortillas. Yeah, this is why I'm not an astronaut. It's the only reason. The preservatives they use in the tortillas, they do not agree with me. Otherwise, I'd be up there doing space stuff, using my big old space brain to do spaceonomics. That's the only reason, folks. Listeners don't know because they can't see the video, but when we tape, Katie is in that huge spinning G-Force thingy and just calmly taping. It doesn't matter.

It's all good. Oh yeah. Me and my gird would ride that thing with an alacrity. Yeah, so they have developed special tortillas that last a long time on a long space mission. But if astronauts are only going up for a few days, they just get regular tortillas from the Houston area. Oh, that's nice. And that's it.

And they're just fantastic. I'm so happy. I'm happy for them. If we launched from a place with less good Mexican food, maybe it wouldn't be such a thing. But it's really good. I do sometimes forget that California is not the only state that borders Mexico and has a strong Latino population. And so I'm like, I don't know, I'm just like, wait, what do

you mean Texas? But yeah, okay. No, it does make sense. Yeah. It's in the zone. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. They're true. They're like a more sort of gunny California. I feel like California and Texas are both just country-sized too. Your sentence could have been like, I sometimes forget California isn't the only state. End of sentence. I sometimes forget we're not our own country. Again, I think borders have, look, I, again, like, I think borders are silly and frivolous, but we do have the best flag. And that does make me feel happy that we've got a bear on our flag. I mean, come on. Although Mexico's flag does

have an eagle with a snake in its claws. And that's also pretty, pretty sick. I do love that. All of Mexico's iconography and everything, it's amazing. It's so good. It's fantastic. Yeah. And then the other numbers here for space are 2007 and 2009. Because in 2007, International Space Station astronauts made breakfast burritos of tortillas, sausage, pre-made scrambled eggs, and what the story describes

as careful application of tiny packets of salsa. In 2009, they did it again, and astronauts Jose Hernandez and Danny Olivas, who are from Texas and California, they live-streamed it. They spoke both English and Spanish to the viewers. Hernandez tweeted, quote, espero la cosecha de mi sueño sirva como inspiración a todos. Which means I hope the harvest of my dreams serves as an inspiration to all.

Oh, that's lovely. Yeah, there's burritos on the ISS, like commonly. Yeah, you want to be really careful though, because you don't want like a droplet of salsa to float into your eyeball. That would be bad. My favorite quote about it is a 2008 blog post from astronaut Sandra Magnus, who spent a lot of time on the ISS. She said she cannot think of any spaceflight food ingredient that

has not been put on a tortilla. She said, quote, when a shuttle shows up, you are in tortilla heaven. Also, quote, you really want to be swimming in tortillas your whole increments. Yeah. People in microgravity, we've been like, oh, this is perfect. And made burritos out of everything. Tortilla heaven is a good restaurant name. I think anyone who's like an entrepreneur who wants to go into like the Mexican food business, Tortilla Heaven. It's a good one.

Yeah. Or just a poetic name for space. Like, you know, the heavenly tortillas. And then the next number for this week is at least three. At least three. There are at least that many popular theories for the name origin of burritos. Because we're about to talk about the relatively specific origins of modern Mexican burritos,

but oddly those do not feature a clear agreement on where the name comes from. There's a few different theories. It's etymology time, guys. Can we have like an etymology alarm sound effect? Like, etymology, etymology. And also we know what the word burrito literally means. It means a small donkey or just even a regular donkey. So that part we know. Because a burro is a donkey, right? Yeah, burro. Burrito is little donkey, which is adorable. Yeah. Yeah. And then the leap to make that a food name happens second. And one theory is that during the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s, the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s, a man named Juan Mendez sold guisados wrapped in flour tortillas from a buggy pulled by a donkey. Guisados are stewed braised meats. And so

that theory says the name comes from the fun donkey that pulled the cart that was selling burritos. Was it like an exceptionally small donkey? Was this like the little donkey that could? I wish this theory had more description of like why the donkey snags people's imaginations, you know? That part to me is tricky. Like a chihuahua sized donkey pulling one burrito at a time? Yeah, like when I get food from a food truck or something, I'm not like, wow, look at the front hood grill of the truck.

I don't like think about it, you know? But it must be a cool donkey. Yeah. Ooh, look, I got some truckies from this truck. Delicious little truckies. And then a next theory here is that workers would take these wrapped foods on the go out to especially outdoor labor locations. And then they started calling the wrapped foods burritos because they resembled the rolled blankets on top

of the donkeys that the workers either rode or brought behind them. And a burrito food sort of looks like a rolled packed blanket on the side of a hoofed animal. Yeah, I've seen those rolled blankets on donkeys before. They always did kind of look edible. It does feel like something like that, yeah. If it was in foil, I'd be like, ooh, you know. Yeah, I mean, we've already talked about how like when you roll yourself or another into a blankie, you feel like a burrito.

