Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Mustard

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Dan Hopper (Ranker, The New Yorker) and writer/podcaster David Roth (Defector, ‘The Distraction’ podcast) for a look at why mustard is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Mustard. Known for being a condiment. Famous for being a yellow condiment, mostly. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why mustard is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Two amazing guests joined me this week. They are hilarious podcasters and writers and people.

Dan Hopper is a longtime buddy of mine. He's a managing editor at Ranker. He's written for The New Yorker and for The Washington Post and many more fine publications. Me and Dan Hopper go way back to collegehumor.com, and he's just one of my favorite people in comedy, writing, the internet, everything. I'm also joined by David Roth. You may know that name as a co-owner and writer at defector.com. He's also co-host, along with Drew McGarry, of The Distraction. Defector is a wonderful and amazing website, especially if you like sports, especially if you like an actually interesting take on sports, and especially if you like a website that knows that the idea of just sticking to sports is a waste of time. It's about the broader context. It's about

everything that that means. Dave is also low-key one of the best writers in the world about Donald Trump, and specifically what Trumpism means and what it is truly about. As I say that, every fan of David Roth is just nodding along like, yes, of course. For the rest of you, there are links in the episode links at sifpod.fun. Dan and Dave are both brilliant and really, really funny, and I'm glad they've made time to talk about mustard. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and I've used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this

on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Chicory peoples. To acknowledge Dan recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Dave recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here.

That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about mustard, a simple yet mighty condiment that the world is quietly obsessed with. So please sit back or toss off a carefree laugh as you squirt mustard onto your date accidentally in a romantic comedy, because that means you two are going somewhere. And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Dan Hopper and David Roth. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Well, I thought of both of you specifically for mustard because there's going to be some sports stuff with this. But with every episode, I start out by asking the guests, what is your relationship to this topic?

What's your opinion of it? I feel like with condiments, we all kind of have it in our bones somewhat literally, like they're just around us all the time. But Dave or Dan, what's your relationship to mustard? I can go first if you want. All right. So my relationship with mustard is, I would say, strong. It's a lifelong one. Sure. Yeah. Are you starting a state of the union? Yeah, it is. I'm going to introduce some troops in a moment that will attest to how well my relationship with mustard is going. I have eaten it my whole life. And as somebody that's from a family that's like culturally Jewish and not especially religiously Jewish, like mustard is, you know, as much a part of like our family sacraments as like you know whatever lighting candles on shabbos would be if we were better about our like it's just something to be snobby about and weird about and persnickety about um that said like i i can't get mad at like cheesy

yellow mustards or like the things that i was like sort of told like we don't do that when you know like it's cascusco it's it's maybe goldens but like french's is for gentiles that said french's is fine i'm not you know like i've grown to love dijon even the one with seeds in it like i it's just like i said it's a condiment that means something to me oh that's a that's a real serious spiritual connection i was just gonna going to be like, I like mustard. I mean, that is what I could have said. Should have gone first. For whatever reason, I decided to start off with something like really stentorian. I don't know how long four score and seven years is.

I don't know why I would start my mustard answer with that. I'm like clearly grasping the one up, Dave. I'm i uh lost an uncle uh and it's just been very personal to me ever since and uh it's like what happened i'm like let's not get into that vada mustard don't ask me about it vada mustard whatever yeah that's like a one of those auto-generated shirts that i keep getting served on facebook just like i'm a Capricorn who loves mustard. You're so good. Went to Penn State University. Don't ask me about it.

I've seen those t-shirts at thrift stores and it's always tempting to buy them even though they're traditionally like extremely large and all of the details on them don't apply to me. But they're the best. They're just like, yeah, I'm a Capricorn that listens to James Brown and has diabetes. And I'm like, well, I guess I should get that, should get that right like because someone and work at self-employed yeah yeah i i would have

been all over that in my from like my 20 to 25 period i would have worn that shirt for sure yeah the bigger the logo the better but now uh oh yeah now i i've outgrown that. Sorry. Uh, but speaking of growing up, I feel like, I feel like mustard is kind of the, the grownup ketchup, right? When you're a kid, you put ketchup on everything.

I put on fries and burgers, but it's also like you dip your chicken fingers in it and like do all this gross kid stuff that like, once you hit a certain age, it's like putting ketchup on everything doesn't appeal to me. Yeah. And like all of a sudden mustard, which is like kind of bitter and i don't know yeah vinegary and strange yeah it's not not really that sweet yeah it it just feels like a grown-up condiment that like as a kid i

didn't really like that much and put ketchup on everything and then as an adult you like get in a mustard and intense mustards and really you know bitter mustards different kind like i i don't know i love i i love it i found out recently that my mom does not like mustard she brought it up in conversation and i was i was shocked because this is ours was like a mustard household and then i was sort of you know like i processed it in the moment that i actually did have a conversation with my wife about it a day later i was like do you remember my mom said she didn't like mustard? And she was like, yeah, are you thinking about that? And I was like, no.

But what did she put on her hot dogs? And my wife very rightfully asked. She was like, when do you think your mom last had a hot dog? And I don't know the answer to that question, but my guess is not recently. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I relate to that thing as a kid of putting ketchup on everything.

