Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Butter

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Billy Wayne Davis (‘Grown Local’ podcast, Conan) and comedy writer/podcaster Conor Lastowka (Rifftrax, ‘372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back’ podcast) for a look at why butter is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Butter. Known for being tasty. Famous for being slippery. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why butter is 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. My guests today are Billy Wayne Davis and Connor Listoka. Billy Wayne Davis is one of my favorite stand-up comedians in the entire world, especially his special. It's called Live at Third Man Records, and then you can hear his podcasting on his show Grown Local or as a guest on The Daily Zeitgeist and Behind the Bastards and lots more great shows. Connor LaStoka is a comedy writer and podcaster and

novelist. You've experienced his writing for Riff Tracks. Hopefully you've experienced his podcasting with the show 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back. And then he has many funny novels. The latest is The Pole Vault Championship of the Entire Universe, which is now an Audible original. Also, I have gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Billy recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Billy recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino Otongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Connor recorded this on the traditional land of

the Manahoke people. 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 butter. Not everyone eats butter, not everyone consumes butter, but you might have butter in your home. You might have butter in your stomach right now. And I am thrilled that butter is something that fits the title of this podcast, because there is so much more there. So please sit back or try to sit without falling down if you have buttered yourself for some reason. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Billy Wayne Davis and Connor Listoka. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then.

Billy, Connor, it is so good to see you. And Connor, it's nice to get together, talk butter. I don't know. It feels like time for some reason. We can fill in why. It is a substance whose time has come, I think. Butter like the cheese has long stood alone. And yeah, let's dig in. I'm neutral.

Thank you for being so ready. Because yeah, I always ask guests, what's your relationship with the topic or opinion of it? Billy has gone first with neutrality, which makes sense. I'm like, for it being a good tasting thing, I'm pretty neutral about it. You know what I mean? Like, I never really thought about it much before doing this. You know what? It's one of those things where every now and then you taste, like, a commonly cooked item, and it's, like, extra good.

And you're like, man, that's really good. Like, that's good. And you're like, yeah, we put butter in it. And you're like, that's it. That's what it is. good like that's good and like yeah we put butter in it that's it that's what it is it's usually butter or sugar and i'm like oh yeah that's good i don't think about those but that's i feel like i learned that within the last year and the rest of the time i was just like astounded by restaurants and i didn't understand how they did it yeah right the past week of not

eating in restaurants is like how come my cooking at home never tastes as good? And it's like, because, you know, that's why the restaurants didn't want to display their caloric information on their menus, because the butter that was in it was pretty much making it twice as much as anything you'd cook at home. Oh, yeah. Being from the South, that is like everything is just like, why is this taste so good? Because we used a whole cow on this one. Okay. Okay. Okay.

You go into the kitchen of the restaurant, and it's just mounds of butter, and then one guy in the corner doing the cooking. Like the whole kitchen's butter. Here's a hot plate. Here's where we make it. That's all we need. It would be, yeah, very disconcerting if there was like a guy who was actually churning butter and it just, you know, constantly was doing the cabbage patch.

Like restaurants like love to do the open kitchen so you can watch like the skilled guys chopping or prepping stuff. But every now and then you just hear, this is farm to table, you guys. This is it. How is it? It smells terrible in there. It it's awful it's why you want the farm further away turns out that is as someone that grew up in the country when i hear farm to table i'm like how close how close well because i grew up in the suburbs of chicago and then i would

go to band camp not to brag, at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. And all of the suburban kids like me, as soon as there was a trip past the campus, you would smell the manure, and we'd all be like, what is that? And the kids from more rural places were like, it's life. And I don't know why you're thrown off. Yeah. That's your hamburger, dude. That's your hamburger. I milked a cow. The first time I ever milked a cow was a trip to Vermont in college.

And you just, the idea of, you know. You should just stop right there. That's the best story. That's my story. Thank you. I will be quiet the rest of the podcast. But when you see what actually comes out of the cow, like, you know, before they are done processing it, that would be enough to put you off butter, perhaps. And then the other part of that story is I very the guy was sort of like he enjoyed giving us city slickers like the Vermont, you know, you know, treatment.

And so he let us chop wood after that. And I was wearing flip flops and nearly cut off my big toe. after that and i was wearing uh flip-flops and nearly cut off my big toe and it was just you know you you hand a 21 year old a an axe and of course you don't think about how you're going to do this but you you you swung it and it came down probably two inches from my from my flip-flop foot it was wow one of those moments where your life just could have been the other way so i think i was still thrown off by like the gross stuff that was in the cow, in the cow milk right out of the, right out of the cow. They, they threw you in the fire pretty quick. It was. As a, as a farm,

like a quasi farm kid, that is a, that's, I don't consider myself a farm kid because like I did, I, I mean, I guess I was, I did all the stuff,

but it never took. Do you know what I mean? Like, like I know, I've said this before, I podcast like, I know how to do all of it and i'm pretty good at most of it i just the whole time i was like i think i'm

gonna do some other stuff when i can i mean that's how i respect the hell out of farmers when they're like i'm just a poor farmer and then you say that they own like just 300 million head of cattle and you're like you need'm just a poor farmer, and then you say that they own like just 300 million head of cattle, and you're like, you need to go f*** yourself. You're a millionaire. Butter's weird, though. It is. Well, we can get into why in all the best ways, because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that is in a segment called, I always feel like numbers are crunching me. And that name was submitted by Nate Youngman. We have a new name

for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Thank you, Nathan. I was imagining a, do you remember Trogles? I was imagining a Trogles singing that from that game you used to get to play in elementary school math class, Number Munchers. Oh, yeah. They were the bad guys that would come and, yeah, they would do little cut scenes in between all the number munching. It was making learning fun. It was.

