Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Prunes

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why prunes 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 Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

Prunes, known for being dried fruit. Famous for poop, poop is the thing. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why prunes are secretly, incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting that people think it is.

My name is Alec Schmidt. I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie! Whoa! Katie! Hey. We had babies each of us.

We did. We did. I had one. This rules. Yeah. And yeah. So he's, he's doing baby stuff. Mine has two.

Yeah. Which is there's a lot of, there's a learning curve. Apparently they don't come out at like talking. They come out not not really talking. They don't. They don't, I thought he was going to do a little tap dance. Like, hello, my darling, hello my baby. You didn't do that.

Oh, yeah, Michigan, J. Golden. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You apparently, it's bring your own clothes, like, didn't come out in a little. The boss baby movie did lie to me quite a bit. Lied to us all. We both had boys who are first name withheld for now. other Schmidt Baby and Golden Baby. Yeah.

And everybody's healthy and happy. As you can hear, Katie's doing good. I'm great. And Shmit Baby's mom is doing good. And so we're very grateful. Yeah. I've learned to lean into the sleep deprivation. I'm, no, I love, I love my son.

He's, he's a great little dude. He's been, he's been smiling now a lot at me. Oh, like on purpose? Yeah, on purpose. Yeah, on purpose. Just tries every facial expression. Yeah. Because he's much younger.

And so. And by much. just trying stuff. Yeah, but much younger. Why didn't I say much? Five weeks. No, but for in baby years, five weeks in baby years is like 50 years. So that's a lot. It's a lot of time in baby years. Yeah, no, he's, he's intentionally smiling now or as much as it is. Like, I'll make a fart noise with my mouth and he'll smile. You know, I'll make, I'll make really funny jokes. I'll sing little songs. And yeah, he's, deliberately humoring me.

So that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, it's very, it's very awesome to see, uh, how they basically go to a potato with opinions about, uh, having to deal with the real world, uh, and then to like an actual boy child. Potato with opinions is very real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They'll start doing social smiles soon. Big new thing with the boy child. is that he's putting his fingies in the mouth. That's the kind of the new, that's like a new fad that he's, I think it'll learn, it's a new TikTok trend,

thingies in the mouth. Challenge. Yeah, Fingies and mouth challenge. All the babies are doing it on baby talk. When you said social smile, it made me think of our listeners being so nice to us while we've been having babies.

Thank you folks for all your sweet messages. And, like it's, It's kind of an A to C leap I made, but thank you so much for all your sweet messages, comments, discords, et cetera. It's been really heartwarming and kind. Yeah, thank you. I really missed doing this and y'all and I really appreciate.

Yeah. I'm hanging in there while we propagate the human race. And ultimately save you all. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But yeah, sincerely.

It's but like, because we and Katie talked for a while before I started rolling. It just like lit up seeing her. It's great. This is a great. It's a joy making the show and being buddies. Alex. Yeah. And we, and I picked a topic a little bit driven by my hospital baby experience.

Ooh, I'm excited. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of prunes? I'm not like a prune head personally. I'm not like a big, like. a pee gal, a prune, which stands for prune gal. You almost called yourself a peepie head. I didn't, I, maybe, you know, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of sort of kind of happening in this household.

Oh, same here. Yeah, the, the prune, like I have heard that prunes and prune juice are good for poopin, which I'm a gal who understands the importance of staying regular. With the poops. So if that works for people, more power to you. Personally, I have not really partaken much of the prunes. I had the same relationships to them. I heard they make you poop. I had never really had them. And then in the hospital where we had the baby, they offered four kinds of fruit juice. And we'd had apple, orange, and cranberry before. We were in the hospital like a normal amount of time, but we just like got interested and said, let's try this.

fourth juice that we've never had. We love prune juice and especially me. I am like prune-pilled now. Oh, okay. Good. I thought you were going to say like I drank like a liter of prune juice and now the hospital has billed me in damages. I mean, we're about to talk about the famous are they a laxative because they are. If you have way too much, you will be pooping a lot. But they're pretty much great for you, it turns out. And then I proceeded to eat straight up prunes. I haven't had stewed prunes yet. But like the hospital, my main, main experience is becoming a father and having a perfect baby. And then maybe number two, distant number two is getting into prunes. I'm into prunes now. So I'm sort of a grandfather or a great-grandfather. This is the most like

dad-coded episode we've done. Like, we'll tell you about prunes, champ. Yes. Listen, he's sitting, he's sitting backwards in a chair right now with a big tub of prunes. Look, it's... Prunes are awesome, it turns out. I can't help it. I am sure that this is going to be enlightening for me. I'm happy to learn about prunes and pooping. I've kind of like, now like I have such a positive association with the idea of like digestion

going smoothly because apparently it's like something that you have to learn as a baby. Like babies don't come out of the box just like knowing how to poop good, which I thought like it would just come naturally. But apparently it's like quite a struggle. And to see my son's face as he is like really concentrating on digestion and how it causes him so much strife, I just have like taken it for granted that like stuff happens and you go to the bathroom. I never realized. So I'm, I want to, I want to learn. I'm, I'm seated. I am seated and I am ready to learn. And you want to be seated when you've had prunes, you know what I mean?

Right. Because that, I basically heard about poop jokes and I also had been told they don't taste good. Oh. They taste, to me, quite good. It's like a very sort of dark, fruity, raisin-y flavor. And they are essentially raisins. They're dried plums. Yeah. Yeah, great. Raisins are grapes, of course. But yeah, it's like just tasty fruit stuff. It reminds me of what I was told about Brussels sprouts where it turns out those are awesome. But they were like kind of a comedy trope of being gross. I have tried prunes before. I'm like I'm not a big, and I wish I was because I think that dried fruit are good for you. Not like a big dried fruit person. I'm fine with them. I don't like hate them. I don't dislike them. But I'm just kind of like, you know. I don't know, throw a wet one at me. I like a wet fruit a little more than a dried fruit. They've asked you to stop saying that at the moment in Turin.

Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, kindly fruit seller. Can you give me some of the wet fruit? You know, the wet kind. I like dried fruit, but also I think I often either go for fresh fruit or candy, you know? Like dried fruit's kind of in between to me. Yeah. And also good, especially if it's prunes. Yeah.

You know, I've had a freeze dried fruit where it's like dried out, like crispy kind of dried out apple stuff and strawberry. And it's very good. I like that a lot. But it's that's hard to kind of find. So I don't generally have it. I think Trader Joe's had it. But they don't have Trader Joe's here. And if they did, it'd probably be like Trader Joe's.

Giuseppe's. So, but they don't, they don't have that. Right. And then the store is called Trader Giusepies in Italy. And then the section with like hot dogs and cheese whiz as Trader Joe's. Right. And, yeah. Right.

Yeah, I forgot about the specialized trader sections or it's like they have different traders from around the world with variations on the name Joe. What an interesting gimmick. Yeah. And that store reminds me of California. This is a very California. topic too. Yeah.

So I think I just wasn't exposed to prunes in Illinois very much. Yeah. Because we got California raisins. Is there California prunes? Is that kind of a thing? They're not a character, but we're going to talk about the California prune board. Oh, the board, eh? Is that who's funding this episode, Alex?

Fess up. Are you getting paid by big prune? Because I want in. I wish, man. Cut? Bring me in on. the ground level of big, big prune industries. If only, because also it turns out they've funded many of the nutritional studies of prunes

and you have to kind of work around how much of it they've funded. Not that they're like cheating. It's just more than one source, you know? Yeah, I mean, you know, like, because yeah, that's, you. But you should always be skeptical of the study is like prunes are so good funded by prunes. Like a prune in a lab coat. what we're like, yeah. And let's talk all about them.

And I'm so glad to be doing this again. And every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and stats. This week that's in a segment called, Stats up your TV, do-do-do-do, throw away your numbers. Go to the country. Stats you with some, boom, boom, boom, boom, plan a little numbers. Count a lot of peaches. Try to find Newton.

on your own I need to get a tambourine I think I think that would record well a tambourine yeah I know like Zoom the software will add it out very sharp noises I'll bet it would you would just be beating something

and I'd hear nothing on the Zoom like the mic would go nuts but and that name was submitted by Annie Barnes thank you Annie we did a previous John Pryne reference on an episode I inspired it. I have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wagging bad as possible.

Submit through Discord or to siftpod at gmail.com. And the first number will get us straight into a takeaway and also a controversy. Ooh, prune controversy. Yeah, it's basically a battle between California and the European Union. Whoa. The number is 2010. Because in the year 2010, the European Union announced that prunes do not have a laxative effect. and that that's always been a lie.

I see. Interesting. Like, why is that, I'm sorry to be rude, but why is that any of the European Union's business? You would think. And to clear up any confusion, they withdrew this statement the following year after an overwhelming amount of scientific and industry pushback from kind of all over. Like with the European Union, like with the European Congress, was it like, you know, anyways, we're like exploring sanctions on Russia. And by the way, prunes don't make you poop. There's a body called the European Food Safety Authority.

So it is their business, sort of. But they announced that based on existing scientific studies, there was, quote, insufficient evidence of prunes causing a laxative effects. and they tried to push to change any sort of packaging or marketing of prunes across the European Union, like on the grounds that it's dishonest to say prunes make you poop. I see. And then did like the pro prune people do a prune in where they all drink prune juice like on the steps of the European parliament? What a difficult position to hold for a long period of time. Because, yeah, this gets us straight into takeaway number one.

Prunes are a laxative in two different ways, despite what the European Union claims. Those dang Europeans. Yeah, and there have been past sifts about stuff like chocolate or peppermint where we talk about how any chemical effect of it is actually very mild. But prunes are much more on the beans make you fart side, where prunes really do make you poop. Like, there's plenty of chemicals in it to do that. And it's always been true. But it's, like, fun, how true it is and weird that the European Union fought about it. That is, it is, it just feels a little bit like, were they getting complaints from people going, like, I was promised a very prolific time on the toilet and did not receive it?

Like, what was the inspiration to be pruned deniers? There's no... real sense of why that is publicly available. It seems like just the food safety authority was going through every food and trying to find myths or false stuff and picked on prunes and were wrong. They took it back within a year. Maybe like there just was not that much that could be. You said this is 2010?

Yeah, 2010, yeah. Gosh, would that, would Orban have still been in office? Because I'm wondering like maybe there just wasn't a lot for the EU to do. because of the Orban sort of blockade of any meaningful EU stuff. So, yeah, as we're taping, Orban just got knocked out. And he, so I remember from writing somewhere news about it, he was prime minister long ago and then lost the office and then came back. When he came back, it was the year 2010. So like, right when Victor Orban was rolling into power to kind of break the whole European Union if he could, they were worried about Prunes.

primarily it seems like well maybe or maybe that was Orban's whole thing is like he was like man like they can't deny the prune effect and then he turned into like a little petty dictator he shriveled into one yes I'm looking at his face that there is a prunishness about it it's there yeah it's there yeah so oddly the other main famous pushback that this got from an EU member was a member of the European Parliament representing England, which was still in the EU in 2010 and would Brexit six years later. Right. But Sir Graham Watson is his name.

And he told the press, quote, most of our constituents do not require a scientific test. And then he challenged a commissioner of the EU Food Safety Authority to sit down and hold a prune-eating contest with him. So I was right about the pruning. Essentially a prune in. Yes. And the press actually got a reply from this EU commissioner who said, quote, I don't think we need to go into competition over this.

So they actually discussed and went over whether to have a prune in like competitively as a challenge. Right. So like I do really like the way in which this is going towards like trying to get an EU commissioner to like poop, poop his pants. Yeah. Yeah, this seems like a Brexit kind of guy, but on this issue, he was right. He was like, the European Union is messing with our prunes for no reason. Right. And that is bad.

Yeah, don't do that. Are prunes sort of particularly beloved by the UK? No. Okay. And it turns out they're basically all grown in California. We'll be in and out of numbers throughout the show. California provides 99% of U.S. prunes and 70% of global prunes. Whoa.

