Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pears

Episode Date: October 5, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/podcasters Jackie Kashian (The Dork Forest, The Jackie and Laurie Show) and Riley Silverman (Troubled Waters, The Game Of Rassilon) for a look at why pears are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

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to really like what you get. If you're a donor, by Thursday, October 15th, you get this gift. So if you love the podcast, but you haven't become a supporter yet, I recommend going to sifpod.fun. Head to sifpod.fun to make that happen and to get all the other benefits you get as a backer, like weekly explicit episodes and bonus shows. And speaking of shows, please enjoy this one. Pears. Known for being a fruit. Famous for being a fruit. They're just fruit. Nobody thinks much about them. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why pears are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is.

My name is Alex Schmidt, and I am not alone. My guests today are Jackie Cation and Riley Silverman. Jackie Cation is a comic I hope you know. She has some excellent albums out. Her most recent is called I Am Not the Hero of This Story. It was the number one comedy album on iTunes and Amazon, and it's critically acclaimed. It also, it has one of my favorite chunks about talking about politics now, and she does it just brilliantly. She's also one of the best and funniest podcasters in the game. She is the co-host of The Jackie and Laurie Show with the amazing comedian and comedy writer Laurie Kilmartin. And Jackie is also the host of The Dork Forest, which is a podcast

that I had just the immense pleasure of discovering a few months back when my previous job ended. A lot of people reached out with ideas and things, and one of them was to go and guest on that show. And then I found out it was the podcast I had always needed in my life. It's people being geeky about especially geek culture things, but many other things too. And it's just wonderful. It's called The Dork Forest. She's also a comedy writer and writes for things like the Troubled Waters podcast, which is a comedy debate show on Maximum Fun. Really great. You can also hear Riley role-playing and also portraying a character and also doing comedy and having fun kind of all at once on a great podcast called The Game of Rassilon, which is an actual play Doctor Who podcast. Riley, she gets to be the doctor in that show, which is, I think, every fan of that show's dream, as far as I can tell. Just be the doctor. Really exciting.

I've also done some podcasts with Riley before, and she's so fun to dig into basically any idea with. So just the perfect guest for this. Jackie's the perfect guest as well. I'm so glad Jackie and Riley are here. 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 Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Jackie and Riley each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva, and Keech, and Chumash, and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples. And to acknowledge that in all of our locations all over, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about pears. And since it's an audio medium, I should probably spell it P-E-A-R-S. I'm talking about the fruit and not, you know, sets of two things. Homonyms are trouble

if you're podcasting. Watch out for them. Don't like it. Fix the language. But anyway, pears, the fruit, are a fruit that has a more interesting present day situation than you might think. And then let me tell you, this episode jumps off into some of my favorite bizarre historical stories through pears. You would not think they are such a doorway into really baffling historical events and beliefs, but they are. It works, and you'll hear why. So please sit back or sit at your drawing table and sketch the pearhead cartoon that's going to save democracy. And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Jackie

Cation and Riley Silverman. I will be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Jackie, Riley, thank you so much for making the time for this, for talking pairs. I'm very excited. Yeah. I feel welcomed. It's lovely. I feel the excitement just oozing off of us. We're going to discuss the big issues, right? Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't have framed it right away as talking pairs, because that's not the most exciting way to think of this. There's going to be a lot of history. There's going to be a lot of, I think, fascinating things. But with every episode, I always start by asking the guests, what is your relationship to

this topic or opinion of it? So either of you can dive into it. But how do you feel about pears in your life? I honestly, like I read that in the notes, and I was like, I have almost no relationship to pears. I don't find that it's necessarily a fruit that I dislike, but it's also not one that I excitedly go for. I think that I tend to fall more into the citrus category of my fruit searches. I'm a citrus fan. Oh, yeah. And I think my immediate feeling was to quote the 12th Doctor from Doctor Who,

which is never eat pears. Oh, nice quote. That's something they say wow cool it's one of the advice he gives his next regeneration upon the upon his death it's never eat pears wow uh so that's like so but is that is that advice about like all of life on earth and existence and one of the main highlights it's don't eat pears it's's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's like run fast, laugh hard, be kind and never eat pears.

So the 12th doctor anti-pear. Yeah. Oh, I'm thrilled to know. All right. I love pears. I enjoy them. I wait for them every season.

I love a pear. I like a Bartlett. I like that red one that I don't know the name of. And then I, uh, and then like all the different guys, if there's several different kinds of pears, I like to get one of each and then they're always, I like them. Uh, I like them ripe though. I don't like a hard crisp pear. A lot of people like to put them in the fridge, eat a crisp pear. I'll eat a crisp pear cut up. I'm not biting into it. That feels dumb. But, uh, I like to put them in the fridge, eat a crisp pear. I'll eat a crisp pear. Cut up.

