Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Spam!

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Spam is 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(Alex’s old podcast hosting service required a minimum of 5 characters per episode title, and he's keeping that going for fun. So that’s why this episode’s title has an exclamation point)

Spam, known for being a meat. Veymus for being a canned weird meat. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the food spam is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt.

I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie! Hello! What is your relationship to or opinion of Spam? Bam, it's the magical ham. It tastes real good and it comes in a cam. In a cam? Mm-hmm.

Something about it is musical. We'll talk about Monty Python later. Because yeah, it's got a jaunty but also comical vibe. Why did I make jaunty different from comical? That's the same. Anyway, you get it. No, jaunty is jaunty. It's like you got a little... comical can be like a clown. Jaunty is you're wearing a hat and you're high-stepping around town.

That's true. Yeah, so it's both. Thank you. You're welcome. But yeah, I have a quick relationship because we didn't really eat it growing up, even though the Midwest maybe it would, but then I had it at a Hawaiian restaurant in Los Angeles. Huh. With their Spam Masubi. That was like the first time I had it a few years ago. And it's great. I really like it. I cannot recall a time where I have had Spam. Okay. So I don like it. I cannot recall a time where I have had spam.

Okay. So I don't know. I feel like everybody's heard of it, so it's a fantastic topic. And thank you very much to James Amaz for suggesting it. Also got support from Asking7 and from Jeff B and from Josh the Speakman, many others. What a fun pick.

Yeah. I didn't know about this until researching and now I'm even slightly more positive about it. I dig it. I remember it being like a funny joke as a kid, like that you would eat spam, because that concept was funny, I think, to us as kids, that it's like a mystery meat in a can,

and like the joke being like, who knows what's in it? It could be dolphin dolphin it could be human yeah it's like i was thinking of hot dogs it's like somehow lower tier than hot dogs even though they're both kind of similar and as we'll find out i think spam is actually a little purer of a meat oh really it's a little simpler what it's made of it's it's uh comes from the mighty and noble It's it's a comes from the mighty and noble and majestic Spammuxen Roam the plains. It's like a rectangular muskox. Yeah

Just a rectangular shape that kind of undulates around. Yeah moving Well, let's get into that because on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called... Stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats,

stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, stats, out here, Broadway. And yeah, there's a team of YoungArgonaut and Cleomancer both on the Discord. Thank you for that suggestion. We have a new name every week. Please make a Miss Sillian, Wacky, and Baz possible. Submit through Discord or to siffpotatgmail.com. And that was the Monty Python spam song, correct? It's been stuck in my head as I've researched it, which is not an ideal stuck in the head

song but also pretty fun. The Vikings are having a good time in the sketch So yeah, yeah, and we'll hit them at the end. The the first number this week is 2016 Okay, 2016 is the year when a deep-sea explorer found a spam can in the Mariana Trench spam can in the Mariana Trench. Yes, well. The very deep part of the ocean. The Mariana Trench has a spam can in it. Ah, well, you know, sometimes a little mermaid

finds human treasures and she forms a sort of collection and she obsesses over a man who doesn't know she exists and that's not weird at all. What if this episode was wall-to-wall music like part of your spam? I want to spam like the people spam. Remember Vikings are under the ocean like blub blub blub blub blub. Blub, blub, blub, blub, blub, blub. Yeah we'll talk a lot about this being a global food later in the episode. One simple number there is 44 countries. Spam is sold in those countries and brought to more of them.

But my favorite weird number about that is that there's spam at the bottom of the ocean. Researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, they did a set of 22 dives with mechanical machines photographing and mapping more of the Mariana Trench in 2016 at a depth of 4,947 meters over 16,000 feet deep. There's a closed can of spam. Oh, so it's still got spam in it. That's good spam in there. Yeah, like a marine animal could open it and eat it. It seems like the London Natural History Museum says the can is closed. Come on, octopuses.

It's not like somebody ate the spam and tossed it like an intact spam can got down there. I think conclusive evidence that Atlantis was a thriving civilization with mass food manufacturing. The A in spam stands for Atlantis. Yeah, yeah. 100% pure mermaid bottom half. Not the top. We're not monsters.

Not the top. We're not cannibals. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just the bottom half. And what is spam? The next number is six. Yes, that's what I was going to ask. It's six.

The number of original ingredients in spam, six things. Okay. Okay. Six animals that go in there? It's really simpler than I expected. And one key source this week is research by Ayala A. Ruvio, who's assistant professor of marketing at Michigan State University. Because spam is a marketing and scientific achievement. She says spam was introduced in 1937. 1937 is the number. And it's always been made by the Hormel company. Hormel was founded 1891. It's the last name of the founder, George A. Hormel. You know, nothing gets me hungrier like the name Hormel. Nothing gets me hungrier, like the name Hormel. He headquartered it in the town of Austin, Minnesota.

Not Texas, Austin, Minnesota. And it's been there for 134 years. They're now the publicly traded Hormel Foods Corporation, but one company has always made spam. And they also make meat brands like Jenny Oh and Dinty Moore. They also have a lot of nut businesses. The Planters brand and the Skippy brand of peanut butter are under Hormel. You mean Skippy peanut amalgam.

That could be an acronym of Spam. Skippy peanut amalgam. There we go. Yeah. Spam, Skippy, peanut, amalgam. There we go. Yeah. But in 1937, they introduced Spam and it was just six ingredients. And the ingredients are pork shoulder. Okay. A second ingredient is ham. All right.

And then the rest are salt, sugar, water, and a very common food preservative called sodium nitrite. Yes, nitrites. Good for you. They really put some pep in your steps. Any chemical label like that, it's both definitely a preservative and definitely in a lot of food. It's not like SPAM is the one weird food using this. Yes. And so that's the ingredients. It's two parts of a pig, pork shoulder and ham, and then salt, sugar, water, sodium nitrite. So what is ham?

