Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Cinnamon

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Seth Lind explore why cinnamon is 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

Cinnamon, known for being tasty, famous for being sticky and sticks. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why cinnamon is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to our 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 very much not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden Katie hi. Hello Hello

And we are not alone because we are joined by one of the co-creators of mission to Zix You can hear all of the seasons right now. They also have a new prequel coming the young old Durf Chronicles Please welcome Seth Lind. Good morning. Happy to be here. Hi Seth, welcome. How do you spell Zyx? This is a question in everyone's mind. And I'm glad you brought that up because one thing you should do if you have a podcast is make it non-phonetic.

Make it so that you say the word and people have no idea how to spell it or find it. It's Z-Y-X-X. Z-Y-X-X, okay. Is Zyx, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I pushed for Z I X so it would be phonetic, but some co-creators were like, but it would be dumber if we spell it like this. And that's kind of a thing we- I respect that immensely actually. We go for is high production value, high level of stupidity. So I mean, but nobody else is going to bother with trying to upend your SEO for ZYXX.

It's true. We've got that on lock. Yeah. You're playing 15 dimensional chess. It's true. Yeah. Also, and it's comedy set in outer space. So outer space has no SEO, has no rules. Yeah. They also love extra like X's in space. I've heard this. Space. Space. Yeah. They also love extra like X's in space. I've heard this. Space.

Space. Yeah. Space is spelled X, X, X, ass. I know. I was going to say space, X, but then that's taken. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for meeting up with us and excited about our topic today. We always start by asking our relationship to it

or opinion of it. And Seth, you can go first. How do you feel about cinnamon? I'm pro cinnamon. I like it. The thing that pops into my mind is imagining a saucepan of apple cider on the stove with some cinnamon sticks, cooking up for a late fall

or winter drink of solace. But I don't know much about cinnamon, so I'm excited to, I think that's going to change over the next hour. That has put me in such a cozy mood. I'm not sure I can continue with the podcast. Oh, should we, Steph? Thanks so much for having me. This has been amazing. I just want to curl into a little ball and put some, make a hot toddy in my slow cooker with some cinnamon. I don't actually know how to do that. Go for it. Yeah. Let's all that. Let's pause and have some hard liquor and then come back to the mic.

Let me tell you a thing or two about cinnamon. You want to know my secrets? Yeah, Mr. Schmidt, if that is your real name. Yeah. Hey Alex, you want to know how I feel about cinnamon for real? Why does it got so many ends in it, huh? Alex, can you tell us that? Smart guy.

We're all just sloshing things. Sloshing, sloshing, everywhere sloshing. Add the foley effects later. Yeah, it is a cozy spice to me. Katie, is it cozy to you? It's so cozy. I love cinnamon. I used to eat on the reg when I was a kid, cinnamon toast.

I don't know if you guys mess around with cinnamon toast. You toast your toast, you put a little butter on there. You put cinnamon sugar on it. Really important that it's the right ratio of sugar to cinnamon. Absolutely. Because if it's too much sugar, then it's just sugar toast. Who cares about that? If it's too much cinnamon, you might die. Because you inhale the cinnamon and it coats, you get the red lung if you have too much cinnamon. So yeah, but properly made cinnamon toast with just the right butter sugar and cinnamon ratios

It's just it's so good. I want some right now. I Totally forgot about cinnamon toast and I used to have it So much. Yeah, it's just so good. My family kept just a um, a big shaker of pre-mixed Sugar and cinnamon so you didn't say because like yeah, you're right the ratio You don't want to be like an eight-year-old trying to get the ratio right in the morning When um your parents could have you know perfected it for you and then you just shake shake shake Oh, yeah. No, we we had the same thing going on We had the the thing of cinnamon sugar

But but sometimes it was deceptive because my mom would also keep just straight cinnamon For recipes and if I grabbed the wrong one, I took a big old bite of that toast But sometimes it was deceptive because my mom would also keep just straight cinnamon for recipes. And if I grabbed the wrong one, I took a big old bite of that toast. I was in for it. Sort of like cinnamon toast roulette. Here's a way I am a doofus. I had a lot of cinnamon toast crunch cereal as a kid, and I think I have never had a cinnamon toast or thought about it Hmm. Well, they shrink down the little it's the same thing But if you remember from the commercials they shrink down the cinnamon toast into the cereal, so it's the same stuff Seen the commercials didn't think about it. I was like, that's probably just some kind of magic shrinky thing

They thought I didn't think about it as being its own food. Yeah, I've only had the cereal thought to do. I didn't think about it as being its own food. I've only had the cereal effication. In retrospect, it's sort of disappointing that the government had shrinking technology and it was only used on that cereal when it probably could have had like medical applications. I can't actually think of a better use for it than tiny cinnamon toasts. I'm trying. I'm really trying. There. okay, there. Nanotoastnology. Yeah, what do you mean medical uses? We're going to put the cinnamon toast inside the bloodstream?

Mainline me doc. And we have so much to explore about cinnamon and on most episodes we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that is at the end. Switch. What? Trick or room. You tricked us, Alex.

You're a liar. You're a gosh darn liar. Wake me then. I didn't come here for words. Yeah. Because we have a whole bunch of basic takeaways to especially lay out what this is in the I didn't come here for words. Yeah. Because we have a whole bunch of basic takeaways, especially lay out what this is in the first place, because most amazing to me takeaway number one. The name cinnamon describes separate spices made of the bark of several

different trees. What? There's... I just thought there was one cinnamon tree. Me too. Easy peasy. One cinnamon tree. Wow. Yeah.

It turns out unless cinnamon is pretty super specifically labeled, it could be one of a few different tree barks and they have different properties and flavor. They're still cinnamons, but you can can like be choosy about the kind of cinnamon you're eating in a way that's meaningful. Are they at least related trees or are these completely different, uh, genre of trees? Related. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And most of their scientific names start with cinnamomum. So that helps.

Cinnamomum. Wait, sorry. hang on. Do that again for me. Cinnamomum. Cinnamomum. Seth, do you want to join the tone poems I'm creating? Wow, I was really confident and just totally whiffed it. Cinnamomum. Cinnamomum. Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of M's. Yeah, cinnamomum. I struggle with just plain old saying cinnamons, so this is going to be fun. Cin-a-mo-mum. Cin-a-mo-mum. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of M's. Yeah, cin-a-mo-mum. I struggle with just plain old saying cinnamons, so this is going to be fun. It turns out that for one thing, US law really doesn't make you label this very specifically. So it's just called cinnamon on the label. But there's especially two that we get here in North America and in Europe and others that you can get locally in Asia for the most part. And they're all still cinnamons and also different at the same time.