I'm not biting into it. That feels dumb. But I like a ripe pear and I like to eat it over the sink. Is that TMI? Too much? No, can't be. No, it's great. The minutia is where this show, I think, should go. Jackie, do you use like an apple core type thing to slice your pear up or do you just

go right for it with a knife? Oh, no, I don't own one of those apple core things that i i always figure um here's now here's more information apples and pears if i'm eating an apple or a pear in the car yeah i will sometimes very rarely throw the core out of the window because it is biodegradable it doesn't feel like littering and i loathe littering but i often more often than not i just eat the core oh wow yeah like an animal really like a like a beast of either fruit apple or pear you're just like i can take it yeah it's still fruit i can handle it i have this is old peasant stock this will process whatever weird food until it doesn't, until I am killed by a random peasant experience. It could have been childbirth, but it wasn't, you guys.

It wasn't. All y'all. Because I was a picky kid, and I'm somewhat a picky adult. And then one time I was eating an apple with somebody. And then I was going to get rid of the core the core and they were like you're not done yet oh wow i was like what do you mean they were like there's a lot more of distance toward the core you could go you're being very finicky about like like you're only eating the outer prime region you really got to keep going and i was like oh interesting i see everybody's different i mean the great thing about eating an apple or a pear is that um you don't need to like it's

usually tidier than because if you have slices then you get wet weird apple juice on your or pear juice on your hand and it gets a little sticky it's not too bad i think i think when you get the when you use like quick cut thing, I feel like all that stuff is pretty contained in the piece and you don't get those juices coming out until you bite into it. You get the hang of it. Yeah. And plus it's probably a learned skill. Possibly, yeah.

I mean, it's not, I mean, I just put the fruit in my mouth and eat it. I didn't have to navigate the waters of apple eating or anything like that. This is so interesting because this is what people must listen to the dork forest go, I think they're done. Are they done talking about whatever that... But no, I think you've got places to go with this pear talk.

Is that what I'm hearing, Alex? Yeah, I'm really glad we're talking about usability and also apples because that's all going to come up. Yeah, there's like, especially with's all going to come up. Yeah. Oh, good. There's like, especially with pears, kind of a usability issue. Where do they come from? Where do pears come from?

I'm just curious about, yeah, where do pears come from? I mean, trees, right? Yeah. I meant. I know. I know. I'm sorry. It was low-hanging fruit.

Uzbekistan? You're riffing. I'm so sorry. It was. Although it's technically not low-hanging fruit would be it's high it's high-hanging blend uh on every episode our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and that all comes in a segment called stats ah savior of the number verse, baum, baum, baum, baum. You wrote the music.

That name was submitted by Paul Nevious and by at Father Mountain and by at ask underscore Jeremy. 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. The less good, the better. Submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment to at Sifpod on twitter or to sifpod at gmail.com that's so weird because i i literally just wrote a round for trouble waters this week that involves the flash gordon theme

song and i don't know how the odds are that that would come up twice in one week in podcast form wow that's amazing because yeah i i've never had a suggestion come from so many people all at once as this one did. This one, like, everybody pitched it all the way. It's just like in the air, I guess, this Queen song. Really exciting. Yeah. Well, Flash Gordon did come out 40 years ago. It's a 40-year-old movie at this point.

So maybe people are excited about the anniversary. That's probably it, yeah. But we got a few numbers here about pairs in general. And this first one leads into where are they from in a world way. Because the first number is three. There are three general types of pear trees. And I think not everybody knows that. There's the flowering pear tree, where you mostly get flowers and you don't really get fruit.

There's the European pear tree, which you get the Bartlett and the Anju and all the ones that we think of as like a pointy pear. And then the Asian pear tree, which is a fruit that not everybody in the U.S. is like familiar with or knows about. But it's incredibly common, especially in East Asia. Is that that round one? Yeah. Is it roundish? Yeah, they're also called apple pears. Yeah.

It's delicious. Which of these is what the ones that partridges are known to hang out in oh uh kind of none oh yeah partridges are a ground nesting bird so they don't mess with any of them they don't like it that is awesome that you are correct as soon as you said that i was like of course they are but i didn't i didn't yeah i didn't oh yeah nice work yeah well played Oh, yeah. Nice work. Yeah. Well played. Yeah. Whole song's a fraud.

Who needs it? And it goes on forever. It does. It's laborious. It is. Right. Dancers show up and lords. Come on.

I'm busy. Don't need it. Got those swans making messes everywhere. You don't need it. And the next number here is 68%. 68% is the percentage of the world pear crop that was grown in China as of 2017. So like more than two thirds of all the pears in the entire world come from China. And I don't think people know that it's like a weirdly pear dominant country. That's actually really fascinating.