I know it's pig, but what part of the pig is the ham? Because ham is just sort of a flat discus of pure pig, as far as I'm concerned. I don't eat it very often, but so what part of the pig is ham? Yeah, great question. Ham is like the thigh and butt area of a pig, like the upper part of the back leg. And then pork shoulder is a triangular cut above the front leg.

Okay. Conceptually sort of like a human cut above the front leg. Okay. Conceptually, sort of like a human shoulder above our arm. Like above the front leg of the pig is the pork shoulder. All right, so it is actually just basically it's just pork. Like different parts of the pork plus salt plus water plus sugar plus a preservative. Yeah, it's just pig meat and some regular stuff, basically. Like, if you're a truly organic or no preservatives person, it's not regular stuff. But otherwise, I don't know, it's not that strange.

The other amazing number is the year 2009. In 2009, for the first time as far as I can find, Hormel changed the ingredients. They added one more thing. Human. And what they added is potato starch. Oh, okay. Huh. Which is also in a lot of food.

Was that for consistency or was that just to kind of cut it a little bit to cheap out on the actual meat? So it's consistency and aesthetics. Potato starch, it's in a lot of foods, it like binds things together, it makes them crispier or crunchier. And Hormel was concerned that the layer of gelatin that forms on spam in the cooking process was turning people off. And so they put potato starch in the raw ingredients to decrease or eliminate the gelatin situation.

All the things that form the gelatin are still in it, but you get less of a gelatin experience. So would it be that when you open the can, there's like a layer of gelatin or is it when you're cooking it, a layer forms? Mainly when you open it, yeah. I see. You'd be like, gelatin. And people, I guess, got less and less into it. Yeah, I think that one of the big things for me

in terms of avoiding processed meats where I can is the slime factor. Like when I noticed the slime, like when you say hot dog water to me, I wanna puke a little bit. Yeah, I think that was the right call. I've never partaken of spam, but I feel like if I opened up a can

and then I just see sort of a clear layer, like a meniscus of gelatin, it would turn me off. Yeah, it's very like legit and also just part of it with all processed meats is like sometimes there will be textural stuff that is not bad for you, but if it turns you off, it turns you off. Like sure, makes sense.

It's an interesting transition from childhood to adulthood, at least for me, is that as a child, I think the more distant I was from something having any signs of being from an animal or being from nature would turn me off. It's like a pink sort of gruel that is cooked into something delicious. That's fine with me. I don't wanna think about this as being an animal, but now as an adult, it's like being able to see

that the fish is a fish or that the chicken is a chicken is a lot more appealing to me. Like, I wonder if that's like a cultural change because with Spam, I feel like Spam was really big during this time, I want to say kind of 50s-ish time period where we really enjoyed uniform foods, it seems like. Like the concept of having like sort of like pure, uniform, easy to cook foods that were very predictable was appealing. I feel like that uniformity both explains people disliking spam and liking spam because it's really just pig meat. And then also it's two different cuts of the pig, chopped up and ground up and unified

in a way that does not happen in nature. That's a flavor and texture nobody else is doing for good and bad. People who like spam can't get that somewhere else unless somebody's doing a knockoff. Then people who don't like that don't like that, of course. Great. Yeah. And I wonder, do we know about the popularity of spam? Has it dipped in the US?

Has it gone up elsewhere? Is there someone tracking the cultural attitude towards spam? Yes, one number unifying all that is 7 million cans a year. 7 million cans a year is spam sales in the US state of Hawaii. And across the episode, we'll talk about especially specific places in East Asia and Polynesia and the Pacific Ocean area being extra into spam and continuing to. And then a lot of the 48 contiguous states and other places, apparently it has dipped a bit, but it's still a major product and also it's not Hormel's

like only top selling product. They're going to be in good shape if spam suddenly goes out of fashion. Right. Food preferences are super, super sensitive to cultural shifts. Maybe this is just personal. I could be projecting, but I think like canned meats or canned food went through sort of a maybe people trusting it less. I don't know if it was because of botulism or just because of the taste of having like maybe doing canned beans or canned peas or something and then trying fresh peas and you're like, wait a minute. Yeah, that shift happened with lots of canned foods, especially in the United States. And an amazing set of numbers there is apparently in 1937,

just 18 percent of Americans in cities were buying canned meats. And just three years later, 1940, that was up to 70 percent. Wow. Seven zero from... From 17, yeah. So there was a huge leap. Yeah, wow. That's like kind of gone down, but just partly because it couldn't go up. You know what I mean?

Like it was so huge in the mid-century to buy canned anything. And then that's just dipped over time. Yeah. I mean, canning did, I guess, revolutionize food because you could do canning in the sense of like jars where you would take a glass jar, kind of vacuum out the air, and then you could make jams and peaches. But the more industrial level version of canning foods,

including meat, which is crazy to be able to preserve meat like that long. Kind of, it freaks me out, honestly. Shelf stability like concerns me. It seems like a type of magic that we shouldn't be fooling around with. I'm saying that it's not based in any science. It's all safe, but it's just like, the amount that that helped increase

the shelf life of things is crazy. Yeah, an amazing number there. This was very surprising to me. The number is two to five years. That's a broad range, but two to five years is the shelf life of spam if you don't refrigerate it. Whoa, that's, yeah. See, that's, to me, that's uncanny.

Uncanny. Yeah, uncanny. And yeah, spam is cooked inside of its can, which is part of why they tried to eliminate the gelatin by adding an ingredient. I see. Interesting. The super short version is the factory puts raw spam into a can, seals it, and then heats and cooks that entire thing.

