Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Doughnuts

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Alex Schmidt and special guest Tom Lum explore why doughnuts are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show.

Donuts. Known for being delicious. Famous for being round often. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why donuts are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Ciphalopods.

Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name's Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. As you've heard in recent weeks, Katie is out. on some family leave kind of things. I'll let that be her news when there's news. So I'm very excited about it. And I'm joined by a wonderful returning guest on this show.

I hope you know him from the amazing podcast. Let's Learn Everything. Also, he's a digital creator for places like Scientific American and the host of the live in-person and streaming comedy and science game show called Our Findings Show, which is a perfect title. Please welcome Tom Lum. Hello. Hey. Hello. Hello.

You got everything right. Awesome. I would have forgotten one if I was asked to list them all. So thank you. Also, syphilopods. That's good. I like that one. I didn't tell you, listeners in the last drive, they unlocked voting on a collective nickname for themselves.

And then they voted for it. Like, they picked it. There's shirts for it. It's awesome. Even though I'm somewhat afraid of some cephalopods such as giant squids. It's still working great. I really love it. And I always think of you and Ella and Caroline being a computer.

a bee and a frog. And let's learn everything. I think you all did a pin and then it had those things that people were like, okay, so this is who the computer is, this is who the bee is, who the frog is? It was very, it was unspokenly, very clear. Yeah, yeah.

And it's very clear you are the left tentacle and Katie is the right tentacle of the syphilopod. Right? That's how. Everyone listening was saying that as you said it. Yeah, yeah. Well, and thank you so much for returning. We have a wonderful topic suggested by Dacoup Bear on the Discord and picked by folks in the poll.

Tom, what's your relationship to or opinion of donuts? I not only love donuts. I have a favorite donut. The croissant donut at the donut pub on 14th Street in New York City. I love donuts. I'm a big fan of yeasty donuts. It's the one thing, it's one of the few things that the West Coast beats the East Coast at is the amounts of donut shops and how good they are. We'll talk about West Coast donut shops later too.

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Love donuts. I remember having a moment at one of my first jobs where someone brought in donuts once. And I thought to myself, you know, coming out of college or I think I was interning out of place. So I was still in college and I was just like, ugh, like donuts for work. That sounds like so, I'm working for the man.

And like, that's such a stereotypical thing. And then I was just like having it on like a Monday. And I was like, no, it's just good. Actually, every so often, every so often a classic trope is good for a reason. And like donuts for work is, uh, it's just good. They're great. They're a, what a delicious. I am cursed though, because I know I'm going to have a hankering for that, that specific.

I'm going to wish I had had bought a dozen for myself before this. recording. So if I leave at some point and you hear half an hour of dead silence, that's because I'm going to bike to get a donut. I'm not editing it out. It's staying in. Keeping it wrong. Keep it real. What about you? Well, I have a number section later, but I believe the number is two for how many times I specifically purchased donuts to say my craving that I developed by researching the episode. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say in your life. I was going to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no. For this episode.

Incredible. And you're like, it's research. I'm doing this for a... I think it would have been three if the shop I like was open on Tuesdays. You know what I mean? Like, it was very hard. I'm glad you were a donut lover. I am too.

They're amazing. And they also, like, I strongly associate them with my dad. He would, like, get us the grocery store bakery case donuts before we did soccer on the weekends. and also our Catholic Church, they would have donuts in the little room called Seton Hall, the little gathering room after Mass sometimes. And then when I got engaged to my wife, we did that in the Asheville, North Carolina area. And the rain was a donut. No, but our favorite donut shop in the world is called Whole Donuts in Asheville, North Carolina.

And I, like, contacted the co-owner Lori, who's amazing, Hello, Lori. and she did a just-engaged donut box for when we like came there afterwards. So I feel like profoundly connected to this thing. I also am addicted to eating. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. So big donut lover. But are they?

And we do love them, but I'm wondering if secretly they could be incredibly fascinating. I don't know. I just got a hunch. We're just on a Zoom call talking about donuts, right? I assume that's what's happening right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Nothing's plugged in. Yeah, yeah.

It's just such a joy to know more about this. So I'm very excited. Thank you, listeners. And there's also almost too many kinds of donuts to describe. But we usually lead with a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, there's one takeaway about their origins first. Because takeaway number one, there are endless global origins that led to the modern U.S. style donut and the main U.S. innovation was to put the hole through it.

No way. Our main contribution is the whole. But there's like fried dough foods and treats globally. People love it. Yeah. Oh, there's sometimes referred to as a Chinese donut. Oh, I forget what the proper name for it is. I came across Yotiao, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom loves that and I'm also a huge fan. Yeah. I've had it once, too. Yeah, it's amazing. I love donuts and fried dough and stuff. Sure. Yeah, it's great.

But it's missing, it's missing that perfect hole center. I want, there has to be a documentary somewhere that does the like social network scene where it's like drop the the the the just Facebook where it's like add the hole, make it a donut or something like that. Some apocryphal thing where someone like pokes a hole. Is there an apocryphal story as to the origin of the hole? There actually is, yeah. So we could make it. We love it. an apocryphal stores in the origin of the hole.