And then in the Chicago region, there's a real stigma against ketchup on hot dogs. And I don't remember when it flipped, but at some point it went from, yeah, sure, Alex, you're very little. So put ketchup on everything, straight to don't put it on hot dogs. Like it was, there's some,

at some point the switch flips and it's like, you're a man now. Like you have to put mustard on hot dogs. That's it works i was gonna ask like how is that communicated to you were they like don't this up for us like we're here at the white socks game and everybody's looking at us like don't embarrass your dad well i and thank you white socks uh yeah because i there i would eat bratwurst aggressively and that was was like my dad's side. It's all German Catholics and mustard is associated with like all of German foods all the time, including bratwurst. So I think I like transitioned that way. Like I was like, well, bratwurst, it's mustard. And then from there, I learned, oh, I've been doing it the wrong way this whole time with hot dogs. It's a certain amount of sense. I feel like I do ketchup and mustard on hot dogs. and i don't know if that's wrong or what i don't think that that's i think that's the acceptable

way to do it like i put all the things you said you put ketchup on and dip ketchup in like i also do that hot dogs for whatever reason are the exception to me but again like i eat three hot dogs a year like it's like pitch to how many mets games i go go to. I thought you were going to say a day. We're watching Detroiters right now, which is delightful. And one of the running gags through that show is that Tim Robinson only eats hot dogs seemingly and eats dozens of them a day. Just a very funny little thing to have bouncing around the bottom of all these different episodes.

Yeah, it's a very unsatisfying thing like i like them but i couldn't eat them as like nourishment it's just like a thing you have it up baseball game that doesn't count towards a meal you never feel good about it it's not something you look forward to necessarily and it's not like when you're done with it you're like well that was like mission accomplished like it is yeah you just ate a hot dog like congrats it's like a it's like chips if they were like meat. Yeah. You know,

it's like eating a hot dog is like eating a whole bunch of Doritos or something like that. It doesn't fit. You're not like, Oh, I've eaten a meal. Right. It's like,

well, yeah, I think if I remember right, I was at a Dodger game and I was with somebody and I was like, well, it's your first one. We should get Dodger dogs. And then they saw the Dodger dogs and they were,

they basically said, could we get something good? Like instead of this weird log hot dog. I was like, I guess so. They're awful, right? Dodger Dogs are actually awful, right? They're not like overrated. They're like just bad. I think I've only had two ever, but I hated it.

The thing with them that I remember being scandalized by when I first saw them is like their big value add is that the hot dog is bigger than the bun which is like you're not doing me a favor there that means that i'm getting like two bites of just like raw dog like just like the actual raw dog in it to you like the little to be nubbin from both ends of it that like i get that with nothing to like you know conceal it or or in any way sort of uh mitigate the the experience of it i don't i don't consider that value like low quality they're like these farmer john's like low quality hot dogs it doesn't match the bun and then they're not they're not even like grilled or charcoal they're like on either a flat top or boiled or something.

Like they have no taste. They're s***. Sorry. Yeah. Take that, Farmer John brand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's losing sponsors left and right. Somebody from National Sausage Council. They were like, we heard your ketchup podcast and listened to your mustard one with great interest. However. Alex has to grind through a Farmer John's subscription box ad read right now. It has everything you want in a meal box. The bun.

The dog that's bigger than the bun. You open it, there's just ketchup and mustard smeared all over the inside of the box that way it's easier weeping weeping weeping like just like a week's worth of hot dogs in a box it's like blue apron for children it's not really you shouldn't be allowed to sell that i don't think but then also like a yogurt garlic sauce and like like the one thing you assemble like we're gonna need you to chop a shallot before you're able to enjoy this hot dog finally oh man

so let's get into our first segment i think from there on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and that's in a segment called take my hand off to stats and numbers land that sounded great man oh thank you very much, yeah. That was submitted by at Chris underscore Murphy 91, and we're going to have a new name for this segment every week,

submitted by listeners like you. Make them as silly and wacky as possible. Submit to at SIFpod on Twitter or to SIFpod at gmail.com. It wasn't the Connecticut rep, Chris Murphy, was it, sending it in? No. Taking a break from, like, fighting the good good fight i have a new idea about a song you could sing about mustard man oh i have a vote excuse me

do you have to pay royalties for singing that i hope that costs like 50 grand to do we have to replace it with a sound alike on the dvd best of of this you have sif listener james headfield listening to it and being like oh when he hears you saying it i was a fan of the podcast before this he yells when he talks of course hopefully he's just mad he didn't think of it right like he should have been the one but you know yeah didn't jump yeah he had a lot of stuff going on if you watch uh some kind of monster you'll see this is a complicated man there's i finally have settled my thing with napster now to sit down and kick back with a podcast that will not illegally use my music oh i love that well uh we got a few numbers here and they i think are fascinating

about mustard the first one is more than 250 000 tons so more than a quarter million tons that is the amount of mustard seed that is traded and consumed every year around the world. And Smithsonian says mustard is the world's most heavily traded spice of all spices. I would not have expected that. Sounds like a lot. I don't know what to wait against, but I'm just like, yeah, that's, I don't have a frame of reference for how much mustard I thought was traded, but that's a ton. It is objectively a very large number. Well, the next number here is one or two millimeters. And that's the approximate diameter of a mustard seed. So they're very, very, very small. And then from one of those seeds, you get a plant that grows to three to five feet tall,

sometimes taller. Cool. I never really think about mustards as like part of a spice trade either. I feel like that adds a nice little like historical slash romantic element to the whole thing yeah it's like the idea of buying mustard is so banal and like this little jar on a shelf or something but it's like oh the spice trade's still going on i forgot about that that's cool actually kind of is that like also the plant itself like i mean i can't imagine there's a lot of mustard greens eaten relative to mustard itself but i've eaten a lot of mustard greens they're pretty good oh yeah like as a salad green like a salad item yeah or well you yeah you'd cook them usually um but you see them in indian food and uh like i've made stews with them and stuff they're very sharp strongly flavored but um that won't surprise

you if you've had mustard the condiment before yeah absolutely well the uh next number here as part of just where it comes from that number number is four, because that is the number of basic ingredients of a mustard. You have to have mustard seeds, which get ground up, and then you have water, and then you have vinegar, and then some kind of spices or flavoring. And then there's also Dijon mustard, which tends to swipe in white wine for vinegar. But it's usually those four things. It's basically just seeds, vinegar, water, and however you want to spice it. There's no vinegar in Dijon mustard? There might be some, but they lean on white wine as the main replacement.