Whoa, I didn't know that. That's wild. Why do they do that? Because then they can just leave it canned and not refrigerate or anything. It can just be on a shelf for at least two years and still be good to eat. And that is just a longer shelf life than most other meats. And they just list a best buy date of about three years after it left the factory on the can. There's no technical like expiration date.

Huh. Why not like cook it and then put it in the can? Is there something about cooking it while it's in the can that especially keeps it sort of sanitary? Yeah, yeah, it's that and it's the most efficient way, yeah. Yeah, and then spam, there's kind of a myth about it that it's sort of like the other myth about Twinkies where it lasts a hundred years or whatever. It is not wildly longer lasting than other canned foods. And when you open it, it goes bad within a few days It's still just meat so right even if you refrigerate it when it's open it only lasts a few days, and you need to eat it So like how long does it last if you refrigerate it? I? Couldn't find a good number apparently that's like kind of unknown

whoa there's like no guidelines. And theoretically that would make it last a long time. Sounds like experiment time. Yeah. Alex, you gotta stick some spam in your fridge and in 10 years, fill a fridge with spam and every year open up a spam and rate the spam.

From a rating of zero to botulism, how's the spam? Yeah, so like, especially back in the 30s when we had less refrigerated shipping, this was relatively miraculous. Like, oh, you can just send this can and it'll be good for a couple years. Great. But now we have more refrigerated shipping and that's less of an amazing feature. But it's still a big part of it. It's cheap to ship in the store. What's the temperature of the Mariana Trench? Could we eat that spam?

The questions are, is it refrigerated basically down there? Cold in there. And then also we don't know how much refrigeration does for the shelf life. We just know it's longer. Right. How much refrigeration does for the shelf life? We just know it's longer, right? Also, we saw it there in 2016 We don't know when it was originally put there It's a wild thing It doesn't have a Best Buy. I couldn't tell from the picture. Yeah. Yeah, the deep-sea camera

I really needed a check for my interest. But yeah Yeah, cuz it looks nice looks nice and sealed up there and it is cold in the Mariana trench So I don't know so it might be edible. We don't know. Yeah, maybe go for it octopuses crabs If you're an octopus listener reach out I would love to talk to you Yes, yeah, I get eight emails. Yeah. I hope this email finds you well.

The last number this week for the takeaways, the last number is $100 US dollars. $100 US dollars in old money was the prize for the person who coined the name spam. Oh. It was a contest. Wow. I didn't... So it's not... Is it just a made-up word then? Yeah, it's a made-up word and nobody agrees on the meaning.

There's theories and there's like acronym guesses, but just a guy thought of it. Spanked ham. Ham that's been spanked into a can shape. That is just as good as all the other guesses because this story, it was originally covered by Life Magazine and then covered online by Mental Floss and writer Michelle Debchak, great piece about the history of spam. Hormel was founded by George A. Hormel and then in the 1920s, his son, Jay Hormel became the new president A. Hormel. And then in the 1920s, his son, J. Hormel, became the new president of the company and steered what led to spam in 1937.

And he sourced the name by throwing a New Year's Eve party for his friends and employees. And he set up a bar. He said, you get a free drink each time you write down a name idea for this rectangular canned pork and ham prototype. You'd get like a drink just for an idea. It doesn't have to be a good idea. Yes. Yeah. And then he also promised a hundred bucks in 1930s money for the winner. Yeah. And according to J. Hormel, quote, along about the third or fourth drink, they began showing some imagination.

Yeah. Just like me. Just like me. I tell you what we should name it. We should name it a stinky little pig in a can. Yeah, yeah. And so a guy, his name's Ken Degnaux. He was a working actor and also a brother of a vice president at Hormel. He wrote down spam with no explanation

and it won the contest. It's possible it was a contraction of the words spiced and ham, but also that doesn't really make sense. We went over the ingredients, there's not spices in it unless you count salt and sugar as spices. A lot of other people have guessed it's an acronym partly because the package writes it in capital letters. But that's just a style thing. In regular documents, it's not all caps. It's just a capital S.

I think he was trying to hit on some girl named Pam, but he was really drunk. He's like, this is spam. You're a treat and you're sweetest ham. Yeah. That would also make sense because the acronym guesses are believable. One of them is shoulder, pork, and ham. If you flip around pork shoulder for some reason, you can do that. Hang on, Alex. Shoulder, pork, and ham? Yeah, and then you'd be using the M at the end of ham?

No. No, no, no, no, no. Come on. So it's a real stretch. I'm not, that's not, no. Another guess. Doesn't pass the sniff test for me. Sniffing the spam. I guess that plays less fast and loose with words is specially processed American meat. Yeah, that I could buy, but yeah, I don't know. That is believable. It's believable, but it's, I don't think it, it doesn't seem like he was thinking of an acronym. Yeah. I think he was drunk.

I think he was just like, I don't know if we call it floorb, sh, sh, shmel, spubbubbubbubbub. Right. Spam, spam, spam, spam cam. And Hormel has also confused people cause then like later on, decades later, they've made taglines for it that are an acronym. At one point the tagline was sizzle, pork, and mmm. But that's not the origin. They did that later. I feel like there's an art to acronyms that

people don't respect. Sizzle, pork, and mmm. You just stick an on and a pia in there. That just doesn't, makes me mad. I'm angry about it, Alex. Yeah, it's kind of amazing that it's better than shoulder pork and ham, but also really bad. Yeah. Well, and being a stand-in for ham is psychotic. That is sociopathic. I agree. I don't accept that. It makes me feel like society is collapsing when I read it. Yeah. I'm like, stop. Stop. You can't just do that. You can't change the rules just because it helps you fit your little idea into a word. You can't make him start with M. It's so short. No. No, you can't. I'm sorry. It makes me so mad. It makes me mad too, Alex. I'm glad we agree on this. Good. But yeah, it's just called

spam because that's the vibe and it is made of mostly ham. So like, sure. Yeah. Spankable ham. Just as good. Or spoonable ham. Ham you can eat with a spoon. Just as good. Like, sliceable just as good. A lot of people slice it, you know? Spliced ham. Ham... Spliced ham, yeah. Half human, half pig. And yeah, with all these numbers, we also have more to say about the origin of all this, because takeaway number one... this because takeaway number one, spam was Hormel's second major innovation in preserving pig meat.