So you can grow them lots of places, but it's basically a California food. Well, because it's a plum and then you just dry it out. Exactly. Yeah. It's simply a dried plum. Simply a dried plum. But I assume like with California, that's like the best plum dry in weather. Yeah, like it's that and just California is amazing for farming.

Right. And there's so many kinds of crops where you look it up and say, oops, it's all from California. and the concept that all American farmers are Iowan is overstated. Like, there's a lot, but it's not true. That's always been funny to me because it's like there is definitely that stereotype in the U.S. that like the Midwest is where all the farms is. But when you look at it, California is ginormous. And most of it is like covered by, you know, not cities.

Those are very dense. But it's like there's a huge. amount of farmland. Exactly, yeah. And there's a prune belt in California that's mostly the Santa Clara Valley, which is kind of more famous now as Silicon Valley. Oh. So they've paved over some of it to build the entire tech industry, but also it's prune growing places, you know? God, I'm like so close to some kind of joke about Silicon Valley prunes.

Something about pooping and AI. Claude, what's happening to my butt? And then Claude tells you, I guess. Yeah. It's not really anything. Yeah. They made a Claude. They made a Claude so good that they're afraid to release it.

Similarly, they've made a prune that makes you poop so good that they're afraid to release it. And so there's a ton of sources for this takeaway. The Cleveland Clinic Digital Resources there. Also, a chemist and science communicator named Andy Brunning, in particular for the chemistry of prunes. scientists had super worked out why prunes make you poop before the EU said any of this. It's completely bonkers that they said there's not evidence. And Brunning points out that a lot of studies are before 2010. And there's basically two main ways prunes make you poop.

One is fiber and the other is a set of chemicals. They're both very easy to understand and demonstrate and everything. Fiber, I kind of generally understand the concept of you eat it, high fiber thing. It's very voluminous. So it creates a large volume of what is known in the business as doo-do material. Yeah, exactly. And lots of fruits have it. Plums have it. And also to be clear, when people dry out a plum to turn it into a prune that is not fermentation, they're simply drying it out and removing the water. But that means that all of the fiber and chemicals of the entire plum are in a much more condensed space. Right. So if you eat five prunes, you might have eaten five entire plums

worth of all that stuff. Right. And then that's why you poop so much. And that's, it's hard, it's a lot harder to eat that much plums because the fluid content like fills you up. It's like if you, yeah, like it's why also so if you, it's like, hey, why is orange juice? Like if I drink a glass, orange juice, I get a lot of sugar and it's maybe not as not like so good for me versus like eating an orange or eating like a bunch of oranges is it's because the like it's been condensed down and with the I guess it's sort of the inverse right. The juice is just the fluid stuff and then the prune is just the fiber stuff. Yeah. And it also turns out when companies make prune juice that does not remove all of the fiber. It usually removes some, but there's still

fiber in that. So even with prune juice, you're pooping for both reasons. There's still some fiber, and then there's all the chemicals. I don't think I've actually had prune juice because like with orange juice, I know when there's fiber in it because it's got like pulp, pulpy bits in it. But like with prune juice, I haven't had it. So it's like, is it chunky? I've had my grocery store brand and a hospital's little plastic cups and both of them were completely smooth, but it's like a relatively thick liquid. I see. There's no textural variation, but it's a relatively thick liquid where you can tell there's probably fiber in there. It's sort of a sludge.

And I keep claiming it's good because it is. It's a very dark rich flavor. It's awesome. I didn't mean that, like, insultingly. I like a good sludge. I'll pound back a sludge now and again. Once again, you're being asked to leave the market into it, please. Stop asking to have wet fruit thrown at you.

Stop asking a pound sludge. Let me chug that sludge. Chug that sludge. Chug that sludge. Carabonieri, ushering you out. Yeah. I'm not welcome in many establishments. So, yeah, so fiber helps us poop, very clear, simple, been studied across basically all foods.

And then when I say chemicals, I mean like just sort of typical organic compounds. They're not adding weird stuff to prunes. The main one is something called sorbitol. Sorbitol. Sorbitol is a carbohydrate and a sugar alcohol. The other place people have it most often is sugar-free chewing gum. Yeah. That's what makes that feel sweet.

Yeah, I've seen that in sugar-free chewing gum. Do they like create it artificially or do they extract it from fruit to put it into gum? Oh, I didn't actually look into that. I just saw it's in there. That's a good question. Because plums just naturally have a bunch of it. And then when you shrink it down to a prune, there's no liquid. you've got 15 grams of sorbitol per 100 grams of prune.

So you're getting tons of it, and it's a laxative. It draws more water into your colon, which softens your feces and makes them release. Right. Simple. So like... I don't know why Europe couldn't figure that out. It's a pretty standard. The other set of chemicals in them, their names sound bad.

It's chlorogenic acids and neoclurogenic acids. But their regular stuff, they have a laxative effect. and apparently similar chemicals are found in coffee. So if you've ever needed to take like a coffee poop after your morning coffee, prunes do the same thing. There's the reason they call it poop juice. And it's not because it tastes like poop. Because it doesn't.

It tastes good. Oh, it tastes so good. Yeah. Yeah, so the European Union walked all this back. Everybody from the California prune board to various world scientists lobbied them. And it seems like it's partly with the scientists. they just had the information already. They weren't particularly passionate about it.

They just said, no, what are you doing? Prunes make you poop. Did they ever apologize to prunes? I couldn't find an apology. Yeah, dearest prunes. We're sorry. I'm doing a prune in until they... You do make us poop, and we never should have doubted you.

So it's got, so it's got a fiber, which makes you. which kind of builds the bulk to poop. And then it has sorbitol, which has the effect of pulling water into the digestive tract, which also makes you poop. And it has the chlorogenic acids. Yes, chlorogenic and neoclorogenic acids, which also have like a laxative effect. So it sounds like it's a triple threat when it comes to poop. It's exciting to me that it's not a joke that prunes make you poop.

It is real, it turns out. Right. And I've experienced it and everything. Yeah, it's great. Oh, good for you. It's nice to be able to poop. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Oh, keep listening, everyone.