Or something called verjuice, which is made of green grapes. Oh, yeah, I've had that. It's like wine that isn't allowed to turn into wine. Yeah. So it's whatever brings that quality't allowed to turn into wine yeah so it's whatever it brings that quality of vinegar to the uh the mustard yeah it's like the store-bought version do they use like a some cheaper is it that or is it like some cheaper alternative to white wine or something because like or are they putting are they pouring white wine into like

great poupon and stuff probably not great poupon would use a proper wine but yeah like whatever uh craisdale brand dijon maybe not so much another sponsor loss just manually opening individual like buying and uncorking individual bottles of wine and pouring them into each thing of mustard and stirring it it's like so expensive and inefficient it's a union job though like you can't you can't fire them yeah you won't have mustard without it just like driving laps to trader joe's to get more wine for your little factory like oh god i get another trunk full oh man making little jokes with the people being like yeah i really love white wine that leads well actually into another number here which is 90 because 90 is the approximate amount of france's mustard seeds that are imported from canada the top mustard seed

growing countries in the world are canada and nepal they each grow more than a quarter of all the mustard seeds in the world and then there was a legal case that determined that dijon mustard is just a recipe so you don't actually have to make it like in the region of dijon or any geographical stuff and then i think from there they just moved a lot of production out of france yeah it never occurred to me that it could be a doc thing but that makes sense actually that it would be because it has the name in the french shirt how did nepal wind up alongside canada in this again i'm asking you questions that you don't know the answer to and i'm sorry about that i just if you ask me to name agricultural giants

like i might get to canada it would be a while before i got to nepal i think and i i think mustard can just grow a lot of places and i guess they grow most of the canadian mustard in western canada where it's kind of drier and more of a plains thing uh so i guess it doesn't need a lot of places and i guess they grow most of the canadian mustard in western canada where it's kind of drier and more of a plains thing so i guess it doesn't need a lot of water because it can also grow in like nepal in the mountains yeah but it grows in most places in the world yeah it's a tough plant i think it would be great if we started growing more mustard here take some pride in our communities to make things in this country just dave giving speeches in front of all these like guys in hard hats who are like mustard seeds harvesters come on man you know i grew up mustard johnny i grew up with him i saw

him down at the there's a community pool like one of those like you know sort of i can't do biden for too long you get it oh god where's this going dave it's a strange it's just or it's the it's that old man thing like every time i pick up a bottle Dave? It's a strange one. It's just... Or it's that old man thing, like, every time I pick up a bottle of mustard, there's a sticker on the bottom. Made in Nepal. You're like mad about it. You're like, why?

It's okay. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the Nepalese getting over on us. Well, and one last number here. It is the year 4,800 BC, approximately. That's the approximate date of the oldest evidence of humans cooking mustard seeds. They found carbonized seeds in Chinese pottery. So it's very ancient.

Been doing it forever. What did they do with it? Just like incorporate it into a meal? It wasn't like used for a sauce or something, right? Yeah, it's probably some kind of spicing an item. It doesn't seem like they made like the exact kind of mustard that we think of. But yeah, people have been cooking with the plant forever, mainly in Asia, Africa, Europe, and then it was brought to the Americas. I feel like as a huge dumbass, whenever I hear anything BC, I hear like 4800 BC, I immediately picture cavemen.

And then you're like, no, they're like civilizations then. They were like you. They're just, their teeth are way worse. It's like 4800 BC. And I immediately picture two cavemen with pounding one on a rock. And it's like, no, that's not. It was not that long ago.

It is weird though. I was a history major in college and I remember the people that were ancient historians, like I didn't think less of them because like they were everybody, you know, in my thesis sort of study group was like a much better student than me. But there was a part of me

where like they were talking about stuff and I was like, well, you don't know anything about that. Cause that was like, that's all gone. Like you're guessing about what was there and like you're writing but whereas like i have to read a book about a thing that happened like while my teacher was alive and then i have to write about that so they'll know if i'm wrong but for you maybe less so which i think was wrong i still like 30 feel that way, right? Yeah, that's fair. I was a history major too,

and I had an American history class where the professor was talking about Stokely Carmichael. And then at one point he was like, and when I talked to Stokely in the day, he said that he added, added, added. And I was like, oh, I'd better learn him pretty good because this guy met him. So I'd better be on top of that let's start putting quotes in front of like vince lombardi quotes in his mouth and being like as stokely cormac

famously said uh winning isn't everything it's the only thing it was in your aim profile and the professor corrected it yep yeah i don't know why you're you i don't know why you're instant messaging your your professor but i don't know in you're instant messaging your professor, but in this situation, it makes sense. Yeah. He's a person. What? He's a person. Yeah, you just hang out with the professor,

and it's like some lame, I don't know, some lame study group, and then you go form that MIT casino team, or whatever the history version of that is it's just like the professor is just gathering all the ace history students together to pull off some museum heist or something i don't know it's an utterly unsaleable version of oceans 11 where like you break into a library but you only are going there to like read a book yeah this one's reference only and then you take it out of the building

elaborate schemes Alex doing the like acrobat out of the box so he doesn't like damage the page of a rare book those are Terry Benedict's antiquities he's warning you

that's a really solid elliot gold invitation thank you i thought i thought he had joined the call it's going to take at least 11 of you that's just a relative amount. I was going to say. The show, the rest of the way, we have three big takeaways about mustard. We'll get into them. Starting with takeaway number one.