That was what you'd play when Oregon Trail had already been taken, but the other stuff left was Odell Lake. You sort of had to get that in-between ground for number munchers. You could have fun, or you could do the math one. That's what it was. You could have fun or you could do the math one. That's what happens. It would be great if all of those, like, MECC games, like, had the ability to, like, unlock a secret screen where you could, like, shoot a bunch of bears and buffaloes. Like, if that just popped up in, like, the lemonade stand game.

The number buncher gets a rifle. Like, okay, it's time. That's how the government should do, like, socialism stuff. It's like make video game programmers, like, put in little things where it's like, every now and then if you learn correctly, you get to do some f***ed up s*** on the video game. And then you get to go back to learning. It's smartest kids in the world. We go back to number one.

Absolutely. Or just put many in the world. We go back to number one. Absolutely. Or just put many games into healthcare.gov. Like if you sign up, you also get to like spin the wheel and you get to shoot at Bison. And, you know, it's pretty cool. Yeah, you get the new Call of Duty. That's just the most dejected leader of all time. Like, all right, here, how about this? How about if everyone's a good person? The mascot is a cartoon moose or something

who's just sort of throwing his hands up and like, you know, just, the next page he's burying his head in his hands. I don't know. Just please, I beg of you, do the right thing. Come on, you guys. That's his slogan. All his quotes use multiple ellipses.

Butter, where are we? Butter. All his quotes use multiple ellipses. Butter? What are we talking about? Butter. Butter. Are we talking butter? I'm sorry. I was sketching the moose, but I'm back. I'm back.

Okay. Yeah. So. I think we're on to something. Yeah. Yeah, it feels. We can sell this to the feds. Absolutely.

And now he's just like, somebody call me. He's checking to see if he got any messages. He didn't. And all he does, the lottery numbers are. We've got some numbers here about butter, and the first number is 10,000 BC. I love if we just know we won't let him talk about butter at all so there's one place in i think uh denmark or norway where they make mousse cheese and i would presume that they're making mousse butter on that farm um yeah we did a trivia night the other night

my wife did a cheese round and then there's one moose cheesery. Big missed opportunity if you're not doing moose butter, I would say. Yeah, they definitely could. I bet they tried. I think it depends on the market. Yeah. I think the farmer's like, no one cares about this butter. They love the cheese.

Right. First number here is 10,000 BC, because 10,000 BC is the approximate start of the Neolithic period of history, which means it's the approximate start of butter making by humans. Nobody knows exactly when it started, but they pretty much figure as soon as people started doing agriculture and doing communities in fixed locations and domesticated some dairy animals, they, they made butter pretty much as soon as they figured out how. So it's, it's many, many thousands of years old. There's no like set inventor or anything. Incredible. It's remains a, a, a cliche, but like the guy who I think Calvin and Hobbes said, like whoever decided he was going

to squeeze those things and that that was going to be how he sustained his family as a, you know, the bravest man out there. I just mimed it, just like, reluctantly like, uh, hey! And the cow's like, hey, that doesn't feel bad. 10,000 BC, the most popular activity was squeezing things and see if you could eat what came out of them. That guy got lucky because the cow was like pretty gentle. Right. Like the guy that did it to the bear was like, he just not like that.

That bear does not. Okay, we can't milk bears. Right. Okay, write that down. Let's try it when they're hibernating. So a guy is crawling into a bear's den as it's asleep to try to squeeze it. It's like, still didn't go well. Nope, still mad. Way better than the timeard did it to the live one though i'm not dead but i got

this thing on my face where he pawed me yeah i think billy i think he also described the bear as a he which is another impediment to the whole uh milking situation yeah and uh no there's there was some visual inner imagery going there i know i'm theater of the mind here, but you got to help them. But yeah, I guess they would just they would they would they would produce a substance. And then they would like you weren't really preserving it. You just sort of leave it there and see what happens to it. I mean, that's how you got beer and stuff, too. Back in those days, you just soak some grains and forget about it.

And then two weeks later, you'd be like, hey, I feel kind of good. Like they must have just I mean, they left butter. And I mean, I don't know how butter is made, but like the solidified somehow. Yeah. History. Well, I think so many mistakes and death happened. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a microcosm of, you know, sort of evolution and natural selection, yeah, in itself, just to get these foodstuffs correct. Yes.

Right. And it is also, when you break it down, like we were talking earlier with learning how to cook and how just any cooking works, when it loses its magic, it really does. When you're like, oh, these are all the same spices, just kind of a little different every time. And there's only so many meats we can cook. It's just like, ah, I wish I didn't learn about this. And I thought that people that could do it were sorcerers still. Right. Even if it's not, you know, the metaphorical how the sausage is made, like gross, you do lose some of the magic when it is just like, oh, yeah, it's just, you know, soy sauce and sesame oil.

