Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pistachios

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Elliott Kalan explore why pistachios are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Pistachios. Known for being nutty. Famous for shells. So many shells. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why pistachios are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode and our first episode of the Maximum Fun Drive. This is 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 because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hey. Yes.

Hello. Yes. Yeah, that's a good voice for it. Feels good. Feeling good about it. Yeah. Yes. And we are so happy to be joined by a special returning guest from many, many things, including

our fellow MaxFun podcast, The Flophouse. Welcome Elliot Kalin to the show. Elliot, thank you for being here. Y'all, it's Elliot. That's how I do it, right? That was how you were saying yes? We're going for an Eastern European vibe right now. Oh, yeah. I guess mine was more Scandinavian. Okay, how about this? It's-a me, Elliot. Finding Europe, finding Europe. Sure, sure.

Yeah, was that accurate? No, no. How accurate was it? It was extremely accurate. Like I thought you were from Naples. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. On a scale from not Italian to born in Naples.

How was it? It's at a gelato pasta carbonara. Oh, wow. That's pretty high up there. It's a pretty good score. Folks, this episode is about pistachios. And me and Katie are doing a whole separate announcement thingy to tell you all about our many things we're doing for the Maximum Fun Drive.

One special thing to mention now is the special pins. A pin you put on yourself. We have special pins for this podcast. Every show on Maximum Fun is doing their own, their own special design. And Elliot was our wonderful guest on a past episode about pickles, where we talked about a unnamed ketchup company. Pickle pin. Pickle pin. Pickle pin.

Pickle pin. It could be any ketchup company. Any of the thousands of major ketchup brands. I lobbied heavily for this pickle pen. I would like you guys all to know that. I mean, you are in great company as listeners to that episode will remember. And if you don't remember, go back and listen to it again. The existence of a pickle pen is a very important thing in my family history. It's something that was a big part of my grandmother's childhood and,

uh, her only real memory from the 1939 world's fair, the world of tomorrow, one of the most influential world's fairs ever were. One of her main memory was getting a pin in the shape of a pickle and how badly she wanted it. So you listeners, you want that pin badly too.

So you got to pledge, you got to support this. Yes. Yes. So you listeners, you want that pin badly too. So you got to pledge. You got to support this show. Yes. Yes. This is like when you exchange the money, it goes to us and then we give you Pickle Pin. This is how, it's a system of economics that I like to call pickle-ism. Yeah. And I'm so happy we have a Sifpod pickle pin for people now, especially from that story and thing. And all of the shows have their own pins if you donate at the $10 a month level already or start doing that, you can get that. And also mainly the joy of like making all of our things happen and possible. It's a really unique place and we're really glad to be here. The pins are so cool.

I think the Flophouse pin this year is Werner Herzog saying, I'm a bad little boy. Oh, that's so good. But you should get the pickle pin. But, I mean, that's another pin you could also get if you're interested in pins. I am a bad, bad little boy. And our topic this week is pistachios, a whole nother green food. Maybe starting with Elliot, what is your relationship to this topic or opinion of it? Oh, you're not going to like this. Alex, you're not going to like this. Katie, you're not going to like this. Pistachios,

this is the last time we talked about pickles. I was like, I'm on board. Pickles are amazing and interesting. Pistachios, you're going to have to convince me because I find them to be – I'm not a big nuts person. I don't like to eat nuts in general. Not a nut head? Not a nut head. Exactly. Some people say I'm a little nutty, but I briefly turned into a 50s housewife, I guess, at a party. I'm not a big nuts eater, and I've always found pistachios especially strange.

My father-in-law really likes them. He eats them a lot. But the reason I find them strange is there was that period about 10 years ago where they just suddenly started advertising everywhere. And suddenly pistachios went from a thing that did not have television commercials to a thing that had Stephen Colbert doing television commercials for them all the time. I remember that. I was young when the milk ads started, so I didn't know how weird it was for a commodity, something that's not a brand to advertise on television. But then when pistachios did it, I was like, this is – are there any other nuts that are just kind of like advertising as a category? And so I have to – I'm curious about it, but I'm not a pistachios user, I guess.

That's cool. A peanuts awareness ad that makes it clear they are a legume, not a nut. Well, I remember there was that talking robot when we were kids or when I was a kid where that gave facts. And the only fact they would say in the commercial was a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. And that burned itself into my brain. But for years, I was like, then what is it? Do they exist?

And the category of legumes, I didn't know it yet. So it's just baffling. I, in contrast, will Fs with pistachios. Nice. The thing is, I feel like the pistachio experience has a wide variance because when you crack into a relatively easy to open pistachio that is nice and green and healthy and tasty, there's not much else like it. When you try to crack into a pistachio that's hard to open, The shell gets under your thumb and it hurts that sensitive skin right under there. Your thumb gets hurt by the shell. I hate

that. Sometimes you open one and it's like a nut mummy where it's mostly dust and shriveled up and it tastes of old book. I don't like that so much. I feel like my experience with pistachios ranges from I like this.

This is good to why on earth there is no God. So it's like it's kind of silly. It's kind of like gambling, though, because like each time each nut could be a good or terrible experience. So it's addictive to have that kind of like, am I going to have a good nut or am I going to have a mummy nut? So it's like operant conditioning, like classical conditioning will create something, but operant conditioning will really get somebody to hit that lever for that either shock or rat pellet over and over again.