Please. Yeah. No, no. You misunderstand, Alex. I think we've gained some listeners. And back to a few more numbers. The next number here, we're going to share some media with you folks. Because the number is 1969.

And 1969 is when legendary science fiction author Ray Bradbury. Hey. starred in a TV commercial for Prunes. I mean, I would have gotten it if he was like in a TV commercial for like strawberry because he's Bradbury. Or blackberries, right? Some kind of berry because of his. name, but prunes. Huh. That's true. Yeah, this, I think they lured him with the cleverness of the commercial. It was written by a satirist named Stan Freeberg, who the New York Times says did a lot to

sort of invents ironic commercials as a fundamental genre. And this was a 1969 ad for the Sunsweet brand of packaged prunes. And I think we can play you the whole audio without any issues. So the two voices you folks will hear are an unseen joke pitchman and then the famous author Ray Bradbury, who's on screen and everything. Okay. Hit me with it. You are looking at Mr. Ray Bradbury, distinguished science fiction author of Farronite 451 and The Martian Chronicles who is said, by the year 2001, man will travel about in pneumatic people tubes. His television wall to wall, and most incredible of all, his sun sweet pitted prunes carried in teard. tiny mini packs. Told it.

What's going on here? Pardon me? I never mentioned prunes in any of my stories. Oh, you didn't? No, never. I'm sorry to be so candid. No, they're not candid, but pretty sweet all the same. The prune of tomorrow, available now.

They're still rather badly wrinkled, though. Sunsweet's wrinkle technicians will one day conquer that too. Sunsweet marches on. I don't mention prunes. in any of my stories? What are these people trying to pull? That's really good. That's fantastic. That's not even like ironically good. That's just good. That's like that's some solid what kind of comedy you call that? It's the sort of, you know, self-effacing comedy. Yeah, self-aware. Exactly. Yeah. Ray Bradbury's being very funny about himself and

the commercials being funny about prunes. Like they even poke fun at the reputants. Like they even poke fun at the reputation of them being shriveled and ugly looking. Right. They say, like, it's great. I mean, there is that story where a man, like, starts, like, assembling a prune and then turns into a prune. And then the story where the, there's, like, the children are all waiting for prune day. And then the one little girl who's the most excited about prune day gets locked in the closet. And then the other one about a prune machine that makes prune juice for huge.

humanity, even though all humans are dead. Am I missing any? There's one where we live in a future where prunes are illegal and then a guy who goes around burning prunes discovers he actually likes prunes. I feel like I'm missing one. I just want to let you cook. This is amazing. There's one where parents have children and they, AI, gives them a lot of prunes, but

then the children like turn into lions and eat the parents and also prunes. If folks don't know Ray Bramary's work, that was like six perfect references in a row. Right. Amazing. Yeah, he's such a funny person for this. And apparently this was a real peak of 1950s and 60s prune advertising. Yeah. The number is 1952.

That's when prune growers form the California prune board. Right. To organize marketing and also research what people want. Spread their pruneaganda. Yeah, they basically did pruneaganda and also pushed farmers to do new varieties that are either easier to pit or grow without a pit at all. Oh, that's right. Because like when you bite into a prune, you don't get like that big seed that is in the plum. Exactly.

And it turns out basically there's no difference between a plum tree. and a prune tree. They're just two kinds of plum trees, and we call one of them a prune tree because it's easy to turn those plums into prunes. That's it. Prunes almost don't exist. They're just plums. Because you have like grapes specifically for wine.

Are there plums that are like specifically for prunes and they don't, they're not really good for eating? Because like wine grapes aren't usually great for eating. Whereas like, you know, oranges that are for orange juice maybe are harder to peel, but they still taste pretty good. Yeah, it turns out, I couldn't get information on like whether the prune type plums would still be good as plums. But there's just tons of varieties of plum that we call prune trees and prefer as prunes. I see, okay. And there's more than 100 kinds of plum trees today.

Wow. That's like a lot of, that's more plums than I would. have imagined. Yeah. And the other weird name thing is all plum trees are in a taxonomic genus with lots of other stone fruit kind of species. And the genus is called prunus. Oh.

Prunus. Pruenus. Please. Our leaves are out of control. Oh. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a sec too. But yeah, like the prune is just a kind of plum that we've bred to be prunable.

to be turned into a prune, not cut the branches. A prune is just a plum that we've made to be prunable. That's beautiful, Alex. Thank you. You're welcome. And one weird sign of that change to make them less dominated by a pits or a stone, the number there is 1933 to 1945. Those are simply the years when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president of the United States.

and the New York Times says one of FDR's favorite White House desserts was a prune pudding. But his like White House recipe, the first line in it was you got to soak these prunes overnight at least. Like because they're really hard to pit if you don't. But the New York Times says if you're trying to do his recipe today, you can probably just get pitted prunes and it won't take long. It's so funny because it's like, yeah, it's like I've got to deal with this depression in this war. Now you want your prunes to soak overnight. Part of its fireside chat. Between that and the EU of missing the whole Orban thing.

Now I just want all major world governing bodies to be distracted by prunes. Yeah. Nero 8 prunes while Rome burned. You know, I mean, I feel like maybe, man, it's just, it would actually be less silly if our politics right now we're more focused on prunes. Yeah, let's make that change. Right. Peace and prunes. Change starts with prunes.

And it does turn out California has been aggressively marketing prunes long before they formed a prune board. Another number there is 1893. 1893 is it's simply the year of the Colombian exposition in Chicago, the big world's fair with the fairest wheel that we talked about in a past episode. and if you've heard of devil in the white city, the serial killer, he was there, all that stuff. But the 1893 Columbian Expo had a entire California building, a pavilion of California advertising its stuff. And the central thing in the California building was a gigantic statue of a medieval knight on horseback. And it was made entirely out of prunes. Oh, that was definitely, I like could not predict where that sentence was going.

That's wild. Why a knight? I think it's just something that feels like a statue. There's no other reason. Like a statue shape, you know? I mean, okay. Like, right. Sure.