But they taste different. So some people who are really aficionados will seek out cinnamomum blah blah blah blah blah and be like why settle for the other two? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Well, okay, so we've got different flavors of cinnamon. I had no idea. Is there one that's like what we think of as the most archetypal platonic ideal of cinnamon as, and then the other two are kind of like variants? Yeah, is there cinnamon prime? Yeah. That's an excellent question. There's basically two that we think are both archetypal in different ways.

And then there's several others that we pretty much don't get outside of Asia. They're just not really grown and exported for the rest of the world that much. Huh. Okay. So what are the two major cinnamons. The two major ones, their scientific names are Cinnamomum verum and Cinnamomum cassia. And they have several nicknames. Cinnamomum verum also gets called true cinnamon. You know, verum, it's kind of Latin for that.

And then it's also been called Ceylon cinnamon because it's native to Sri Lanka, which has been called Ceylon in the past, the country in the Indian Ocean. All right. So we've got true cinnamon. And then is the other one called real cinnamon? That true cinnamon nickname is like a dig at Cinnamomum cassia, which also just gets called cassia. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty passive aggressive.

Yeah, yeah. And it's grown in Eastern China, also all over Southeast Asia, especially Sumatra in the country of Indonesia. But all the cinnamons are from South Asian and East Asian tree barks, just from different trees. These two cinnamons come from two different trees. I see. And most people don't know whether they're eating one or the other. Either we'll call it true cinnamon and cassia for shorthand.

Yeah guilty as charged. I have no idea what I'm eating when I shove that sweet stuff in my mouth. Same. Yeah. And in particular cassia, it has kind of a more bitter and more pungent flavor in a good way. And so actually it tends to be what's in a lot of American baked goods. Like the smell of cinnamon rolls wafting to you is often cassia. And then true cinnamon is sweeter and milder and a little bit more of a subtle flavor. Do they look like in there? Because I know there's the rolled bark form that I sometimes will get if I'm feeling real fancy and I want to shave a little bit of that on onto my baked goods.

Do they look pretty similar or do they have a different sort of shape with the bark rolls? Excellent question. They're easy to tell apart as sticks and very hard to tell apart once they're ground up. The true cinnamon is like an incredibly thin and flaky. I read that it's compared to like cigar paper. It's a very delicate stick. And then the cassia is much thicker and also kind of a redder color. Wow. Okay, because this is what I was thinking because I have seen both kinds and I kind of, you know, with my like sort of ditzy not thinking too much about stuff brain, I was just like, I guess like the thinner stuff, maybe that's just like stale and then the thicker

redder stuff that's like newer. I wasn't sure. I was's like, yeah, maybe they just had an older sicker tree for this other cinnamon. I just didn't think too hard about it. But I have noticed they're different. They don't tell us anything. We have no idea. The cigar paper version seems like a little frightening when thinking about the red lung that you were talking about Katie if you either by accident or by choice Decided to smoke it. It seems like that would be a terrible decision

It would be yeah, and we'll we'll talk about the cinnamon challenge later. Like okay. Yeah. Oh, no, I forgot about that People don't really think about this being tree bark and tree bark actually goes through your digestive system very easily. It's just cellulose. It's just wood basically. It just goes right through. But your lungs very bad. It's like terrible actually. Right. I forgot about the cinnamon challenge, but yeah, that's right. People were actually intentionally kind of like, what was it, like trying to eat it or inhale it? I think it was trying to eat it, but then you inhale a lot of it. Exactly, it's like really hard to eat. So then you cough and hack as you try to do it.

And then you inhale a bunch of it and it's terrible for your lungs. It's very bad, because it's tree bark. Like, of course it is. Right. Yeah. Right. That doesn't belong in there.

Just like a bunch of tiny splinters in the very fragile air sacs of your body. That's not good. And yeah, there's other cinnamons that do exist and get eaten by a lot of people. Nicknames for them include Indonesian cinnamon, Saigon cinnamon, Malabar cinnamon. But all of this is the inner layer of a tree bark from a few specific species in Asia. Wow. The other big thing is they all share a key chemical.

And we've named the chemical after the spice. The name is cinnamaldehyde. Cinnamaldehyde. What? A lot of these scientific names are just cinnamon but with little tweaks. That sounds like formaldehyde in a children's cartoon, right? Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like what the witch from Hansel and Gretel would store her children livers in.

Yeah. Like they like they need to get the cookie monster off of it. Yeah. Come on, Cookie Monster. And bless the editor who removed that section from that story because it just, you know, it didn't flow. It messed up the structure and, you know, just like you have to pause so your children have nightmares for a couple years and then read the rest. And yes, enameldehyde, it's an organic compound. It's an essential oil.

It's in the bark of several different evergreen tropical trees, and trees make it to repel insects and fungus. Like a lot of spicy or interesting things we get from plants, it's a plant defense. Oh. Note about essential oils. Probably people already know this, but essential oils just means it is the essence of something does not mean that it is essential for you to have, which I feel like sometimes people who are marketing essential oils play fast and loose with that distinction. But yeah, it's not essential in the sense that you should be taking this. It's essential in essence of tree bark or

essence of cinnamon tree bark Wow, I feel like more industries to do that like well, these are essential cars and You're gonna your doctor might not mention it but research shows Yeah, you want you want at least one G wagon in your in your driveway in essence their vitamins. They're almost vitamins They're like in essence vitamins We will talk later about influencers kind of doing this one way with cinnamon. Oh, really? That's a great call. Oh, boy. I'm excited. I'm excited for cinnamon to cure what ails me, Alex. I'm going to rub it on the soles of my feet and my headaches are going to go away. You'll see. But Alex, you said something very general that I didn't know, which is that spicy things

in plants tend to be repellent, protective things. And that, I feel like I've wondered sort of like, why is this plant delicious? What is this? What is this help them? Is it literally random? But that's, I feel like that explains so much about the world and flavor. Different plants have different strategies. So some are really sweet because they're trying to attract pollinators. So the pollinators come, they get the sweet nectars and or a fruit that's

like really tasty. It's like they want to be eaten because then an animal eats it, poops out the seed somewhere else. And then some plants like spicy plants with capsaicin in it are really selective about which animals they deter because birds, they actually want to come and eat their stuff because then the birds eat it and they poop it elsewhere, distribute it. But they don't really want other more destructive animals like mammals to come and eat them because it's too much.