Yeah. Give me a cage and a lever and I'll keep pushing on it no matter what. Alex, what's your, what's Alex, what's your stash take? Thank you, Katie. I think I'm a little like you, Katie. I think my number two nut, and we'll also talk about whether they're a nut or not. What's your number one nut? Far away number one, peanuts.

I eat them all the time. Really? And then pistachios, there's a lot of manual labor and there's a lot of trash in a second bowl. And that's the only thing holding me back from just funneling these into my body all of the time. Yeah. When my father-in-law eats it, he has two mugs, one filled with the unshelled pistachios and one that fills up with the shells. And it's like the law of conservation of matter that as one mug gets lower, the other mug fills up. Yeah. And then I'm like, I have my trash on my not trash in front of me and one changes. I feel like I'm like doing a weird little gruesome show for the other people around me.

But they're so good. It's worth it. It's great. I like a project food, actually. I do like project foods where it's like I have to work a little bit to get to it. I like sesame seeds. I like pistachios. I like pomegranates where it's a fun little puzzle to get to the food. I am a squirrel. Yeah. I mean, I can see that. That's part of the fun of oysters.

Part of the fun of oysters is getting to pry it open with a knife and then slurping down that sea booger right afterwards. The problem for me is like it's all that work and then you've got a snart glarb. You're harking down a snart glarb. And it's very salty. It's a very salty snart glarb as well. Snart glarb. The pistachio of the sea. Anyway.

So pistachios, Alex, what are they? Are they a nut or a legume? They are neither. And we'll talk about it. What? No. Shut up. Why did you let us go talking about nuts all this time?

You shut the hell up. Another classic bait and sift. You think it's one thing and then it's another. This episode has a lot of numbers. So we're going to do a stats and numbers intro, which is the following. In my stats, in my stats, numbers, numbers, numbers, erse, erse. Nice. You got the little throat doodad that she does.

Hits just as hard as the original. Yeah. And that name was submitted by Peanuts Initiative. We have a new name for the Stats and Numbers segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod.gmail.com. The first number is going to bring us straight into a mini takeaway. The number is more than 700.

Because there are more than 700 plant species in the taxonomic family anacardiaceae yeah anacardiaceae i know i know that family yeah they have that tv show right they have lots of tv show all the daughters have like their own companies they've they've sculpted their faces to be perfect for instagram and no other like angle in the real world yeah they've they've been and and their butts as well to be and their butts fifth dimensional which is their faces have fewer dimensions their butts have more dimensions they have tesseract asses tesseract that's right sort Sort of relevant because the emoji for a bud is a peach. The Anacardiaceae family is a family of fruit trees. And that family includes pistachios because mini takeaway number one. Pistachios are tree fruit.

Shut up. They're fruit. You go to hell. I'm so mad about this. This is like when you read about what's technically is or isn't a berry, and they're like, a banana is a berry. A watermelon is also a berry. And you're like, well, then what is it? They all are?

I don't understand. Strawberries are not berries. And you're like, stop it. Did you know that Greenland is rather icy, and Iceland is actually warmer than Greenland? Greenland is rather icy and Iceland is actually warmer than Greenland. Yeah, it's that wild. But also, I really like this one because it is specifically pistachio farmers and distributors tricking us. If they didn't do a step earlier on, we would all kind of know this, probably. I knew it.

I knew they were tricking us. I knew it. Those ads. tricking us i knew it those ads you're right those ads thank you like yeah they they were trying to out there there's smoke screen for the truth look the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was not telling us the truth about pistachios right why is it why does it present as a nut right Right. Why does that benefit the stachio industry? Yeah. Yeah. So these are something we call a culinary nut because it sort of tastes like a nut and has nut properties.

But they are technically droops. And a droop is a type of fruit where there's an outer fleshy part surrounding a shell with a seed inside. And the familiar ones are peaches and plums and cherries and other fruits that have like a pit. So like stone fruit, kind of. Yeah. Okay. But wouldn't like chestnuts also be droops then? They are not.

A chestnut is a hard-shelled pod that contains both the fruit and the seed of the plant. So a chestnut, a hazelnut, an acorn, those are true nuts. If it's soft on the outside, it's a droop? It's a droop. Some more surprising droops are cashews, walnuts, almonds, pecans, and pistachios. And we are going to link a photo of pistachio fruit. It turns out that the pistachios in a store are a fruit, but with the thin layer of flesh and a peel removed

to just get down to the seed in a shell. So here's my question then. Okay, people are a layer of flesh surrounding a hard inner core are we droops or are we nuts what are we how do we how do we fit into this we're a legume i guess if we contained a seed yeah that would that would work i this isn't how i wanted to teach you about it but we do contain seeds i guess we're i guess since we're not plants, I guess that's it. Yeah.

Droop? Terrible name. It's a terrible name. And pistachios. We'll link a photo of the fruit. It's not a lot of flesh. It's not a lot of peel, but it's like a reddish or pinkish fruit skin around this shell and this seed that we're used to. Yeah, they're appealing looking.