Tom, some of the camera crew. We're doing it. We're going to get props. Yeah, this takeaway is the style of the food, especially in the modern U.S., and also the name,

because the name makes sense if you know where a few of the influences came from. And what I would have guessed is wrong. I would have guessed it's named after like a hardware store fastener nut, like the round piece of metal with a hole in it. It's not named after that probably.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's probably named after actual nuts inside of actual dough. What? Right. What? No. That's not, that doesn't. Disagree.

I famously, I don't believe I've ever had a crunchy donut. Although, hey, write that down. That's an innovation. Please tell me more. Last of sources here, feature for Smithsonian Magazine by David A. Taylor. A. Taylor. A couple well-research features from, Menlo floss, one by Michelle Debchak, one by Michelle Herman, and then an article for the website

of the Bowry Boys History Podcast, written by co-host Gregory Young, and then also digital resources from the New England Historical Society, because we think New England people put the hole in the donut. Hmm. Hmm. I know they have claim to Duncan, so there's a... Yeah. There's donuts running their blood. Yeah, the guy who put the hole in the donut and Duncan, Donuts are both from Quincy, Massachusetts, but separately.

Really? It's just a coincidence. Huh. Something in the water. Probably clams or lobsters or stuff. I don't know what. Yeah, yeah. There's something indirectly created that environment.

Yeah, and the question of who created donuts, it's really just every culture in the world. Almost everybody's done some kind of fried dough treat. One incomplete answer for the U.S. one is the Dutch colonizers. who invaded what's now New York City and the Hudson River Valley because they had balls of fried dough. One written record of that is from the author Washington Irving who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle and other stuff.

Yeah, but apparently more importantly, you wrote about. To me, yes, I've been to Sleepy Hollow, it's fine. But this, you know. It's no Dunkin. In 1809, he was writing essays about the area, and wrote that in Hudson River households, the dinner table was, quote, always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hogs fat, and called doughnuts or oleukes.

Oh. A delicious kind of cake at present known scarce to this city except in genuine Dutch families. Now, and I have been to a Dunkin'oli cooks before. I have not. That's, wow, they say donuts back then. Yeah, that's the key thing. 1809, it's now the United States. The name donuts probably did not come from the Dutch

because they had this other name too, but also because they weren't doing the specific thing we're about to talk about. Oli Kooks is Dutch for oil cakes, just an oily ball of dough, that's it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is, that's probably a more accurate name than a donut.

Especially now, yeah. Yeah, because the Dutch brought this in, but apparently a lot of other parts of the world, including Europe, had their own fried ball of dough food in various ways, various styles. And the trick with cooking those is it's hard to cook it all the way through. You can end up with like a really crispy outside and a uncooked or raw inside because of the frying and the fat or the oil or whatever else. For sure, for sure. Oh, my God. That's why. Oh, my God.

That's why you have the hole. Oh, my God. It's a surface area to volume thing. Yeah. Oh. That's it. It's great. How did I not know that?

I sort of didn't either. And then like another good solution is Yotia that we were talking about. You just make it all long. Right. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. You're right. Sorry.

It's also great. It's like in a long strand that you then fold like like like. And so really because a donut when you put a hole in it turns from a sphere into a tube. And the tube has more surface area. Oh, my God. Sorry, you're blowing my mind. You're right. It is long because you can't, if it was a sphere,

you wouldn't be able to fry in the middle. And it's really just, okay, sorry. Yeah. There's just a lot happening in my brain right now. The math, the geometry of it all. I did this earlier while I was eating donuts to cope. I was like, yes, yes. Oh, God.

Yeah. This is mathematically satisfying. I'm allowed to eat all these. Yeah. Yeah, so like both those ideas are great. And then there was another approach that we think began in especially England and also what's now Germany, where another solution to the dough in the middle not cooking is to just put something else in the middle. And one of the main things they'd put in the middle was actual nuts, like almonds and pecans and walnuts and stuff.

Oh. Because if the heat doesn't get there, it's okay. It's fine. sorry these are I thought I don't know why I thought it was just gonna it's in the name of the freaking

podcast and every time I'm surprised oh boy boy howdy they put nuts in there that's also thank you for just being such a donut appreciator too

like I feel like we love knowledge but also well see that's the thing as I thought I was going to be like I know about all these things about the donut So they put nuts, that's really clever because they don't need to cook in the, and then it's got a little treat in the middle.

Yeah. Wow. We should do that more often. Yeah. Yeah, it's great. And it partly led to jelly being in the middle of these. And, you know, it just is another solution to the global problem of how do I evenly fry or cook this thing.

It's great. That's why the, oh, okay, sorry. Okay. This is why this is before the numbers. We have to, like, understand, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We have to really understand the donut.