Yeah, there's a coziness to it. And then here's a third theory. They might have been named after silly or stubborn children. Huh. And specifically children who would help women carry their shopping home from markets and stores. And then the women would pay the children for that labor, not with money, but with the inexpensive portable meal of what we now call a burrito. And so it became like, these children are like my little donkeys is the theory. Oh, okay.

Okay. It's food for the little donkeys. Oh, that's the cutest one. I like that one. Now I want to call kids little donkeys. Like, yeah, look at you, you little donkey. I feel like they'd probably like take offense. The parents would probably like, you know, pull their child away from me. But, you know,

just saying like, like thinking of little children, like little donkeys, it makes me think of Pinocchio and how, you know, they turn into those cute little donkeys, you know? It's actually pretty horrifying that, that, that whole situation in that movie, but still, it's a cute nickname. That's at least three theories. There are other ones too you can find, which are equally possible. We really don't know exactly how this leap happened. Then also another number here is the late 1800s.

The late 1800s is when dictionaries in Mexico started including the word burrito as a food term. It started in the late 1800s. And interestingly, those dictionaries listed burrito as a food word from the state of Guerrero in southern central Mexico. We're about to talk about modern Mexican burritos being a pretty northern food, but in some parts of southern Mexico, the term burrito has been used to refer to what Americans would call a taco.

And there's been some messy defining of what is or isn't a burrito. The other interesting name thing here is that Professor Jeffrey Pilcher says, we're also not clear on the name origin of tacos. Like that's been a food, but we don't have a solid, solid like facts of where the name taco came from. Well, there used to be a giant bell made out of a taco and... We'll touch on him too. Yeah. We'll touch on him too. The Taco Bell. And someone's like, we got a taco about this bell.

You thought you could escape that pond, didn't you? You tried to get away from it, but I didn't lay you. Weirdly, Jeffrey Pilcher says one theory about the name origin of tacos is that they are named after small detonation charges used by silver miners in the 1700s AD. The charge was gunpowder cradled in a piece of paper in what we would now call a taco shape. But we don't even know if that's the reason. Both the name taco and the name burrito are a much newer usage than the making of the food. And then the existence of the foods leads us into takeaway number one.

Burritos started out as a specific utilitarian food in Northern Mexico. All right. I can get why it's utilitarian. It's like the space thing. It's like what we've been talking about. They're really, really handy. Literally fit in your hand and you can eat them. And unless you've overstuffed the thing, it's not so messy.

You can just eat it on the go. Yeah. And that and a few other things we're surprisingly clear on as an origin of what has become the common Mexican burrito and Mexican food burrito in the United States in our minds. And one of them is portability and also it being a like inexpensive working person's lunch was really the big start of this because you can just bring it places. Yeah. Key sources for this takeaway, it's again the book Taco USA by Gustavo Arreano and also a New York Times piece by Patty Jinnich, who is a chef and cookbook author who traveled

to Ciudad Juarez and also El Paso in Texas. Because apparently there's a pretty broad agreement that the city of Juarez, which is in the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, it's pretty adjacent to the city of El Paso in Texas in the U.S. We think the city of Juarez is probably the beginning of modern burritos. Like not just Northern Mexico, that specific city.

Okay, that's interesting. Like is it, that's fairly well established or is there some controversy about it? Claims that debate it attributed to other nearby parts of Northern Mexico, in particular the state of Sonora, which is just west of Chihuahua. But in general, we're looking at these states of Mexico that are now adjacent to the US states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico. And until the 1840s or so were sort of central Northern Mexico and then the United States grabbed a lot of the land next to them.

Right, right. Which became like Texas. Yeah. And so like what's now Northern Mexico and used to be more centrally located in Mexico is where this starts. Patty Genich says that there's no one chef or restaurant in Juarez that's claiming the credit, but as a group, these family-run restaurants believe they coined the food of a burrito made of a flour tortilla filled with beans and then a few other typical fillings, usually rice, usually just one meat. And a relatively uncomplicated burrito. The key features are a light and thin tortilla, and a very portable, not messy package. So this is not a smothered burrito. This is a take it to go burrito. Right. Yeah. Having that nicely wrapped little like a baby in a papoose, except you do eat

it. You eat that baby. Yeah. It's the best, even though the metaphor is tripping me up a lot, but it's the best. And the key thing that made these popular is as a lunch for people doing labor in outdoor situations. Because the thing is, 1800s especially, you don't have microwaves, you don't have convenient little electric ovens, but a farmer or laborer could get a wrapped up room temperature or cold burrito, leave it in the sun while they're working in the morning and enjoy a hot meal at lunch. So that heating arrangement that's completely green energy, I guess, that was the key way that this food spread and became a hit.