Peach colored. It's interesting. Yeah. And pistachios are so associated with green that it's very startling to see that they actually don't, they're not, the green is inside something else. Farmers, they remove and discard that reddish, peachish, pinkish stuff because the flesh has a pretty acidic flavor. Some people do not want to eat. There's very little of it per nut, so there's not a lot of nutritional or food value. And it's fruit flesh, so it spoils a lot quicker than that seed does

that we think of as a nut. So why bother leaving it on? How does it taste? It's supposed to be pretty acidic. I couldn't find any recipes using it. You could try to do something with it probably. Yeah, it seems wasteful. Could you use it for something? Mash it up and turn it into jam? It's one of those parts of a plant that at least modern Americans are just not bothering with. Like a lot of us are not using corn stalks for anything.

We're just letting them get fed to livestock, you know, like that kind of thing. They make a good doll. Yeah. Or it's a little bit like if you wanted to, you could eat through the center of an apple, right? And Alex has. Yeah. That's just what I do now, yeah. Oh, my God.

Yeah, our episode about apples with Dan and Stu, also from the Flophouse. I found out that you can eat all of the apple, and now I just do. It's terrifying. Yeah. He just has this, like, his eyes glaze over. He's just got this fixed gaze as he chews and he chews. I once read a story about Abraham Lincoln where someone remembered that he didn't eat around an apple. He would just eat from one end to the other just straight through because you can do that.

It's only society that tells you not to eat the core of an apple and just throw it away so that your garbage can look like the garbage in a cartoon with banana peels and fish skeletons. Yeah. garbage can look like the garbage in a cartoon with banana peels and fish skeletons. Yeah. Pistachios. I love that it's not just a little taxonomic thing. Like our farmers and grocery stores are leading us to not notice the fruit element of pistachios. This is a choice.

Yeah, this is not like- A mistake. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. Everyone's caught up on Taylor Swift and then the football guy and how that's supposed to do something in terms of some conspiracy, but they're missing the great nut conspiracy. Yeah, and speaking of stunning things about nuts that the internet talks about. I don't know if I can take any more. I don't think I know if I can take any more surprises, so let's ease into this one. Yeah. The next number is one, because that is how many sources the internet uses to claim that shipments of pistachios can spontaneously combust.

Sorry, none of this is, all of this is new to me. Yeah. I'm a baby and this information is hitting me like a sledgehammer. Yeah, there is a widespread bloggy claim that a shipment of pistachios packed up in a big crate altogether can overheat and spontaneously combust all on its own. Spontaneously, you say? That seems unlikely. The thing is, there is just one source that seems pretty solid saying that that's true. It is a bureaucratic website of the German government. The German Transport Information Service has a ton of specific information about how pistachios are high in oils, high in fats.

And if that's exposed to just a little water or the right heat or friction, it can overheat and combust. These nuts, like, sorry, these pistachios, these droops just rubbing up against each other, like how much jostling is happening? Yeah, it's against each other or against jute fabric that takes in the oil and then the jute sparks. These are seeds technically. Now I buy it more. I didn't, I didn't know. So here's the thing. I didn't know that jute was involved. Now I buy it more i didn't i didn't know so here's the thing

i didn't know that jute was involved now i buy it right it's pretty flammable jute is uh i i'm confused by the use of jute uh like at four rugs and such like because have you felt that like on your feet it feels like a million tiny angry farmers prodding you with their pitchforks. And I don't like it. And I could see how these pistachios would self-combust just to escape the feeling of jute. See, now I have – I'm a little bit more affectionate towards jute if only because I only recently watched the movie The River directed by Jean Renoir, which takes place in India. And the dad of the family in it runs a jute factory. And so they talk about jute a lot. And you get to see the jute production process in glorious color. And even though the movie's from the early 50s. And so I'm like, Oh, I never really you're right. A lot of people depend on

jute. Like I never thought about it that much before. So now I'm like, all the all the everything I'm learning about pistachios, I learned about jute, but I liked it. And now I never thought about it that much before. So now I'm like, all the, all the, everything I'm learning about pistachios, I learned about jute, but I liked it. And now I'm learning things about pistachios and I'm like, I don't like this. So maybe it's just that jute has a place in my heart and I don't have any room left for pistachios.

I don't know. I guess I'd prefer a rug made of jute than a rug made of pistachios. Oh, for sure. That weird little bit of flesh just slipping off all the time and then, and then burst into flame, I guess. Yeah, I and I could find zero reports of this happening, right? Like there's no you would think some news source somewhere would say shipping a pistachios caught on fire, you know, blew up.

It's a cover up. and blew up. It's a cover-up. It seems like, much like Einstein had to wait until observation technology was strong enough to see the eclipse

that proved his position that gravity could bend light, it feels like this is a theoretical construct and we're going to have to wait until it happens to know if it's true or not. That's what it seems like to me.

We need to put some pistachios and some jute in the Hadron Collider and seize what happens. Yeah, throw some particles at it and see if it bursts into flame. I assume damaging the Hadron Collider, but that's what we've got it for, right? Yeah, or just some guy named Hadron rubbing them together real fast. An Oppenheimer figure saying, now I have become Death, destroyer of jute, and it just catches on fire.

They're all nervous. Oh, yeah. They're all like nervous. Oh, what if it doesn't spontaneously combust? What are we going to do? So many billions have been poured into this project. And he's got that bowl of the things, the ball bearings he's putting in to show how much uranium they've finished. But instead, he's just dropping pistachios into that whole movie. Click. finished, but instead he's just dropping pistachios into that old movie. The other number here is 12, because that is the number of blogs

I found that tell you pistachios can combust and ultimately link to nothing or the German government. So I gave up after 12. If anyone has any actual reported evidence of this happening, please let us know. And I find it interesting as like an internet information phenomenon. Right. I mean, now I do want to get a pistachio and rub it against some jute just to see what happens. Just be careful. Yeah, because I'm worried that this is the German government having a little bit of fun on der April Fuhlen's day tag.