And so they produce capsaicin, which birds lack the receptors in their mouths to like pick it up and feel the burn, whereas mammals do. So then it's like most mammals are like, ah, this plant is burning me. They just didn't count on human beings being perverted masochists where we're like, ah, my mouth is burning. Oh yeah, give me more of that. Right, right, this is gonna be a hit YouTube show. Yeah, I feel like I've learned a lot about this kind of thing

from a few sifts, especially Mustard was probably the earliest one where I was like, oh, Mustard plants just do this to repel caterpillars. That's the entire reason we get this condiment. But then also Katie's wonderful show, Creature Feature, about all sorts of animals. Like, yeah, it's just plants being like, please don't eat me specific species. And then humans are like sharpening a knife and with a pervert look in our eyes, you know? Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, like coffee is meant to be a toxin for insects, like, hey insects, this is gonna

mess you up. And then humans are like, excuse me? Yeah, don't mind if I do. Just you say. Yeah, challenge accepted. Yeah, and that cinnamaldehyde is really important because especially with these human names we've chosen, like True Cinnamon and implying Cassia is false cinnamon. They're all cinnamons.

Like, they all have the thing that makes it cinnamon as a spice for us. And true cinnamon is sort of almost, I don't want to call it elitist because nobody's being elite, but like it's like a judgment by fans of true cinnamon that doesn't need to be so judgy, you know? I do want there to be a cinnamon connoisseur who gets a cinnamon roll from Cinnabon and takes a stamp and is like, no, send this back to the kitchen. This is not true cinnamon. We'll talk about it later. They don't use true cinnamon.

They use a different thing. Cinnabon. Oh, really? Do they actually use cinnamon or do they use some sort of cinnamon-like compound? They use a proprietary cinnamon. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

They invented it. What does that even mean? They made their own tree? Let's hit it. This is a... Sorry, I'm forcing the issue here. No, this is... Because it's yet another super specific cinnamon thing. Cinnabon, their annual usage of cinnamon is more than 240,000 pounds for franchises in 48 countries. And at every one of those locations, they use a special proprietary mix of cinnamon types, which they call Makara cinnamon.

Makara. Makara. That's just their brand name for it. I see. But they use a mix of the cassia cinnamon and then primarily what's nicknamed Indonesian cinnamon. The scientific name of the plant is Cinnamomum Burmati. Okay.

Wow. And that is considered to be maybe even a little more pungent and aromatic than Cassia. It's part of Cinnabon's conscious strategy of put our franchises in malls and airports where the air is relatively contained. Also put the oven as close to the front of our retail space as possible and just push smell. Blast the smells out. Weaponized, beautiful smells. So that's how specific cinnamon varieties can get.

There's people being like, we need the more aromatic and better one because we'll haul people in. They were originally at Sea-Tac Mall in 1985 near Seattle, and now they're in 48 countries. Wow. And so what they've made their copyright is the specific blend of cinnamon. They didn't create a tree. They're not Willy Wonka with their own sort of cinnamon tree forest, but they have a very specific type of blend of trees that exist. That's a good thing to clarify.

Yeah, because there's going to be somebody who genetic engineers one, but it's basically a blend of two cinnamons. One is cassia that a lot of us eat and the other is a relatively specific Sumatran cinnamon. Yeah. Wow. I want a cinnamon tree where it grows the cinnamon rolls right on there and you just pick them. Oh, yeah. Candyland style.

Yeah. And you find worms in them sometimes But the worm has to be delicious Nailed it nailed it. I it makes me wonder if like rival mall restaurants have tried to set up rules to limit the they're like have tried to set up rules to limit the like how far the smell of Cinnabon is allowed to go out or like rules about how they're pushing it out to be like pretzel places not getting any business because

the You know because the smell is overwhelming everyone and pulling them in cartoon style Like because you have to kind of be an industry person to know how the smells gonna work and what it's gonna do I'm really enjoying imagining like Auntie Anne's and Sonoban being militants about a map of a mall and pushing little troops around, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because yeah, they are all cinnamon despite that true cinnamon nickname.

And the biggest difference, at least with the ones popular in the US, is how they're grown and harvested. Because they're both from trees, they're both from tree bark, but the cinnamomum varum, the true cinnamon, it's a tree that's almost more of a bush. Like it's a small trunk with lots of little branches and shoots. And it's a tall bush, but it's still like lots of little different branches. And then what human growers do is something called coppicing that we talked about on our past episode about Christmas trees. That's where you cut most of the top off of a tree

and then let the trunk continue to grow new branches and trees. Right. Yeah. So they can try to make one trunk of one of these true cinnamon trees last for about 50 years. Wow. Constantly coppice new branches off of it. And then these are also small branches. So a bunch of people with little hand tools, like soak them in water, peel the outer bark off to throw away, then peel off the inner bark that's the spice. It's so thin it curls up on itself as it's removed.

That's why it's that curled up shape. And then there's a lot of like drying that on drying racks, processing it in factories where people organize it into whether it's good for an entire stick or good for grinding. Like it's incredibly labor intensive, the true cinnamon. The cassia tree, it's basically just one trunk, like I think of as regular tree shape. Right, yeah. And so for that kind of cinnamon, they just grow big farmed rows of trees, especially in Vietnam and Indonesia and China. And then it's one big chop, you cut off the whole outer bark, then the whole inner bark,

and the inner bark is the cinnamon. Cassia trees generate about 10 times more spice per acre than the true cinnamon tree land. I see. And since it's less workers and more spice, the cassia is just a lot cheaper. Yeah, my sources for this, they just talk about the spice production. I don't think I listed them. The key sources for this takeaway, there's a book called The Spice and Herb Bible by spice grower Ian Hempel and The History and Natural History of Spices by geologist Ian Anderson and also on the side by plant researcher Vowder Klein of the Dumbarton Oaks Research

Library. Because these cost such different amounts, even though they're otherwise the same oil of the same spice and the same region of the world, cassia is just a lot cheaper. And that's the other reason cassia is in so many American baked goods and snacks is that it's like both more pungent and punchy and cheaper. So for our snacks, our companies are like, of course, why would I use a mild expensive thing? It's silly. Yeah.