Mustard gets its flavor from 90 million years of warfare against caterpillars. And that's because like the mustard plant and its development and evolution, it's been a battle to prevent caterpillars from eating it. And the chemistry that comes from that is how we get the flavor. I think the last word in that sentence felt like it was added Mad Libs style, right? It was like the most random noun possible. I didn't know where that was going and i wasn't

expecting caterpillar to be the word well it does make a certain amount of sense the idea of like anything else like the idea of like any war that long it's like it pretty much has to be against a creature yeah that makes some sense in that like the flavor of it being so like acrid like of the leaf itself which being like really super like what's the i don't i guess like acrid is the the word that i would want to use like have you ever had like a mustard green like raw i don't think so no like a bite of it it's not pleasant it's like really uh like in the way that eating like the the wrong type of mint can be like where it's just kind of like a flavor uh that is oppressive but like out of

proportion to the amount of it that you're eating but i always associate that with things that have like evolved to not be eaten you can still eat them though it's your person and yeah you can't run it's just a plant you've that's why you've evolved past caterpillars you're like we're cooking this yeah seriously sorry i'm faster and i know how to prepare it see a caterpillar trying to braise that good luck good luck ass i was gonna say but i remember it's a you can't use the words i just also swore i just get real worked up about caterpillars i know i hate those guys we'll do a blue show at 1230 tonight where we really unload on the caterpillars in the back room of the casino. Terry Benedict's casino. Callback.

Yeah. There he is. I love it. We have two main sources for this, this battle between mustard and caterpillars. One is a Smithsonian article. between mustard and caterpillars. One is a Smithsonian article. It's called Mustard is a Product of Evolutionary Warfare Between Plants and Caterpillars by Helen Thompson.

And the other is a book called Mustard, A Global History by Demet Guze. I love books like that. I've never read them, but there's so many of them. And I love that there's an industry there where like when in doubt, you can pitch a book that's just like flounder, like American history through a fish.

And they're like, all right, well, yes, that's a yes. Write that book. So I own the book because I was in a great bookstore. It's called Malaprops Books in Asheville, North Carolina. And it partly jumped off the shelf to me because it is mustard colored, right? Like the power of mustard lured me in again. Nice. Like it's just this yellow book. I'm like, what? Who does that? And then here we are. So this is chemistry stuff here.

And it springs from, it turns out mustard seed is not spicy until it is crushed. And when it is crushed, there's a chemical called glucosinolates and an enzyme called myrosinase. And you don't really need to know what those are but the point is when it's crushed those two things mix and then you get the like they would say an acrid or like pungent smelly kind of mustardy strength when those two things mix awesome yeah and so then from there according to smithsonian quote we can thank caterpillars for the pungency of our mustards because the mustard plant defends itself against insects by producing glucosinolates. And then insects like caterpillars or cabbage butterflies evolved resistance to those over millions of years. And so then since

the plant was still getting eaten, the mustard plant developed more and stronger chemicals, and then the caterpillars got stronger. And it's just a back and forth battle that scientists have dated to about 90 million years of evolution. So that's how mustards got strong and interesting. Who's on top right now? Oh, I don't know. Not the caterpillars, you got to assume. They're regrouping right now.

Yeah. Yeah, probably getting back together and being like, well, look, obviously we've been getting our asses kicked the last 11 million years. And I'm sick of it. 2048, though, they're going to be eating the crap out of some mustard plants. Just like, oh, God, caterpillars are back.

They have like weird red mouths. They can like suddenly just destroy mustard. That's how evolution works, I think. suddenly destroy mustard that's how evolution works i think yep well apparently the plants can now create 120 different glucosinolates and i know i keep saying that long chemical word but basically that it's a real arms race like the caterpillars should get guns or something like there's something that's got to come next you know yeah we can't eat you but we can shoot you yeah that's it it's very american way of thinking about this thing. Nobody wins.

We've been getting boat raced for basically an unimaginably long period of time. Maybe guns would help. Little tiny caterpillar guns. But they have like a dozen of them in all their little hands. Yeah, their little weird cilia. Waving them around. That's how they get places. That's like an enemy in an earthworm

gym game right but yeah but that's a pretty quick takeaway it's also there's a quote here from food science writer harold mcgee who defines mustard's pungency as quote neither a taste nor a smell but a general feeling of irritation that verges on pain that's and i like that a lot because mustard's almost more of a feeling than like a flavor. And it's because it comes from these like chemicals that are designed to fight caterpillars. That's a much better way of saying it than what I,

which I mean, it makes sense. That's Harold McGee's job, but that is a very astute way of describing the experience of it. And also why like the first times you have it as a kid, you're kind of like trying to keep a straight face and like hold yourself down on it. Yeah. Yeah, it just kind of hits you and you're like, this is food.

But then later you decide it's food. Yeah. That's a pretty quick one. The next takeaway here is a bunch of sports stuff. Takeaway number two. Mustard has even more to do with sports than you might think, especially in America. The first one here is that the French's brand, which we all know is like the yellow mustard in the US, and I think elsewhere too, but French's became the top US mustard in a lot of ways by

like dovetailing with hot dogs and baseball becoming popular at the turn of the century. It's also a thing where French's is the current top brand in the US and it's number two is Grey Poupon and number three is Golden's. But French's is like the long time number one. I don't know if it's your, well, we were talking a little bit about it before. How do you feel about French's being number one? Is it too basic? Is it too lame? It's not surprising, but that's what I, if I picture a bottle of yellow mustard, I think it's probably French's, right? Yeah.