That's, like, pretty much the marinade for all of this stuff. Yes. It's just sugar. We just put a ton of sugar in it, and that's why the beets taste like candy. Oh, okay. We had the reverse experience. In my elementary school, there was a was a like cake raffle at the fun fair every year so like the rookies would go and they'd try to win tickets so that they could get you know a hula hoop or like a inflatable high five hand or something but you could go and then put your tickets and try to win a whole cake which when you're in fourth grade like nothing is better than like having all the cake you want and then so we always wanted this woman that's like an eight ball everyone yeah because yeah if you asked your parents to buy you a nintendo

they'd be like well maybe for your birthday if you ask them to buy you a whole cake they'd be like are you out of your mind like absolutely not but so we could win a cake it would be like that's like yeah if you're like 18 you're like hey dad could you get me a keg of beer? And he'd be like, no, man. Start with one beer, dude. Right. But Mrs. Lovejoy would make these cakes, and we thought they were the best. And then one year she revealed that the secret ingredient in them was beets because beets are just so high in sugar. And we thought that was revolting because beets are a vegetable,

and vegetables do not belong in your sweets. So, yeah, you don't want to know how the sausage is made. guys ever had dates no i haven't had dates i have dates are it's crazy that the dates are from the earth they're they're so sweet when you have the right earth made this you're like yeah you're like we didn't have anything to do with this are you sure that's how sweet dates are like i don like, I don't trust it. Wow. We've done this. Now I'm jealous

of Indiana Jones. You've never had a date, Alex? No. I only know them from Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's it. Wow. You seem like a date

kind of guy. Fascinating. I'm still wondering if you're putting me on. Yeah, like when he told us about Bandcamp, we were both like, yep. Yeah, sure. Right, right me on. Yeah, like when he told us about Bandcamp, we were both like, yep. Yeah, sure.

You've had them, for sure, but you've never... Billy's going to walk off camera, Alec's door is going to be kicked open, and there's going to be a date force-fed down his throat like a foie gras goose. You're going to have one. Then we're going to cook. Just a few more things about the origin of butter.

This is all, it's all kind of theories because it's so many thousands of years ago, but they're pretty sure that before humans domesticated cows, they domesticated sheep and goats. So one of those was probably the first source of butter, even though we now get most of it from cows. And the other thing is that we'll talk a little about later about how butter is made. But one theory is that because butter is made by basically agitating milk or cream, the theory is that what might have happened is somebody had a huge sack of milk, like in an animal skin or something, rode a long distance with it. And then as it shook on the ride like they got to their destination and had all this butter and they were like oh that's the theory yeah wow so they probably like put it on the table and their boss was like fired right he was like walking you know you know

to go die at age 23 or whatever the life expectancy was and then his boss like bursts back out be like no wait like we're on to something or he just had to sell it hard because he was promised something he's like this is better than what i promised right yeah yeah yeah remember how this had no lumps in it you want the lumps that's that's the good stuff the lumps that's typically it's hard to find these like you try to find any lumps in this, in any grain. It is typically a bad feature. You know, any sort of thing with lumps is usually not going to be good, whether it's your new carpet or whether it's, you know, going to the doctor and finding them.

But, you know, for butter, they paid off. And gravy. Yeah. Right. If gravy's got lumps, you're like, all right, I'm okay with this. Because it's a lump of gravy. Like, that's, you know, in any form, it would still be fine. Yeah.

And I think gravy's just butter if you do it right. Butter with meat squeezings. That is the essence. Well, the next number here is a simple number. It is the number two. Because that is the number of butter stick shapes in the United States. And they have funny names, it turns out, which is nice. I don't know if either of you are aware of the situation where the Eastern and Western United States have different shapes of butter

sticks for the most part. I did notice that. Yeah, because Billy, you went from Tennessee to California, right? So you've done it. Well, I went to Washington first. Oh, yeah. Well, I've lived in, yeah, I've lived done it. I went to Washington first. Oh, yeah. Well, I've lived in Virginia and San Diego and then Vermont. But I'm trying to picture what they are. No, it's like this to this. And then it's just, I don't, it really is like from this to this. And the listeners are like, yes, I understand.

this and the listeners are like it's like well it's like long ways to they to like short ways and the way they package it's just like it's like they just twisted it kind of and made i remember noticing it when i first was like huh i like local dairies because i travel as a lot of as a comedian that was one of the first things i noticed when i travel is like re you there's a reason that podcast doughboys is so popular because yeah when you see a regional fast food chain you're like what is this thing right or you've heard about it you people have just bragged about it fast food you can't get yeah you know that's sort of the the in and out effect where you know people just talk it up and then so you want to get it when you get there but then it's like an emperor's new clothes because you can't go back to states that don't That's sort of the in and out effect where people just talk it up, and so you want to get it when you get there, but then it's like an emperor's new clothes because you can't go back to states that don't have it and be like,

it was fine. You have to be like, oh, yeah. Oh, it's so good, you guys. Yeah. But that was like, so we had this in East Tennessee, there's this dairy called Mayfield, and they had ice cream that was just out of this world. So when I went and moved to Seattle, I was just out of this world so when i went moved to seattle

i was like what is the local dairy and they didn't really have like a local one like that they had like tillamook and that's why i noticed the butter stuff too i was also not a healthy person at that time wait so i i'm imagining what to me is the classic stick of butter, which is divided up into, I believe, eight tablespoons and is half a cup. What is the other size? So the size is the same. It's a shape difference. And the two shapes are, if you're east of the Rockies, you have a relatively long and thin stick of butter.

And it turns out that is called an Elgin stick. And then if you are... Like Elgin Baylor? Like the town of Elgin, Illinois, which is apparently where they first made the machines. Yeah, Elgin Baylor would be more fun. And then... He was named after the butter.

And then west of the Rockies, it's like a shorter, thicker, kind of almost squarer stick. All right. And the name for those is Western Stubbies. Wow, nice. That's what those are called. Yes.