Yeah. That makes sense. And when either one's ground up, it's much harder to tell them apart. You basically have to taste test or try to see a color difference. And apparently, a lot of countries, including the US, there's not rules about labeling this.

You can just call either one cinnamon. And some makers will like label their thing as Sri Lanka cinnamon or true cinnamon and then cut in a bunch of cassia to cheat you. So it is the fentanyl of cinnamon. A little bit, yeah. How much cinnamon would kill you, Alex? And she means you. And she means you.

Not one. How much cinnamon would kill one adult Alex Schmidt? Yeah, yeah. But there are a lot of people that name themselves like that. Now it's not just you. Yeah, my viziers have tried for years and they'll never succeed. But that sort of brings us into our next takeaway number two. I'm always surprised by accidentally helping you with a takeaway.

Especially by asking how to kill me. How do I kill you Alex? Well that brings us into our next takeaway. Wait, to recap, was takeaway number one was the varieties? Yeah. Okay, got it. And also, like I said, potentially, especially a lot of Americans might have only ever eaten cassia because true cinnamon is expensive and mild unless somebody bothered to cook

with it. You've maybe never had it, possibly. Wow. But take away number two, there are a few minor modern health panics about cinnamon and then one possible health benefit that also might help lead to winter cinnamon treats. Winter cinnamon treats. Great. There's a whole bunch of different health things and they're all pretty mild as health

things but they've especially popped up online. Work me up into an anxious frenzy, Alex, and then bring me back down. We mentioned the most dangerous one, like the cinnamon challenge can actually mess up your lungs pretty bad. It was like a big goof online in the early 2010s, But tree bark does not really dissolve or break down in your lungs. It's caustic the lung tissue Don't don't do this. Right like like the good news is you can just not do it. No one does it except as a stunt But don't do it Yeah, like I don't think like if you sneeze on your cinnamon toast and a little bit gets up your nose

You don't have to worry too much Trying to eat a bunch of cinnamon and inhaling huge amounts of cinnamon that would be bad for you which yeah, it's like your body's telling you it's bad for you because your body is like Trying to expel your lungs as you're doing it. So it's a good, it's like when you're, when snot and tears and stuff is exploding out of your face, that's usually a sign your body is saying, maybe not, maybe don't do that. But we are doing it competitively right now on live, the three of us, right?

Despite the warning, is that part of the show? I've been trimming it out. We did it before, we'll do it now. Yeah. We've been remaining amazingly calm given that we've done the cinnamon challenge five times already and edited it out All of us our face has just a red cloud on it like a stick of dynamite blew up. Yeah Right. Yeah I'm like, what's his name? Timothy Chellamay and dune where I just get a face full of this, just like getting

my face in there, get in there. Wow. Speaking of gummi, ride the gummy worm. Oh man, a version of Dune Waxle. Just a giant gummy worm going through piles of cinnamon and riding it. Oh man. Oh yeah, the spice must float. I always thought the spice looked good in the David Lynch version.

It looked tasty. Anyways, let's move on. Too much can be said about the David Lynch, Thune. We don't have time. I know. Zero time. And then there's two other health concerns about cinnamon that have popped up online. And one is lead contamination.

Uh oh. The good news is that this is not anything specific to cinnamon. It was just a broader food safety issue in recent times. That's not good news, Alex. That means more stove has landed. What do you mean? Good catch. Good catch.

That's true. Good news is not just cinnamon, guys. It's true. It's not just cinnamon, guys. It's everywhere. Turns out everything on a... You've seen those big shipping containers on boats. Those are made of lead. In my head, I know I'm going from most worrisome to least worrisome, but I got ahead of myself

with the good news. It's still bad. Yeah. Apparently, in early 2024, some children's applesauces were found to be lead contaminated. Oh, wow. And investigators figured out it was a spice grinding operation in Ecuador that ground the cinnamon in a way that gets lead into it. Wow.

Were they grinding it like in lead, with lead grinders? Was that the thing? Yeah, some part of the machine either had paint or parts with lead and then that didn't. Jeez. machine either had paint or parts with lead. But in general your cinnamon will not have lead unless somebody does super unsafe food processing. Like that's not intrinsic to the plants or the process. I imagine that as literally the wording on the label. In general your cinnamon will not have lead unless. It's like this is made in a facility with nuts right below that.

Generally speaking. It's not the cinnamon's fault. It's just that there's a lot of extremely unsafe food practices out there that sometimes you'll just get a little lead in your children's sippy cup. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. Cool.

Great. Good news. Thanks for the good news. And then the last health thing, this is the only one that's actually intrinsic to some cinnamon. Some cinnamon contains a substance called coumarin. And coumarin is an organic compound. It's also produced by plants to ward off pests.

And if you consume a lot of coumarin, like a whole lot, it can damage the human liver. Okay. How much cinnamon toast I gotta eat before this is a problem? Apparently you need to eat one entire teaspoon of cassia cinnamon per day for multiple weeks in a row. Like an entire teaspoon. So only the world champion of the cinnamon challenge has to really worry about this one. Yeah. Yeah, but like apparently one teaspoon is enough for an entire batch of cinnamon flavored cookies or other very large amount of baked goods. Okay. And you'd

have to eat that daily for more than two weeks to start to experience liver trouble. Okay. And the other thing is this is another meaningful difference between cassia cinnamon and true cinnamon. It turns out that cassia cinnamon has a lot more coumarin, about 250 times as much. Whoa. So if I want a cinnamon toast every day, I should be using a true cinnamon Yeah, legitimately if you're going to like yeah eat a ton of cinnamon every day try to eat true cinnamon But no one really does this behavior either way

So that's that's gonna you got to really check check the budget though the true cinnamon every day is that's you know, the one percenters or Yeah, yeah, I want to do the superize thing except with cinnamon and call cinemunize me. Simunize, simununize. Okay, now we're going in on it. Simunum. I think we'll get there. Give me about 15 more minutes of the podcast and I'll get it.

Sure, we'll just, yeah, we'll just, we've got time. Give me about 15 more minutes of the podcast and I'll get it. Sure. We'll just, yeah, we'll just, we've got time. And this has gotten into the news in two main ways. One is Danish bakeries fighting with the European Union. Not to be confused with Danish bakeries, which just make Danishes. I have been to Danish bakeries before and indeed they use a lot of cinnamon. They use quite a lot of cinnamon. It's very good.