Wow. Yeah, especially like New York City and Hudson Valley, English military forces take over the Dutch colonies. And so then you have Dutch only cooks merging with English dough nuts because it's dough around a nut. And then you build up to some donut culture that way and also the name. The name dough nut has stuck around even though we're far beyond a little ball of dough with a walnut.

in the middle. It's good though. It's sort of like, I don't know, I think it's like the opposite of Coke. You know, Coke carrying over from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm surprised that that stuck around, but like, again, if it was called fried cakes, I feel like they'd be a lot less appealing, more general. It's very concealing of its nature to be called a donut is like a cute name versus yeah, yeah, fried cakes, which is basically what they are. Totally, yeah. Even something like Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. It's because it's going to like jack you up on something. It's right. Oh, it's just a little light thing. It's clear. So it must be healthier for me than Coca-Cola. Yeah. So like that kind of fried ball comes along. Also apparently around the early 1900s, just various businesses came up with the spelling D-O-N-U-T as just like a fun and other commercial.

way to spell donut but we think whole word dough whole word nut was before that cool that makes they're both fine they're normal yeah it's and then give it another hundred years and it'll we'll do the thing where we take all the vowels out and it'll be dint t yeah d't all the all the all the tech companies taking the vowels out of things yeah the don't it'll just be a pill oh terrible dystopium it'll just be the whole And yeah, and then so the tall tale that may be true of making the hole, that's kind of the only part that's relatively specific to people in the United States. It is after Washington Irving was writing about it, in the mid-1800s, around the 1850s, there was a ship captain who lived in Quincy, Massachusetts. The ship captain was named Hanson Gregory.

And his claim is that, like people across history, he was frustrated with uneven cooking of his dough. in the friar. The legend is he used the cover of a tin box, almost like a cookie cutter, to just slice a hole through the middle of some dough. And then the next time he got short leave, he visited his mom who lived in Maine. She used that idea to start a hit donut business. So it could be them or somebody else, but we think New England people started making holes in this.

That sounds normal enough to not be apocryphal. Like, I was totally expecting, like, someone drops a bunch and they fall on, like, a sword. and so it stabs it in the middle. And he's like, oh, no, I don't have time. I have to cook it now. And the sword is Excalibur or some dumb thing. It falls on the Bible and it makes a perfect hole in it. It's something, yeah.

That seems plausible, you know. Donuts, halos, donuts, halos, donuts, halos. It all makes sense. It all makes sense. Probably sacrilegious. I'm sorry. Anyway. And to totally steal Simpsons Joe's joke, sacrilegious.

There we go. That was the key insight from Hanson Gregory and his mom or somebody else that made modern-style U.S. and Canadian donuts. But again, everybody's been making some kind of fried dough worldwide for a long time. Apparently, we think there's a description of an early fried dough food in the Bible, like the Hebrew Bible. As much as we were just joking. Wow. Yeah, it's in the beginning of the Old Testament, Book of Leviticus. There are tips for what to offer in fellowship while worshiping. And the first suggestion is cakes made with a lot of olive oil.

And then the translations are tricky, but it seems like that implies frying it or some other kind of donut-ish preparation. Yeah. I guess that, I guess in theory, there's nothing that would make that modern, even though I feel like fried food feels like such a modern concept. Like hot oil is not modern, I suppose. Yeah. And neither is dough. So, huh, okay. Good old olive oil, you know, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And yeah, we mentioned Yotiao that is also probably one of the oldest strong fried dough traditions in the world. There's a theory, it may not be true, but there's a theory that even influenced the creation of churros. Like as China connected to colonial Spain and Portugal and in the Americas, people might have made another fried dough stick that way. They definitely seem similar, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then if there's one other fried dough tradition with a hole besides U.S. donuts, it might be a food in Nepal in the Himalayas. Huh.

They do, it's a food called cell roti. It's a sweet rice flour-based treat for festivals and special occasions. But it's much more of a make-a-long stick of dough and fold it into a ring than like punching a hole through. Yeah, which just, again, feels like something mathematically beautiful about that coming to the same. shape from two different means is just that that's that's hilarious I really like it yeah and donuts and the math seem to have a fun connection for people like there's a you probably know there's a whole field called topology where people talk about the surfaces of things and how that makes shapes I believe is it a Taurus is a donut I

believe yeah Taurus is a donut and and the joke is that a topologist thinks a donut and a coffee mug are the same thing because they have one hole yeah because they both have one hole yeah so people like the math of frying food. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. And then from there, the United States really leaned into popularizing our style of donut, mostly because we mechanized and commercialized. One leader there was Adolf Levitt. He was a Jewish-Russian person who fled Tsarist Russia in the 1910s. He opened a bakery, then invented donut machines. A few decades later, North Carolina, 1937, the first Krispies,

cream opens. Their key insight was a big sign outside the building that lights up when new donuts are ready. So people go when it's hot. And then the first Dunkin' Donuts, 1950 in Quincy, Massachusetts, Hanson Gregorystown. And then decades later, Duncan Donuts started selling munchkins, aka Donut holes, which kind of wraps around to reinventing a small ball of fried dough. We got there again.

Yeah. But also, but then treats it as a. a new mythology as to its origin when in fact it is cribbing from it circles back around, much like a donut, it loops around, much like a tourist. Now I want an infinity simple donut. Yeah, great. Yeah, yeah. It's easy.