Das April Fuhlen's day. Fuhlen tag. Der April Fuhlen's Day, Tag. Das April Fuhlen's Day. Fuhlen Tag. Das April Fuhlen's Tag. Ich bin ein bad little boy. For April Fuhls, I was at the crosswalk and there were no cars, but the little man was red, but I still crossed. I'm a bad little boy. Yeah, because they're very specific about it.

And it's, again, these fruit seeds that we consider pistachios. They are a culinary nut. They're full of the oils and fats in a good way that many nuts are. So it seems like the components are there. And I really want that Einstein of observation to tell me that this has ever happened for real. Someday. Someday. Someday. I hope we don't get in trouble for accidentally telling people how to create an incendiary

weapon. Oh, a jute nut bomb. A jute nut. It's called a Tennessee cocktail. And another whole other amazing thing about the physical situation of pistachios is a new takeaway number two. Pistachio shells are a more amazing version of walnut shells, and their structure could have advanced technology applications. Really? Okay, so Alex, you jumped into this saying like like it's even more amazing

than walnut shells because we all know right we all know how amazing walnut shells are yeah i i feel like i feel like katie and i are both working on an information deficit that you're taking advantage of we're not accommodating down the nut hole as Alex is. That should have been the pin for the drive. Ah, that quote. There's always next drive, not hole. So we're just buying as foundational fact that walnut shells are amazing and that pistachios are on another level amazing. What kind of high-tech applications do pistachio shells have yeah they're sound like tiny ponies when you knock them together

right tiny python the smaller monty python they use them in the movie for horse scenes yeah yeah mini pythons flying circus it's the it's the pocket size you can put each one of them on your fingers and it looks it's like you're a little your hands a little dutch boy because you got little clogs yeah so there there is a team doing advanced microscopic research into the cellular structure of these shells so they are putting it in the Hadron Collider. Yes. The Hadron Nutcracker. Yeah.

It's an enormous wooden soldier. Oh, that big guy, yeah. That smashes its mouth shut at high speeds. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the source here, it's a 2021 study published in Royal Society Open Science. It's a team led by Notzberger Gierlinger, who's a biophysicist at an Austrian university.

Notzberger, yeah. And they took the closest ever look at walnut shells, were amazed by the cellular structure, and then looked at pistachio shells and found even stronger and more amazing connections between the cells.

So it's, so like why were they amazed by the structure? Just was it very strong? Yeah, it's extraordinarily strong, and it might have applications for how we make the fabric of safety materials, in particular safety helmets. Oh my God, not helmets, just a giant walnut. Like a bike helmet for a squirrel. Yeah.

For a person size. War would be so much cuter. Yeah. It's very Redwall. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of stuff they've been wearing in Redwall. Nut helmets.

They've got like leaf armor. Yeah. I definitely, when I was a kid, I would definitely do that. Like with my toys, I'd hollow out a walnut and put it on a toy and put some leaves on it, create little outfits out of nut parts. Yeah, this team, they looked at walnut shells under very powerful microscopes. The cells of walnut shells, tongue twister, they're puzzle-shaped cells with interlocking lobes. They have enough lobes to interlock with 14 other cells. So each cell can connect with 14 other ones.

That's the right number. Oh, good. Form an incredibly strong network. Man, you don't want 13. 13 is too few. And when you get up to like 15 interlocking lobes, the whole thing, it just falls apart. Yeah. They said like, okay, that's amazing.

Let's look at other shells. Pistachio shells have the same number of lobe connections, but an even tighter way of jointing. They connect via ball joint structures similar to the joints of a human hip. Wow. That's incredible. And there's 14 of them, you say. And they can do that same number. Wow. That's incredible. And there's 14 of them, you say. And they can do that same number.

Yeah. That is, that's, that's perfect. I love, I love that. Is this going to change? Like, can they do use that for, for like buildings also, or just for wearable things? Like, are we going to live in not homes or stashio, droop homes? Yeah. Should we be interlocking 14 lobes for like our, you know, various construction materials?

Yeah. Yeah. The honest answer is 2021 is recent enough that we're still figuring out how many applications this has because. It's amazing it took us this long to look at nuts under a microscope. It's amazing that nuts have been around for thousands, if not millions of years. Microscopes have been around since the 18th century. When did Van Leeuwenhoek make up the first one of those? Like the 17th century? Yeah, I forget the year. It's amazing he never thought

to look at a nut. He was so busy looking at water and his own sperm that he just didn't look at a nut the whole time. Astounding, yeah. These connections are so amazing that they looked at pieces of broken walnut shells and pieces of broken pistachio shells. And they found that many of the walnut shells, the cells had detached from each other, but the pistachio cells are so tightly linked together. You basically have to break them by breaking the cell itself and not the connections between them. Now, I am surprised I didn't think about this before when you're talking about how the pistachio shell could be helpful in creating stronger safety material, because this is a shell that

is routinely broken every single time someone eats one, multiple times a day. And that could, like, if the strength of like an elderly person or a child can open the shell, I don't think it'll be that great a helmet. So what, so how is, what are they going to do with this? I don't understand. I mean,

this is, this is the same concept of like, when they say that like spider web is super strong, right? Like obviously it's like, well, I can just like swat away a spider web. What do you mean?