Yeah. That sounds really, really good. A sun-warmed burrito after a hard day's work. I mean, obviously as a podcaster sitting in my chair going like, oh, that sounds really nice, having to do hard labor. But yeah, I mean, genuinely having a sun-warm burrito sounds really good. Yeah. One thing, and I know this is different food item, but similar is that when I go on a hike, I love to take an empanada with me

because it's like a full meal. It's like not so messy that like the jostling from the hike is going to like, you know, like if I try to do a sandwich, it's like a stack of cards that gets all jostled around. But an empanada holds its shape, stays together. You know, if my backpack gets a little bit warm, that's fine because it's just warming up the empanada. And it's great. It's such an amazing thing to take on a hike.

Yeah, like this is really a leading early food for it's wrapped up, it's portable, and you just either eat it cold or enjoy it in a lightly heated way. And apparently people do that with burritos to this day with their cars. As I was researching, I found an NPR piece where they rounded up advice from touring musicians and found that a lot of them do something called an engine block burrito, which is where you pack up a whole bunch of burritos, keep them relatively chilled,

and then leave one on the engine block of a running car when you'd like to have it. So then you don't have to deal with restaurants. You just have amazing meals ready to go. Sounds good and also possibly a little dangerous. Because I know though, if your burrito has rice in it, I know that rice does have a certain quality that if you like, there's a process by which if you reheat it too much, either leave it at room temperature for too long or sort of go through the process of putting it in the fridge and then reheating it or putting

it in the fridge and taking it out and having it be at room temperature too much, there is a chance of a certain bacteria growing on it that can cause very severe food poisoning. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if that's, I don't know if that becomes an issue with this sort of like engine block burrito situation. Cause otherwise it sounds perfect. Yeah. And whether they knew that or not, the people building this cuisine and see it at Juarez, they were really focused on beans as the leading filling. That makes more sense. Yeah. There's like a passive episode long ago about many kinds of beans, but the main bean types they'd be using have incredible nutritional variety and worth. And so even if you're adding

one other thing, like just a cheese or a meat or a rice, it's a really pretty valuable meal for your body. It just has a lot in it. Beans are like incredibly, incredibly densely packed with nutrition. And that's why you got it. And that's folks, that's why you got to chew them well when you're eating them. If you get a lot of, let's say a little bit bloated after you eat a lot of beans, you're not chewing them enough. You got to chew them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah. Then you're good. And so yeah, that's where we think this starts. It's very Northern Mexico, either Juarez or the nearby Mexican states.

And amazingly, that stayed pretty regionally specific until as late as the early 1900s, because what happens next is takeaway number two. Burritos became a national United States phenomenon due to the brisero era of Mexican labor and its influence on frozen food and fast food. Turns out this entire story of burritos tracks with specific trends in the relationship between Mexico and the U.S. and the movement of people into the U. So there was some specific connection though to this immigration and frozen and fast foods? Yeah, the immigration is the key thing and then it just happened during a time when around the mid 1950s, Americans start building up the frozen food industry and separately the fast food industry. Yeah, that makes sense. So like was this to cater mostly to like the growing immigrant

population? They have food that they like from their origin country. And so was this something where like essentially food retailers were trying to cater to this new growing population or was it that you would have immigrants who themselves are creating and distributing this food, or a combination of the two? A combination, yeah. This all did benefit from tacos being sort of the first Mexican food to break into the US, and that was in the early 1900s. And then there began to be an infrastructure of Mexican restaurants.

And burritos specifically had sort of their own path afterward. when there began to be an infrastructure of Mexican restaurants. Burritos specifically had their own path afterward. Key sources here are the US National Archives talking about the Bracero program, and then a reference volume called the Oxford History of Mexico, co-edited by Michael C. Meyer and William H. Beasley, professors at the University of Arizona. There's an interesting thing where the Mexican burrito from that Northern Mexico area, it doesn't really get going outside of Northern Mexico into the rest of Mexico until late in the 1800s

and into the 1900s. And Gustavo Arellano says that with all Mexican foods, there's been a thing where Mexico is this giant country with so many different specific regional foods that often one region's food has trouble breaking into another region. People are like, no, we have our thing in this state. And so then a lot of Mexican foods become national hits in the United States before gaining traction in the rest of Mexico. That's interesting.

I mean, that rings very true. I feel like in the U S if you were raised in the U S you may, I guess, take it for granted how much of a sort of melting pot the U S is where we share. I'm often very critical of the U S but like this is something that is genuinely really cool about it is like how much there is this mixture of cultures where someone in Chicago who's nowhere near the border learns about Mexican food and has some and maybe even finds a semi-decent restaurant there. I don't know. Go to the Pilsen neighborhood.

That's the tip. Go to the Pilsen neighborhood. Anyway. I'm being a jerk. I'm sure there are really good restaurants there that are at the Huffax and Foodham. Anyways, but yeah, I mean, but yeah, in other, like even in, I've noticed this about, you know, sort of now living in Italy and stuff, there's a lot of regional cuisine and people are very particular about it.