Yeah. Yeah. For folks who don't know, Katie lives in Italy. I'm glad you can confirm this. I'm European now. Because traditional Danish bakeries in Denmark, they use tons of cinnamon and apparently the European Union has set one of the lowest thresholds in the world for kumarin in food. Much like the US, a lot of Danish bakers used cassia for the pungents and the aroma.

Because they're cheap? And cheapness too, yeah. And then in the 2010s, a few food safety testers happened to test some Danish pastries and told the bakery, I'm sorry, but you're hitting the kumran threshold. You have to switch cinnamons or use less cinnamon. Wow. And then Danish people were like, the EU is a controlling mind virus. It was a whole fight. They were like, no, is a controlling mind virus. It was a whole fight.

They were like, no, with the umlaut. No. No. Wait, Katie, this is a brief detour away from cinnamon, but because you live in Italy, do you just travel to every country or did you seek out Denmark for a reason? Oh, good question. No, that was a, it was a, I went to Copenhagen a couple times, one for just fun and the second time for my husband is a professor. So he'll get like, he'll give talks at different universities.

And so I just kind of hitchhike. Wait, he does? He makes you hitchhike? You guys got to have a talk. It's like, all right, good luck. I ride his coattails, as it were. Such as it was. All right, I was just curious.

That's obvious. No, it's really- The tangent from the episode. It's a good question. And Denmark's supposed to be amazing. Yeah. It seems great. Yeah, it's real fun.

And if you're ever there and you're trying to order from a bakery, how you, like you read the, to pass as a Danish person, is you read the name of the food or whatever it is you're ordering and then you leave out most of the last letters. So if you see something that like looks like it's saying, Able skeever, what you say is most of the last letters. So if you see something that looks like it's saying, Able-Skiver, what you say is, Able-Skiver. And then they're like, oh, you must be Danish. Because you didn't say most of the words for this, or most of the letters for this word. Wow. That's such a great hack. Yeah.

All I heard is a Swedish chef voice. I really don't know Scandinavia well enough. I'm sorry. Trail off and then I'll start speaking to you in Danish and then you won't know what they're saying and you just say talk and then they're like be nice to this lady she's been riding the rails all day after hitchhiking. Just pretend you understand or give her. But that is really interesting because I did notice that like so much of what they had at the bakery was just chock full of cinnamon. I mean it was delicious. I'm not complaining.

I don't drink that much. My liver can take it. I'm going to go. Like since I don't drink so much alcohol alcoholic. I want to get cinnamon poisoning instead. I Know what the physicals they ask, okay, how many drinks per week, but they're not saying like how much? How much cinnamon what what's our what's their deal with cinnamon lately keeping it to? Four sticks a week only when socializing Like a package of cinnamon like a cigarette pack with a picture of a diseased liver on it.

It's like, doc, I'm doing the challenge every day. I can't stop. I'm smoking the stuff that's sort of like the cigar papers. The warning is supposed to scare you, but the guy on it still looks really happy. Come on. It's so good. Nice try, Denmark. Oh, Denmark.

Then the other way this specific Coomer and things got in the news, it relates to a potential positive of cinnamon. There's some not totally solid theory that cinnamon has mild health benefits, especially for decreasing- I'll take it, Alex. Say no more. Especially for decreasing blood glucose a little bit. It makes your sugar spike a little less. There's also a vague theory that that might have helped lead to European winter desserts because if you have a

bunch of cinnamon with your holiday and sugary stuff maybe that makes you feel a little less sugared up afterward. And like help lead to say Christmas stuff being cinnamony. Oh, interesting. Who's funding this research? Is it like a, is it big cinnamon getting into the, you know, in the pockets of the researchers? It feels that way.

I'm not accusing, I'm not accusing your husband, Katie, of his academic research being tainted and him being invited to Denmark on a sort of lavish trip just because he's minimizing the dangers of cinnamon He is an economist so there could be something going on there economics of cinnamon, all right That means he's heard of money. Wait a minute Wait a minute. It's all connected. Yeah. I mean, I think that probably the reason we have a lot of cinnamon in winter is that cinnamon

is really good in hot drinks and in baked goods. And in the winter, you want to have a lot of hot drinks and baked goods because it's cold. Yeah. And we crave, I think we crave more carbs and fat in the winter because of the cold. And also historically, hasn't it been like that's sort of the time of feasting because you're not working out in the fields. So you have all this time to prepare fancy stuff because you're not, you're not doing, so it's like, what are we going

to do all day? I'm going to make hot beverages. I'm going to bake fancy things rather than sort of the plain stuff I used to. And then you have collected all your resources for the year. And so now maybe you can afford to have a little bit of spices and cinnamon and stuff. That would be my guess. Exactly. That's the bigger reason. Without any data or reading or anything to back me up, I'm just going to confidently state that. I imagine you're describing like four barons who have a great stock supply and then it's

just like the peasants are just hoping not to starve in the winter. And everyone else is, what a wonderful time to bake. Yeah, the source there is a piece for theconversation.com by science writer Serena Dessalvio who points out that if cinnamon stops your blood sugar from spiking, it's a very minor effect. It's not medicinal. It's not a big thing. But because a few influencers have heard about that, there's a recent fad of influencers saying you should have a daily dose of cinnamon for your health to like chill you out and relax you.

But the liver thing, Alex. Exactly. And so then there's an amazing piece for the Daily Dot here. They talk about how that like theoretically mild influencer tip has led to doctors needing to say, okay, but don't do cassia because like then you'll be the one person in the world giving themselves a liver problem Like oh my gosh, like yeah, you can do this dumb thing with true cinnamon, I guess but like yeah watch out Yeah, yeah, if you're dosing yourself with spoonfuls of it, that's the one way you can have the liver problem

This happens so much with like supplements and essential oils and things where it's like someone is like, oh, there might be this mild possible benefit to this one possible compound in this thing. And it's like, I got a main line every day until I'm like die. It's so weird. And folks, that's two giant takeaways about this. And we've got another one plus some numbers after a quick break. Stick around.

Cinnamon stick around. Sorry, I came up with that really too slow. We're back and we've got one more takeaway before some numbers because takeaway number three, the ancient Greeks thought cinnamon came from borderline mythological places and situations because Arabic traders kept their supply chain a secret. Wow. The ancient Greeks had truly nuts beliefs about where cinnamon comes from involving monsters and magic and stuff. Hmm. Okay. But they had cinnamon like Arabic people and other people brought it to them. They just didn't tell them where it was from.