And that's and that's, is that specifically the apple pears you're talking about? Or is that also including European style pears? Like do they get imported into that, that that agricultural economy? Yeah, they do all of it. Yeah, all of the kinds and export a lot of them too. They're just really the next biggest country for pear growth is Argentina, and they grow less than 4% in the world. Like it's just China is this incredibly dominant pear grower. And next number here is 371 years old. 371 years old is the age of the oldest fruit tree in North America. And it's a pear tree. It's the Endicott pear tree in danvers massachusetts and it was planted around 1649 and it's still alive still makes fruit still fruiting okay that's actually really impressive destination pear tree yeah it's actually it was made a national landmark in 2011 and and people like come and visit it it has a fence around it now it's it's like a a important tree if any of

them are important they're all important Trees are the world's lungs. Exactly. I just finished Frodo and Party are coming back to the Shire. I'm going to reread A Lord of the Rings, and they're about to find out, sad sack, bad things have happened to the Party tree. Bad things have happened.

But they luckily have that acorn, and there will be a Malorn. Remember the Malorn, which is the elvish nut that Galadriel gave Samwise in Rivendell. It's a great story. Everyone should read it. It's called The Lord of the Rings, and it's much better than the movies, though I like the movies if I could forget that I read the books. I admit I have not read the books and I hear they're great

yeah the movies are like watching a very fancy episode of Willow I loved Willow don't get me wrong use the wand use the wand Willow anyway that's my impression of the goat I would say that impression my impression of the goat. I would say that impression was greatest of all time.

Yay! Riley Silverman, ladies and gentlemen. And there's one last number here, and it's a pretty weird thing. The number is more than 1,100. And more than 1,100 is the number of fake models of fruit on display at Museo della Frutta, which is the museum of fruit in Turin, Italy,

which is an entire museum in Italy dedicated to models of fake fruit. Is it 1,100 different types of fruit, or 1,100 specific fruits? Could there be a bowl of apples? Yeah, because I feel like grapes alone, it's going to get you a few hundred. Yeah, I think like a bunch of grapes would be one.

That's how they're counted. Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. And I bring it up because the top kind they have is they have 494 varieties of pears. Oh, wow. Fake artificial pears that somebody made. Okay, models of pears. Oh, wow. Fake artificial pears that somebody made. Okay, models of pears. People love painting pears.

That bowl of fruit business. People have been doing that still life of bowl of fruit for hundreds of years. Yeah, and a pear is frequently part of that. I feel like people like showing off they can do that curve. Right, right. That's a real sweet, sweet, sexy pear.

It's basically an artist's way of saying i'm gonna be drawing a naked lady right now but since i have to do this i'm doing a pair much like this podcast trying to keep it clean we're trying to get into the mo my hair yeah right if i had more friends this wouldn't be a pair but that is what's going on i could get this at the store so well played well played there's also there's a weird thing uh especially with the past being so into fruit um we'll link an article from atlas obscure they talk about how this fruit museum um according to a botanist named valeria fossa who lives there uh sorry who works there, she says nearly 70% of the fruits on display at the fruit museum have gone extinct. Like we still have pears, but the kinds and varieties of pears have gone away or aren't grown anymore.

And so they're using the fake fruits there to figure out what fruit types used to be and like what kind of fruits people used to grow because they have fake ones that they can use as models. Oh, that's fascinating. All right. Well, I think from there, we've got the stats that we can go into. There are three big takeaways for the episode. And just to preview it for people, the last two of them are crazy stories from history. But the first one is about pears specifically.

And takeaway number one. American pear growers are jealous of apples. That's a thing. I think not everybody knows that the overall like American. Oh, I can see that. I can see that. You can see it? Yeah.

That tracks 100%. It's kind of like when you see commercials on TV where like Burger King or Pepsi are trying to take down McDonald's and Coke. But like Coke and McDonald's never have to mention their competitors because they're just doing so well. Yeah, that's exactly what this feels like to me of like this is an apple world yeah you want to be a pear that's your choice man yeah I'm just imagining a commercial now where it's Justin Long and John Hodgman Justin Long is still an apple but John Hodgman's now i guess i guess that doesn't work because that was pro apple i thought this whole analogy falls flat and i apologize i should have stuck with mcdonald's and moved on i had it i i i had a full cup of coffee you really had a full cup

of coffee i kept trying to pour i don't know what's wrong with me yeah riley riley we got to imagine justin long and john hodg wearing fruit costumes. And that is irreplaceable. It's a lot. I'm pretty excited about it. It's real good. But it's exactly that commercial and marketing thing where a lot of the world is much more into pears than the US is, especially we'll have links about if people don't know, Asian pears are what we see in the US as more apple shaped.

And they are a massive deal, especially in East Asia. They're a very big part of that Chinese crop. But in America, we're used to what's considered a European pear, the one with the point on it. And it's an entire industry of growers and farmers who are jealous of the apple industry because it's more popular and doing better, and they want to find a way in. Question. You know that you can get mailed to you pears is it harry and david i think that's right but they they almost always ship pears they almost never ship apples pears are they're they're classier you you you look at uh this is this is this is the billionaire class. That's what that's what we're looking for here.