The surface area is fine. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the global quest to fry dough evenly. It led to all this. And that's the main way the U.S. contributed is a bunch of a hole. Awesome. And yeah, now that they're established, we can get into stats and numbers.

And this week, that's in a segment called, Ladies, SIF Podcast, numbers at your feet. Wonder how you manage to count, one, two, three, E. Thank you. The name was submitted by Maureen. Thank you, Maureen. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly away as best possible.

Submit yours through Discord or to Sif Potichima.com. Tom is really cheering elaborately. I appreciate it. That was great. Most of these numbers are about modern donut culture. And the first one's a specific night. The number is the evening of March 19th, 2026. Okay.

March 19th is this year's date for Eid al-Fitur, which is the festival for the ending of Ramadan, the night that ends Ramadan. And Ramadan's a month of the Islamic calendar when many Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. And last year, New York Times reporter Sarah Khan did a piece about American Muslims and their tradition of donuts as a key food on Eid. Donuts is a goat too.

Yes, I have a friend of mine who is Muslim and adores donuts. I forgot about this completely, yes. Oh, I haven't experienced it. That's really cool. Yeah, apparently it's just kind of developed organically and quoting the piece here. Across the Muslim world, each culture serves its own preferred sweet treats on Eid. African Americans might have bean pies. South Asians prefer sheer corn.

North Africans delight in Acida and Ma'amul is popular throughout the Arab world. But at American mosques, which serve the most diverse religious community in the country, donuts are the perfect crowd pleaser. Yeah. Apparently they're halal friendly. And then on top of that, we all know they're cheap, they're easy to cater. You can get them at all hours. And they're great.

I feel like we're beating around the bush. They're great. That's also a reason. It is, yeah, it's like, they're just great. And then also, apparently a few donut shops have noticed and begun, like, specifically celebrating and catering toward this. That's so great. That's awesome.

They say that in a town called Frisco in Texas, detour donuts is a shop serving Ead donuts shaped like Crescent Moons and shaped like stars. There's flavors like creme brulee or pistachio rose, which sounds amazing. Wow. Sohalla Shasavan. owns a shop called saffron bakes in Milwaukee. She makes Eid donut bouquets with lemon rose pistachio hoops. Wow.

And then there's also now a line of children's clothing. It's a brand called Lil Dini's. And owner Nabeha Haider created baby pajamas that say, don't forget my Eid donut. Because she had donuts when she was a little kid doing Eid with her family, you know? Yeah, yeah. God, that's so cool. I you know sometimes

the gosh dang American melting pot is beautiful ain't it? Sometimes it's really cool Yeah so I love that I'm also looking at another country here the next number is 24 Seasons Okay

24 seasons is how long a hockey player From Ontario named Miles Gilbert Horton played in the NHL Oh Tim is this is this the the Tim Horton's or is this an unrelated surname? So the thing, his name's Miles Gilbert Horton and I've been thinking about baby names obviously.

Apparently before Miles Gilbert Horton was born, his mother nicknamed him Tim. There we go. Okay. But they didn't make his name Timothy or Tim. I don't get it. So anyway, he was always called Tim even though they do before he was born. You know. But yeah, he was a star, like, bruising defensemen in hockey.

He's in the Hall of Fame. He won four Stanley Cups for the Maple Leafs. Holy moly. And when he passed away in 1974, he was a 44-year-old active player for the Buffalo Sabres. Wow, yeah. And then long before his career ended, he co-founded Tim Horton's donut shops. In 1964, he, like, took time to found donut shops while winning his third consecutive Stanley Cup and being very busy with hockey. That's wild. His donut legacy precedes his hockey legacy. I, if you had said that

as a joke, like, the Canadian donut brand was started by a hockey player, I would have been like, come on, that's a little. That's like a bad joke, but like it really truly is. And I did not know that. Sam. As much as I loved Tim Hortons. It's not like even like in the market, there's no like hockey stakes or anything like that. It really is just its own thing entirely. Yeah, absolutely. It's so strange. Yeah, they also took the apostrophe out of the name to make it easier to write, so it's slightly modified from his name. It's just Tim Hortons as if Hortons is the last name. Fascinating.

But that chain basically single-handedly made Canada the number one consumer of donuts per capita in the world. Wow. Canadians eat more donuts than any other national population. Whoa, really? Wow. Yeah. I wouldn't have guessed. And it really took off in the seven. apparently, you know, Tim Horton dies in 1974.

His business partner proceeds to grow the chain. They did have 40 locations when he passed, but his partner Ron Joyce grew it to thousands of stores. There's a fractious relationship between the families because Joyce bought out Tim's widow, and then later she sued about it. But they're also still connected to it to the point that Ron Joyce's son married Tim Horton's daughter,

and the couple operated Tim Horton's franchise. in Ontario until 2023. And so we flash forward to this part in the documentary where this drama happens. It's all it writes itself, the donut story. What if it's, oh, it's called the whole story. We're done. Sorry, we can't. I'm so glad we're not recording this because this is cool.