I see. So they thought like a came from a magic cinnamon goat or something. What's the yeah, I thought I was thinking goat as well. Right. Magic cinnamon goat. Yeah. We were both thinking it. Everyone. I think everyone's thinking it. Yeah. The lesser known cereal of the 80s, magic cinnamon goat. The range of monsters included bats or giant eagles or snakes and also sun gods got involved in one of the myths. Yeah, you know. But no goats, I can't believe that.

That just feels right to me. I've tried to microplane a snake before for some seasoning. Does not turn out as good as you want. And you take a snake that's really brightly colored and you think this is gonna be a tasty snake here, it just irritates them, they don't like it, and it doesn't taste very good. Be nice to snakes, people.

Yeah. You're gonna get tips by email from our witchcraft listeners. They're gonna be like, here's how you do it. Okay, so you take the eyes. Please don't microplane snakes. You're gonna get tips via email from our witchcraft listeners. They're gonna be like, here's how you do it. Okay, so you take the eyes. Please don't microplane snakes. They're very sensitive. You have to sneak up on the snake, Katie.

You're going after the snake that sees you. And KeySource is here. Another great book. It's called An Edible History of Humanity by nonfiction writer Tom Standage. And also citing a piece for JSTOR Daily by Livia Gershon because cinnamon's been a luxury for many thousands of years. It's mentioned four different times in the Bible. There's Egyptian stone inscriptions recording cinnamon shipments from almost 4,000 years

ago. It didn't reach the Americas until the Columbian Exchange, but Europe, Africa, Asia has had cinnamon for a long time because people just wanted it from all that way out in Asia. Yes, to make cinnamon toast. Yeah. I guess you could just make that, huh? If you had bread. They already got bread, they got butter, they got cinnamon.

Did they have sugar? I don't think they had, they must have had sugar. They already got bread, they got butter, they got cinnamon. Did they have sugar? I don't think they had, they must have had sugar. Oh, sugar is tricky. But they had versions of it, yeah. But yeah, but maybe it was difficult to get sugar. Over the thousands of years, people in East and South Asia trade cinnamon elsewhere. And in China, people both acquired cassia and started growing it. Also, doctors prescribed it as treatment for all sorts of conditions, in particular flatulence. If you

were flatulent in ancient China, you would be given cinnamon. Is there any indication that it's effective for that? Asking for a friend, of course? Yeah. It really seems like it's not a necessary nutrient in any way. We just like it. And then cinnamon moves west from Sri Lanka and from Indonesia via Arabic traders. And this really gets going, especially around the 500s BC when there's thriving Greek city-states. And the Arabs don't tell them where it's from and so they make up myths. There's a Greek named Herodotus who's often credited as the first historian in like Western culture. He also made up last stuff.

The first liar. Yeah, yeah. And he had separate myths for Cassia cinnamon and True cinnamon. It's really exciting. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. Huh.

So he knew that difference but was wrong too. He said Cassia cinnamon comes from a place where a species of giant aggressive bats live and you'll be attacked by the bats if you go there. Okay. Do the bats have anything to do with the cat? Like it's just he's saying the bats are there. Do the bats poop out the cinnamon? Like what's the deal? It's just like an environmental danger of Cassia cinnamon land. I see.

Yeah, but they have no flatulence when doing so Which actually makes them more dangerous because you never hear them coming yeah silent Yeah, and he said people in that region had to craft entire body suits out of ox hides With just little eye holes so they could like survive the bats while they harvested cinnamon. Oh wow. Oh wow. That was his story. People were bored back. They're so bored. And then separate story for true cinnamon and he said Arabian people told him this. He said that true cinnamon is not from Arabia but it's brought to Arabia by giant birds Like in their talons, they weren't so just messing with them like like where did you get this cinnamon? Giant birds. Yeah, you ever seen a bird think bigger

Yeah, no even bigger big birds big man coming in cinnamon on Backpacks and they're on their little bird backs. He said that they say that the birds bring this as part of building nests. Like if they build it out of mud and sticks, including true cinnamon. And then what people in the region do is they, this again involves axon. People offer chunks of axen to the birds, like big joints of oxen, you know? And then the birds in the process of trying to get the oxen meat, they like scatter parts of their nests as they fly down.

And then people gather the scattered cinnamon from the nests. That's how it's harvested. Okay. I really thought that they meant the birds were purposefully delivering it as part of the trade system. But it's actually just, they're clumsy with their nests because they're so excited to have joints of oxen. What a convoluted origin. I do respect this one more than the bats thing because it just the bats one just seemed kind of thrown together like yeah

It's on an island. Yeah, they have to collect it, but there's bats. Yeah So thing like first the birds come and then you have to like greet the birds with the bird bugle And then you gotta then they build their nests out of mud and cinnamon And then you got to offer them a cow and then you blow the bird bugle. And then you gotta, then they build their nests out of mud and cinnamon. And then you gotta offer them a cow and then you blow the bird bugle again. It's like when a five-year-old is making up the rules to a game and they're like, and if you do that, you can't.

And then the birds come and then there's cinnamon in their nests. Yeah, they kicked his nest though. And then the cinnamon fell everywhere, obviously. And you pick up the cinnamon, but you gotta make sure you have your cinnamon helmet on. Yeah, and then more guys did more myths in ancient Greece. About 100 years after Herodotus lived, there was a scientist named Theophrastus. Theophrastus' claim was not specific to the varieties, but he said that cinnamon grows in deep glands

where it's guarded by deadly snakes. Regular-sized poisonous snakes. Why would snakes care? Yeah, no reason. And then he said people had to make themselves protective gloves and shoes in order to harvest it in spite of the snakes. Out of oxhide?

Yeah, he didn't say, but I assume. At this point, it's got to be oxhide. These Greeks make me think oxhide's really great. We should get it as a sponsor or something. Ox gear? Yeah. Ox socks. And then the other part of Theophorastus' story is that in that region, you also had to satisfy

a sun god. And so the harvesters, as they hauled back their cinnamon, they left behind an entire third of it as an offering to the sun. And they would watch to make sure it burst into flames to indicate that the sun was satisfied before they went on to trade it. The rest of the time. So when the sun's happy with a gift, it incinerates it. Yeah.