It's super strong, but it is, it's like per, per unit, right? Like it's like, well, the tensile strength is stronger than like steel or something like for spider web. And it's like per unit, right? Like it's like, well, the tensile strength is stronger than like steel or something like for a spider web.

And it's like, yeah, well, that makes me Superman. It's stronger than steel. But, yeah, you could accidentally walk through a spider web and break it. Whereas like if you accidentally walked through a steel girder, like it's not going to just suddenly come apart and you're like, oh, it's in my hair. Gross. How do I get it out? Unless you're Superman. Unless you're like, oh, it's in my hair. Gross. How do I get it out? Unless you're Superman. That's what happens when he goes through a suspension bridge

and he's like, oh, it's in my hair. Yeah, but I mean, it's per unit of thing, right? It's proportional. Yes, exactly. Like if you created a steel girder out of like spider, well, probably not. I don't really know how it works. I'm going to be honest with you.

I sounded real confident a minute ago. It's kind of like when they're like an ant. If an ant was, if you could lift as much as an ant proportional to your body, you could lift up a car because an ant can lift up a leaf. Exactly. And it's like, you know, leaves are pretty, they're pretty light, but it's all proportion, I guess. But ants is small. Yeah, ants is real small.

And we're talking about, like, not just separating the halves, like, breaking the shell into pieces, which I know we still do with our human hands, but yeah, if we scale this up and interlock it. Sure. No one is ever like, I can't, this pistachio shell, I just can't.

Yeah, usually we're breaking the hinge, but you can break the shell itself. It's just kind of hard. Yeah, yeah. I like how much nature is setting up defenses all of the time. And so just these little pistachio shells had like an architectural structural joint system. I know it's not that I'm having an idea or something, but it's amazing. You could form a Roman phalanx if you were real tiny with pistachio shells and like thorns. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Even smaller than Redwall. Here we go. Tiny war. Teeny tiny war. Tiny war. And a few more numbers here. The next number is about 99%. About 99%.

That's how much of the U.S. pistachio crop comes from California. It is basically all from there. We did it. As a California resident, we did it. We're giving you your pistachios. You're welcome, America. Hold on a second. I thought there was a drought in California nigh on 20 years.

Here's the thing about California that's so great about California is we're not going to let the fact that we don't have enough water stop us from raising very water-intensive crops like almonds, rice, and pistachios. There's no reason that rice should be something that California grows, but we totally do. Almonds take a lot of water. It's like that scene in the movie Dune where they're watering those palm trees, and it's like, oh, yeah, the water from these palm trees could save 100 people a day from dying. And they're like, so we shouldn't water the trees. And the man was like, no, that's why it's important to water the trees. That's California for you. that's why it's important to water the trees.

That's California for you. You know, it's like that scene in Dune where the big, um, butthole worm, uh, listen, can, uh,

if you walk without rhythm, you won't attract it. You know what? I just realized, I'm surprised we've been this long to realize that in the second Dune, he's going to become a butthole surfer because he's going to ride on that worm. Oh yeah,

the butthole worm. Yeah. Man. Did you watch the, uh, we can't talk about Dune anymore. No, yeah, the butthole worm. Yeah. Man. Did you watch the... We can't talk about Dune anymore. No, we're talking about pistachios. Right. Butthole surfers?

Yeah. Butthole surfers. Butthole surfers, too. Because California, they have that drought problem, and then whole other different problems that, if they get worse, will impact our ability to have pistachios in the country. Because the San Joaquin Valley of Central California is where we get about 99% of walnuts and pistachios and many other foods as well. It's really a breadbasket for the country. Why?

It's an amazing place for growing things. The soil is super fertile. I mean, there's been years and years of manipulating rivers and water sources to get to that area and you get sun so you get so much sun it is a great place to grow things it's just like like all things human do humans do is they're like this is a naturally great place to do something let's do as much of it as possible and then more than is possible let's just over like the same way you hear those stories about when people come into the to the the americas and they're like you could walk across a river on the backs of the fish. There was just so much fish in the water.

So let's eat all of it. We can do anything we want, Americans, and then too much of it. But yeah, California, but naturally, it's just a great place for growing things. Let us leach the fertility of the soil as much as we can now because it's awesome. Exactly. Yeah. of the soil as much as we can now because it's awesome. Exactly. Yeah. In spite of all California's advantages, we have run into an interesting issue with growing pistachios there specifically, which is a mini takeaway number three.

Climate change is interfering with pistachio tree sex. No. It turns out a small change, that's still really meaningful, but a small change in global temperatures and temperatures in California is throwing the blooming of pistachio trees out of whack and preventing the males and the females from hooking up and making pistachio nuts for us.

I think this is something that is important to understand about like climate change where it's like, it's just like a couple of degrees. I like turn up my thermostat up and down a couple of degrees and I'm fine. Nature seems really stable, but it's kind of a Jenga game where each piece is like an entire species of animals. And so if you like slightly mess around with stuff, you can have these like weird consequences. Like one of my favorite illustrative stories is like Saiga antelope. It's these like antelope with huge noses.