I'm so glad this is just a private conversation that we're having. I'm going to unplug more stuff just in case. What other plugs are in here? My favorite wild stat about Tim Hortons is that as of 2019, so it's pretty recent last time I counted, as of 2019, there was one Timmy's franchise in Canada per 9,800 Canadians. So one per about 10,000 people. Wow. And for comparison in the United States, there is one McDonald's per 23,100 people. Are you kidding me?

Exactly. Wow. There are Timmy's in apparently 16 U.S. states as we're taping, but they're really all over in Canada. Yeah. Sorry. That's wild. So it's basically one business co-founded by a star hockey defenseman turned them into a donut country. It really wasn't such a thing before.

Had no idea. Had no idea. It was that big. Another donut subculture here. The next number is 1951. Okay. 1951 is when a donut marketing organization promoted the new idea of apple cider donuts. Ah.

I thought they're old or pioneer stuff, but they're from the 1950s. Yeah, it seems that way. But instead, Don Draper apparently was like, people love apple cider. They love donuts. What if we? And then we marketed it as if it's something, you know, Paul Bunyan was making or something. Right. I always get them at farms or autumn festivals or something.

Yeah, the iconography of people in bonnets and with horses and stuff. But no, 1950s. Oh. And this is a product of a guy we mentioned before, Adolf Levitt, Russian-Jewish immigrants to the U.S. He is maybe the first huge entrepreneur of donuts in the U.S. or the world. He just kept looking for new ways to make donuts a bigger thing. So he had bakeries and then a chain of bakeries and then made donut machines. and then he said the next way to sell more donuts is to promote the concept of donuts.

Like the idea. Wow. Like really, Don Drapering. Wow. It's named the Donut Corporation of America. Wow. And it was just a like for-profit donut marketing firm marketing the concept of donuts to the world. Fascinating.

Yeah. Wow. Like there really was big donut. Big donut. Huh. To the point that he's just promoting the idea in a way that he doesn't universally profit from. You know, like other people can start donut chops. He's just like, I'll make money.

It's, yeah. Huh. And they had some notorious ideas, apparently. Because at one point in the 40s, they tried to promote donuts as a health food and a superfood. Ah. Which I have come to learn is not true. I'm sorry, what? What?

What? The hole saves you because you're not eating the hole. And that saves you a few calories, really, doesn't it? There we go. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it's all the classic, like, it's like low in sodium maybe because, like, maybe there's not a lot of salt. There might actually be a lot of salt and I actually don't know.

But, like, you do the thing where you, I mean, yeah, find a way to spin it in a way. Yeah, exactly. There's a recent stuff about sliced bread where we talk about wonder bread making somewhat true claims early on about being enriched. basically they claimed the donut flour is enriched enough that donuts are super healthy for you and in 1941 they paid a surgeon to endorse a single source donut diet and claimed you can live on quote vitamin donuts which none of it's true wow yeah and they have the it's like one in ten surgeons approves instead of yes pay more

surgeons. Oh, man. Yeah, so federal regulators intervene. The public did not believe it. So that went away. But they also would do other more normal campaigns of just promoting flavors or styles or something. And in 1951, they promoted a apple cider donut.

You add apple cider to the batter of a buttermilk donut and also maybe false spices. And it's a great idea. It went nationwide. It's really good. It's genius, yeah. But it's new. I really thought it was old. Yeah.

That's very surprising. And the last number of the number section, the number is 2013. Year 2013 is when a few Dunkin' Donuts franchises in the Boston area remained open at the request of police despite a citywide lockdown after the tragic bombings at the Boston Marathon. Wild, because the police force needed the donuts and coffee to... Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of, like, jokey, Chief Wiggum connections of police and donuts. And then this is the most serious one I've ever found. Yeah.

Yeah. Because the bombing happens in April 2013 at the Boston Marathon. And then it took about four days to catch the bombers. And so the city implemented what the Boston Public Library calls, quote, an unprecedented lockdown. Basically, every business and service closed. People stayed home off the streets to, like, try to help. There just be a clear field for catching the guys. except for Dunkin' Donuts.

Yeah. And then police specifically asked a few strategically located Duncan franchises to stay open for food and coffee and bathrooms. Wow. And they did. Which sounds like the bit about police and donuts, but it really helped. Once again, yeah. Literally. And then Boston, again, I'm like, that's a really insensitive joke.

It's like, no, it's actually the truth. That's what happened. Boston and Duncan. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's very real. That's why it's a joke.

Yeah. And, yeah, it's the serious example of the real phenomenon of American police officers leaning on donut shops. And according to Paul Mullen's professor of anthropology at Indiana University, Purdue University, Indianapolis, that became a trope in the late 1940s because, quote, the early hours donut shop is a post-World War I phenomenon in major cities and did not spread to most of the rest of the country until after World War II. It was just the open light, a sweet treat open late kind of thing? Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And like mechanizing helped a lot, but then also they were open late and also open in the very early morning because they needed a lot of donuts finished by the early morning. So you started a wild hour when some of the only other people who are working are police officers. Makes sense. And also police could afford donuts. There was also a thing where apparently some departments warned their officers that they could not accept gifts because it would just seem like bribery or something. But then there would be kind of an exception for something as cheap as donuts and black coffee.