Like I think it does take a while for foods to catch on from different regions. And even if you have say like when I try a region's cuisine here in Turin, and then I go to that actual region and try the same thing, it can be completely different. And there really isn't like Italian food. I mean there is, but you get what I'm saying. Like there are so many different regional foods. And so, yeah, it does not surprise me at all to hear that that is the case also with Mexico. Yeah, exactly.

People in the US are like, I don't know, I don't have a concept of Mexican food yet, and we'll just receive all of the regional types. And then, you know, not necessarily receive them super openly or get the most authentic version, but it's not a thing where somebody in one part of Mexico says, why are you opening a restaurant for this other region's food? We do our food here.

Yeah. Yeah. US Italian food is sort of Southern Italian food because most immigrants who would come from Italy to the US would be from the South because they were poor and they were going to seek better economic opportunities. And I would wager, I guess that this is similar with Mexico, right? You may get more immigrants from certain regions where people need to immigrate in order to find better lives for themselves and their families. And so those are the regions where their food is going to start to be represented more in the US.

That's all dead on. And then also there's an extra element of the functionality of burritos that makes this happen in kind of a non-regional area, non-regional way. Yeah. They're just, they're such perfect little packages of nutrition, but go on, Alex. The speed of this progression first, apparently a few people start organically spreading burritos into the US around the 1920s. And Gustavo Rayano says the key crossovers were from Juarez, essentially across the street and one river, into West Texas, then also from the state of Sonora into Arizona, and also the general boom of Los Angeles. Los Angeles in the 1920s just grows so fast and especially needs labor

for construction and for Hollywood. There's all kinds of Mexican people coming there. I'm a little bit, maybe a little bit of a traitor, but I will say Los Angeles on average, I'm not saying always, but on average has better Mexican food than San Diego. I'll never let you have WD-40 now. I'll never be welcomed back in San Diego. You'll have to pay for your WD-40. Yeah. I think in general, Los Angeles just has an incredible food scene in no small part

because of how diverse the people's origins are there. So you can get really, really, really good Mexican food and often very specialized food that it's actually like, yeah, this is from this region, which is really, really cool. Yeah, that's neat. And with the burrito becoming familiar, that still took many decades. But Gustavo Arellano says by the 1960s, most Mexican restaurants in the US offered at least one form of a burrito and used the name burrito. Apparently in 1964, the Los Angeles Times published its first burrito recipe in their newspaper. And the write-up said burritos were, beginning to be popular in our taco stands. So in 1964, people were like, this is a cutting edge food from Mexico, the burrito. The other big push that makes this flip happen

where it starts to be known within a few decades is the Bracero program. The official name was the Mexican Farm Labor Program. It ran from 1942 to 1964. It got nicknamed Bracero, that's a Spanish word that means laborer who works with his arms. This was an agreement between the US and Mexican governments. They started it in 1942 because the US didn't have enough manpower for the war effort. The initial briseros worked in all sorts of industries. Then after the war ended, the US and Mexico renewed the agreement but limited the workers

to doing agricultural work only. Well, that seems weird, but okay. We could do a hundred episodes about Mexican immigration to the US because it has all sorts of elements to it. Braceros were a big spark of it because huge agriculture industries got used to official migrant workers. And then because of labor union pressure in the US, the program ended in 1964 and the companies just kept hiring people without doing it on the books. Like that's a lot of where it starts.

Right, right. Yeah, there's a whole complex history of like, yeah, labor unions are great, but then there was a whole element of sort of a, Oh, but we should only really have unions for people who are, you know, quote unquote, Americans are born here or, you know, white. And then that causes that whole problem of like, well, you know, these, these companies are still highly motivated to not pay their workers much. And so then they can hire people who aren't able to join the unions, you know, and just, yeah,

under the table. So it's, yeah, it's all connected, man. It is very complex systems. And then this had an incredibly specific impact on burritos because the thing is- The most important impact. Human rights, labor rights, whatever. But gosh darn it, it's got a huge impact on burritos.

So you better listen up people. Yeah, because what happened is agricultural companies, especially near the border, they realized, hey, we can feed a lot of braceros for very little money with very little infrastructure if we feed them bean burritos, just beans in a tortilla swaddled. And they can do that heating maneuver of leave it in the sun. And so these companies started giving braceros to bean burritos for lunch every day. If things were going great, they got a bonus of some cheese, but otherwise a bunch of low quality beans in a tortilla.