If you get them. So enjoy, folks, if you have that on hand. Wow. West Coast a little more laid back. You can tell by the way they name their butter. It does sound like a guy who's passed out at the saloon in a cowboy movie or something. There's West Coast Stubby. Hey! Ain't been the same

since the bandit took his herd. Hey! They took my shins, too. And yeah, the eastern ones are called Elgin Sticks because the town of Elgin, Illinois used to make a bunch of machines for producing butter sticks, and that was the shape they did. And then according to John Brunn, the UC Davis Dairy Research and Information Center expert who Marketplace talked to, he said that

before the 1960s, almost all butter came from out east. And then the west, especially California, really ramped up production, and the new machines they bought do the stubby kind of butter stick. Talk about another thing that the guy probably delivered him something, and they're like, is it supposed to be stubby? And he's just like, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yes. That's a west coast stubby. Yeah. Oh, yeah, a local term. I like that. Yeah. Get some branding in on it. And he goes home.

He's like, and then I said West Coast Derby, and they were like, cool. And I was like. They bought it. They totally bought it. I am so relieved because we shipped those things over the Rockies, and those machines are not light. Well, we got, there's two more numbers here. One of them is more than 20%. And more than 20% is the US sales increase for Lando Lake's butter in 2020. staying closed during the pandemic, but it's because, quote, the pandemic has lasted so long that people are starting to dish up richer meals at home, and many have taken up baking,

benefiting Lando Lakes. So they had a huge 2020. This is shocking to me. Yeah. Because I saw a bunch of, I saw a bunch of loudmouths saying that they were never going to buy it again because they took the woman off the box. So that's, I mean, it's almost as if those people weren't saying that in good faith. That's truly stunning. Can you imagine saying that out loud? No, you can't. No one would ever say that out loud. You need the internet to make a claim that dumb.

Yes, but even typing it to me, I would just be like, I can't. There's one more number here, and last number takes us into the first takeaway. The number is one, and here is takeaway number one. Butter comes from one ingredient, and that ingredient comes from an amazing array of animals. Butter will have salt in it or other things in it often when we get it but the basic making of butter you just need milk from an animal that's all you need like that that's that's the whole deal wow yeah could you i mean i'm sure they've done it it's like like uh breast milk butter there's we'll We'll link a blog from Jezebel.com where somebody says they did it and has instructions and pictures and stuff.

My main source for a lot of the episode is actually a book called Butter, A Rich History. It's by a food writer named Elaine Kosrova. And it's great, but also does not touch the human butter issue. The internet says you can do it. And I think mammals, you can do it pretty much. I haven't seen it disproved that a mammal can't do it. So yeah, probably. You can probably do it.

Wow. The whole process is a producer takes raw milk. They usually extract the richest portion of the milk, which is called the cream. And then you just churn that into butter. And now we do it mechanically. It used to be people with big churns. And according to Slate, quote, butter is formed when the membranes surrounding fat globules in cream

are stripped through the process of physical agitation that allows the fat to clump together into a single mass, i.e. butter. And so you can get all kinds of variety in the world if you just pick new milks and new animals and stuff to get out of it but otherwise it's pretty straightforward you don't need to like stack up a bunch of ingredients or something that ticks a list of like maybe three of the ten like least appetizing words to describe something so delicious globule clump membrane yeah but yet and then butter They just somehow, they form into a delicious Voltron when you put them all together.

I wonder, yeah, so like, I mean, like we talked about the moose earlier, but I just wonder, you know, what else is out there that they're doing? Because, you know, your sheep and goats, fine, we'll accept them. Those are good. The cheeses are good. But you start getting down into weirder mammals, and all of a sudden it just starts getting very off-putting you know i have a question is that is it just dairy if it comes from a cow no it's not there's also a thing with the word butter according to national

geographic the word butter comes from ancient greek because it's a combination of their word for cow which is boss and cheese which is turros so it's boss turros it's like named after cows that's why cows are called bossy in cartoons and stuff yeah like bossy i feel is like a generic cow name like rover for a dog that's interesting yeah also it's way better name than butter bossy no boss turros yeah it's pretty cool yeah it. That's better. I can have some butter. I would like some Bostoros. Are you going to cook with Bostoros? But in this author, Elaine Kosarova has, like, traveled the world sampling butters.

And in the U.S., we pretty much get it all from cows. But she says that producers around the world also count on the milk from sheep and goats and yaks and water buffaloes and camels and other animals, too, to produce milk that will get turned into butter. And then if you make sheep milk into butter, you're using milk that has double the fat content of cow's milk. If you use goat milk, the butter will be white because they don't store the carotene and grass that makes butter yellow. Camel's milk has more vitamin C than other milks. They're all just like different in their own way and can be butter. It's just an option. Dog butter makes you just throw up instantly. But then you eat it right back up. Yeah, the other thing Elaine Casaroba says is she picks out the cheese industry,

because especially if you go to a fancy grocery store, there's like this whole case of cheeses, and it's like, oh, this is from this animal, this is from this region, and yada, and yada, yada. And she's not saying we need to do it, but she says, hey, butter could be that. Like, it only isn't that way because there's no demand for stuff in the U.S. besides like normal butter. That's the only reason. That's interesting to me because it is – they use camel butter because cows will die if they live here. So that's why it's a cultural thing. It's mostly just because of the geography and more than anything else.