And then there was yet another separate Greek myth which claimed that a lot of spices such as cinnamon and ginger came from some sort of heavenly paradise. It's kind of separate from Olympus. I don't really get it. But it would come down from a heavenly paradise into the Nile River in Egypt. Like it would wash down through some kind of water cycle. And then the Egyptians would net fish cinnamon out of the Nile. They said that's where it comes from. Okay, okay, yeah, cinnamon. Did they see the bark of it or just the powdered form? Because if you see sort of like,

this looks like a tree bark. Because when I was a kid and I saw cinnamon, I was like, that looks like a plant. That looks like a piece of a plant. And I was five, so, you you know I didn't think maybe this is guarded by snakes. They thought it was like driftwood or something. I see okay. Because yeah it would be often the sticks because that lasts a little longer than the ground kind but but they just thought it was getting fished out like

driftwood or something. Okay. But originally from some sort of paradise yeah. I see. Okay. And then they thought, okay, and then the Egyptians, after fishing it, sell it to the Arabic people who sell it to us. And allegedly, this was all just Arabic traders fooling them. I do think it's also that the Greeks like to make myths, but- They really do. They like see a swan and they're like, I bet that had sex with a woman. in there like, I bet that had sex with a woman. And then, sir, this is a Wendy's. Exactly. Yeah. And the thing is the Arabic traders, they would bring cinnamon west overland by camel or sail it up the Red Sea to Egypt. It was a very worthwhile, shippable luxury good. Then in the Roman era,

Romans and Egypt figured out the cinnamon supply chain for themselves and looked down on the Greeks forever being fooled by this. They're like, where does the cinnamon come from? Giant birds? No, really. Why do you think they didn't want to tell the Greeks where the cinnamon came from in the first place? Were they worried that Greeks would try to come over and steal their cinnamon plants? The theory is that the Arabic traders didn't want the Greeks to find another way of getting it in another cellar.

And it was a little bit of a monopoly. And then the Romans said said the Greeks are dumb. Apparently the Roman writer Pliny the Elder wrote that, quote, those old cinnamon tails were invented by Arabs to raise the price of their goods, end quote. I mean, probably. That seems reasonable. And Pliny was wrong about all sorts of stuff, but he seems to have been right about this. It seems like, now we know where it comes from, but the Greeks were amazingly wrong. I love it. Wow We have a bonus show about Cinnamon Toast Crunch But before that let's finish up our main show with just a couple of numbers and this week those numbers are in a segment called

Making my way through math walking fast numbers pass and I'm stats bound Fast numbers pass and I'm stats bound. Da da da da da da da. Da da da. Oh, that was a good one. Beautiful. And that name is from Jaren on the Discord. Thank you, Jaren. We have a new name for this every week.

Please make a Macillion Whackin' Bad as possible. Submit yours through Discord or to sifpotagmail.com. Yeah, just a couple numbers. The first one is 2023. That's a recent year. Yeah. Yeah. 2023 is when a customer sued the Fireball brand of cinnamon whiskey for fraud and misrepresentation. I too would like to sue the Fireball brand

of cinnamon whiskey for being something that I should not have had in college because it was terrible. Yeah it turns out Fireball puts two different beverages in their two different sizes of bottle. Whoa what? What? And they have more than two because there's like various sizes of the big kind but the tiny mini bottle and the big kind are different liquids. It's not both whiskey. Yeah. And nowhere is that revealed. And it's a little bit revealed, but Fireball got sued and I couldn't find the ultimate

results of what became a class action lawsuit. So folks on Discord, please tell us. Wow. Is it like two cents to anyone who's ever drunk Fireball whiskey? Probably yes. Because Fireball, the brand was created in Canada in the mid 1980s. It expanded to the US in 2001. And according to NPR, the large bottles at liquor stores are a whiskey with cinnamon

flavoring. And then the mini bottles, which are often available at businesses like gas stations that don't have liquor licenses, they can sell the mini bottles because that's a cinnamon flavored malt beverage. Wow. They both have cinnamon, but only one is legally defined as whiskey. I see. Wow. Did the small bottles say the word whiskey?

Like where they actually are that's that's the thing like it's mostly because people love cinnamon They were labeling the small bottles as just fireball cinnamon and dropping the word whiskey Interesting and so they said that's why we've always been able to sell this extremely cheap different malt beverage, because we don't say it's whiskey. And then in 2023, a US-based plaintiff sparked a class action lawsuit saying that that's not enough difference, because the words fireball and cinnamon and that devil logo and everything else is the same. Yeah. Wow.

I feel so torn about whose side I'm on in this really important legal battle. What was the harm they were arguing happened to them? Being like deprived of whiskey by a brand that implied whiskey. And apparently most of the legal battle is over not whether they were deprived of something, but whether a branding that's quote literally true can still be misleading. Cause it's literally true that the mini bottles are a cinnamon flavored alcohol of the Fireball brand.

Yeah. But are they still kind of lying, you know? Yeah, that's why I feel like I'm kind of on the side of the Fireball company because they're not It's relying but then again, right it's relying on your knowledge and perhaps Extreme devotion to fireball that you would you would just need it so badly that you wouldn't look so closely at the gas station Right, right Which like yeah Wow, So and as of September 2024

It's still going on a Florida judge let it go forward So I'd love to find out how this finishes it might be out there and it's hard to dig up But yeah, we should do a sequel episode. That's kind of a true crime thing if we're if they let reporters like us into the courtroom Yeah We should do probably real-time recording We should do probably real-time recording. I remember that sloshing we were doing earlier. That's when it starts. We tape full of eyeball.

We gotta decide the genre of true crime though. Is it like cozy true crime or are we doing dateline true crime? Like what voices do we use? Do we use sort of our cozy like, you know I'm in the courtroom where 20 people were murdered by fireball whiskey. Right. Now I'm in the courtroom where 20 people were murdered by fireball whiskey. Right. Is it like, yeah, it's like wine and slayings or is it like, dun dun dun dun dun.

Jennifer Coolidge thought she was drinking whiskey. It wasn't. We found the true name of the play dead. The cinnamon lotus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, speaking of vibes, the next number is December 2024.

Last December. That's when one Spotify user received a year end description of their music listening habits, which listed a genre called Cinnamon Soft Core Art Deco. Oh, wow. Last Christmas, I had a Spotify list. It was Cinnamon Core Art Deco. Cinnamon Soft Core Art Deco. Spotify claimed that as a music genre that exists. Wow.