I mean, for what it is, I guess it's like the good kind of that type of mustard. It's not my favorite kind personally, but like I draw, I'm also like, I've become more generous about this, I guess, as I get older, the same way that like I draw a distinction between like Domino's and then like pizza, you know, that it's like, not that like, you know, Dominoes isn't pizza it's just like it's a version of pizza that is like identifiably like for a different palette than like the pizza that you might like to have or even the pizza that you get from like a pizzeria just like a local place and i guess like for french's to me is like entry-level mustard but

that makes sense that it would be number one for that because it has the least of all of the you know the harold mcgee words that you used earlier going on with it yeah yeah and very by design yeah and so the the history of these three brands the oldest one is golden's which if people don't know is like a spicy brown mustard and it's the longest produced american mustard it started in 1867 and they made it in manhattan near the south street seaport so just like mustard seeds show up on a ship, and you start making mustard immediately kind of thing. Hell yeah. Sweet. So it's very, very old-timey.

I have some Goldens in my pantry right now, actually. It's not my usual brand, but there was a sale. I just want everybody to know the whole truth. That was going to leak if you didn't get out ahead of it. Yeah, right. This is it. This is like Crisis PR 101. truth that was gonna leak if you didn't get out ahead of it yeah right this is it like crisis pr 101 once ross starts talking about mustard obviously all my the legions of haters start

digging into it my family needs time with our mustard right now uh if we can just please please respect our privacy and so for basically the rest of the 1800s golden's is the number one american mustard gray poupon on the other hand doesn't really get into the u.s until those Privacy. And so for basically the rest of the 1800s, Golden's is the number one American mustard. Grey Poupon, on the other hand, doesn't really get into the US until those commercials in the 1980s. It started in France in the 1800s. But there's a great old Malcolm Gladwell article in The New Yorker that describes people trying to do a new ketchup. And along the way, he describes that in the early 70s, Grey Poupon in the U.S. was no more than a $100,000 a year business, which is tiny for like a brand of anything. How could they afford all the Rolls Royces?

Everything's rented. It's all for show. They maxed out their credit cards. They're like, oh, this better pay off. We're screwed. And they did like, I know we're joking, but they took like a little bit of a leap. Apparently something called the Who Blind Company owns the Grey Poupon brand. And then they were just finding out that it kept winning blind taste tests. And so they gave like a little bit of money to a Manhattan ad agency named Lowe Marshall,

who put out the first, pardon me, would you have any great poupon tv commercial in 1981 and in cities where the ads ran sales of great poupon leaped 40 to 50 percent it just like completely turned it into a brand one ad that was all it took incredible an aspirational brand that is an aspirational copy yeah yeah gonna be some dumbass being there rich guy like one of those like hideous 80s rich guys that like somehow didn't even eat well like like the trump diet dudes where everything you get is just like a big steak with like a lemon wrapped in cheesecloth and like a sprig of parsley and that's like the absolute apex you can't pay money for food that's better than that in the u.s until like 1995 just like being appalled by king ralph all the time you're not

even like the cool rich guy you're the rich guy who's like never like weird that that character's not like the villain in the commercial like you never see that be like who you're supposed to be. That's true. There's definitely two of them. And it's like, whatever, the brothers from Trading Places. Yeah. The idea of like watching it and being like, oh, well, those guys like it. Drops the racial slur in the ad.

Yeah. It's like, man, these guys are financial monsters. But I mean, they probably know what mustard is so i'm gonna just suck it up and buy it they get results i i remember someone pointing out a friend of mine pointed out like great coupon hasn't really advertised since then right yeah oh yeah i feel like those ads were so effective at like establishing a brand that they just kind of were like, let's just like leave it. And they have just left it since then. There was never a time in like 2000. I could be wrong. I certainly don't remember any. But there was never like,

meet the new Grey Poupon in like 2004, where they rebranded and it was like cartoony. You know, it's the same packaging, like no TV tv ads they're just on shelves and that they've just coasted off that initial push and the wayne's world parody i respect that me too very much yeah and the idea of like not of like resisting that temptation to like spend some extra money and have like dan cortez eat it and like make some 90s face into the camera or whatever like that's smart like eats it turns black and white there's like three of them and then it's like there's no he's the great great poupon doesn't have a twitter account where it's like talking

about depression and stuff you know it's like guys i think i think our next heist should be heisting ourselves into some kind of decision making role at great poupon because this sounds great uh well no i would i would want to keep it i'd be like i'd want to get in charge and then be like don't do any of this stuff keep just coast off those 80s ads like this is the stuff that like when a marketing company like lands a new client they're like we have to do all this new stuff so we can prove we like juice the sales and like they just have not needed to do that for whatever reason i appreciate it imagine the the ideas that they've been brought by people over the years and people been like all right so you know these two old guys like they've obviously died i mean just considering how old they were in the 80s so these are their kids

and their kids are into extreme flavors and into like just like awesome flavor blasting of all the food that they have names are kyle and lyle two cars will drive up but it'll be dodge neons and it'll be dave coulier and butt'll be Dave Coulier and Buttnick from Salute Your Shorts. And it'll run during the Super Bowl, and everyone's going to talk about it. It'll be like, oh, Buttnick's back. But we'll leak it like four weeks before the Super Bowl so everyone talks about it. And you're like, we don't need any of this.

Oh, man. And it is that iconic of a commercial. It built their brand and kind of the idea of eating Dijon in the US, because until then we had yellow mustard and we had spicy brown mustard before that, and that was it. Because the French's company, they were founded and were drawn on an article from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, which is the main newspaper in Rochester, New York, because the RT French company was founded in Rochester in 1880. And mustard was one of their first products, but it was like the spicy brown kind. They weren't

doing what they do now right away. They were also making prepared food mixes, household supplies, and pet foods, like just anything they could think of as a company, they were making it. And then from there, in the early 1900s francis french who was the son of robert timothy french uh he asked the team there he said hey come up with a more appealing version of mustard because maybe there's a way and a spice mill manager named george dunn developed a smooth and bright yellow mustard that they branded as french's cream salad brand mustard because you were partly supposed to use it to make salad dressings or cream things.