You want a fancy fruit. I wonder if that's their like marketing way of saying we actually can get pears at a much cheaper price from the pear growers because we're so desperate to sell them. So we've got all these pears that we're trying to unload and we're going to say it's classy. Riley, what are your favorite apples? What's your favorite apples? Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm a granny Smith till the day I die. I'm a green apple girl. I will, I will.

Yeah. You give me, you give me some greens. Ride or die? Yes. Interesting. Yeah. Sour. Give me, say the same thing.

Green grapes. I find green grapes to be so superior that I get offended that grape is so synonymous with purple because I, even though purple is my favorite color, a green grape is the best grape that there is. You were made for this show. Apparently not because pears are the one thing that I keep diverting us from because I don't know enough about pears to talk about them. But I love you taking the stand though. That's great. Yeah. I'm the queen of digressions here because i only know the fascinating things i'm learning about pears from alex do you think that part of the problem with

pears uh and acceptance is that like we come from that like british culture where pear shape is like actually like a derivative like a derogatory term like oh it's all gone pear shaped like we like pears have been slandered culturally yeah did you alex did you end up looking up that saying and finding the origin of that saying by any chance? No, I actually I think things have gone pear shaped. But it's true. We associate pears with an idiom where everything's gone wrong, you know, no, and and apples are like some kind of avatar of of if you eat one of them a day, you're immortal. You know, like, it's really different places in the culture yeah well here's a weird thing is

to go pear-shaped means to go wrong to fail miserably to go away in a terrible fashion they believe that the term originated with the royal air force so 20th century to describe pilots poor executions of loops of the air ending up with pear shapes rather than round shapes. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I'm going to need a second source than Google just popping up with something called a grammarist.com. Anyway, but feel free to email me, Jackie at JackieKesha.com. Okay. If you've got more pear information, now I'm interested. Now I'm in.

We'll double check it. We'll bleep it all out if it's not true but that's a silly reason i really like that but you're right about the origin yeah you're right about that comparison of of pears being pear shaped and apples being apple that keeps doctor away because i've been playing the video game assassin's creed odyssey recently to kill time and and pretend that I'm not living in a hellscape. What platform? PS4, because I do not have the money to buy a new system the day it comes out. But yeah, PS4 playing it. And there's a section, because you're in ancient Greece, and there's a section where you're speaking to Hippocrates about the advent of medicine

versus praying to gods and hoping that you don't die and there's literally a scene in this assassin-based video game where hippocrates hands you an apple and says if you eat one day you might not need me so this guy who's supposed to be the inventor of medicine is also advocating apple and yet the origin of that the origin of an apple a day keeps the doctor away is an ad campaign of course course. Of course it is. Yeah. It wasn't. Yeah. It's not based on anything because all an apple is, is fiber and sugar.

Yeah. Much like a pear. But in the U.S., our main source for this is an article from The Atlantic. It's called The Push to Make Pears the New Apples by Taryn Phaneuf. Obviously largely successful. new apples by Taryn Fanouf. Obviously largely successful. And they,

they follow a horticulturist at Washington state university named Amit Dhingra, who is apparently affectionately known to growers in the region as Yogi pear. That's his nickname. And he is like on a mission to improve pear marketing. So it can like catch up to apples. Because even us, when I was like, hey, what do you think of pears? We pretty quickly ended up talking about apples.

It's not a fruit that's central for us in the US. It's a tough battle, because I think getting Americans to eat more fruit in general is a fight. And then being like, let's eat more of this specific fruit. Yeah. For one thing, apples are a fruit that we see as easy in the U.S. And then also apples are one that there's so much demand for them. Apparently, a lot of research is done around them. The article quotes a molecular plant scientist named Tyson Koepke, who says, quote,

For decades, a lot of researchers have told growers, We're going to study apples, and pears are like apples. So we'll learn something about pears by studying apples wow oh which is uh i don't think true i'm amazed scientists science related people said that that's great uh sort of like um we're gonna study italians because we want to know about polish people? Is that what's happening? More or less, yeah. That's pretty much right. I mean, that's not that off of American stuff, medical stuff, where there's plenty of examples where they learn that things affect women differently because they never tested them in women before.