Also, why they don't use olive oil or whatever is because they didn't have that stuff to cook with. So they were like, hey, here's what we figured out is a good way to lubricate these pans and make these things not stick. And then also it tastes good and doesn't kill us. And when we eat it correctly, my thing works good. I also wonder if its status is more ingredient than main course itself is why you'd be reluctant to go to the store and spend what I would imagine would be like $45 a pound for camel butter. Because if you're just going to like cut it up and put it in your pasta,

as opposed to like putting it on a Triscuit, like you might be, you know, like you would if a piece of cheese that was that exotic. That's probably like why you don't see as much of it. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Because Elaine Casaroba says that, quote, the practical fact is that cows are the most general, generous, manageable, and affordable source of butterfat, especially in modern times, end quote. Because yeah, it's just easier to get,

and then like you say, Connor, it's just going to go into stuff. You're not going to notice so much, probably. Also, I like the way that we evolved. We went with goat, sheep, We went with goat, sheep, then cows because we went by size who we could overtake. And then we eventually went with just cows because they are the least aggressive of the three of those that come back at you. Actually, the big ones, pretty easy to control. So we're going to use those. Yeah, the goat ended up standing on its hind legs and like you know cursing my family it was actually like it was a uh it wasn't good it was yeah and then your uncle he kept he loved those sheep in a way that we need to get rid of them

he kept saying feels the same and i don't like that we need to get some cows okay yeah yeah off of that we are going to a short break followed by a whole new takeaway 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. Well, I think we can go to a next takeaway from here. Takeaway number two. There are two whole separate world traditions of butter sculpting. We're talking about sculptures made out of butter. I have a lot of family in Iowa, and so I grew up knowing about butter cows and like butter sculpting, but I don't know if you guys had experience with that growing up or anything. Yeah, Wisconsin State Fair would visit

family there and you'd see stuff like that. It's quite impressive. There's their very famous tweet of Ted Cruz standing in front saying, wow, a cow made of butter with no exclamation mark or anything. And he's got a very, very, very disheveled appearance and stuff. It's an old timer, I think. So that was sort of, when that would circulate, you know, six years ago, I was just like,

that is right, I've been here. I've years ago, I was just like, that is right. I've been here. I've seen them doing this in Wisconsin. It's really amazing. But they do people out of butter. I mean they do like structures. So I think I'm sure that if you can name a celebrity, there's probably been a butter version of it at some point in time. Well, it's just – if we're really honest, it's an example of over-industrialization is what it is.

We should never have that much excess butter right the cows are like you guys i mean not for nothing but you guys are being about this you you you had me hooked up to the milker for four hours that's gonna that's gonna feed hungry children right i mean while he's sculpting a butter Lego Batman who's meeting a butter derpy hooves or something. He's just like, Yeah, listeners, no one tell

the cows about this. They'll be very upset. And yeah, taking the butter and making it into another butter cow, like a cow made out of butter, is just sort of like, that's, you know, they feed cows back to themselves as feed. Like it's just one step removed from that almost. Yeah, it's like that old Anthony Clark joke where he's like, I used to take the cows and feed them hamburger. Eat it, cannibal.

cannibal you know and we have two very very different traditions of butter sculpting to talk about here but the first one is this united states tradition that i i love how he called it billy like over industrialization we dominated farming so successfully and mainly showed it at state fairs uh world fairs that kind of look how much we did it and you're like that's much we did it and you're like that's no thought past that we didn't no we got a bunch yes big number we did it big lots lots of thing i'm best big okay i wonder if the skill translates of you know carving the butter you know into like other impressive you know ice carvings or like huge wood carvings or anything like that or if if those are just like, those fields just can't stand each other. And they think the butter carvers think the ice carvers are hacks. You know, there's some level of that.

That's like kind of true with fine art sculptors, actually. And if we didn't make it clear to people, there's a thing in the US, especially at state fairs, where huge, many hundred pound sculptures made entirely out of butter will be displayed for people. The Iowa State Fair one is a butter cow every year, but also they'll do stuff like a 50th anniversary Starship Enterprise for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. And because Captain Kirk is from Iowa, there was a Pennsylvania fair where they did a set of butter mascots. He's not from Iowa. I want to correct you. He's not a real person.

Oh. What? No. I know. I'm like 90% sure he's not a real person. Yeah, I got that. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's a statue of Rocky in Philadelphia,

and I had to look up if he was a real person when I saw it. I knew he wasn't, but the fact that there was a statue there, I did go back to my hotel and look it up just to make sure because I was like, I might be wrong. I don't know. Right, because I think Rocky is based on a story of an actual boxer, but that statue is not of that guy. It is 100% one Sylvester Stallone.

It is of the movie guy, yes. It's very clear. It's of the movie guy. It is 100% one Sylvester Stallone. It is of the movie guy. Yes, yes. It's very clear. It's of the movie guy. That's what it doesn't even say. The real guy is just, there is a statue of the real guy, but it's just in some like creepy guy

shed out of butter, of course. Yeah. Well, it's just cheese whiz is what it is. Just Philly cheese whiz. Right. I've got like a few other sculpture examples here. And one of them is from Pennsylvania because because at the most recent Pennsylvania Farm Show, they did a triple butter sculpture of the Philadelphia Eagles mascot, who was named

Swoop, the Pittsburgh Steelers mascot, Steely McBeam, and then the Flyers mascot, Gritty. There was a butter Gritty, the internet internet that you could see at this like Pennsylvania Farm Show. Somebody just built it. And you could throw batteries at them, hopefully. Per the Philadelphia tradition. Is Steely McBean, is that that sounds very unfortunately internet-y to me. It does.