The other weird thing is most of these Mexican laborers had come all the way from central Mexico, partly because there's just a huge population around Mexico City. Not only were the braceros being fed not great bean burritos, many of them were from a part of Mexico where that's not Mexican food. And so they were like, what is this and I don't like it and huh? But in a roundabout way that popularizes burritos. Because then they check like, oh, you can probably get a good burrito elsewhere and okay, now I'm familiar with this.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's definitely not like a fully satisfying meal, but yeah, beans are surprisingly very, even like cheap beans, right? Are surprisingly extremely nutritious. Exactly. Yeah. It just like got people by and that's one of many ways braceros were not treated well. It's not the only one. Yeah. But because of this huge linking of a big population of people with a new food to them, that helps spread burritos nationwide, especially after many braceros proceed to live in the

United States one way or another. And with that spark, burritos go nationwide in the US. There are already taco stands that can just add new menu items of burritos. And then also they got a huge boost from Taco Bell. Because in 1962, a man named Glenn Bell creates the first Taco Bell menu. It's named after his last name of Bell. Uh, boring. Yeah. I thought his name would be Glen Taco.

So the very first Taco Bell menu included bean burritos with a bit of red chili powder. They were even kind of influenced by what braceros were fed, a just beans burrito. I mean the chili powder probably helps judge up the flavor fed, a just beans burrito. I mean, the chili powder probably helps judge up the flavor, but really just beans in a tortilla with a little bit of chili powder. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm demonizing bean burritos. Like, they're good for what they are. It just shouldn't be your only meal every day.

Flip it and send it. I don't want to make it... I don't want to make it sound like I'm demonizing bean burritos. Yeah, we should put that on a soundboard or something. That was a fun Alex statement. Yeah. Yeah, because they're like, fine, if you can mix in other stuff. I mean, that's what I used to eat. I used to eat bean burritos as a kid, right? Like, I eat just a refried beans and a tortilla. Yeah, it is pretty good. Especially with cheese, it just sings, you know? Yeah. And then beans in a tortilla. Yeah, it is pretty good. Especially with cheese. It just sings.

Yeah. And then the other thing that really spreads burritos in the US is the invention of the frozen burrito. Because in the 1950s, there was a man named Dwayne Roberts in California. His family had a meat butchering business. He starts working for the family business and says, how can I grow it? He comes up with freezing beef patties for the relatively new fast food chain McDonald's. Once he's a frozen meat guy, one of the company's Mexican American employees introduces him to the concept of a burrito.

He eats his first burrito and then develops in 1956 the first frozen burrito. That gets sold in grocery stores. It's also a way that stores like Taco Bell can just heat up an item rapidly and serve it. Yeah, that's, I mean, I guess we kind of take it for granted that food comes in that frozen format. In fact, it's kind of a drag now when you think about like all these things just as frozen bricks that get tossed in a deep fryer or in the microwave. But I guess at the time that was pretty innovative.

It was, yeah. Yeah, like the whole supply chain of it and everything. And so this combination of fast food and frozen food industries runs with the idea that in many cases they heard about from braceros, who had also in many cases just heard about burritos when they started being braceros because they're not from Northern Mexico. Yeah, I mean, it is really important to remember that like different regions, like a lot of countries have, I mean, the US included, right, where it's like different regions. It's like the differences between the different regions in a country are probably just as great as between like sort of on average people in one country versus another country. Yeah. Yeah. And many United States ethnic restaurants

kind of flatten that out. In some ways positive. They're trying to serve as many kinds of food as possible, but you just don't know when you walk into, let's say a Chinese restaurant with 200 items on the menu. They're just pulling concepts from the entire country because they can. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that is how burritos kind of suddenly took off in the US and also began to spread to the rest of Mexico from this Northern Mexican spark. Sometimes we look down so much upon, and when I say we, not you and me, Alex, or even the listeners, just like society will look down on laborers who

aren't paid well as sort of, you know, like, ah, you know, you're, you're poor and you're a laborer. So people look down their nose at them. And yet in this case, like the food that they were being fed, which was, you know, maybe not even that great, just kind of a small form of compensation to keep them working throughout the day, like became so popular and like now you're buying like $15 specialty burritos somewhere. Yeah, that'll especially fit the bonus show this week.

But also we have a giant last takeaway for the other half of the show. So we're going to take a quick break and then unwrap the other half of this week's burrito. Unwrap it. Ah, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, That was the appropriate response. brand new crime fighting trio here to protect the anthropomorphic muscular animal citizens of River City. Featuring Justin McElroy as Axelile, the firefighting axolotl. Clint McElroy as Roger Mooer, the debonair cow of mystery. Griffin McElroy as Navy Seal, the raw seal that has never served in the armed forces and Travis McElroy as every other swell critter in River City.

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that's worth the price of admission. Every Tuesday on MaximumFun.org or your favorite pod spot. Free with ads. Folks, we're back and we're back with one last big takeaway for the main show because takeaway number three, the United States is a nation of relentless burrito experimentation, both with the recipes and the economics. Yeah. I was trying to explain this concept to actually someone from France, it's always funny to

try to explain America to people, Italians, let alone Italians, but also like French people, it is wild. But he was fascinated by the idea, the way that Americans like play with our food in ways that are almost like irresponsible. Because I was explaining fair food to him, how we'll deep fry Snickers bars. And he was like, you deep fry a Snickers bar? I'm like, my man, just wait and let me tell you everything. The other grotesque and heinous rites of passage that go on at state fairs.