Did they get sued for that? Cinnamon softcore art deco. Safe browsing, folks. Always keep your browsers on child mode because you never know what's going to come up. Cinnamon softcore is, you know, it's too early in the morning. Yeah, the New York Times covered this in a trend piece because Spotify does a year-end wrapped for users each December. In 2024, they gave out something called 2024 Music Evolution with monthly breakdowns.

They tried to give a new genre for every month, so maybe they needed to stretch. A listener who had mostly listened to Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, and The Weeknd was told that that month they listened to the genre, Cinnamon Softcore Art Deco. So right. Yeah. Okay. Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, The Weeknd, and other songs added up to that. Okay.

Okay. Where does the Cinnamon come in? Like how does that? Does it need the lyrics mention cinnamon? Is it like? Yeah, a cinnamon vibe. What's Yeah, that's what bother people cuz It's meaningless It's it's like we've given too much over to AI at this point We've we should have some human curation of these lists.

Truly because that same rap also included the AI feature for people. AI voice told you about what you've been listening to, and so people said, if we're trying to turn the vibe of cinnamon into a music genre, this almost wraps around to being try hard and impersonal and to AI. Like a human would not tell me my tastes are cinnamon when it comes to music. Right. You have...

Cassia cinnamon hardcore. You have been listening to neoclassical coconut. Very last quick number here is 2022, because 2022 is when biologists sequence genes that are creating a cinnamon type fur color in black bears. Cinnamon as a color is what we're comparing this fur color of black bears to. It's a mutation. Did they do this because they noticed more black bears are kind of turning reddish brown? Yeah, apparently, especially in the Western US, because black bears live in North America.

Evolutionary biologist Emily Puckett at the University of Memphis led a team that looked at the genomes of more than 200, Ursus Americanus, the black bear. And they think they found a mutation in a pigment producing gene that specifically causes almost more of a brownish-reddish fur on a black bear. Stan McAvoy Is it the entirety of their fur, not like patches? Have you seen pictures of these cinnamon bears? Adam Sandler Yeah, the whole bear pretty much, yeah. And people are nicknaming them cinnamon bears, which is cute

Okay, so this complicates the relatively useless mnemonic which is if it's black fight back if it's brown Lie down if it's cinnamon you can win a man. I Don't see anything useless about that Sounds for real though. Yeah, like this apparently this has been going on for thousands of years. The bears are fine. But humans got interested in this because our heuristic for seeing a bear and deciding what to do in the woods is mostly based on fur color. Even though black bears, brown bears are super different sizes, you can kind of tell.

We just look at the first so Some people have done like brown bear safety with a cinnamon bear a bear. That's really a black bear Right, right. That's that's just going on in the world. It's great I mean a lot of black bears are not just like like there's various pelt color for black bears and Including like the cinnamon color. So yeah, it's not, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently in the eastern US this mutation isn't common at all. Like you just see black bears, but western US they're all over. Yeah. But you could theoretically purposefully breed cinnamon bears by getting a couple of them and making, and maybe even if you got the sort of smallish Cinnamon bears you could eventually make a sort of French bulldog. Yeah Of bears like a small domesticated cinnamon bear. Yeah, tiny cinnamon bear every time it sneezes its eyes dislocate Uh... Get him.

French Bulldog stuff's playing good. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. They can only be born by C-section. Is this accurate? Let's just think about teddy bears. Let's just think about teddy bears in real life. Yes, I like cinnamon bears.

What could go wrong? What could go wrong in our cinnamon bear breeding experiment? Hip dysplasia. Hip dysplasia. No, no. The cinnamon bears are going to be perfect. They're just going to be trained. They're going have a little

Little trace a little belt with a tray that brings you your your cinnamon buns You just want your own personal Paddington, that's true Guilty as charged Folks, that is the main episode for this week, and I want to say another big thank you to Seth Lind for making time. He's very busy with all sorts of podcasting, especially being a co-creator of Mission to Zyx, which is such an astonishing and funny, long-running improvised comedy show in a science fiction world. They also are making a prequel

called The Young Old Durf Chronicles and lots of other drops and episodes in the run-up to that. I'm thrilled they're our fellow Maximum Fun show. I'm thrilled Young Old Durf is gonna be part of my later in 2025 listening, and the entire run of Mission to Zyx is available to you right now if you've never heard it. So we'll link all that and please check it out. And again, so glad Seth could make time to join us for Talkin' Cinnamon.

Welcome to the outro of our Cinnamon episode with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the name cinnamon describes separate spices, all made of the bark of several different trees. Also they all have cinnamaldehyde, and it's possible you've only ever had cassia cinnamon and never had so-called true cinnamon. Takeaway number two, there are a few minor modern health panics around lead in cinnamon, coumarin in cinnamon, and the cinnamon challenge, the most dangerous one.

There's also one possible health benefit that tied cinnamon to European winter holidays, but it's probably mostly just a luxury. Takeaway number three, the ancient Greeks considered cinnamon a borderline mythological luxury because Arabic traders wanted to keep their supply chain a secret. And then a few numbers at the beginning and end of the show about Cinnabon and their proprietary cinnamon blend, the class action lawsuit against Fireball, the weird stretching by Spotify to make cinema a music genre, and Bears. Those are the takeaways. Also I said that's 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 bonus topic is the urban legend and dark twists about alleged shrimp tails in Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You might remember a bit of that viral story, you don't know all the details and twists. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund 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 MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a miniature library about cinnamon. The book The Spice and Herb Bible by spice grower and trader Ian Hemphill. Also a book called The History and Natural History of Spices by geologist Ian Anderson. He brings in geology. It's very interesting. Also lots of mythology from An Edible History of Humanity by nonfiction writer Tom Standage and then a huge amount of scholarly and journalistic writing about

cinema online from JSTOR Daily, a piece by Livia Gershon, a piece for the conversation.com by science writers Serena DiSalvio, Writing for Ars Technica by senior health reporter Beth Mole. Writing for The Daily Dot by Brooke Schoberg. And a piece for NPR's The Salt Food Blog by Sid Sulla Overgaard. 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 Wapinjur people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Seth also taped this in Lenapehoking, specifically

the lands of the Munsee Lenape people, also the Skatigok people and Mohican people. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Seth's location, and 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 41, that's about the topic of vanilla. Fun fact there, a young boy on the island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean revolutionized vanilla growing for the entire world. If you've eaten vanilla, it's mostly because of that kid. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals

and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shaven by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. 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.

week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.