It actually wasn't a huge leap beyond a previous product called flavor sealed ham. But just spam is the one that lasted. Flavor sealed ham kind of got folded into it. So Sam. spam is the one that lasted. Flavored sealed ham kind of got folded into it. So, fam. And key sources here beyond what's been cited, there's Peace for Smithsonian magazine by staff writer Alex Chun, Peace for the Guardian by Rasheen Kahl, and a biography of George Hormel by the Minnesota Historical Society. So he was tinkering around with spitting in God's eye when it came to preserving pork for a while then.

And he was also battling Chicago meat producers because George Hormel, he's from Buffalo, New York and his father ran a tannery in Ohio. So also like preserving and chopping up animals, a tannery. And then George gets into meat packing in Minnesota, but he's very close to the big Chicago meat packers and he can't beat their scale. They're just too big. Right.

So he says, let's innovate. It's like this, you think you can run with the big dogs packing our meat? It reminds me of the fake identity in Ferris Bueller where he talks about a sausage king of Chicago that's just made up. That was kind of real, like our Moore and all these big Chicago people doing meat. We pack our meat better than anyone.

Yeah, yeah. And so George and then also his son, Jay H Hormel serves in the US military in World War I in the late 1910s and then comes home to be in the business and also think technologically because World War I there's all this tech, you know. And so then they innovate and in 1927 they come up with flavor sealed ham. And it's a lot of the principles that went into spam, but it was intended to be as similar to like a deli ham or a fresh ham as possible. So you can what looks like regular ham.

Oh, wow. So how do you get it in there? Because I don't know if you've seen like a pig before, Alex, but they don't usually fit in a can. Yeah, it's the dumb answer of bigger can. You just like the there were two sizes of flavored sealed ham and the full size is it's basically a can that's shaped like what I think of as an Easter ham or like a giant entire ham. Okay. You just make a really big can and put a ham in it. And you also take the big bone

out first. That's it. Now get in there, Wilbert. I know the spider says you're some pig and now you're going to be some can pig. Get in there. Yeah. They take the bone out and then try to do a visually and texturally accurate big ham in a can. And that's it. And this was very popular. People were excited about it. Flavor-sealed ham, you say.

Yeah, and the advertising also pushed it as like a luxury product that had like beautiful flapper ladies in the yard. The idea was just like, this is as good as a great ham plus one technological idea to seal the flavor and preserve it, that's it. Like otherwise this is top shelf stuff. Man, yeah, I'm trying to find like a photo of what it looked like outside of the can. Which I can't find, which maybe is a blessing.

Yeah, my sources say it like looked right. You know, like there's no bone in it. Usually from a butcher you'd still have the bone in. Which maybe is a blessing? Yeah, my sources say it looked right. There's no bone in it. Usually from a butcher you'd still have the bone in. But otherwise, unlike spam, it looks like meat people were familiar with. It's basically sort of like getting a vacuum sealed ham these days. Yeah, vacuum sealed and canned, yeah. But this was like a great Gatsby vibe in a positive, luxurious way, ham.

Right. Right. It's like all the flavor of ham and all the convenience of canned. Yes, yeah, that was it. And so that was Hormel's new big product. And then around the end of the 1920s, George Hormel decides to enjoy a retirement. He'll later pass away in a mansion in Los Angeles, you know? In a ham-shin?

Yes. It's a mansion that the ham built, yeah. And so then Jay is running the company on his own, and he says, what other technology can we do? And really the main extra idea with spam is that many Americans in the 1930s, especially affluent white Americans, thought pork shoulder was a low quality cut of meat to the point of maybe you just throw it away. I see. What's wrong with the... I'm not like a big pork person, so I don't really know what the different cuts of pork are. What's wrong with the... I'm not like a big pork person, so I don't really know what the different cuts of pork

are. What's wrong with the pork shoulder? I feel like ham has gone through a transition of at first it was like deliciously soft to people and then it's become kind of, oh, it's soft and weird and just lunch meat. And like pork shoulder was considered tough back in the day. Like, oh, this is tough. And like now people are like, oh, if you braise it forever, it's delicious, you know? Right, right. Or Mel was apparently discarding a lot of pork shoulder in the process of making flavor-sealed

ham. And Jay said, oh, this is wasteful in so many ways, like on all the levels. What are we doing? Correct. Yeah. But he also didn't think they could market pork shoulder on its own. He didn't think America was ready for just buy pork shoulder. And so he figured out a way to chop it and mix it into ham and make a combination product

as a cheaper meat in a can. That's spam. That's it. Yeah. Look, if you've already got the, if the pig's already dead and you're just chopping it up and you're throwing stuff out, why not sell the stuff in that scrap pile? Yeah, it's just like a really good idea in so many ways, like making more out of pig lives and less food waste. It's just very positive that they did this for what it is. I know not eating pigs is the best for pigs, but second best idea is spam. Yeah. So that pig ghost isn't like, why didn't you like my shoulder? I worked on my traps

forever. That's a buff pig. That's cool. Yeah. And yeah, and the only other idea was the shape of the can. I figure people have seen Spam as a rectangular and rounded can. The company did it that way because unlike flavored sealed ham, they weren't trying to imitate how the cut of meat looks from the animal. So they said, let's do a totally novel can that kind of no foods are in other than maybe sardines. Yeah.