As donut. Oh, okay. Cool. They, like, weren't allowed to go receive nicer food because it would seem like the, I don't know, Steakhouse was trying to get favors. That makes sense. That does make sense, yeah. Yeah, the sugar rush helps you stay up a little while longer before you crash later.

And they're so healthy for you, all that vitamin donut. That's a funny story of that. Also, there's an antis obscure article here where they quote, a former Philadelphia police chief named Frank Rizzo who says that he and his force felt like their job was active enough to burn off the calories. And so unlike people in more sedentary jobs, quote, you got out there, walked around, rolled in the streets with criminals, and burned the calories off. I think they like donuts a lot.

I feel a little 50-50 on that. That's that's I know the other other reason is Donuts are so cheap Police could basically discard them halfway through if an emergency or a call came in sure you could just like drop it and get going

instead of taking off the whole lobster bib or whatever There's also yeah yeah But also again once again The real route They're good Yeah These are all like fun explanations

I'm sure factor in They're also just good It's the universal thing Yeah there's a bunch of features and they're great. It's like if a Swiss Army knife was also delicious. It's like, yeah, it has all these little gadgets and little reasons and and factors as to, it's like, oh, it does this.

And it does this. It's also delicious. Just imagine like fixing something with a crellar and then I eat the crellar rapidly after I'm successful. Write this down. Genius ideas. Genius idea number 12 we've come up with. Well, folks, we're going to unplug some more stuff to keep these ideas to ourselves.

But while we do that quick break for unplugging, we're going to come back with World War I and Pink Boxes and more. Oh, hey, I don't have to wait. Folks, we're back. The break was an illusion. Ha-ha. And we have two more takeaways for the main show here, starting with California Donna Chops. Because takeaway number two, one Cambodian immigrant to Southern California accidentally built one of the most robust independent food business traditions in America. I know loosely of this because I know there's documentary about this, I believe.

Yeah, I've seen the documentary. It's the key source here. It's called The Donut King was released in 2020, directed by Alice Gou. And I'm also linking more coverage by the BBC. But yeah, this will be a relatively short takeaway because the documentary is pretty complete. They just want people to know about it. Yeah, it's a story of Ted Noy. who was nicknamed Uncle Ted by the Cambodian American community

because he built and then personally lost a huge chain of donut chops that are still operating. Ted Noy was an adult when he fled Cambodia in 1975. The Khmer Rouge was killing people. And so he and his wife and three children barely escaped. And then he ended up at a refugee camp at a U.S. Marines base, Camp Pendleton in Southern California. Wow. And then really, really worked. became a church janitor and took a nighttime sales job and took an overnight gas station attendant

job working three jobs as close to 24 hours a day as possible to provide for them. Wow. And then at the gas station job, he saw people buying donuts at weird hours and said, hey, that donut shop across the street seems profitable. And then he just like scraped together capital penny by penny and also did the training program for a chain in L.A. called Winchels. Winchell's donuts. If people have seen the movie Reckett Ralph, there's two like donut guards who work for the Candy King,

and their names are Duncan and Winchell as like a donut shop joke. It's cute. But he basically put together a bunch of capital. He and his family worked around the clock, and they slowly built a chain of donut shops, and then also brought fellow Cambodians to safety and then made them the operators of new franchises. Wow. Which is cool. Yeah.

I'm just amazed how many times in this story, the donut is the story of the importance of immigrants as I stared directly down the barrel of the camera. Really? And every community can take it and make it a thing, you know? Like people aren't like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that only belongs to group one. You know, it's for everybody. It's great. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ted Noyes family sponsored more than 100 other Cambodian families trip to the more safety in the United States. set them up with donut shops so they had like a thing to do right away too also the family sort of invented pink boxes for donuts oh yeah the classic yeah they were like slashing costs apparently at one point early in his career

when he was working at somebody else's donut shop he tried to save money by rinsing off the discarded stir sticks for coffee and putting them back and then the chain had to say you can't do that no But he found a better solution where the company that supplied them with white cardboard for boxes had a huge batch of pink cardboard that they couldn't unload or sell.

No way. And so it was cheaper. Yeah. What? And then it became like an accidental perfect advertisement for what they do. Yeah. It's really cool. Wow.

And he also maintained extremely high standards. I hope that's true stick story didn't sound too gross. He was like making sure the shops were good. It's a true story I just like regretted saying it, you know? No, no, no, no, no. It adds the exact amount of realism to the immigrant story where it is like, every so often there are some things where it's like, okay, maybe maybe, maybe a little too part.

Yeah. Into the. It's an idea, but it was too much. Yeah, yeah. It is an idea. Yeah, and so really without any of the big donut chains noticing, Ted Noy builds this giant chain of donut shops that are, they have their own names and operators, but it's one big franchise of pink boxes, really friendly, wonderful Cambodian mom and pops, a really distinctive

thing in a grassroots way. And they basically take over the territory of the Winchell's chain, either replace or buy out those. And allegedly Dunkin' Donuts found they could spread to the entire United States starting at the East Coast, except Los Angeles. Wow. And they were like, why isn't this working? Why isn't this happening?