The Snickers bar is like the first monster in that dungeon. You have a lot of other levels to go to here. That's a mere goblin in this cavernous dungeon, my friend. There are many other monstrosities that await you. But I am excited to hear about the way in which we play around with burritos because I mean, some of them may be sort of state fair-esque nightmares, but like a lot of it could be really interesting. It's mostly like what I've heard about many cuisines, especially something like ramen, where it's like, there's not just one ramen, there's just constant experimentation and trying new

things. And key sources here are everything cited earlier, also writing for serious eats.com by Adriana Velez. We will not index every possible burrito type because there's too many. The smothered burrito either developed in Texas or Michigan. There was immigrant communities working their way up the center and the Midwest of the US that developed that. Looking worldwide, Jeffrey Pilcher says that immigrants from Lebanon to Mexico created pork al pastor. It was inspired by Lebanese shawarma, like the big spit of meat.

They said, oh, we can do pork this way, a specific way. And that led to Mexico and the US eventually putting that in burritos, pork and pineapple tacos and pineapple tacos and then burritos. Yeah. California is especially big on this. There's something people often call LA burritos, which feature guisado, which is a stewed meat. There's also the kosher burrito that came out of the Boyle Heights neighborhood of LA, which is historically Latino and also Jewish. So the kosher burrito features pastrami and cheddar cheese, came about in the 1960s. Again, this is why I mean, I'm sure New Yorkers are going to argue with me about this, but I feel like LA has some of the best food in the world.

It does. Because of how much mixing of cultures there are, how many immigrants and first to beyond generation immigrants and how that can create just this incredible like blending of so many different ideas about cuisines, these countries, and then everyone's really used to trying new things. And so there's a lot of competition in order to get people's attention. Exactly, yeah.

That led to another food in LA called the okey dog, which is a tortilla wrapped around two hot dogs, chili and grilled onions, as well as the cheddar cheese and pastrami from the kosher burrito. There's also textural experimentation. In Northern California, there's a Dorado style, which means it's golden. You crisp the tortilla to a golden color rather than it being relatively fluffy. And then two more styles here to cover in detail. One is something I've often heard called a California burrito, but it's the kind with French fries inside. More incorrigible. I love it. I feel so patriotic right now. I love how playful we are with food. That appeared around the late 1980s and it came out of a weird hypercompetitive set of

restaurants that are all named after people with names ending in Berto, like the syllable Berto. Oh my God. So Alex, like when I, like I grew up in Encinitas and we live- Nearby this actually. Yeah. We had, there was an Alberto's really close to us. Perfect. Just kind of a, I mean, it was tiny. Like there was maybe like, like three places you

could sit, but yeah, they, they really, really incredible Mexican food from that restaurant that my family would go to all the time. That's awesome. Yeah, the first two of these chains were Roberto's and Alberto's. And it turns out that Alberto's was founded when Roberto had let two of his cousins start a location. This? Okay, no, I've heard this.

I've heard this story before. Okay, no, but continue. Sorry. I've heard this story before. Okay, no, but continue, sorry. It turns out it's for real. Like he said, hey, my cousins, you guys are not quite doing my standards of tortilla freshness and ingredient freshness. You either need to close down or change names. Tortilla freshness is so important. I agree with this gentleman.

Yeah, Roberto Robledo told his cousins this. And then they said, okay, they got a can of paint. And the simplest name that they could change the cursive letters of Roberto to was Alberto's on their signage. Oh my God, this is so wild. Alex, this is like, I just thought that my brother was sort of, you know, telling me silly schoolyard tales, but that's, this is wild. This is part of my childhood. This is crazy. I should have led with checking if you're familiar with it because yeah, Roberto Robledo,

he first came to California as a bracero in the 1950s and then he settled in San Ysidro and launched restaurants. And Albertos thrives alongside Roberto's. And then other entrepreneurs say, if I'm going to do their style of food, I should do like a Beartone name. So Filbertos becomes another chain. Filbertos, yes. They were everywhere. And they are separate businesses that vaguely imitate each other by having a Beartone name and like a red and yellow color scheme and some other corollary elements. The Albertus that we had had a single arcade game, which I think was one of the Street Fighters.

I remember I never put coins in that thing, but I'd smash those buttons and I thought stuff was happening, but it really wasn't. Right, and just the loading screen is playing and you're like, woo. That is Alex. That's exactly what it was. I'm not joking. That's what would happen. I was too young to understand. I would be pressing buttons, things would be happening.

I'm like, I did this. I did this. Hey everyone, look at this. I did this. I did this. Hey everyone, look at this. I did this. And then I'd get my flautus and be happy. That's so funny. And yeah, and so because these chains were pretty similar in a lot of ways, each chain and really even each location experimented as hard as they could with burritos. And we don't know exactly which restaurant did it, but around the late 80s, early 90s, one stuffed French fries into a burrito.