They made it that way as an indicator of spam's versatility. It's a very distinctive and I wanna say pleasant shape. Yeah. It's very instantly identifiable, which is great for sort of branding. You barely even need to see that it says spam on it because it's just got that shape. And as soon as you

see maybe a little bit of yellow and blue there you're like you know that's spam. Yes this is such a marketing win and food production win and it just really worked out all around. And folks that's a huge takeaway in tons of numbers. We've got three further takeaways to come about everything from World War Two to Mani Bajpan. Katie, did you know that support for today's show is provided by Aura Frames? I have one of those. Me too.

I have a lot of photos that I take that are silly and dumb and I don't think to look at them ever again. But because I put them on the frame and it starts playing them, it's like, hey, there's that silly and dumb photo I took that I don't think to look at and now it's on the frame and I get to look at it. Same. It's a really nice like second way to connect with people that I'd call on the phone for the most part. I find. Yeah. And also folks know Mother's Day is coming up. You could always give your mom a call.

You could also give her an Aura frame because it's a digital picture frame and then your pictures can cycle through it. And there's a whole nother thing going on. I got one for my mommy. Me too. Yeah. So the way it works is if you're invited to someone else's frame, you can upload your photos to them so you can kind of surprise them with these photos. And it's great for me because I live in very different time zones from my family. So I can just add some photos to their frame

and then they can wake up and hey, it's my dog wearing sunglasses. Now I want that picture hey hey send it to me. Invite me to your frame Alex. I should. And Aura frames are named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter they're featured in 495 gift guides last year you know run up to Mother's Day give her a call and also send her a new picture of Yes, Katie's dog cookie and sunglasses or maybe one of your pictures, you know either way. Yeah Private dog in the sunglasses. I think that's better

Yeah, that's aura has a great deal for Mother's Day for a limited time Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting aura frames calm a ura frames calm to get $35 off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat Frame. That's auraframes.com, promo code SIF, and support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions apply. This week we're also supported by Game Show Network, and they have a couple new trivia shows going on. You may know I was on a trivia show at one point, won some games. I'm also a trivia fan.

I'm always looking for new stuff to see. And there's two new ones on Game Show Network. Tic Tac Toe is hosted by Brooke Burns. That's the Xs and Does of a Tic Tac Toe game and a trivia element. And there's a surprise dragon that sneaks up on the contestants. They also have a new show called Bingo Blitz hosted by Valerie Bertinelli.

It's based on the popular app and it's two contestants answering trivia to win bingo balls and points. And both these shows bring in a chance element on top of trivia, right? And I feel like that combination is unbeatable as something to watch and also just something where there's a lot of drama. You get to see people take a risk while they're also flexing their mental muscles. There's a lot of human drama there. It's also fun to play along from home. Would you have gone for that square that might have a dragon in it? Would you make that bingo move? So play along at home. Watch Tic Tac Doe followed by Bingo Blitz weeknights starting at 7 Eastern on

Game Show Network. We are back and we're back with take away number two. Spam was one of the first ways the United States supported the Allies in World War 2. Whoa. By creating a spam cannon that we shot at the dang Nazis. Yeah, the Wolfenstein games feature it. You fight robot Hitler with spam. Yeah, they're like, oh, look at me. I'm a stupid Nazi. And then you shoot spam at them at such a high velocity.

Inglourious Spamsters is a great movie. I remember that scene where Brad Pitt caves a man's skull in with a can of Spam. And yeah, basically the timeline of Spam's invention and also the US making a late entry into World War II meant that one of the first main ways we supported the Allies was food, and SPAM was such a shippable protein. It really helped. Yeah. It melts in your cam, not in your ham. Better tagline than sizzle pork and mmm. I'm much more into that. We have another number here, because according to Ayala V. Rufio of Michigan State, Hormel

shipped over 150 million pounds of spam to the world in World War II, to armies, to citizens, to everybody, over 150 million pounds. They had started making it before the war started, but then they just ramped into being a huge producer of food for export. And apparently by the end of the war, about 90% of all Hormel products were being shipped overseas. Whoa. Because they're so transportable, people said, we don't need to just use that advantage

for going from state to state. Let's send it across the entire earth all the time. Was that why the spam became so popular in the South Pacific because of like a military presence there? Yes. Yeah. Wow. Do I get a prize for guessing?

Is it spam? Can it be spam? You do get spam. Yeah. Hooray. It's in the mail. It'll be fresh when you get there. Yeah.

That's why in particular Hawaii is the leading US state for spam consumption today. Because this started as food aid, then troops were served it. There was also bizarre discrimination against Japanese Hawaiians, which extended to blocking a lot of them from obtaining citizenship, but then also shutting down a lot of their fishing jobs. In 1940, the US passed a law limiting fishing boat licenses to US citizens only in Hawaii. In 1941, they barred non-citizens from doing shoreline fishing nets. The concept was to prevent Japanese Hawaiians from being spies and monitoring Navy movements. Okay.

But this was also discrimination. It was like Japanese internment in California. According to Michelle Debchak's amazing piece for Mental Floss, this put a lot of Japanese Hawaiian fishermen who were not citizens yet out of business, and it also cleared a lot of market share in Hawaii to replace fish with spam as protein. It's another element. Spam, the fish of the grocery. of market share in Hawaii to replace fish with spam as protein. Hmm. Ah. It's another element.