They're really cute and weird looking. They look like Star Wars monsters and they have these huge noses and bacteria grows in it. And usually it's fine. But when the temperature increases just a little bit, there's like way too much bacteria. And then they all die. Anyways, I want to hear about why the climate is interfering with pistachio trees' ability to bone. Yeah, I think most of us don't think about trees as mating at all. Like just some seeds happen and there's more trees, but they do,

turns out. And it turns out California pistachio farmers, they'll plant one male tree for every 20 females. And in March or April, you know, right around when this podcast comes out, the males spray pollen all over the females and they respond by forming the fruit that we now know are pistachios. But it turns out there's a really weird pistachio tree behavior, which is that they need something called chill hours. And chill hours are a period of the year that they spend in temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which is around 7 degrees Celsius. They need hundreds of hours of time when they're just cold and can be dormant and can prepare to start mating again. I thought it was like where the dude trees just need chill hours like away from the lady trees where it's like, yeah, I just need to like chill with my other bro trees. We're going to like pistachio cave.

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to pound downachio cave. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to pound down some firts. I'm going to pound down some fertilizer, you know, bro tree stuff. Right. That's why they added one game to the NFL season. More chill hours for pistachios.

That was the goal. But yeah. And there's a really weird thing where, especially the main California pistachio varieties, the males and the females need different amounts of chill hours. The University of California Cooperative Extension says females need around 700 hours, males need around 900 hours. Ain't that the truth? Males need more. Ruth.

You don't see more. And then because temperature has also changed, then the two genders that we're talking about are out of whack in terms of when they become not dormant and ready to have sex. And so sometimes they're just not having sex at all. Or sometimes the trees make what a farmer describes as blanks, which are shells with no nut inside. Oh, no. Shooting blanks. It's all the fruit part. None of the nut part.

Right. They're just making like fruit only and they don't know that humans are only interested in the seed. It's the worst no nut November that we've ever had. I love the idea that the trees are like, the trees, if someone just informed to them, no, not for them, like, no, no, no. What we want is the nut part. They'd be like, oh, OK, then we'll make the nut. We won't we won't worry about the other stuff. They just start growing bags of wonderful brand pistachios like that green label.

Why didn't you just tell us? We could have packaged it. Yeah, and according to NPR, who had a very fun headline about calling this Netflix and chill, in order to make the chill hours situation work, this by developing a special chemical spray that can trick a dormant tree into thinking it's time to wake up and start mating if the other trees are already awake. And that's our short-term solution. Tree aphrodisiac. But you never think of any of the many steps of this at all. It's just trees exist and they make nuts. Yeah. Is this chemical spray just Old Spice?

It's Axe. That's the thing. Axe. Yeah. Is this chemical spray just Old Spice? It's Axe. That's the thing. It's Axe. Yeah, Axe for trees. I like the idea of trying to pitch a product to trees where the brand name is Axe. That's not something they want to think about or hear about. Too soon. And since they clearly didn't have a tree in the room.

We tried all the brand names on them. Axe, Whipsaw, Crosscut. Huge Fire. Huge Fire, yeah. They didn't like it. They didn't like any of them. Yeah, that is why you need representation. You need a tree in the executive suite to stop things like that from happening.

Well, folks, that is three takeaways and some numbers, too. We're going to take a quick break, then come back with one more mega takeaway about how pistachios got to California. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back with one last and giant takeaway for the main episode. Mega takeaway number four. takeaway for the main episode. Mega takeaway number four. The United States went from dying Iranian pistachios red to endlessly propagating one pistachio seed in California. Could you? What? One more time. The United States went from

dying Iranian pistachios red to endlessly propagating one pistachio seed in California. I feel this is like I asked someone to tell me what The Expanse is about, and they told me what season three was about. And I'm like, you've got to go back farther. I don't know who these characters are. Alex is like the extended director's cut season five of pistachio lore. Yeah, really gotten into it.

Way down the nut hole. And the key sources here are an actual book. It's called Nuts, A Global History. It's by food historian and University of the Pacific Professor Ken Albala. Also Atlas Obscura pieces by Anne Eubank and Diana Hubble. Because before the break, we said California is the overwhelming leader of U.S. pistachio production. We did it. It also, it turns out California now grows more pistachios than the whole rest of the world put together.

That's got to be good. That's got to be good for the ecology. That's natural. Yeah, it's very natural. Yeah. Right. If something wipes out those, there's just no more of that. the ecology i that's natural yeah it's very natural yeah right yeah if something if something wipes out those there's just no more of that that's how i like it i like putting all my bread in one very good basket yeah there's three there's three industries in which california beats the

world pistachios pistachios film and television and uh tech stuff where it ruins people's lives and you're like but why did you think this would be a good thing to introduce into people's lives and the tech people are like it's amazing you have to use it now i know you don't like it we don't like it you have to use that's the three things california excels in it's tech stuff where the name ends in ily for some reason yes uh reason. Yes, yes. Where it's like, Frability, Frability. We don't know what it is or what it does, but we need it on our phones.

We have this new thing. It's a new app that takes your children's love away from you so that you don't have to deal with it. It's called Frability. Well, I don't know that I want my children to love something other than me. It'll make your life easier. Frability. You can't not like it. The name my children to love something other than me. It'll make your life easier.

Frability. You can't not like it. The name is so cute. You need it, you know. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah. And Dillify, where it makes paintings for you so you don't paint anymore or do anything interesting.