Like the Bodie McBoatface thing. Is that do you think that was a result of a poll or was that something that's like a deep, you know, steel city tradition from 40 years ago that just aged terribly? I feel like you haven't been to Pittsburgh if you have to ask that question. I feel like they were like, this is a good name. Other sculptures that have been made are a tribute to the Apollo 11 crew. They made them out of butter for the Ohio State Fair for the moon landing anniversary. Thank made them out of butter for the Ohio State Fair for the

moon landing anniversary. Thank you for your service, gentlemen. You're welcome. And then the butter cow, the Iowa State Fair describes it as about 600 pounds of Iowa butter that is then cooled and sculpted into a butter cow. That's incredible. The largest butter sculpture ever made was made for the 2013 Texas State Fair. It weighed over 4,000 pounds or 1,849 kilograms for our metric friends. But it was a butter version of an existing sculpture called Big Tex that welcomes people to the Texas State Fair. So they just made a butter one at a world record setting size. Wow.

Did it make it wave? Because it big techs wave. That's incredible. That's, you know, everything bigger in Texas, like, yeah, just to the T. Most techs did of all time is what they did. Now I want to see butter Ted Cruz standing in front of a cow made of butter. Like, you could do that. Make that 5,000 pounds, break the record,

and make it this looming monstrosity that just would dwarf a city skyline. But how would you get that melting butter effect that his face already has? That's right. The other thing about butter sculpting in the U.S. is that the start of it and kind of the history of it is really built around female artists. So that's very exciting. The first, like, major butter sculptor in the U.S.

was a woman named Caroline Shock Brooks, who was an Arkansas farm woman who started experimenting with butter portraits in the 1860s, had no formal artistic training. It's not exciting. It's sad. What's that? It's sad because that's all they let women do. Exactly. You can carve this butter. And she's like, all right. And then they look like, she's amazing at this.

And I'm like, nah, should we give her like this, like, you know, like bronze or something to work? Like, nah. Has she ever been reenacted in butter i i actually don't know i hope so because it is it is exciting and sad like you said billy because there was already an existing thing where butter making on family farms in america in the 1800s was usually kind of like the ladies part of the business and they would they would work out little stamps and molds and little artistic things to like label their butter as from being their farm and stuff and so women were able

to break into this butter sculpting because the men working in like stone and metal and stuff didn't feel threatened by it like that was the only reason that was an open lane for women in the art world those are hard artistic mediums those are the those are the man ones and then you can have the one that is soft. Anyone could carve that. Anyone could carve an incredibly detailed replica of Michelangelo's David in there because it's soft.

It's soft. Look how soft those nuts are. I'm a man. I'm a man. Those are granite. That's a granite penis. It looks... Is it?

I just thought it was a... You didn't do a very good job sculpting it. That's because granite penis. It looks... Is it? I just thought it was a... You didn't do a very good job sculpting it. That's because it's hard. It's still a d***. Yeah, it's hard. Truly, when you say Michelangelo's David, like she, at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Paris, Brooks displayed an epic portrait

called Dreaming Iolantha of a beautiful blind princess from a historical play the new york times said quote the harmony on the face is exquisite the ear is quite a marvel like it was she was doing incredible like like classical sculpture and butter to convey blindness in a butter sculpture is amazing yeah yeah unbelievable what it is and then it melted because it was 1876 and there was no there was not cold. It was just everything spoiled immediately. Can you imagine the other d***heads at this

Paris thing just being like, alright, now we gotta go see what the butter chick did. And then she unveils it and people just start crying. It's amazing! It's amazing! Why do you choose butter? you're like because men are that's why i chose butter and then they pan down they pan down to the next guy and it's like what

did you do and he's like you don't want to see it and they're like is that steely mcbeam he's like yeah like i said you don't you don't give give the prize to the blind woman no no no it's cool it's cool mine's broken mine's broken i'm going to put it on toast. Leave me alone. Just, ah, I didn't know. It's annoyed having sex with Gonzo. I got a little... It's just, I thought this was a pretend one. I didn't... And so then you have this, like, these sculptures are shown at a few state fairs and then it becomes a thing that americans do there's been an iowa butter cow at the state fair every year since

1911 like it's a long-running thing here the the utter utter and then the other world butter sculpting tradition there we go the other world butter sculpting tradition is There we go. The other world butter sculpting tradition is like as different as it can be, I think, while still being butter sculpting. It comes from the country of Tibet, which is in the Himalayas, if people don't know. The dominant religion there is Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is from Tibet. And Tibet has like a huge dairy industry based on yaks, which are like a shaggy haired species of cattle. You may remember them from like animal alphabets where they're the letter Y, you know? Yeah, they dominate Y. They're cool. Yeah. But there's a big tradition of butter sculpting in Tibet as like a sacred

religious practice. And Elaine Kostrova says it stretches back to the pre-Buddhist shamanic history of Tibet. And then the first recorded Buddhist butter sculpture was in 641 AD, because the king of Tibet married a Chinese princess. They wanted flowers for the ceremony, but fresh flowers were not in season, so the Tibetans improvised by creating a bouquet of flowers from yak butter and flour colored with natural pigments. So they dyed butter and sculpted it into flowers, and that was the bouquet for the wedding. That is some hillbilly, is what that is.

That is mountain people. I come from those. Yeah, mountain billies, yeah. I come from those people, and that is exactly what that is. You mean not buying something off the registry, but being like, here, I made this for you off of stuff on the farm?