There's no other reason to do that at all. Yeah. I am forced to accept it. I mean, I know they're like butter statues, but often the butter statues make a bit of sense. Like it's a cow. I guess. You couldn't do like a statue, a prune statue, because then it just looks probably like a big doo-doo.

Right, right. Like the night, and I will amazingly be able to link black and white pictures taken. That's really sepia, but like a sepia picture from the time. Oh, this is one of them things where if you cross your eyes, it makes it a 3D thing that they like to do, I think. Yeah, it's a stereoscopic picture. Yeah. And people bothered to document the prune a knight at the California building of the Colombian exposition because it's just the most prunes ever assembled into a shape ever. So people at home who are looking at the image, it's like it's got two images and you like, you got to cross your eyes and kind of move your head around until the image like turns.

It's like a magic eye and I'm trying to do it and it hurts my eyeballs. Yeah, California has really been pushing this forever. And also the U.S., United States version of California kind of fell into being the pruned belt of the world. Because it's been a global food for thousands of years. According to the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, we think the first ever domesticated plums were one of the first domesticated fruits at all by humans. And they were probably grown near the Caspian Sea in West Asia more than four. thousand years ago. There's also native prune species in most of the continents of the world. The main one in North America is prunas americana. It's a plum tree from New England to the Rocky Mountains.

So we think globally people have been drying plums for a few thousand years. And it's not something California invented or truly perfected or anything. Well, no. Yeah, I wouldn't imagine. So it seems like any kind of fruit we would have dried at some point in history because that almost just happens on accident because you pick the fruit and then you leave it out and Bada b'i-ing is dried fruit. Exactly. Yeah. And like you just need heat or the sun. That's it.

Yeah. So prunes are ancient and also California is out here building prune nights and making Ray Bradbury joke about them. and it's an interesting through line. I guess like the only kind of requirement for dried fruit is that the skin is sort of tough enough because like so many things can be dried, but like something with more delicate skin will just sort of rot like strawberries or something. Yeah, that's true. That really does help. And yeah, plums have a tough enough skin. So that's how you get the prune.

Right. And then plums are kind of called prunes in their scientific name. It's a whole weird secretly plums food. This statue is really impressive. I've got to say, if you hadn't told me it was made out of prunes, I wouldn't have guessed. Yeah, I'm going to include it in the little Instagram Carousel I'll post. And legitimately, the prune night is so impressive. I think we need to take a break and then come back.

The prune night. They call it the prune knight. That was the name of it. I would like to think that this is part of King Arthur's court. And you've got Lancelot. You've got and then you've got the antagonist, the Black Knight. But most feared of all is the prune knight because he will make you poop. You'll go from the round table to around porcelain.

Yeah. Yeah. King Arthur sits on the porcelain throne when it comes to the prune night. The joke is, the joke is poop. The joke is poop. We're going to hit the bathroom, then come back with a few more pruning takeaways. Yeah. See in a second.

Pruning up. Hey, Katie. I'm so glad we're doing this. Yeah. Again, like I said. Here we are again. And we also get to do it during the Max Fund Drive. This is the second and final week.

Yeah. Next Monday, we'll be over. So please participate if you can. You can have like medium fun. You can have like medium rare fun, but only now can you have maximum fun through the drive. It's true. Yeah, it ends on May 1st, May Day Labor. And so please join in now so you don't miss it.

There's a link in the description of the episode to directly support SIF and make our entire show possible because we entirely depend on donations. When we can find an ad, it's not very much money. And also we have high standards. So it's entirely dependent on folks coming through. Yeah. And the whole maximum fund network is like owned by the workers, which makes it cool that it's like ending on Labor Day. Just that's fun.

Last week I talked a lot about why to donate. Oh, you know what? I have news for Katie that. Yeah, I didn't tell you this off mic even. So you'll just get to react to it live. All right. Live Katie reaction. As folks know, we've made a podcast called The Inspectors Inspectors, which is a podcast about the TV show produced and funded by the United States Postal Inspection Service.

And when we recently tried to make episodes of that, we ran into a lack of episodes available online. And also our piracy skills were not up to finding it. We never tried. Legally speaking, we never even tried. Exactly. Right. And so the news is that legally speaking, the entire series fell off the truck and into a flash drive that. a listener mailed me. Oh. So we have all of it now. Wow. I mean, you know, through legal channels,

clearly. Yeah, it fell off a truck, which is legal. It was, it was God's will that we should see this show. The drive he sent me all of the episodes have some kind of bumper from some kind of faith-based streaming service on the front, not the ones we've been using a whole separate one. I feel like, I love that the listener sent that in. That was super kind. I also love how, like, earnest Alex is, such that he's willing to plug in a mysterious flash drive into his computer. And receive the good word, which is a show that feels like it's religious, even though it's actually completely secular. Yeah, I didn't scan that at all or anything.

I just went for it. Yeah. Yeah. With, like, a laptop I don't care about? No, my only computer. Folks, listen, if you send Alex a flash drive, he will plug that in with like just as quick as his little hands can get that in his computer. Yeah, boom. I'll take any cyber war worm you got.

Yeah, let's go for it. If he finds a flash drive in the bathroom, first he puts it in his mouth and then he puts it in his computer. So, so yeah, as you folks will see if you've looked at. Instagram or anything else. We have a set of drive goals. Most of them are new episodes of the inspectors. We aired one of those during family leave and people loved it as far as I can tell. So beyond members who've already heard the show, we're excited to make more now that we can. There's also a goal for digital art. It's straightforward stuff we would love to do for you as a thank you. Honestly, like I want you guys to reach the goal for the new inspectors because I want to, I'm deeply hooked.

The misadventures of Preston and company. It's a show about the postal inspectors. And it really doesn't answer any of the questions that you think you would have about postal inspectors. It does answer the question of like what happens when you get people writing a script who create a weird sexual tension where it definitely doesn't belong. Yes. No chemistry where it's supposed to go. and seem to not really understand the mail. It legitimately makes you less informed.