People loved it and then all the others did it and it became a burrito trend. I hope it was our Albertus. I think also our Albertus changed its name either to Philobertus or to Roberto's. I don't know. Something happened or maybe one of the chains consumed this one. It was always very confusing to me as a kid. Obviously I was prone to confusion given the whole Street Fighter situation. As someone who's doing Maggie Simpson operating a steering wheel but with Street Fighter,

I think I know how this works. The last one to talk about here is the Mission Burrito. Some listeners might have been pounding on their device, why haven't you talked about Mission Burritos? This starts in San Francisco in a neighborhood called the Mission District. The business credited with creating it is called El Faro. It means the lighthouse. In 1961, Mexican immigrant, Fabronio Ontiveros opened a grocery store. On his second day of business, an entire crew from the nearest fire station asked him for sandwiches. He said, I don't really have sandwich stuff, but come back tomorrow. I'll have an amazing lunch for you. Like eat somewhere else today. Then that night he came up with a double wrapped burrito full of more ingredients than usual.

And the firefighters loved it. He kept tinkering. They became a restaurant. And then there was a whole scene of small businesses doing this style of relatively loaded burrito that you also wrap in foil because it's just big so the foil keeps it together. You're double bagging it both with the... You have two layers of tortillas, right? Yeah, double wrapped. Yeah. Double wrapped and then also the foil. The thing about a Mission Burrito is you can still get them in the Mission, but they have become maybe the most prominent US burrito because of Chipotle.

Yeah. Chipotle, whether you think it nails it or not, it is imitating a mission burrito. And so that's kind of the style. There's lettuce, there's like a lot of different fillings. And so like these Juarez burritos were often a lot smaller, thinner, more compact, more portable. Like it's relatively new to do a Chipotle burrito. Yeah. I have never once had a Chipotle burrito. Not a single time.

I like them a lot and I know it's just different. And apparently the entire conversation around authenticity in Mexican food and in food is just very fraught. So it's just what it is. To me, it's not so much that I don't like, who am I to judge anyone about authenticity? Again, it's the tortilla freshness issue. I really agree with Roberto. It's so important. Like for me, maybe, oh, maybe Roberto is able to taste the, wait, his name is, Roberto. Was the restaurant just named Roberto's or was that actually his surname? His first name. Yeah.

Roberto Robledo was his name. Okay. Okay. Okay. I didn't want to just call him Roberto if that was just the name of the restaurant, but yeah, no, maybe he was able to taste that preservative or taste the weirdness of like a stale tortilla. Because like I'm pretty sure all the tortillas that from Chipotle may have that preservative stuff in it. And I really, I just can't, I can't deal with it. Yeah. And many parts of the U.S. lack fresh,

amazing tortillas too. So it'll still like play, you know, in other places. I wish I wasn't a mutant with like extra taste buds. But yeah, write to us in our Discord if you too think that store-bought preservative tortillas taste like butt a little bit, just like a little hint of butt in there. I'm going to start thinking of you as food amorphous. You know it's false. You know it's not real. And then also I get to imagine you had a Morpheus outfit, you know, it's fun. It's not real. And then also I get to imagine you had a Morpheus outfit.

It's fun. It's a funny thing. Yeah. I think a technical term is super taster, which just makes it sound like I'm really full of myself. No, food morphers. That's just what it's called. It's called being a food Morpheus.

Food Morpheus is better. I like that better. I'm adopting that now. I'm food Morpheus. Yeah. I'm adopting that now. I'm food-morpheus. And yeah, the Chipotle boom is one of the biggest food stories in the last 30 years of the US. There was a chef named Steve Ells who graduated from cooking school in 1990, goes to work for a fine dining restaurant in San Francisco, and his goal is to earn enough capital to start his own fine dining restaurant. Along the way

he's in San Francisco, he tries a Mission Burrito and says, oh, what if he did a fast casual Mission Burrito place? He sets up the first Chipotle in a former ice cream parlor in Denver, Colorado in 1993. The first one's in Denver. He was just able to get a space and picked it. All right. And then- got one key newspaper review from the Rocky Mountain News that said it was great, becomes a hit. And initial customers didn't really understand what it was, but then people got used to it. And from there,

Ells just kind of throws himself into expanding a Chipotle business. Apparently people ask him if he's ever going to open that fine dining restaurant. And he replies that he opens three Chipotles every week. He's always opening restaurants. Yeah, makes sense. And then also early, early in the existence of this Denver Chipotle, an investment banker named Tony Miller eats there. He loves it so much and has such a vision of this could be huge. He approaches Ells and asks if he can buy in as a partner. Ells says no. So in 1995, Tony Miller opens his own restaurant called Qdoba, also in Denver, doing their own, this is kind of a fast

casual mission burrito. And then both those spread it nationwide. I always felt like those two, there was something happening with that because Qdoba is so similar to Chipotle. And because of both of those restaurants, a few people are curious if the US will become some sort of burrito monoculture, where it's only Chipotle and Qdoba style burritos. The counter argument is that we're really good at experimenting with burritos. So we'll probably just keep doing new things and they'll have to keep up.