I remember there was a big thing a few years ago where they realized that the way women were depicted as... The way people were checking as like the way people were checking to see if a woman had had a heart attack was actually not determining it because women experience heart attack symptoms differently than than men do and so were they asking the men around them hey did you notice any you notice any women having no no women are having heart attacks okay uh no no that's uh so women don't get heart attacks they just they just they just get hysterical they just get hysterical and they just drop dead from his from being hysterical

right right they're just you know what you know what's killing him being a bitch wait a minute uh i am i am ruining your clean rating a Alex. I would like to. If it's going to go, let's take it out hard. You know what I mean? Like, let's do it. Let's. And if that takes it out, that seems, that seems like a very low bar. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah. The tiniest of all bars. That is weird. So they studied apples to learn about pears that is that is the best that is the dumbest that doesn't make any sense we i mean it's not like they can't get pears exactly yeah they're completely available it's not hard to find and it's just a thing where the article describes it being like an economic death spiral where not that many people buy pears. So then there's not that much research into pears. So there's not that much marketing of pears.

So not that many people buy pears. And it just kind of loops around because we just have more of an apple culture here. And it's also partly. You really can't beat Big Apple. I mean, it's just all. It's Big Apple. Well, and also with apples and pears, like apparently the next step for pear marketing is to just copy the apple slices industry because the company crunch pack in particular like rolled out

pre-packaged sliced apples is a big thing and apparently from 1980 to 2005 apple production went up 1.7 billion pounds wow because of the introduction of like sliced pre-packaged apples spiking the demand for it so they want to like find a way to do that with pears like preserve the slices and sell them that way oh my god pears are the pepsi of soda pop what a pain in the neck guys think out of the pear box come Come up with something before Big Apple. Oh, my gosh. I'm not saying they're doomed, but I'm just saying. They're trying to prop themselves up with an apple box.

Because they're falling short. They're standing at an apple orchard trying to sell pears is what they're doing. I feel for them. Yeah, because there's even alcoholic pear ciders that are out there that are like trying to get in on that apple market. Yeah. Well, there you go. I don't know. Because there's a pear tart.

There's not an apple tart, but there's the apple pie. The apple pie is huge. Yeah, it's the American dessert. I mean. Right. The pear tart is some sort of weird foreign thing. Yeah. It sounds French to me.

Yeah. Do you have a, a steak in the, in the pear industry, Alex Schmidt? That would be the best grift if I did. Oh man. Uh,

I wouldn't make a lot of money. It really would. What if every episode of this podcast was just pear focused and it was a trick to get people to come on and talk about pears and how unfairly they're treated all all the other episode topics are just like this episode is about casper what a fascinating mattress uh like it's just products it's just clear sponsorship and uh i think i think next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway before that we're gonna take a little break we'll be right back 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. the next bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney,

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

And remember, no running in the halls. Now that we know that pears are the off-brand apple, we can go into our other takeaways and some amazing history here, I think. And the next one is takeaway number two. is takeaway number two. A satirical pear cartoon helped end the French monarchy once and for all. Wait, that one I need to know more about. Yeah, what is that?

Yeah, so a satirical cartoonist who drew the French king like he was a pear set off a chain of events that ended the French monarchy in the 1800s like that was that was a key thing so when you see pears in the store and specifically a european pear you can be like aha that had a role in uh french democracy good right they succeeded where marius and his friends failed i don't get that that's a lame israel well played well played well and also and so this is in in finding out about this story, and our main source is a story from Lapham's Quarterly.

The title is The Royal Image Goes Pear-Shaped. It's by Liz McQuiston. In finding out about this, I found out that I didn't know as much French history as I thought. Because it turns out that, like, I knew the French Revolution happened. And then I knew that, like, by World War II, they were a democracy. But it turns out in the 1800s, they went back and forth through, like, a bunch of different kinds of government. Right. Including bringing the monarchy back.

Yeah. And the monarchy came back. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's what's happening in Les Mis. Les Mis is set during the period of time where there is a king again, like there wasn't before. And then you also have Napoleon's whole run. Oh, there you go.

Okay. And then Napoleon II. Because I actually haven't seen les mis i just know references so that's that's why i knew the one reference but not i hear it's a downer i haven't seen it i've also not seen the end of the king and i because i hear it ends i actually yeah i haven't seen that either we're skipping all the big musicals. Who needs them? Busy. So French history. We have a situation here where they do the French Revolution, and then Napoleon comes in and becomes like the emperor of France. And then when he is exiled after he's defeated, the other European powers say France has to be a monarchy again.

So they bring the monarchy back, and then they have a brief revolution in 1830, where they say, this king that we just had tried to end press freedom and dissolve the legislature and get rid of the like democratic parts of the government. So they're out. And we're bringing in a new king named Louis Philippe, because Louis Philippe will be someone who believes in freedom of speech and believes in a legislature, and initially he does that. And then the following year, according to Lapham's quote, the artist and journalist

Charles Philippon gathered a team of brilliant artists and founded the satirical weekly La Caricature in 1831. Immediately taking a step too far, he published a drawing of the king's head metamorphosing in four stages to a rotting which is a pear head also french slang for fool or simpleton so immediately the first joke he does about and i sent you the uh the cartoon of yeah but it's a savage cartoon of the king turning into a pear and everything goes wrong from there savage it's kind of a kind of a baller move to be like hey you have to give us a king

that gives us freedom of the press and then we're going to use the press to completely eviscerate the king just like such a good i love it apparently in response to this cartoon in 1831 this artist charles philippon is hauled into court and quote as legend has it he avoided prison by demonstrating the resemblance of the king to a pair oh wow jury wow by means of sketching it and also by verbal panache and he was acquitted of the charges that's like the reverse oster wilde yeah yeah it's i i i am just amazed that like an 1800s court went for that very, very fun defense of he does look like a pear. Ha ha ha. It's like very whimsical, very into it. I love that.