As you'll hear, I've had to do extra Googling and research, not research research, like for SIF, but extra looking stuff up to clear up the confusion from this edutainment show. It's a show that feels like it was written by early AI, but before AI came out, so it definitely was not. Yes, yes. It predates it and predicted it, I guess, in a messed up way. Yeah.

Maybe all AI is like modeled on the inspectors inspectors. Sorry, no, just the inspectors. We're the inspectors inspectors. That's right. If someone out there wants to start a podcast analyzing our podcast on the inspectors, that would be the inspectors, inspectors, inspectors. That is actually the funniest thing someone could do. Yeah.

That, yeah, you know, just be like, I don't know, I feel like Katie's jokes in this episode, we're a little middling. No, I think most of the show would be theorizing whether I'm forcing you to watch it. Right. I think that would be most of the concept. It's like you can almost hear the duct tape through the audio. Yeah. Like what kind of leverage does Alex have? Right.

Compromat. So make that. But first, please follow the link in our episode or go to maximum fund.org slash join. And it's a privilege we've got to do a few of these drives. And this new one, it sort of aligned with huge life milestones for both of us. So we're kind of popping back halfway through it to say, please join in and thank you. Yeah. Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

I can finally say that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I sold a never-worn pair for no reason. That was really stupid. The baby's fine. Yeah, baby is fine. Shoes never worn. Baby's fine.

They did not fit. Didn't fit. Didn't fit. Baby told me it's the wrong color for them. They're more of a winter. Yeah. Baby shoes, by the way, most worthless thing you could have because those do not. They do not stay on.

The baby don't need them. Baby doesn't walk. You put shoes on. You putting shoes on a baby. Baby's like, I don't, why I need shoes, where am I going? Pop culture lied about that. We have no shoes for the baby, and we have a bunch of pairs of socks that we have not even tried to put on them. So I do put sock.

I do put the sockies on them. It's a constant sort of thing of you put the sockies on, and then the sockies come off, and then you put the sockies on. But the weather's warming up now, so no more sockies. And our guy, he's been in a lot of, like, long sleeve onesies with yeah the onesies pajama feet those are good

I love the sort of like onesies that complete like covers all the digits because babies do like to scratch their faces early on and their their little pengey nails grow really fast

and it's hard to keep up with so then it's just like look man you've lost your hands privileges we're going to cover them hands but now I now it's He's got his pinkies and his toes out, also because he's grabbing things and putting his hands in his mouth. So, anyways, baby needs, baby needs to do, he doesn't really need shoes yet, not yet. Maybe tiny sunglasses.

That'd be fun. No joke. If you support the drive, that kind of helps some of those kind of stuff. It does. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to monetize the baby, but it's just how it is, you know. Here we are. So. By supporting the show, you're supporting babies.

Don't you care about babies? Yeah, now we got them. Don't you care about babies? Sounds like you don't care about babies. I'm just going to delete the rest of this episode and it'll be us saying this about, don't you care about babies. Don't you care about babies? Get out of that. Yeah.

Yeah. that's the plug that's the pitch thank you folks yeah thank you wow back to prunes back to back to prunes thanks for and also just thanks for listening even if you're not a member it that also yeah that also helps our babies it's a yeah i think i said last week legitimately a few folks can't afford to support you know it's a thing it's like it's so cool you don't even know yeah and then the folks who do support like subsidize them which is very kind right so It's all good in the neighborhood. You're all cool.

Love you all. Yeah, I love you folks. Time to prune up. Prune up. And we're back. And Katie, we have two more prune takeaways. The next one is takeaway number two. The noun prune and the verb to prune have separate French language origins.

French people like get it together. I blame English speakers. I think French people had slightly separate words, and then we just anglicized both of them and didn't keep them separate enough. Man, the French are the best. It's slightly different, though, because it's probably like prune and then plune. Exactly. And I'm not even going to try to pronounce the text I've got, because it's going to sound like I did that.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's relatively quick, but the key sources are the Oxford English Dictionary, and then also Green's Dictionary of slang, which is by lexicographer Jonathan Green. We've cited his book, The Vulgar Tongue, on previous episodes. Yeah, there's two totally separate words for this fruit, the prune, and then the verb to prune, which means to cut branches or vines or something and trim something down. Yeah.

And it come from different places, and then kind of similar French words got anglicized into the same thing. But these French words just have completely separate etymologies. Yes. The fruit we think originally, originally comes from ancient Asia Minor, ancient Anatolia, what's now Turkey. Like, their local language words for their plum trees that they dried the fruit from. And then Greek people probably borrowed those local words. The Greek word is something like Prumdi. And then that fed into Latin, which fed into what's called Old French, which is French, which is French. from around the 700s to the 1300s.

And in the mid-1300s, the old French word for a plum was what's spelled P-R-O-N-N-E. And then English speakers borrowed that, but split up a word for plums and a word for prunes. Hang on, I think I can pronounce that. Prawn. Yep. Perfect. And then, meanwhile, totally different, not what's now Turkey A origin. In the 1500s, what's called Middle French had a word that spelled P-R-O-U-G-N-E-R.

Hang on, I think I can announce that. Pruner. Yep, even better. And the origins of that word are related to birds. Oh. And specifically what ended up being the English word preen, like preening feathers. Like it's from middle French words that mean to trim the feathers with the beak. Ah.

And so English speakers took prong and prouin, and they merged them both into the word prune. And so we have the same word for cutting plant branches or a dried plum. Right. But a bird doesn't prune itself. We turn that into prune. Exactly. We also shifted that. And then we also split up the one French word for a plum into prune.

prune and plum. It's a mess, this language. Yeah. You shouldn't listen to any podcast or anything in it, frankly. It's not a good way to talk. Yeah, because then we're saying like a partridge in a prune tree, pruning, the prune tree preening its primary feathers. So many P words, yeah. I'm a peep-y head for this topic, right? Because as I was researching the fruit, I was like running into the pruning verb and like Google search attempts and stuff and looked into it and it's this mess. French had it kind of separate and together, but then we mangled it. I don't know. I still feel like the French had it coming.