Wow. Because Ted Noy was so just grassroots and underground. They couldn't even figure out who their competitor was. Like, where do people get donuts? Yeah. Like, why can't we sell any? Like, which CEO do I need to talk to? Yeah.

It's like, it's Ted. Wow. Yeah, and they allegedly they wasted so many millions in the late 1990s that they gave up until 2014. on the whole Los Angeles market. They were like, we can't beat these guys. Dang. Yeah, and then the dark part of the story is basically that after this chain really grows, Ted and his family are millionaires.

They, like, begin to live a little bit nicely. And then Ted develops a gambling addiction. And is, like, doing secret trips to Las Vegas that he hides from his family to lose more money. It's an addiction. It's tragic. And then he starts. solving gambling debts by privately giving up ownership of donut shop after donut shop after donut shop to the operators in exchange for short-term cash.

And so soon his family learns they own nothing. He loses his marriage. He goes back to Cambodia. Wow. And apparently this Donut King documentary could only be made after the filmmakers talked him into like revisiting the United States. He was like too ashamed to return. But then he wanted to tell the story.

Yeah. Fascinating. But the shops always thrives. His gambling was the only problem. So the shops are still there and they remain really hard for anybody to dislodge as a competitor. Independent businesses in the U.S. It's great. Yeah, yeah.

And one last takeaway, this is back to the East Coast of the U.S., also Europe. Takeaway number three, there's a seemingly silly holiday of National Donut Day. And it turns out that is a 1930s celebration of World War. one heroes and especially American women. Get out of town. Get out of town. I thought it was like an internet dumb holiday. Yeah, it sounds like a BuzzFeed article being like, oh, what's day?

It's Tuesday. We don't have anything right now. It's donut day. It's older than apple cider donuts is what you're telling me. This donut day? Yes, it is. Wow. I hadn't put that together.

Yeah. So, sorry, where is this again? It's a U.S. holiday, National Donut Day. And it's, sorry. Sorry, I, I, I, I, I miss her. I thought this was like a little local thing where they've been keeping up National Donut Day. Yeah, the Salvation Army created it in 1938 to honor all participants of the U.S. in World War I, but especially women who like volunteered and supported.

Wow. By making donuts and little machines intense. It's like, it's like very meaningful. And I think last week got the show, I was. was like national popcorn day and like other dumb holidays. And then you're going to find out. Yeah. Yeah, the main sources here are the U.S. World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City

and also the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission and a feature for J-Store Daily by Aaron Blakemore. We mentioned Americans start mechanizing donut production in the 1910s that dovet with World War I. It lined up. Wow. And the U.S. joined the war April 1917, which is almost three years after it started. And once we joined, people were really excited to participate.

In particular, men who were allowed to be soldiers, and then women who were only allowed to do support work and help out. And one thing women did was they ran little tents either near military bases or near recruiting stations, where they had a mobile. coffee set up in a mobile donut machine. And it was coffee and donuts for especially people to come enlist in the U.S. military. The wildest version of that is apparently in Union Square in Manhattan. That's right by the donut pub.

Yeah. In New York. Okay, sorry, continue. Yeah. Set up a what? So like, Union Square, we know it. There was a giant wooden model of a Navy battleship that they named the USS recruits. to try to lure people as a stunt to come join the U.S. military.

And then it had coffee and donuts inside it. Wow. It really, coffee and donuts shows up. It keeps showing up in all these places. My God. They're very global, yeah. And then the ladies, after they, well, they did that in the U.S. for recruitment and also training.

And then they followed the troops over to especially France and continue doing this on the front. And they were nicknamed donut dollies, the ladies helping with it. And so then apparently this made donuts a symbol of the entire U.S. effort in World War I. No, no. To the point that... Really? Wow.

In 1917, another New York City thing, there was a stunt auction of donuts where the prices are wild and you know you're donating to the war effort. Uh-huh. And somebody bought one donut for this 1970s. money, one donut for $5,000. No way. Wow. It's very silly. That's wild.

What a really emblematic of a lot of things happening there. And it also, it led to a myth that maybe, so there's a real thing that U.S. troops in World War 1 were called doughboys. And there's a myth that they were named after donuts. That's probably not true. but donuts were closely enough associated with the World War I Army that that's where people got that. Huh.

Yeah. The doughboy name is probably because their uniforms got really dirty in an operation in Mexico in 1916. So they came back. They looked like they were covered in dough and dirt and stuff. Yeah, so then more than two decades after World War I, the Salvation Army created a National Donut Day as like a pretty serious and feminist military holocaust.

a day. It's way different from the other food dumb holidays. Fascinate. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's a lot. There's a lot tied into that, huh? Fascinating. Yeah. It's the first Friday in June. And so there are also a lot of years when it lines up with the June 6th anniversary of D-Day in World War II and probably seems too silly. But it's, it's actually in keeping with that kind of thing. Yeah. It's actually very related. Wow. So we, yeah, the U.S. really made itself a donut country in so many ways, along with Canada and the whole earth. Wow. Anyway, we'll make a bonus show, but then donuts, let's do it.