But then they premiered it at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. They served it on hot dogs. And that dovetailed really well with hot dogs being a thing. And 1904 is like kind of, you know, beginning of modern baseball right around there. And so they were kind of in the right place modern baseball right around there uh and so they were kind of in the right place at the right time with a very uh fun approachable mustard that was what it took awesome i love world's fair world's fairs and world's fair history like can immediately

picture that yeah yeah it's definitely i sort of i'm sure that being alive in 1904 absolutely sucked ass and i don't want to be in any way nostalgic for something that I would not want to experience myself. But there is something cool about the idea of history moving forward in increments related to world's fairs. That was the period for it, right? It was like a 20- or 30-year period where it's like, yeah, meet the vacuumed cleaner, like that kind of stuff. It's just great, and it's on yeah meet the vacuumed cleaner like that kind of stuff it's just great

and it's on like a rotating futuristic thing it's also like ancient roman looking it's like yeah it's great i love it when ours grew up in chicago our 1890s when i was like what's it famous for and they were like well the city had just burned down and then during the fair there were a bunch of murders and i was like oh we we didn't get a good one huh okay well that's tough no anything good get introduced there and they're like well spree killing yeah the crime of the future behold one man can can kill dozens of men it's like housewife in an apron just stabbing like so much easier all these people that got got on a buggy in indiana like three days earlier being like

that is incredible look at that is that's awful they also they got it like we're talking about the world's fairs being important and they really were important at the time and off of this world's fair within five years french's mustard sales doubled and then from there they were so associated with baseball that in 1915 they introduced the pennant logo that we know now and it was explicitly a reference to like pennants at baseball stadiums and the style of baseball stadiums. Of course. And so like as the mass culture of that grew, one of the parts was this is mustard now.

Like it's not this old spicy brown thing. It's French's. Hiding in plain sight makes total sense. I haven't, I never like made that connection, but it's so obvious. And then there's two other real fast sports things here. One of them is that also because of baseball, America is home to the world's largest mustard museum. The National Mustard Museum is in Middleton, Wisconsin, which is a suburb of Madison. It has over 60,000 types of mustard as of 2019,

receives 35,000 visitors per year in normal times. And it was founded by a lawyer in Wisconsin there. He's told people he specifically spent time organizing a mustard museum and putting it together to get over depression caused by his beloved Boston Red Sox losing the 1986 World Series to the New York Mets. So he poured his time into a mustard museum to get over it. There's like a, I'm trying to like who would write the novel that that would be about like it's a little too like picker-esque for richard ford but there's that's definitely like got a like 80s 90s uh like male literary vibe to it i like it though that's a very pleasing story arc and now the red socks are good and the Mets are bad. I hope he's happy. I was thinking like 2000, I was thinking like 2006, like twee indie movie, like Little Miss Sunshine type thing.

Oh, yeah. Oh, he runs a mustard museum. And it's like all like cutesy kind of thing, like Michelle Gondry type stuff. Yeah. Can we, can we? Greg Kinnear slowly revealing that he's actually not as happy as he seems yeah why would i not be happy i love mustard i have 700 types of mustard like then like michelle monaghan or somebody is like i think that this house is actually empty

for all the mustard you have in it because it has no love or whatever and then alan arkin comes downstairs and is like why are you yelling and that's the whole anyway no no no i mean it is alan arkin in the movie i just mean the voice the voice i missed an opportunity to do an elliot gould voice that's the embarrassing part off of that we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan

Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Maximumfund.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, And remember, no running in the halls.

And there's one one final sports thing, which is that and I didn't know this until I saw a weird hockey thing last year. But it turns out mustard is kind of a sports drink. Like and this isn't just an American thing. You can consume straight up mustard to beat cramps and to prevent cramps in yourself. What? It's an anti-inflammatory? Or something like that? Yeah, it's like, and the Mustard, a Global History book dives into how it might be physical, or it might be neurological, but one of the two, mustard is helpful. Because cramps, if they're caused physically, they're caused by dehydration or by not having enough acetic acid. And mustard contains acetic acid, has sodium as an electrolyte,

and then also turmeric is anti-inflammatory. So all that helps prevent cramps. And so occasionally you see runners or other athletes consuming like a packet of mustard straight up and then continuing with what they're doing and it's because mustard is some kind of uh like cramp fighting substance because of its chemistry i've never seen that never knew that yeah that wouldn't be the grossest thing that i've seen a runner like just like a packet that i've watched somebody running blast down their throat during a marathon like if it was mustard i'd'd be like, all right, well, at least I get that. Like you're taking it, you know, whatever the other stuff that like power applesauce that you're eating, like that doesn't sound really nearly as legitimate.

Because if people want to see it in the show legs, there's a video from the NHL, September of 2019. The video is titled Mark Letestu chows down on mustard in third period and and the caption is just with the third period underway in winnipeg mark letestu of the jets procures a packet of mustard on the bench and quickly scurfs it down exclamation point but like on youtube half the comments are people just laughing about it and then the other half are people just trying are like it helps with muscle cramps cut it out like stop it like stop stop making fun uh because i guess it does like he just knows this thing and other athletes do too it sounds like a hazing thing

for like a rookie player like yeah we all uh we just scarfed down mustard on the bench here you go rook like you first and then they do it and it becomes a viral video you like it yeah yeah this all fits so because mustard is one of those like the greens are one of those things where you see i don't know if uh you guys are big green market guys but there's a certain type of of green market experience you can get where like there's a stand that has produce and then like instead of that's just saying what this is and how much it costs there'll be like one super dubious paragraph about all of the health benefits that it affords you if you eat it and i feel like mustard is one that's always like this is like nothing is better for your liver than eating this or whatever and you just have to be like all right i don't know like