We're coming for your language. A totally separate thing. We have one last American takeaway. Takeaway number three, the U.S. Prune Lobby tried to make prune burgers a dominant school lunch. And it's plausible that we might have unknowingly eaten one of these. This was a social experiment in 2003. I don't think they did it in Illinois, but they did it partly in California. So you possibly ate one. Well, not me because my mommy packed my lunch. Oh, there you go. save from Prude Burgers.

That's good. Thanks, Mommy. Yeah, now a grandma too. That's nice. That's right. That's right. They visited. They're very good.

The grandparents, yes. Mine are coming, yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, the main source here, it's an amazing feature for gastro obscura, which is by writer Michael Waters. And also citing reporting from the time by the Seattle Post Intelligence or Newspaper. And then I'll link the website of California Prunes. The current prune board website, which has their current recipe that they're still pushing for what they describe as juicy burgers.

But it is a prune burger. Yeah. I mean, Alex, it really does sound like you answer to the prune board now. I like, you're like, please refer to the prune board official website. If they had paid me to promote prunes, I think they would have gotten less effective stuff because I would have been self-conscious. I'm just like earnestly stoked. Yeah. The sincerity is weird.

The sincerity is weirding me out. No, but prune burgers, the actual stuff that goes into meat burgers is probably pretty, like, gross. So I'm not, like, going to be precious about a burger. A burger is, like, ground up animal parts. On the other hand, uh, blah. Exactly. This basically failed because the name Prune Burgers is off-putting. And also people heard that name and thought it's just an entire patty made of prunes. Right.

But what they're actually pushing, at least the current website recipe, it's one pound of ground beef and then just one tablespoon of prune puree. Oh, interesting. And the idea is basically you're making the relatively low-tier hamburger that's served in school lunches. into something juicier and with the vitamins and other moisture and benefits of prunes. It's kind of a good idea. I've had apple sausage and it's very good where like you mix apples in with sausage and I like that. So I actually could imagine that being very good.

And now I sound like I'm, I answer to the prune board. Yeah, because in this time in the early 2000s, it was basically an all time low in prune sales. to the point that the California prune board tried two relatively desperate strategies. One was to change their name. They became the California dried plum board. That's so, like, that's so funny. Like, we're going to fool them all by being the dried plum board. Yeah, and they say they did surveys and found 70% of consumers are just more interested in a dried plum than a prune.

That's so. Entirely based on the name. Oh, man. I mean, because it's interesting because I think prunes have this, like, you made this joke earlier in the episode about being a grandpa. Like, it definitely has a connotation of like, oh, that's something old people eat so they can poop. So it's not cool, even though it should be. Yes. Pooping is great.

Yeah. And in 1986, they brought in an executive director. His name's Rich Peterson. and his entire job was to try every marketing angle that doesn't feel like old people stuff. That's all he did. I think they need to do that with grape nuts. They got to change that brand up a bit because those little suckers are good. And people think it's just old people, basically old people chow.

And first of all, old people are great. And I think that their chow should be celebrated. And then secondly, you know, I, I, I, I, I mess with gravenuts. And I got made, this is kind of a personal grievance of mine. If I can, you know, take time out of a podcast to revisit old wounds. When I was taking driver's ed, the driver's ed teacher, an adult. And I was like, you know, 15 or 16 made fun of me because he was like doing this like icebreaker exercise.

I was like, what did you eat for breakfast? And I, you know, it was just like, I ate grape nuts. And then he encouraged the entire class of the young student drivers to laugh at me for eating old people cereal. But, you know, gosh darn it. I was regular. That's so rude of that guy. And also, I love grape nuts, but I specifically learned about them from my grandfather. Yes, they are.

It's truly, I can't deny it. But like, here's the thing. The thing about what I'm sort of circling around to is the idea of like making fun of food that like old people eat. It's like, but they're old. So they're still alive. So the food they eat has maintained their bodies into elderliness. So shouldn't that tell you something? Maybe the prunes and the grape nuts and the tapioca is doing something.

Yeah. And I feel like American culture. has less respect for elders than most past and present cultures of the world. Yeah, you know what? Like, I do, like, no joke like here, it is kind of fun because like I'll be out on a walk and like there's less of a, it feels at least

that there's less of a sort of divide because like an older person will just like strike up a conversation with me and will like chat and it's nice. And we drive past him here. Yeah, it's really a thing. Yeah. But anyway, so the elders are right. Prunes are good.

Yeah. And while the prune board was trying calling themselves the dried plum board, which, by the way, they reversed in 2019. They're now the prune board again. We're prunes. We're proud. You prune proud. But their other idea was, you know, like a great beef burger, you probably don't need to add prunes. But batches of school lunch burgers are probably dried out and not that great.

Right. So they ran tests with students in California, Colorado, Maryland. Florida and Washington, D.C. in 2003, they served prune burgers and also another food, which was turkey hot dogs, but with a prune puree to also moisten that up. And apparently, the tests all went well with people they surveyed, but the public objected to prune burgers, which was the description by local media, because that's a funny name. Right. And this dovetailed also with the cherry industry trying some cherry mixed burgers in Illinois and the blueberry industry trying that in Florida. Like fruit producers were trying this stuff in the early 2000s.

Right. And apparently, according to the gastropskira, the prune industry almost made prune burgers a national thing because they were doing this through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And apparently in 2002, they had only sold about a third of a million pounds of prunes to the USDA, which I know is also a lot of prunes, a third of a million pounds. That seems like a lot. But entirely based on the Prune Burger pitch, their next year's contract in 2003 was for 10 million pounds of prunes, 30 times as many. But then what happened is the next couple years happened to be very bad prune harvest.

Oh, no. And so it actually was not the offloading surplus cost effective thing. Prune growers needed. It sounds like they either bailed on the contract or lost money on it. And between that and the PR of the name Pruneberger, this went away. Okay, but I do have a solution for that. Like, if they want to try it again, you call them plum mummies. Plum mummies?

Yeah, and kids think mummies are cool, right? And you're like, this burger is made out of plum mummies. Prune like an Egyptian and everybody dances and does the bengals. Yeah, right? Yeah, here we go. People, kids like gross stuff and mummies and spooky. haunted Halloween burgers. That's true.