And so then from there, basically, there's this vendetta between the king, Louis-Philippe, who's trying to come off as like the people's king and this chill king who's into freedom of the press and very cool. people's king and this chill king who's into freedom of the press and very cool. And then this cartoonist who he keeps arresting for doing things that are mainly just calling him a pair over and over again. But he is, in 1832, he's arrested and fined and jailed for seven months. And then throughout that time, quote, Lepois became an emblem of resistance against authority and continued to have a needling effect appearing in Philipponine's papers in as many annoying variations as possible end quote and apparently the king banned drawing the image of a pair so then philippine's paper printed the text on the front page in the shape of a pair like they did a bunch of type setting and block printing

to arrange words in the shape of a pear so it wasn't technically a drawing like it's just a constant could not have helped the pear industry yeah right now they're political you can't just eat one anymore it's a whole uh it's a whole deal yeah yeah pears have been have been over time have been recognized as propaganda for the left and so they've they've been smashed down by the right wing this is like the literal like the most literal example of like throwing rotten fruit at someone you're trying to publicly shame it's like it's like taking it to elegant and higher levels and it actually i it makes me realize why like france has such like a satirical like what was that that the tragedy that happened to that,

that set that what Charlie Hebdo? Yeah, like that, like, that was such like an important part of their culture of like, no, we very much have this established, like legacy now of using press and mocking our leaders to as a way of like, asserting our independence. That's actually really fascinating. Yeah, that's exactly right. There's this like, really long running satirical cartooning tradition in France that is important. Like it is it's not like our political cartoons where you've just heard of them. And then Thomas Nast did some stuff like there there. It's been a really game changing thing. Yeah, that's a that's a that's really impressive. And it is and the progression of it was really fast, too, because we have King Louis Philippe in 1830. And in order to be king,

because the previous one was kicked out for being too conservative and limiting too much freedom, all he needed to do was come off as a nice guy. And within six years, he's so angry at the press that the government starts arresting newspaper editors and ransacking their offices. September of 1835, the entire French press was censored on any political reporting or commentary or anything from this thing that was sparked by a pear cartoon. Yeah. And then by the next decade, the king is kicked out and they switch to a republic for a while. Like it was a pretty slippery slope, starting with a cartoon. I love that. I think that's amazing. That's great. And, and from there, I think we can go into the final takeaway, the other big history story.

Takeaway number three. Christopher Columbus decided the Earth was shaped like a small pear. Huh. That was what Columbus thought. A lot of people debate, like, did he think it was flat or it was round? Neither. He thought it was a pear-shaped Earth with, like, kind of a point on it. Well, I think we can all agree that Earth has gone pretty pear-shaped over the last couple of generations.

And I'm also fine to add one more thing to the list of things that Christopher Columbus was wrong about and can be remembered less joyously. Right. Yeah. Right. Well, especially this will come out the week before what some people call Columbus Day. I feel like it's always good to round up further reasons that he stinks and was very stupid, you know, and this is another one we can get into it. As someone from literally Columbus, Ohio, I'm more than happy to find ways to break down that hero worship a little bit. little bit i forget you're from columbus yeah it's um yeah that i i think the first chapter if you never make it past the first chapter of howard zinn's the people's history of the united states uh you'll find reason to dislike christopher yeah so yeah yeah absolutely or talk to literally any

native person or indigenous person yeah obviously all all Columbus stories are relevant to native people and people in the New World. And the main source for this is a great book about tons of that. It's by Charles C. Mann. It's called 1493, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. The book's sort of a sequel to 1491, which is his other book about kind of the Americas before Europeans started showing up. Has he thought about writing 1492.5? Because that just, you know, like sort of a pre-ender shadow of... Oh, perfect.

You know, Empire Strikes Back was the best movie. Speaking of dirtbags, we could talk about Orson Scott Card. Oh, yeah. This week's Jackie and Laurie. I was arguing with Laurieson Scott Card. This week's Jackie and Laurie. I was arguing with Laurie Kilmartin on this week's Jackie and Laurie, and I literally said to Laurie Kilmartin, shut up, J.K. Rowling. And I just had to shut her up for a second. I had to go into heckler mode so I could get my point across.