i assume you grew it yeah i didn't i didn't know any of that i was wondering if it was going to be one of those like remember all those like 2008 like internet articles that were like if you get cut put bacon on it and it like stops the bleeding and you're like yeah no one's gonna do that but apparently people do do this with mustard so yeah like gatorade exists and stuff but guys are using mustard i don't know it's just what they're up to yeah you can't it gets you it gets you direct it's like the uh you know you don't have to wait for your body to process the liquids when you've got the kind of uh spicy slurry um beef yes if you just like ate a packet of mustard maybe that would just be like whoa

kind of snap you out of it type thing that's what like the 90s ads for gray poupon would have been like that bit that you just did right there there would have been like a like sound effect and you would have been like loaded with pow like teacher like it's like all gray from like 18 inches away like squirting it down into their mouth someone's leaning over you like yeah that's like whatever whoever that would be i don't know pick a wrestler sting is doing it for some reason and the activity they're doing is like human bowling

or something they're like and then they like run and go in a bunch of huge bowling pins you're like we have one last takeaway before the bonus episode let's get into it takeaway number three a surprising number of world religions and cultures feature a story based on mustard. We'll go through them real fast because there are six different traditions here that all feature a mustard story. I think I had heard of the parable of the mustard seed in Christianity, but that was the only one I knew going into researching it. Same, and I'm not Christian, so I'm going to learn a lot from this other stuff. This will be interesting. In Christianity, there is, in the Gospels,

in the parable of the mustard seed, there's a story where Jesus is talking to the disciples, and according to Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verse 3132, he says, quote, The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field, though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the metaphor of mustard seeds are so incredibly tiny. And then I sent you guys some pictures of like what especially the black mustard species can grow into. It looks like an enormous bush. So then it became a biblical metaphor, is something people talk about.

Cool. That's scientifically true also, right, basically? Yeah. There's some little internet articles that will say, actually, an orchid has a smaller seed, but the point is the metaphor, and yes. It's a very, very tiny seed, and then you don't get an actual full-on tree

but you get a very very large plant yeah does the gospel include that it's like actually it's like shut up yeah that's just good religion you have to you have to be willing to acknowledge every caveat at excruciating length and the lamb of god replied you know what i mean especially the tidiness of the seed ends up becoming a thing in a lot of other traditions. The book of Mustard, A Global History talks about how in some Jewish texts, apparently the universe is compared to a mustard seed to demonstrate that all that exists now was packed into the tiniest imaginable speck of space at the universe's beginning. The 1200s Jewish scholar Namanides said that, of space at the universe's beginning, the 1200s Jewish scholar

Naamanides said that, quote, at the briefest instant following creation, all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard, end quote. I think, I don't know if that's scriptural, that might be more of a thinker and philosopher, but apparently it comes up there too. He he was but he was an important one so that is i you know also that sounds kind of big bangish or whatever yeah yeah it's very advanced yeah that's uh surprisingly apt for a very old assessment yeah good job dude yeah i'm interested in the ones from the religions that i'm not remotely familiar with though like hit me with give me some some different ones yeah well the the rest we have

are islam and buddhism and greek mythology and then the nepalese tharu culture god nepal there's a lot of places to go don't you marry mustard um can you give us one of the other ones apparently in the quran there's a passage that says quote none shall enter the fire of hell who has in his heart the weight of a mustard seed of faith and none shall enter paradise who has in his heart the weight of a mustard seed of pride uh end quote just kind of a nice verse yeah kind of a if you have faith you will go somewhere nice and and if you have pride you won't kind of. Kind of like the go-to smallest, lightest thing imaginable of the era, right? It's like, interesting. Yeah, the tininess of the seed.

People are like, what metaphors can I do? What can I bring out? It's like not just a grain of rice. That's like hacky. Yeah. Or like a light as a feather or something like that. It's like mustard seed. It's like, cool.

Well, that's good. We can probably massage the language, but I get what you're saying about getting into Paradise Hall. I just need something zippier. I need something zippier than rice. Let's go around the room. And they keep eating huge Dodger dogs until they think of it. Like, oh.

huge dodger dogs until they think of it like oh a huge glob of mustard falls or falls on the on like the parchment it's like yeah we've come up with so many 1995 commercials for mustard just in the last few minutes i think we found our greatest skill here yeah that feels good yep traveling back in time and pitching incredibly dated ads for products that were doing fine they're like we're doing fine we're selling plenty of mustard i'm like but you could do this barging into a conference room with like a plan to make Starburst racist for some reason. Well, that's no segue necessary. A Buddhist parable.

This is the story of Kisa Gotami and the mustard seed. And it's a story where Kisa Gotami was the wife of a rich man. And she felt sorrow after her only child died, and so she was taken to the Buddha. And then the Buddha told her, quote, he could bring back her child if she could get a white mustard seed from a family which has had no death. After searching house after house, Kisa Gotami saw that every house had mustard seed, but no house was spared from death, end quote quote and then she learns that death is is a fact of life and and is uh accepts the loss and that's a parable in the tradition there

it's a good takeaway but for a little for a second i was like what is why is he doing this like yeah sounded a little like double dare it's also kind of nicely old testamenty in the sense that like it doesn't resolve in a way that is like favorable for you it's just like a way a way to teach you something sad but they're like well give them some do have a do a bit of business before they learn this obvious sad thing yeah i was i was also slightly apprehensive of bringing uh you know like serious stories into a silly podcast but i don't know i'm amazed that mustard is in so many of these things. So that's why we're exploring them, yeah? Yeah, me too.