If you pitch it as a gross thing in a way that teenagers like and middle schoolers like. Like, yeah, like this is the curse of the plum mummy. It'll make you poop. Maybe also part of the problem was just adults clearly supported this idea. If you had adults act like they didn't like it, kids would have been like, well, then I'm eating prune burgers every day. Right. Like, don't eat these. Don't eat it.

Don't eat it. Or one of those commercials. You don't like cinnamon crunch, cinnamon toast crunch. It's like adults don't get it because it's got cinnamon swirls in every bite. And these stupid adults, they don't understand. That's why kids love cinnamon toast crunch. You do that with prunes. You have a commercial where it's just like, like, hey, old person.

And then it's a kid just punching their parent in the face. And then it's like prunes are cool. But I'm an old person. I love pizza bagels, the old person food. I love fruit roll-ups, gushers. Yeah, it's like, hey, they're sunny. I love vaping and pizza. And then a skateboarder just like grinds on the old person's face and is like,

shut up, old man, I like prunes and exercise. Yeah. And he does like a skateboard jump and a half pipe and holds a plum up to the sun and it dries midair. Right. Oh, guys like you, kitchen, you're prunes. I'm a regular Don Draper. Regular because you poop a lot? Yes.

Yeah, sure. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. And it's the first episode we're taping since our babies came. We are so glad you are here and that our babies are doing good. Both the moms are doing good. You hear one of the moms on the show, of course. But I'm so glad that this exists and I can be a dad and make this and that you're here with us. Thank you.

Welcome to the outro for that very special. special return episode we've done. It's got fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, prunes are a laxative in two different ways, despite what the European Union claimed. The fiber and the very simple organic compounds make you poop. It's very clear. Takeaway number two, the noun prune, and the verb to prune, as in pruning a plant, have totally separate, french, French language origins. English speakers mangled them into kind of sounding the same.

Also worth mentioning, as we said in the show, prunes are simply dried plums, and then also plums have a scientific name. That's the taxonomic genus prunus. It's all just dried plums, but in a prune way. That's very interesting. Takeaway number three, the U.S. prune lobby tried to make prune burgers a dominant school lunch in 2003. It is possible that if you grew up in California, Colorado, Maryland, Florida, or Washington, D.C., and were in school in the early 2000s, is possible the California Prune Board and the U.S. Department of Agriculture served you a Prune Burger in a test. You might have eaten it. And then tons of stats and numbers in this episode. Everything from the Ray Bradbury

advertising for prunes to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, loving them as a dessert, to the Prune night that I am excited to link and also show in the Instagram carousel of pictures that I always do for an episode. So at SIFPod on Instagram, if you want to see the prune night in a fast way. Those are the takeaways. And I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. It is the maximum fun drive. Every show makes some kind of boco, some kind of special, you know, audio that's only for members. We do that every single week and always have. So there is a bonus show for every SIF main show that's ever been made.

And this week's bonus topic is prune, fingers and toes. It is a surprising borderline scientific mystery why your fingers and toes get prune when they get wet. Prune means like shrivel, like the visual look of a prune. We call it that in the United States, pruneing fingers and toes. And then you can visit sifpod.fod.fon and become a member to participate in the Max Fun Drive. and also get a library of more than 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows approaching 24 dozen. There's also a catalog of all sorts of Max Fund bonus shows, including several episodes of The Inspectors, Inspectors, where Katie and I review The Inspectors, a edutainment show produced and funded by the United States Postal Service.

So all that's just for supporters of Maximum Fund. Thank you so much to everyone who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include a ton of university digital resources about prunes and plums. Special thanks to Colorado State University, Iowa State University, the University of Connecticut, and the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, to name just a few. We're also drawing on the Oxford English Dictionary and Jonathan Green's Dictionary of Slang, and also the online etymology dictionary for where this word prune came from,

citing an amazing feature for gastro obscura by writer Michael Waters about prune burgers, and then further health information from the Cleveland Clinic, from science communicator Andy Brunning, who's a professional chemist, and also a lot of reporting from Mental Floss, The Guardian, and other trusted digital sources. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lenape people and the Wapendrew people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadiguk people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my 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 in life.

There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 20. That is an episode about Chairs. And the fun fact there is that the guests on the Chairs episode are two hosts of Max Fun

Podcasts. And they did that before we were. even part of Maximum Fun. Laurie Kilmartin is an amazing stand-up comedian and comedy writer, especially for Conan O'Brien's late-night shows. And she co-hosts the Jackie and Laurie show on Max Fun. And then Danielle Radford co-hosts tights and fights on Max Fun. And is a wonderful stand-up comedian, tabletop role-playing game person.

If you've seen her on stuff like Dimension 20, she's from that. They also both do a ton of other stuff. And we've had a ton of other people that are from Maximum Fun guest. on our show. Jackie Cation from the Jackie and Lori show. Also, other people from all sorts of stuff that's on the network, I'm so overjoyed that when we were just a tiny little independent show, people from Max Fun were still joining in the fun and helping us make it. And so then we've been able to come very full circle and become entirely part of Max Fun later on. And that also helped me make Katie my co-host every week instead of just the most frequent and wonderful guests on the show.

So, yeah, as you go through the catalog, especially if you become a member and enjoy the bonuses, but as you go through the catalog, you will see a lot of maximum fun in there. And that's part of why we ask that you join in on this drive, because it's been pretty fundamental to the whole show, not just since we've become part of the artist's collective of shows where we still own our show. We're still, I want to call it independent. I feel like that's not fair to shows that truly don't have the support of an artist's collective like Max Fun, though. But we have the best. things about being independent while also having the best parts of collaborating by being part of something like Max Fun. Anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying I recommend the chairs episode of SIF and I also recommend Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshavened by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for editing this episode. I don't know if I've entirely said yet as part of starting to have kids, especially my baby boy. I've brought in Chris Sousa to edit the episodes, not just master the audio.

I think that is a wonderful thing to do all around. If you support the Max Fund Drive, it helps fund that and fund him. Also, thank you to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks. Go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secret. incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.

Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.