And then I had to later apologize for calling her J.K. Rowling. It's a pretty harsh insult. It felt pretty harsh. And yet it worked because she wouldn't let me talk. Then I apologized. I'm also excited any time we can talk about how disgraced Orson Scott Card should be. Like he's one of the lamest people here in North Carolina. And that's saying something.

You know what I mean? Like, boy, great right right right that guy that guy decided to i mean much like jk rowling you're like that's the hill you want to die in that you're gonna dig the hole yourself jump into it and then eat dirt you're dumb yeah i'm very grateful for lovecraft country as a show because i think it's time we finally address just how completely horrible Lovecraft was. Like, I think it's one of those things where. Yeah. Oh, H.P. Lovecraft. Yeah.

It's like, oh, no, it's not even hidden. It's published articles, poems and stuff he wrote. And it's like, there's a whole thing of these generations of writers that we, like, lionize. Luckily, nobody asked Tolkien too many things. Yeah. No. But. that we like lionize luckily nobody asked tolkien too many things yeah um but and whenever somebody asked him if his stuff was was allegorical he got very angry and did not want to answer the question right he's no fool if you were to ask me about israel i got nothing to say except for i understand they have good salads.

Well, and throwing back to the ultimate deceased disgraced person, Christopher Columbus was someone who... Well played, well played. That's a really good... Here's your segue award. So there's... And Charles E. Mann talks about it, but lots of people know about it. Like, there's been sort of a gradual figuring out by people of exactly what Columbus was doing in terms of navigation and in terms of understanding how the earth was shaped. Like there's an old myth that

everybody thought the earth was flat and Columbus figured out it was round, but that's not true. The most accurate thing is that since around the 200s BC, we have known that the Earth is round, primarily because of a Greek mathematician named Eratosthenes. Eratosthenes had a pretty accurate measurement of the Earth's circumference. And then Columbus thought the Earth was much smaller than that. And Columbus was wrong. And then also he thought it was pear-shaped. And so Spain was super interested in his belief about the Earth being much smaller than people thought, because that meant it'd be much easier to sail to China.

It would be helpful for trade. And so that was why they funded his voyages. And that was why they did all that stuff. I would say, I would argue, just because I hated Columbus, is that the only thing Columbus was good at, quite honestly, was sponsorship. Yeah. Like corporate sponsorship. Finding corporate sponsorship was his strong suit.

Oh, yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah. He could get the queen to fund not just one, but two trips that were not to China. On the premise that he was going to China. Yeah. Alex, was there a reason cited as to why he thought those things about the world? Was there some sort of evidence he was following, or was he just really stubborn, like,

no, I just decided this is how it is, and I'm going to pitch it this way? Yeah, that's a great question. And I love how Mann especially splits Columbus's two mistakes, because one mistake is that he thought the Earth was a lot smaller. And it was mainly based on while he had done prior just sea voyages, exploring stuff, he did some like amateur astronomy. And so he said, oh, based on my astronomy, like the Earth is smaller than it is. Eurasia is much bigger than it is. If we go from the Canary Islands, it'll only be about 3,000 miles to get all the way to China,

which is crazy. It's completely wrong. And then the other thing he thought about the Earth being pear-shaped is mostly just like his own weird religious beliefs and cosmology and stuff. Because according to Mann, Columbus thought that Earth was, quote, in the shape of a pear, which would all be very round, except for where the stem is, where it is higher, or as if someone had a very round ball, and in one part of it, a woman's nipple would be put there. And then the tip of the nipple was, quote, the earthly paradise where nobody can go except by divine will, end quote. So he believed that the earth is small and pear-shaped because there's this enormous elevated part that is heaven. And he could find it because he's a great guy.

And he believed that only women had nipples. Weird. Yes. I guess so, yeah. Good for you for making it super weird, Chris. Good for you for being, making it super weird, Chris.

I, that feels like such a, like a modern cult thing where like someone has some very convincing arguments up to a point and then they just, there's one left turn that you're not seeing coming. And that was exactly. It's awesome. It's like, it's the dollop.

It's awesome. It's awesome. It's awesome. It's bananas. Yeah. You're just like, what just, you had everything? What just, where did you? Tinfoil hat factory. Wait. Oh, it's hopeless. What just happened? Wow.

Right. Like the first stage of Scientology is just an acting class. And then later, you know, later. Right. Then it's a land grab. It's a land grab. Yeah, that's, and according to Charles C., man, like the king and queen of Spain were very specifically interested in the earth size stuff, and just kind of like hand waved and tried to be like, sure, sure about the heaven nipple. Sure, whatever, man. Don't care. Columbus also, late in life, he is discredited. He's arrested. He spends a little bit of time in jail.