That can be the end of the main show. Do that feel good? Oh, well, hold on. I have one more thing to say. If we can keep rolling a little bit. Oh, keep going. Yeah, and I can drop it in the middle too. I really have such a hangar in for a donut, and I feel like if you've listened, you've earned a donut listeners.

But if you give me one second, I'm just going to go run and grab it. Oh, the donut. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. I didn't tell you. I spent the hour and a half before we were recording biking to the donut pub on 14th Street in Manhattan because I knew I was going to have a hankering by the end of this. And I haven't had one of these in like a year, I think.

It's been a long time. I haven't had a good excuse to go out there, but I have it here. you were so ready I was so ready it is both a bit for this podcast but also for my own personal safety

to have a donut or else the the hankering I would have for a donut would be dangerous so here's what it looks like folks I guess

so the next our findings show is the Friday after this releases I'm also going to link to Scientific American stuff this is the professionalism

okay if you show up to top stuff yeah it's going to be put together it's going to be ready We're going to have. The next Our Findings Show is this coming Friday when this releases the 20th of February.

If you use code, you can either use code SIF or Donut for a discount. I will add that. Awesome. Go to OurFindingshow.com to grab tickets. It's live in person in New York and streaming everywhere. Yeah. You can do it anywhere. Cheers.

Cheers. Cheers to the donuts. A long American. and worldwide tradition. Cheers. I'm so hungry. But I'm feeling full. I'm sated with joy about you having one.

Let me tell you, I'm sated by both joy and donut right now. My God. You know how sometimes it's like if your podcast ad runs on the MaxFund Network, you might see a little bump in listener views. I want this episode to cause a bump in donut sales. I want Dunga Nose to be like,

what happens in February? What is this related to? It's like after Valentine's Day? I don't understand. This doesn't make any sense. Thank you so much, Alex. Thank you so much, for this excuse to have a donut.

Tom, thank you. We're messing with data and we're having fun. It's great. Yeah. I'm doing math here, Alex. I'm doing math. Donuts are math. Yes.

Donuts are math. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. As I said, Katie is away doing family things. And I want to say a big thank you to Tom Lum for coming back doing another one. He was on a previous episode about Bastille Day and other things, too. You know what else is here? The outro of this episode about donuts. It's got fun features for you, such as a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there are endless global origins for the modern U.S. style donuts, and the main U.S. innovation was to put a hole through it for even

cooking. That was also borderline of mega takeaway, because we got not only the origin of the food, but also the origin of the name donut from wholeness fried balls of dough. Takeaway number two, one Cambodian immigrant named Ted Noy built one of the most robust independent food business traditions in America with Southern California independent pink box donut shops. Takeaway number three, the seemingly silly holiday of National Donut Day is actually a very serious and earnest holiday dating back to the 1930s. and celebrating Americans in World War I, in particular American women. And then many, many numbers this week, in particular about donut cultures around the Muslim

holiday of Ramadan, the Canadian chain Tim Hortons that made them the number one consumer of donuts in the world, the surprising recency of apple cider donuts, and the authentic reasons police rely on and benefit from donut shops, in particular Dunkin' Donuts in Boston. 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 maximum fun.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 a myth we will comprehensively bust. There is a bizarre myth claiming John F. Kennedy told more. than 100,000 Germans. He is a jelly donut. John F. Kennedy never said he's a donut. Visit SIFPod.fod.fund. Fun for that bonus show for a library of more than 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. I especially want to highlight a show called Cheddar Heist, where Tom Lum, our other recent guest, Ellen Weatherford, and then Tom's co-hosts Ella Hubber and Caroline Roper did tabletop gaming where they are all rats. It's called cheddar heist. It's in your bonus feed if you're a member.

All of that is special audio for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of wonderful journalism about history and food, in particular from Smithsonian Magazine and writers like David A. Taylor. Also, mental floss pieces that I've added and checked, in particular by Michelle Deb, and Michelle Herman. A lot of coverage of modern donut buying and eating by the New York Times,

especially about Ramadan and also about Tim Hortons in Canada and the U.S. And then sources like JewishChicago.org and the website of the Bowie Boys podcast about people like Adolf Levitt and also about the donut dollies in World War I. And if you're looking for a really amazing documentary to watch, it's called The Donut King. It was released in 2020 directed by Alice Gou. really a heartfelt and wonderful tale of not just Ted Noy, but the entire community he had a hand in building in Southern California.

That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape-Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Tom also taped this in Lenape-Hoking, the land of the Muncie-Lanape. and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in Tom's location, in 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 SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people in 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 is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 277. That's about toilet paper. It's a recent one and also the bonus show is even more Cold War stuff. This week's bonus show about JFK is Cold War stuff. And then the bonus show for 27 is about Operation Tamarisk in East Germany.

Beyond that show and the show, Let's Learn Everything co-hosted by Tom Lyle. I also want to recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. I believe on hiatus right now and an amazing archive for you to check out. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa 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. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows.

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