Spam, the fish of the grocery. Yes, that's what people said, yeah. No, they said that though. Spam is the fish of the grocery store. Not literally, no. That's not a quote. Don't make me hope like that. Yeah, sorry.

Yes, spam remains a huge deal on Okinawa, where the US knocked out a lot of Japanese military forces and then set up a lot of force to bomb the home islands of Japan, the Philippines, Korea, also a lot of Europe. It was shipped there and also GIs spent time there. You know what's wild is that that's one of the US products I think I can sometimes get in, I don't, I don't buy it, but I can find it usually in a grocery store. So it's like, why do they, why spam though?

Out of all the American things. Makes sense. Because it's in like, there's a little section sometimes of like sort of food imports and there's like, Worcestershire sauce and then Spam. And I get the Worcestershire sauce because that's amazing, but the Spam I usually don't get. It makes total sense. That's amazing. Because yeah, like whether GIs were eating it or a place was devastated by the war and couldn't get other protein, like Spam

could sit on a boat or a shelf and come through and feed people. Wow. Incredible. And so that, yeah, that's really the global push of it. This also just was one of the first ways the US fought the war because I think people know like December 1941 is the Pearl Harbor attack. But Pearl Harbor was more than two years after Germany invaded

Poland. A lot of the rest of the world started World War II in 1939, not basically 1942. There was a law called the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 where Congress and President Roosevelt set up the sale or loan of actual military equipment to countries fighting the war. But for about a year and a half before that, our main contribution was food and other non-combat stuff. Spam was kind of the key protein that we helped the allies with before we sent guns and then troops. Wow.

Is that kind of our main food export, like canned food like spam? Or was it just part of sort of a large arsenal of food? Kind of both, because anything that preserved well was what we sent. Something like produce is harder to ship and know it'll be still good when it gets there. But Spam, it's in these stackable rectangular cans, it'll be good for at least two years. We knew that we could put that on a boat and if the boat wasn't attacked, that could feed somebody in especially Europe initially.

You can also build like a wall of it and then sort of use that to hide behind. And then the Nazis will be like, oh no, I do not see any of these, sir. I do not see any allies. I only see a wall made out of spam cans. And then you paint a tunnel on the wall of spam and run through it. Yeah. Oh, I should run, I will run, wait a minute. I will run right through this tunnel.

There is a tunnel painted on the wall. I want to run through it. Wait, but I don't know that it's painted. It looks like a normal tunnel. Take that wily goreng or whatever. I don't know. Yeah, take that. And related to all this, the next one's takeaway number three.

Spam marketing created a smash hit music group and TV show that was one of the best entertainment jobs for mid-century American women. All right. In the late 40s and early 50s, there was a group called the Hormel Girls that were a tent pole of pop culture. They were a massive deal. I've... interesting because first of all, I've never heard of them, and second of all, they were named Hormel Girls.

Yeah, they mainly advertised the canned chili con carne and the spam from Hormel. Okay, okay. Those two products. So, huh. I mean, all right. But they basically wrapped up in the mid-1950s, so pretty much if you weren't alive then everybody kind of forgot about them. They were always doing advertisements, but they were like a major, it was like the California

Raisins if those just completely took off. Especially up to the mid 1950s, most TV shows were not like produced by a production company and you sell ads to everybody. It was a company funds an entire TV show. The TV show is named after them and only advertises them. A lot of the early TV shows are like the Texaco Star Theater or some other show where the name of the show is a company. I see. So, would they do other songs and things about Hormel products or was it all about Hormel products?

They just did like a ton of songs and then a ton of Hormel messages. I see. Just those two things back and forth. So like a love song and then like, be sure to eat your spam. Yes. Yeah. Okay. How was it? Alright. And People loved it. Yeah. I'm looking at like

a picture of them. They're all wearing sort of tents. I think those are skirts and then a white blouse. It looks like one of them's got a tambourine, some maracas. Yeah, there's two key sources here. It's a piece for JSTOR Daily by Erin Blakemore and a piece for Alis Obscura by Anne Eubank. Because again, end of World War II, almost all Hormel product is being shipped outside the US. So they'd tilted from being like a maker of grocery store meats and canned things in the 30s to being like the cheap canned meat supplier to the

earth. Right. And so Hormel said, did we screw up our brand in the US by doing this? Like do people think we're low quality cans for other people now? Ah, yeah. The sort of like, like if our product is going worldwide to poor people, then we're too good for it. And the other issue was apparently some soldiers returned home to the US sick of spam.

Well. Because they had been fed too much of it in the military. Yeah, I mean. And so Hormel said we got to do something. We got to change this. Make it sexy. Almost yet. Because like J. Hormel, he says, okay, I'm a veteran of World War I.

I'm still running spam. What do I do to make it have a more positive brand again? And he realizes two things. They could lean into this war association and they could also look at what was happening with American women after World War II. Because a lot of American women got to go into the workforce, into jobs besides childcare and being at home. And then were supposed to go back was the idea. Right.

Okay, ladies. All right. We don't need you anymore. Go back to not having rights. Go back to not having spending power. Oh, you all had your little fun during the war times. Now it's time, scoot, time to go back, scoot.

We were pretending you could do jobs. It was a big goof. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, oh, you thought you built a bunch of military equipment all on your own? Aw.

Yeah, and so as soon as 1946, of military equipment all on your own. Aw. Yeah. And so as soon as 1946, they created what was initially an all female marching bands called the Hormel Girls. And they dressed in military type outfits and they did a lot of like free entertainment at parades and fairs. And it was almost like a drum and bugle type vibe

of military marches, but all women playing the music. And was this meant to be sort of, was this to appeal to women or to appeal to men or both? Both and in the two ways of women can still do stuff and remember when we won the war partly with Hormel products. Women, we see you. We know you can still do stuff and remember how we won the war partly with Hormel products. Women, we see you. We know you can still do stuff and remember how we won the war.