Also, when you try, when you, maybe I can recruit other people, like just try, if you try a really fresh tortilla, I got a really good mom and pop or, you know, just a good quality burritos and you really taste that freshness, you're not going to want to go back. You'll be ruined forever just like me and that makes me happy. Yeah. And the other thing is Chipotle in particular might lead the invention of a next production

system for burritos, which people may love or really despise. We don't know. Are we having robots make burritos, Alex? Not yet, but that's on the way. Because for one thing, way back in 2016 Chipotle made a deal with Google to experiment with delivering burritos by drone. I've seen those little things. Well, okay, so you're talking about flying drone. I've seen those little things. Well, okay, so you're talking about flying drone. I've seen those little delivery robots in LA

get pathetically stuck. Yeah, like this seems to be just not taking off yet and we'll see. But even wilder to me, in 2023, it turns out there's a Chipotle test kitchen, an attached restaurant. It's called the Chipotle Cultivate Center. It's in Irvine, California.

They began offering burrito bowls and salads assembled by robots. According to The Atlantic, Chipotle collaborated with an automation startup called Hyphen. They created what they call an automated digital make line. And so some online orders get made by the robots. But amazingly to me, the robots are only making burrito bowls and salads. They are not wrapping burritos. And it's unclear if that was not the goal yet or if they tried to have it do it and it couldn't do it.

But like robotics has not cracked wrapping a burrito yet. I see. So robots doing baby diaper changes cannot happen yet, I think. Like first we do the burritos and then we have them handle the babies. And then, you know, I don't think anything wrong can come of allowing children to be raised by robots equipped with chat GPT. Yeah, like artificial intelligence of robots and stuff. It seems like burritos are kind of a frontier still, even if some other Chipotle menu items can be made.

And yeah, babies too probably. Maybe they can like put music on for your baby, but not change its poopy dippy. Sure. I'm all for non-sentient robots taking up sort of forms of labor that are not fun for humans. I know that cooking and being a chef can be very creative and very fulfilling. So I'm not saying that they should replace all of that, but it's like, yeah, cool. I'm not necessarily against robots making Chipotle burrito bowls, but I just don't trust our society to be good enough to then go like, and therefore, anyone who had their job taken away from them by a robot, we will help you.

their job taken away from them by a robot, we will help you. Yeah. When we, in the distant future, when we have our space burritos, maybe we'll someday look back on this time and think, huh, why didn't we just give everyone a free burrito robot? Yeah, the production and the economics and the recipes are all constantly changing in a way I never really thought about. And so yeah, it's going to be interesting, the future of burritos. It's going to be really actually legitimately fascinating. Burritos really do track with the progression of humanity, I think. It represents us. We are a thin skin, but within us is contained complexity and multitudes. Alex, I'm really trying.

I'm really, really trying to do a burrito metaphor here. Tell me it's working. It's working great. I love it. Wrap it up. Yay. Wrap the little metaphor. Cuddly.

Wrap it up. It's a cuddly little metaphor. Wrap it up! It's a cuddly little metaphor. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro. With fun features for you such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, burritos started out as a specific utilitarian food in northern Mexico. Takeaway number two, burritos became a national United States phenomenon due to the brisero

era of Mexican labor and its influence on mid-century frozen food and fast food. Takeaway number three, the U.S. is a nation of relentless burrito experimentation, both with recipes and economics. And then so many stats and numbers about the origins of tortillas, the origin of the word burritos, tortillas going into space, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said this is the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org.

Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show. Every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode, this week's topic is burritoflation. Burritoflation. Burritos, economic inflation, you get it.

Visit siffund.fund for that bonus, for a library of more than 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things? Check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fun org Key sources this week include a couple of amazing books taco USA how Mexican food conquered America That's by Southern California journalists and nationally syndicated columnist Gustavo Arellano Also the Oxford history of Mexico that's co-edited by professors Michael C. Meyer and William H

Beasley of the University of Arizona. Further digital resources from the U.S. National Archives and the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Also a Smithsonian Magazine interview with Jeffrey M. Pilcher of the University of Minnesota. And amazing food writing and journalism by Patty Jinnich for the New York Times. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people, and the Wappenjur people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere,

native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 154, that's about the topic of The Name Alex, near and dear to my heart and really a gift from you folks for picking it. One fun fact there, The Name Alex got a lot of its popularity from made up stories about

the historical figure Alexander the Great exploring the ocean in submarines and exploring the air on the back of griffins. So I recommend that episode of those wild stories. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the BUDDHOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Broken Unshaven by the BUDDHOS 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 members, and thank you to all our listeners, I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.