Well, it is, we only have so the registry, but being like, here, I made this for you off the stuff on the farm. Well, it is. We only have so much to work with up here, and it takes a long time to get down. But we are incredibly resilient, if not resourceful people. So look at this art we've created. Or we can't grow much corn up here because it's all rocky so the corn we do have we turned into liquor so here you go it's worth more than your corn that's what that's what that is i understand completely where it was like ah man we don't have flowers right now and the chinese don't do flowers right now and the chinese do not tell them about that weed they're gonna want all that way don't tell them about that

do the butter thing is the picture you sent us the example of this yeah of that so it's incredibly intricate beautiful like buddhist figures with either mineral or natural pigments yeah it's pretty much our joke about the guy who made butter Steely McBean, and then the Tibetans are just like, oh, this is a literal work of art. It looks like the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Yeah. The fact that they're both butter carvings is like saying that Godfather Part II is the same as Daddy Day Camp or something.

What are you saying? What are you saying? Sorry, sorry. I wrote Daddy Day Camp or something. What are you saying? What are you saying? Sorry, sorry. I wrote Daddy Day Camp. This was the long con. That's the best part of Hollywood. You say something like that, and it's like your friend's like,

I wrote that. The jukebox scratches, and the guy at the end of the bar, what the hell did you just say? I wrote Kindergarten Cop, and you're like, that's, you still shouldn't be mad right

you should know yeah i'm being honest with you that's the thing it's all you should know then if you wrote it then you should know the guy who wrote kindergarten cop wasn't like pacing in his room before he like you know uh his wife is like come to bed he's like not now and then he sits down boys have a penis um my art i suffer for my art that's it yeah he's like here's my i turned in my art today and that's exactly right that like the two i guess sides of the world or hemispheres or whatever. We have America where we're doing funny butter enterprises, and then Tibet. Since the 1400s, they have monks making incredibly elaborate butter sculptures to celebrate what's called the Tibetan Butter Lamp Festival,

where the streets are full of lamps made of yak butter. And then the monks work so hard at these sculptures that apparently they dip their hands in snow or in icy water to keep the hands cold so they don't melt the butter they're working with too much. And they'll have like health complications from that, but they're that committed to it. And it's like, it's this deeply meaningful activity in Tibet to be making butter sculptures.

I had no idea until looking at this. Yeah, that's beautiful. That's like a, it's like the Winnie the Pooh meme of just like, you know, butter sculpture. And then he puts on the tuxedo and it's like the Tibetan butter sculpture. Yeah. That Tibetan guy is like, I've suffered for my art. And the kindergarten cop writer is like, hey, me too. Yeah.

I feel you, dog. Yeah, so there are these amazing sculptures that we will have pictures of if people want to go see them, because I like that Sistine Chapel comparison. They're really very nice. They're very different from gritty as butter. But we have one more takeaway for the episode here we go into takeaway number three the american butter industry tried to destroy the new margarine industry by forcing them to dye margarine weird colors whoa this is a late

1800s thing but i i had no idea until getting into the research for this. There was an era when the butter industry did a bunch of legal shenanigans and political moves to force margarine makers to dye it pink and some other weird colors, too. Wow. Man, that's diabolical. Yeah. What did they do to force them? They basically got a hold of state and national legislators and convinced them to put it on state and federal law. It was actually on the books. Big butter?

Yeah. Big butter, basically. So that would be like if you said you can't call champagne champagne unless it's there, but then if champagne went and made everyone else dye their other sparkling wine green or something to make it look like pond water yes exactly yeah that's perfect analogy yeah that's incredible or if you owned a lot of paper mills and all the newspapers you went and did a campaign and said cannabis was evil oh what a fantastical world that would be. I can't, I can't imagine. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be like, you know, and then like, like it took a hundred years or so for people to, uh, figure out that it's not in there. Our body has receptors for it. Nobody would have that much time on their hands or have that much, you know, malfeasance towards something so harmless. Yeah. Or just

greed, just straight up greed yeah is what that is well like so that when you make things different colors like it just it either like makes it incredibly appealing if you're say under the age of 14 like when it's like you know now cheetos turn your tongue green or then if you're if you're like now the uh you know crystal pepsi for whatever and you're just like well is weird. It doesn't look like what I'm expecting. And now it's vile to me. It's that old Mr. Show sketch. Like, fuck you, granny.

This ain't your margarine. I did it again. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Man, so did they not succeed? Or did they just like, was it, did they have to dye margarine pink for a while? They had to dye it for, as far as I can tell, like a decade or two in a lot of states.

Wow. And it's because margarine, I had no idea, but margarine really took the world by storm all of a sudden. What happened is, and we've got a great National Geographic source for this, but they talk about how margarine was invented in 1869 in France. Yeah, nice. 1869. And so there was a contest run by the French emperor Napoleon III to come up with a cheaper substitute for butter. And the French chemist Hippolyte Megemurie came up with a spread made out of beef tallow

that became oleo margarine. And then it just blew up worldwide. And by 1882, New York State alone was producing 20 million pounds of margarine. Within a decade and a half, it was everywhere. That is such a perfect thing for Napoleon III to do. Napoleon I is like, I'm conquering everything. Napoleon II is probably like, well, I ran the family business. And Napoleon III is like, I ran a contest so people would invent margarine.

Like, what do you want? Like, sure, I'm not my grandfather, but we all can't be. What if we made butter worse? Yeah. I did a contest to make butter worse. He partly did it because they were about to go to war with the Prussians. So he was like, I need to save on butter. How do I worsen it to fight my war that I want to fight?

Wow. Yeah. It was all machinations. Napoleon finally leaves Elba. He gets unexiled. Like, what's happening? Your grandson really messed things up, man. You got to have a talk with him.

I will, but first I'll eat this piece of toast. Spit take. Like, really mad. What? This is where someone's going to write in and say that, like, the actual Napoleon is Napoleon III and I'm just an idiot. Like, that's probably not going to be the case, right? No, separate guy. He was, I think he was his nephew.