Eat your spam. Everybody eat your spam. According to historians Jill M. Sullivan and Danielle D. Kack, this was meant to achieve a quote quasi patriotic branding for spam. Spam is a war hero. You should purchase it and respect it. We won the war because of spam. No one's saying it, but everyone a war hero. You should purchase it and respect it. We won the war because of spam. No one's saying it, but everyone's thinking it.

Right, they couldn't quite say it because that's weird. Right. But they were like, eh, eh, military spam, military spam. Eh, you think what I'm thinking, right? Spam is a troop. And yeah, and then they just kept expanding what the Hormel girls did. Next step was to have them sell spam door to door as door to door saleswomen. Oh, that's, so they would come up with like their little tambourines and maracas and like

sell the spam or what, how would they do that? What was their sales pitch? Yeah, they'd like put down the instruments, but they would come to your door and say, it's me, one of the Hormel girls. Do you want some spam and sell it? So I imagine that like there were then it was more of an army of thousands of Hormel girls, not like 15 of them. Okay.

Got it. Yeah, the group kept growing and Hormel also purchased and decorated a fleet of 35 Chevy's with like perfect white paints and Hormel logos on it to like catch the eye as these parades of cars came through town and sometimes there'd be like police escorts, it was a whole event. I'm looking at these ladies and they do look like kind of vaguely military, are they not, like are these not official military uniforms

and these are like Hormel pseudo-military uniforms? Hormel pseudo-military. That's not a crime? And then a lot of them were more or less veterans, right? Like they either worked in the war effort or were in the USO or something. It was just like accepted that the like everybody knew these ladies were not troops, but also a lot of them legitimately had done something in the war effort. Right, right. Well, then, you know, hey, yeah, yeah. If a couple of ladies want to come up to my door and sell me on the convenience and flavor of spam. You know, that's America.

That's what people said. And yeah, and then this peaked with Music with the Whore Mel Girls, a hit TV show launched in 1948. In 1953, Nielsen said it was the number four TV show in America in the ratings. Whoa, people love their gals, their ham, and their music. Yeah.

And this only ended because the TV business changed. The combination of the TV show and a bunch of live events ballooned to an annual cost for Hormel of $1.3 million in old money. And then also TV shifted to what we know now where like a production company makes a show and then the network sells ads to lots of companies. Right. Quality programs these days, like two people who've never seen each other getting married. Yeah. And sometimes they're naked the whole time. And sometimes they're naked. Sometimes they're on an island and they're naked and they're either in a jacuzzi or they're trying to suck the nutrition from a sea rock or a sea sponge.

I'm so glad you followed the word suck with the nutrition. I didn't know where that was going. You never know. You never know. But yeah, and also, J Hormel passed away in 1954, so that combination of changes, new Hormel management said, let's just do modern marketing and a few individual ads for a lot less money. Right.

And so the Hormel girls suddenly end. No more parades, no more TV show. That's it. Aw. Well, no more Hormel girls. But when they were happening, they earned a weekly salary of $50, which was much better pay than basically any other job for a woman in America. So they could get top level talent, the girls got to travel, they worked with other women,

they were not sexually exploited like other female entertainers. So God, I would hope not. This was one of the best jobs for a woman in entertainment in America, was to be a Hormel girl. Wow. Feminism built by spam. Pretty much unlike most of the rest of society, they said women can still do a job besides being a mother after World War II.

Yeah. It was legitimately interesting. Mother or self spam choose Choose your path ladies There are two spams inside you one you'll serve to your child The other you'll hold with a trumpet or something yeah, yeah, you either have soft flesh, baby or smooth canned, baby You either have soft flesh baby or smooth canned baby. With perfect edges, no corners on this baby.

And we have one last big takeaway because takeaway number four. The combination of global spam sales and the Monty Python sketch helped coin the name spam for junk emails. Yes, this was actually going to be my question. So there was a Monty Python sketch about spam. I know there's like a spam musical, but that happened a lot later. But what's the, yes, tell me, tell me the story. Yeah, and confusingly, the Spam-A-Lot musical is mostly a Monty Python and the Holy Grail musical with like a title reference to the spam sketch. But the spam sketch was in the original Monty Python TV show on the BBC called Monty Python's Flying Circus. Yes.

And this takeaway is tricky because we don't quite have documentation of one of the links. There's no one creator of the slang term spam. But according to good sources, the trend lines of spam being in the world and the Monty Python sketch added up to spam as the nickname for junk emails. The repetitiveness of junk emails is like the repetitiveness of the Monty Python characters in the sketch talking about spam all the time. Okay, so what was the sketch? What was the spam sketch?

Explain it in a way that makes me laugh just as if I'm watching the sketch. I got to warm up for Monty Python female impersonation voices, because that's most of the sketch. This was in 1970 in the second season. Terry Jones and Michael Palin wrote a sketch where a couple is eating at a restaurant. For no reason, they're lowered into the restaurant from the ceiling on wires. It's just stupid.

But the menu of the restaurant is dominated by spam. Like every item is spam, spam, spam, eggs and spam kind of thing. Mm-hmm. I see. Okay. And then the whole rest of the restaurant is a chorus of Vikings singing about how much they love spam. Of course.

A lot of Python sketches are both completely wacky and grounded in something. Yeah. And if this is grounded in something, it's that post-World War II Britain, the economy was not very good and a lot of US troops came through. And so spam was common and people were kind of sick of it. Yeah. So spam was, there's too much spam, a lot of spam. Yeah. So that's why it's like funny that a restaurant of British people would be excited about spam. Unlike in our bonus show, we'll talk about South Korea funny that a restaurant of British people would be excited about spam.