We have a new app that chooses randomly one out of every thousand users and murders them when they least expect it. It's called Squinkly. Tastify. It tastes for you so you don't have to get all those yucky tastes in your mouth. Yeah. Blech. Look at that. Gross.

It tastes great. In a roundabout way, this is basically California disrupting pistachios because as recently as 2018, it was not quite the top producer. Not quite. Just ahead of the U.S. was the country of Iran. And the country of Iran is more or less where pistachios are from. Today, the U.S., Iran, and Turkey are the big growers. You've set this up as kind of an America versus Iran thing, and then just kind of threw Turkey in at the end. How does Turkey play into this?

Are they a competitor or are they like a distant third? Like they're on the board, but they're still so far down? Give me some dynamics here. Yeah, according to UN numbers, the U.S. grows slightly more than half the world's pistachios right now. And then Iran and Turkey put together grow about another third. Oh, I see. And so everybody else is pretty far behind them. Is Luxembourg growing any? Like, where's the rest?

And the reason is pistachio trees want a very dry climate and actual winter. Okay. Oh, because you're saying they need that certain amount of, you need that certain amount of chill days. Exactly. The bro out time. Yeah. Yeah. So it can't just be hot.

It needs to be a place like Iran or central California where winter will come in for a few months. But then otherwise it's dry and there's a lot of sun. Okay. I mean, Iran is kind of the California of the Middle East. Like they grow a lot of pistachios. They do have a film industry. I don't know what they do in terms of tech. I mean, it seems like every time Iran has tech, America kind of gives the introduces a computer virus covertly to stop it. But when that recent Iranian government will come up in this, but the country of Iran is like the center of pistachios for most of the world. And for most of history, for like thousands of years, it was the leader in growing pistachios. Also, right around when this show releases will be a Persian holiday. It's a New Year holiday called Nowruz.

And a traditional cookie of that holiday is chickpea flour with pistachios. It's called Nokoji. It's like a fun, delicious cookie that they have. Oh, that sounds heavenly. It does sound good. I will say, so Iran is a country I hope to go to someday. I've always found it really fascinating.

It seems like a beautiful country. And my wife's grandparents in the 70s used to go there regularly on vacation because they were living in Europe at the time and they always loved it. But here's the thing. Persian desserts, they're not really – like there's not a lot of chocolate in there it's a lot of like honey and nuts and fruits yeah and so i'm worried that i'm gonna be i'm worried i'm gonna enjoy a delicious dinner and they're gonna be like would you like to see the dessert menu and i'll i'll be like i'll just bring me whatever chocolate thing you have and they'll be like we don't do that you have to eat nuts with honey on them and i'll be like no

why why am i here i guess that's more me personally my preferences than anything else i mean i i i love i love uh nut based desserts i also love chocolate and so i i actually find that the like diversity of the palette to be enriching elliot okay that's a good way to look at it wow i never thought about it that way and also when you asked about turkey our bonus show we have one every week for people who support max fun like in the drive and the bonus show is going to be all about turkish delight so we'll talk about that confection there associated correctly with turkey i've never had it and really and my strongest memory of turkish delight is reading the lion the witch

and the wardrobe and not understanding what it was. And being like, what is this lady feed? What is this weird magic like food that she's feeding him that he loves so much? I like it. I don't know if I like it enough to betray my family for a weird cold lady. She might have to sweeten the deal with some cold, hard cash, but yeah. And with the pistachios themselves, they were such a Middle Eastern thing that they basically were not in what's now the United States until the mid-1800s. And they were brought here by immigrants from countries like Iran, just bringing them over. The other weirdest thing about eating them here in the US is that we primarily imported them from Iran all the way until the late 1970s. And one reason we stopped

is the Shah and the Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis, but there's a couple other reasons too. But when we imported them, they were sold a very specific and very different way. But when we imported them, they were sold a very specific and very different way. They were most commonly sold in vending machines at train and bus stations. And the importers dyed the outside of the nutshells a bright red color, like slathered them in red dye. And that's because the Iranian ones were handpicked, and apparently the picking could leave blemishes. There's nothing wrong with the blemishes, but just for aesthetics, Americans decided, let's turn these bright red and sell them that way. And the dye would get on people's hands and stuff.

It was a very differently understood and eaten and viewed food until the late 70s, like after the birth of a lot of listeners. These nuts look disgusting. Let's cover them in red dye made out of lead and insect guts. I'd much rather, I would hate to eat a food with a blemish. I'd rather eat a food that leaves stains on my hands when I'm taking a train somewhere. Exactly. It's incredibly rude. Is that a brown spot?

Let's coat it in red. Spreadable red. What if these just look like clown noses? Wouldn't they be more appealing if they looked more like clowns' noses? Or a rat's spleen I would like that, please Yeah, one of the dyes is red dye number two And in the mid-1970s, there was a cancer concern about that dye That it might be carcinogenic

And so, just like kids have this all over their hands And it was totally unnecessary It was not at all needed to eat the pistachios. Until the nanny state told us we can't get a little bit of cancer in our nuts. Oh, so suddenly it's not okay to paint our food when we serve it to children. This is as bad as when they stopped letting us put white paint in the milk to make it look better. out letting us put white paint in the milk to make it look better well the thing is you have to it if it if you only a little bit it's probably fine it's you wouldn't want to put it on a food like say pistachios where you're eating lots of them yeah right right right around just all over yeah yeah you're all of your hands like the snack involves at least 10 of them right like nobody eats two pistachios at a time you know no way and way. And yeah, and then in the late 1970s, the U.S. switched to homegrown California pistachios.