Okay, good. Yeah. Whew. I also assumed that margarine was World War II. I thought that's when they would have just unleashed that onto humanity just as a way to, you know, save. Different World War. Yeah, exactly. And I will never forget the year it was invented because I said nice like a dumb.

I couldn't repress it. That's the internet for us. That's how it works. I couldn't repress it. That's the internet for us. That's how it works. Real quick here, the buildup to these laws to change the color is like U.S. dairy companies immediately tried to destroy margarine. And so they lobbied Congress to pass what was called the Margarine Act in 1886 that

put huge taxes on it. The states of Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio banned it completely. Then also National Geographic says a barrage of dubious scientific reports hinted that margarine caused cancer or possibly led to insanity. Wow. So they just flooded the country with like laws and propaganda all to say margarine's terrible, don't do it. And when that didn't work, they tried this color stuff. Posters of Hitler eating a big tub say margarine's terrible don't do it and when that didn't work they tried this color stuff posters of hitler eating a big tub of margarine like man that's incredible what how much time and man hours wasted to demonize a perfectly terrible product for the

wrong reasons yeah right they didn't say it's not as good they were just like it's the devil like they tried a bunch of other stuff when i and then i don't know if i've seen margarine that has not been dyed because all these laws are gone now about the color of margarine but the dairy companies realize that margarine like comes out of the machine or whatever looking very white and very pasty and not very appetizing and so butter producers claim that the yellow dye being put in margarine was a ploy to deceive the public and like illegal business. And so through lobbying and other moves, apparently by 1902, 32 US states had some kind of color constraint on margarine

on their books as a law. A lot of them said you couldn't dye it yellow, but then Vermont and New Hampshire and South Dakota, those three states passed what were called pink laws that said that in order to sell margarine in that state, you had to dye it bright pink. And they did that in the 1800s. It was on the books for a while. Yeah. Wow. We've always been cool. It's always been just a level-headed country over here. With the margarine coloring, you have Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota pass laws it has to be pink. And then other states tried to do their own laws where it has to be red or it has to be brown or it has to be black. Like U.S. states were like, oh, this is how I, a legislator paid for by the butter industry can like ruin margarine you have to actively put mold in your margarine to signify that it's not butter that is

that is what we're going to say here in new mexico that's our law did you just put poison on the box mr yuck is the official mascot of margarine vomit sticks Mr. Yuck is the official mascot of Marjorie. Vomit sticks. And then the resolution of those laws is it went to the U.S. Supreme Court. And so... Of course it did. Of course it did. Yes.

And so in the case of Collins v. New Hampshire in 1898, it was a 7-2 decision against those laws. They said that the statute of New Hampshire prohibiting the sale of margarine, unless it is of a pink color, is invalid and prohibitory. In other cases, they said states could keep banning making margarine a specific color, and states could keep taxing it aggressively and do other things, but you couldn't require it to only be one weird color was how the courts came down. And then margarine was sold in like relatively normal colors for the rest of U.S. history.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, so there's an alternate timeline where that caused, you know, Civil War II or something like that, you know, a state's rights issue like that was just like, you know, well, I guess we got to, we're succeeding. People went to, people went to the hospital over this. For sure. Folks, that is the main episode for this week.

My thanks to Billy Wayne Davis and Connor LaStoca for buttering me up with friendliness and humor. Feels good. 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 because 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 world's most ancient and powerful butters. I'm being a little bit fun about that title, but we're going to show you ancient and powerful butters beyond your imagining, and also explore the frontiers of theoretical butters that are not yet in existence. I think this is the first time the bonus show has had a topic that's very similar to the main topic.

It's more butter, and that's because butter is that amazing. So visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than two dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring butter with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, butter comes from one ingredient, and that ingredient comes from an amazing array of animals. Takeaway number two, there are two entire separate world traditions of butter sculpting. And takeaway number three, the American butter industry tried to destroy the margarine industry

by forcing them to dye margarine weird colors. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Billy Wayne Davis is an amazing stand-up comedian. We'll link his special. It's entitled Live at Third Man Records, and Third Man Records is Jack White's label and setup and everything down there in Nashville. And then Billy has a fantastic podcast of his very own. It is called Grown Local, and they go to a new part of the cannabis world every season. We're linking to the website for that, or you can type in the URL. It is grownlocalpod.com. And then Connor Listoka is many things. He's a senior writer and producer for Riff Tracks. If you've never heard their audio commentaries on movies. I highly

recommend that as a way to just entertain yourself, especially at home. We're linking 372 pages I'll never get back because Connor and his Riff Tracks pal Michael J. Nelson co-host that excellent podcast. And then Connor's hilarious novel is a new Audible original. Connor's novel is called The Pole Vault Championship of the Entire Universe. The audio version from Audible Originals has a cast featuring Eliza Skinner, Janet Varney, Weird Al Yankovic, Paul F. Tompkins, John DiMaggio, Dulce Sloan, friend of this show Jackie Cation, and many, many more comedy heavyweights. So I think you will like it. Check it out. Many research sources this week. Here are

some key ones. A great book entitled Butter, A Rich History. That's by Elaine Kosrova. A great article from Vice. It's called The History of Butter Sculpture is Strange Indeed. That's by Matthew Zuris. Another article from Atlas Obscura featuring the Tibetan approach to butter sculpting. And then an article from National Geographic. It's called The Butter Wars When Margarine Was Pink, and that's by Rebecca Rupp. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at safpod.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. 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.