And also, there's two more here. One is Greek mythology. This is a story where it's like early... Oh, man, someone's going to f*** the mustard. Nice. Oh, what? I forgot I can't say that. It's all right.

It was the correct word. You're fine. Yeah. So this is like the early, early part of Greek mythology where there are titans, and then you like work to the gods later. And so the titan Kronos eats all of his children because he believes that one of them will overthrow him. You don't need to say why he did it.

He had a good reason, Dave. I'm sure. It's a titan. And so he has eaten five children and then his son zeus is born uh so zeus's mom hides zeus so he can't find him and then zeus figures out i can make my father chronos throw up and if i do that all my siblings will pop out of him and so zeus feeds him an emetic drink that is mustard with salt and honey and that's based on mustard actually working as a vomit inducing substance if you use it that way in real life

so mustard is a key greek mythology thing as central to it as barfing and uh and sex i'm i'm never totally clear on the powers of like greek gods and and titans and stuff because it's like they have the power to like eat and swallow all of their children and they can create the earth and whatnot but like they can't like not throw up from a drink that's what's so good about it is that they they control everything they like have unlimited power except for like they can be pranked and are pranked constantly yeah a lot of dumb contests and stuff they're they're just yeah i married the seas to the skies like now to celebrate with a little drink. Oh, this isn't sitting right. Oh, man.

Yeah, they're the best. The last one here, we returned to Nepal. There's the Tharu culture in Nepal. They have a practice where women receive tattoos made from a mixture of mustard oil and cow dung that's stabbed into them with a thorn from a tree. And then the mustard oil is naturally antiseptic. So it's a pretty healthy way to get a tattoo with old fashioned things. End quote. Tharu believe that when they die, they cannot take anything with them but their tattoos. On the way to heaven, if one finds hardships, one can sell the tattoos and therefore make the

journey to heaven more comfortable. End quote. so there's a culture in nepal where people are receiving like mustard tattoos uh for the afterlife whole thing it is it is like genuinely interesting how many of these revolve around the like known physical scientific properties of mustard right yeah like they're not it's not like totally magical or totally metaphorical it's like stuff that mustard measurably does even in like parables. Cool. Yeah. I had a similar thought and this is something kind of weird about it because I everything

that works in the world now feels like a mistake or an accident somehow, you know, that there's just like a sense in which like, like, I don't know how people that are as dumb as people are now built bridges or like let alone you know figured out medicine or like the large hadron collider or whatever like that just seems completely beyond humanity and yet like clearly you know there this stuff was not an accident people did observe things and come up with you know totally ingenious sort of solutions to problems that have existed forever i don't know why they stopped i think that would be a thing to pick back up to the extent that we could manage that yeah people being good at things yeah yeah yeah like i think that would definitely be like a cool thing to like turn that back on like however that was

like switched off and they were like now you're only good at like inventing an app that like makes somebody come to your house and do your laundry for you and loses four billion dollars a month yeah i'm all for that can we make can we make that happen alex oh yeah human success we're bringing it back folks we're bringing it back, folks. We're bringing it back, is what I would say at the rally. We're going to do it. You hear that so much. Man, I hope humanity listens through the end of this podcast. There were some rocky parts in there. I'm worried that they got turned off by some of the profanity that was used, even if it was beefed.

But I feel like this takeaway is very important. They were about to save humanity until they heard my Elliot Gould impression. And they just didn't have everyone logged off. I'm like, no. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Dan Hopper and David Roth for diving deep into that topic and into advertisement ideas I wish the world contained. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more

secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is probably the darkest bonus topic I have ever chosen. It also leads to a positive result for the world at the end of the story. So you will hear us grapple with the darkness of it. You will hear us be thrilled that it turns out to have a silver lining. So visit SIFpod.fun. You can get that bonus show. You can get a dozen other bonus shows from the entire run of this podcast, and you can back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring

mustard with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, mustard gets its flavor from 90 million years of warfare against caterpillars. Takeaway number two, mustard has even more to do with sports than you would think. And takeaway number three, a surprising number of world religions and cultures feature a key story or parable based on mustard. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. Dan Hopper is a managing editor at Ranker.com. R-A-N-K-E-R. Please check out his work there. Check him out on Twitter at Dan Hopp, H-O-P-R. Please check out his work there. Check him out on Twitter, at Dan Hopp, H-O-P-P. And then

David Roth is at Defector.com, also co-hosting the Distraction podcast for Defector. And it is audience-supported media that ought to exist, and I hope you'll check it out. Please support it. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A hugely important book for this episode, it is called Mustard, A Global History by Demet Guze, who's a food writer and food historian. The book was published in 2019. It's part of what's called the Edible series. They do deep dives on all kinds of different items, but particularly big thanks to writer Demet Guze for her book, Mustard, A Global History. Another key source is an article from Smithsonian. It's called Mustard is a Product of Evolutionary Warfare Between Plants and

Caterpillars, as by Helen Thompson in 2015. And a great article from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the newspaper of Rochester, New York. That article is called French's Started Right Here in Rochester. It's by Alan Murrell. Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Their newest album is called Long in the Tooth. It's excellent, and it's available at daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons, and now more

than ever, because we just finished the mini membership drive for this show. It's a thing I came up with to do a fun version of our first Patreon goal where everybody supporting the show gets to have a sticker and a thank you card from me sent to them. So many of you stepped up. We met that goal and beat it two days ahead of schedule, ahead of time, and then everybody else after that got to join in on the fun too. So I'm talking to many new patrons right now, and I want to extra special just thank you for helping make this show a thing that exists and bringing this kind of thing to everyone we possibly can. And of course, for you new patrons,

especially, I hope you enjoy now more than a dozen bonus shows, including the one this week, but all kinds of bonus shows for you. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.