One reason was the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. I got to say, it's enough of a reason to me to take hostages if you find out your main, one of your main exports is getting red paint slathered all over it. Yeah. They're like, they're doing what? They're doing what with our pistachios? We handpicked those. We put time and effort into that. Yeah. The blemishes are kind of an indicator of quality almost. So anyway. Oh, well. But there were two other reasons the U.S. switched as well. One is that early in the 1970s,

California taxes changed and increased on citrus crops and so then a lot of farmers switched from citrus to pistachios but then the biggest reason is way back in 1931 an american botanist brought back a particularly great pistachio sample from iran and brought it to california like like basically stole their technology of pistachios. I mean, I guess they probably cultivated it. It's not like Iran invented pistachios, but I guess they probably did cultivate them over time. So maybe they did. I want to see the version of Argo about that. Sneaking the pistachio plant out.

They've still got to act out a science fiction action movie for the airport security guy to bewilder and baffle him with American narrative techniques so that they can get the escape. That's the part of the movie. I have a lot of issues with that movie. But that's one of my big issues is the way they treat the Iranian characters is if they basically have the intelligence of children because they're in another country. And it's when he's telling that story at the end and the security guy's like, oh, I'm captivated by this. It's like, come on, he's a professional. Like the idea that you can go to a report guy and be like, but hold on,

let me tell you a story of a fantasy world where lasers and swords come together and be like, okay, you can go through. Thank you. You earned your way with that tale. Thank you. You're a bard, I suppose. Yeah, and this did involve

a lot of hauling stuff out of Iran because in the 1920s, the US government set up an agricultural research facility in Chico, California. And then that team sent a tree researcher named William E. Whitehouse to Iran. The name is a little on the nose as an American representative in another country. His last name is Whitehouse, yeah? Yeah. We've got to send Gary Bald Eagle with you. Another country. His last name is White House, yeah?

Yeah. We've got to send Gary Bald Eagle with you. He collected dozens of pounds of Iranian pistachios, planted more than 3,000 trees in California. One tree that they named the Kerman variety thrived far better than the others. And all of California's pistachios are descended from just half a dozen root stocks, mostly based on that one tree. That's amazing. It became the world's pistachio, more or less. You know what they say about evolutionary bottlenecks?

It's good. It's good. It's delicious and refreshing. Always fine. You want a very narrow genetic stock. That's how you keep things going. The least genes, the easier it is for mating. Yeah. So like today we're eating kind of just one variety of a seed that is from a fruit where we're kind of struggling to make the trees still have sex with each other.

And just two generations ago, it was completely different. We were importing Iranian seeds and painting them red and putting them at train and bus stations. It's so weird. Front to back. I don't know which is better or which is worse. But now I'm starting to understand why pistachios suddenly needed to advertise because they were like, people don't really know what we do or what we are. I think people think we're still painted red at train stations and bus stations. We got to make sure people know we're green and that you split us open and you won't get stuff on your fingers.

I think it's legitimately useful ads for like grandparents. Yeah. Like they may not know. Yeah. Those ads would be so much better though, if they just were like angrily telling you, do you know how hard it is to get these trees to bone do you know how hard it is to get these trees to boink each other all that time spent yeah getting those trees aroused reading them banned literature about trees yeah Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. And hey, happy Maximum Fun Drive. It

continues next week. We have special guests coming on that episode as well. And there's never a better time than right now to begin supporting our podcast and our wonderful network, Maximum Fun. And of course, thrilled to have Elliot Kalin back on the show, his podcast, The Flophouse, with also our buddies, Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington, who you may know from the Apples episode of the podcast. It's just incredible. And then Elliot's done a lot of other wonderful programming, especially bonus extra podcasts for people who support this network specifically. They are not available to the general public. They're only for the people who are our partners

and friends and really caring about this thing that we're trying to do. So please hop on your phone or your device and do that thing. Join Maximum Fun at MaximumFun.org slash join. In the meantime, you're in the outro of this episode. It's got fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, pistachios are tree fruit. Takeaway number two, pistachio shells are a more amazing version of walnut shells, and their structure could have advanced technology applications. Takeaway number three, climate change is interfering with pistachio tree sex. Mega takeaway number four, the United States went from dying Iranian pistachios red to endlessly propagating one pistachio tree in California.

And then we had tons of stats and numbers along the way, everything from the many species of drupe fruit-producing trees, to myths about pistachio combustion and the one weird German website pushing that, and more. Those are the takeaways. 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 at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. Members get a bonus show every week, not just during the drive. Every week we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Turkish delight, which is not just an Arnia thing. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 15 dozen other secretly

incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the book Nuts, A Global History by food historian and University of the Pacific professor Ken Albala. A couple amazing Atlas Obscura pieces, one by Anne Eubank and one by Diana Hubble. Also other digital resources from the journal Science, McGill University, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of

the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Elliot taped this on the traditional land of the Gabrielina-Wartongva and K'iche' and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Elliot's location, and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode?

Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 63. That's about the topic of Antarctica. Fun fact, the real-life crew of Antarctica's McMurdo Station holds an annual screening of the John Carpenter sci-fi horror movie, The Thing. You know, the one where an alien stalks Antarctic researchers. So, I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by

the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that?

Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.