His reputation really suffers, also because he's killing a bunch of people. But so he... He went to jail for tyranny, right? Like, that was like one of the things he went to jail for was legitimately for tyranny. Yeah, for his horrible rule of a Caribbean colony. Yeah. Oh, for his horrible rule of a Caribbean colony. Yeah. Oh, okay. And so because he's sad about all that,

apparently late in life, Columbus got even more into the messianic spiritual beliefs that he had. Sounds about right. And so in a later voyage, he went to Venezuela, initially thought Venezuela was an island. And then after realizing it was a landmass,

he decided he must have found the earth nipple and he must have found heaven and succeeded and done it. Cancel culture still not working. Who is still giving this guy ships? Yeah, they're still giving this guy cancel culture still booking him. It's insanity. Yeah.

Louis C.K. works Chappelle's gig this summer. Bill Cosby still doing stand-up in prison. Yeah, this is after he was jailed for tyranny. He gets to keep going on voyages, and he's going down the Orinoco River in Venezuela and says, Oh, it's not what I've decided is an island called Isla Santa. It is, in fact heaven so now i never mind the island thing i found heaven and then after that people were like no it's south america he it's it's you're crazy i think he discovered ayahuasca is what he actually discovered i i love the thing about the king and queen being like we're just going to pretend this

other stuff isn't part of the argument because the one thing that we want to have happen is going to be part of it. So we're just going to go ahead and buy it. Yeah. Like there aren't other ship. There's other captains. Yeah. What are you doing?

Go talk to the Vikings. They've already been to America. Go talk to them. I mean, granted they weren't super chatty, but I mean, at the same time, it's like,

right. You want to find somebody. There's other at the same time, it's like... Right, you would have found somebody. There's other contractors. Hire somebody else. That's extremely true, because also apparently part of why Spain was willing to take the plunge on this crazy Columbus guy was that Portugal had a big business going, sailing all the way around the bottom of Africa and India and getting to China the quote-unquote long way, but really the only way you could go. And so they were like, if anybody else has any other ideas,

even if they're crazy pear-earthers, we'll do that. We'll throw money at it. Yeah. I guess that's like, rather than just redo what Portugal's already doing, they were going the non-pear method of like, we're not just going to do what Apple's already doing. they're trying, like, they were going the non-Pair method of, like, we're not just going to do what Apple's already doing.

We're going to try to do our own thing. That's true. Bringing it back to Pairs. It's Pairs all the way down. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Jackie Cation and Riley Silverman for taking a bite out of this topic

and dumping on Christopher Columbus. Those are the two best things to do, every show. 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 pear-related and it's also holiday-related, and I'm going to leave it a mystery from there.

This topic is pear-related, and it's also holiday-related, and I'm going to leave it a mystery from there. Visit SIFpod.fun to immediately solve that mystery by becoming a patron, supporting the show, and backing this entire podcast operation. No drawn-out mysteries. I'm not going to mess with you. But please go find out. It's really fun. And thank you for exploring pears with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the American pear industry is jealous of apples. Takeaway number two, a satirical pear cartoon helped end the French monarchy once and for all.

And takeaway number three, Christopher Columbus decided the Earth is shaped like a small pear slash nipple thingy slash heaven. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. Jackie Cation has all her info and everything else at JackieCation.com. And her two excellent podcasts, one of them is The Jackie and Laurie Show, co-hosted with Laurie Kilmartin, and the other is solo hosted by Jackie, The Dork Forest, running for 13 years now, and just a fantastic show with so many episodes you're going to like. And then Riley Silverman is writing for Troubled Waters on Maximum Fun. And then Riley Silverman plays The Doctor on the Doctor Who RPG podcast, The Game of Rassilon.

They're telling improvised, original Doctor Who stories, and their second season is in its finale arc, which means this is a great time to follow the entire story so far. Like, this is just the right time to jump in. Really cool. You can find links to all of that at this episode's links page at sifpod.fun. You can also go there to see our many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in The Atlantic from 2016. It's called The Push to Make Pears the New Apples. It is by Taryn Phaneuf. An amazing article in Lapham's Quarterly. It's called The Royal Image Goes Pear-Shaped by Liz McQuiston. It's about how that one cartoon began the fall of the final French king, King Louis

Philippe. And of course, you can see the many pear cartoons that took him down in that article. And then there's a book link that I cannot recommend enough. It's by Charles C. Mann. It's called 1493, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. It's called 1493, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. I think especially if you're familiar with 1491 or have read 1491, that's about kind of what was there before Columbus's arrival and before the global exchange that he kicked off.

1493 delves into the aftermath, which is incredibly fascinating and reshapes the entire world in ways that may surprise you, even though you're living in it. 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. The Budos Band's next album is called Long in the Tooth, and guess what? It comes out this Friday, October 9th, if you listen to this right when it drops. You're a few days away from new Budos album. Pretty cool. Pre-order your copy, or if enough time has passed, just go ahead and order your copy

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. I hope you love this week's bonus show. 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.