Unlike in our bonus show, we'll talk about South Korea, a lot of the Pacific that would not make sense as a comedy premise because people are excited about spam. They like it. And there were Vikings in the restaurant because marijuana or? Basically, yeah. They wanted just a group of guys who sing in a peppy way. There was a trope at the time of Vikings singing a chorus as they row their ship to attack a monastery or whatever.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So that's why. But pretty much marijuana, yeah. You know what? There are some Monty Python sketches that I think might, nobody get mad. Some of them I think maybe don't hold up so good.

And some of them- What? What? Trying to do that voice. Some of them hold up- What do you mean? Some of them hold up incredibly well. Like some of the sketches that I feel like were less like memes or something when I was in

high school and then I've looked back on and found them are really, really funny. Very funny. Yeah. I think this one holds up pretty good for being so wacky. As you watch the sketch, a lot of the humor is how often people are saying like, spam, spam, spam, spam in funny voices. It is funny. It is a funny word.

I got to give them that. They sound funny. British people, again, don't get mad at me. It does always sound when you're talking like maybe you're having a bit of a laugh. Like that maybe you're pulling our leg a little bit with that accent of yours. Maybe it's a little bit of an inside joke. And I don't believe you talk like that the whole time. Like I don't believe you.

It's a little bit of a show, a little bit of a performance for our benefit. And then when they're at home, they just talk normal. You know? They just speak normal. Right. Yeah. Yeah, the United States invented English. Yeah? And people in United States invented English.

And people in England are borrowing it. I don't know why they have to pretend to have this accent. Yeah. Yeah, I also, I like that in Python sketches they occasionally reference how wacky their voices are being. Like, there's a sketch where one of them's being a lady talking about how much she loved a gangster guy named Dimmesdale. And at one point they say he knew how to treat a female impersonator. It's great. It's a good bit.

Really, really bad. But anyway, so they make this spam bit and it's kind of one of the later Python bits to get outside of the UK. Because like that whole Flying Circus show, it's only on the BBC's Airwaves. And the two big breaks for Python in the US were Monty Python and the Holy Grail after its release. It sold a few tickets in 1975 and then it was a cult hit down the line. And the other break was PBS stations aired tapes of Flying Circus starting in the mid and late 70s as well. Yeah. Yeah, because I think my parents were big Monty Python fans and so they inculcated me into that humor pretty early on. Mine too. Yeah.

Yeah. Let me know that Dead Parrots was the pinnacle of humor. Nothing funnier. And the spam sketch is not necessarily the first thing you're shown. It'll be the Holy Grail movie usually. Life of Brian is kind of bigger in the UK than the US. Also, they made a sketch movie that did not include the spam sketch. It's almost a deeper cut. And so, it took a while for Americans to see the sketch. And in the meantime, Americans started inventing the internet. Right. Right. And nothing ever went wrong. The end. It was a beautiful, it was a beautiful innovation where we used it to communicate and do art and play together.

This is such a wild internet timeline thing of using the internet poorly. Computing historians say the first junk email was way back in 1978, which is kind of before a modern internet at all. What was it? Like how, okay, so it was before modern internet, but like what was the junk email? Yeah, so this was the experimental ARPANET's network. ARPANET is an acronym. It was like a precursor of networking computers like we do today.

And a guy named Gary Thuark said an unsolicited message to 397 people selling a new kind of computer for Gary Thuark's profit. And he received a ton of outraged replies and also sold about $13 million worth of products. So it was bad and worked. Hi, it's me, Gary. So I hope this email finds you well. I know this is like the maybe first email

you've ever received, but will you buy something, please? Yeah, yeah. It's just like the it's like the first human sort of language is developed on stone tablets and then you you hear a big thump outside your cave and you look out and it's like Og here, you like big rock? Tablets, tablets, get your tablets. Ever since then, people exploited early computer networks to send unsolicited ads and messages.

At the same time, chiefly, nerds and geeks are the first Americans to get into Python. They're PBS subscribers. It's relatively advanced humor compared to what else we people had. And so like the repetitive junk email, somebody we don't know who associated it with the spam spam spam spam spam in the spam sketch. And also in a crossover way related to the sketch, like the annoying ubiquity of spam meat. Right.

Yeah. That's where it came from, the term. It checks out. It checks out. It checks out that a nerd would come up with that. The other like weird factoid is that the first PBS station to air Tapes of Flying Circus was in Dallas in 1974. And the specific guy who greenlighted that is a guy named Bob Wilson. And he is the father of actors Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson. Oh. So their

family like changed comedy that way kind of more than the the sons. You gotta follow the spam. Yeah. So yeah so that's why we call that technology the meat thing. A lot of it is legitimately Monty Python. They're a big reason why. I guess those chaps did something good for the world after all. I'm going to sing spam at you until you like them more. Spam, spam, spam, spam. I like them. I like them. I just...

I know. You're kidding. There are just certain sketches that I think... I remember in high school everyone thought were the best and now I look back on it and it's like, you know what? I think there were better ones than the dead parrot one. Yeah. Cheese Shop is kind of the spam vibe and also good.

There's a few. Yeah. Yeah. Let us know on Discord your favorite Python sketches. Let us know your favorite. Let me know why I'm wrong Bicycle repair man is a really good deep cut. I really like my repair man. It's a world where everyone is Superman I'm on their superhero is a guy who fixes their bicycles. It's great I like the guy with the really long German name from oh

Germans are wacky. Yeah, it's good. They really are. Sorry, Germany. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. I'm going to be talking about the Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Spam was its company's second major innovation in preserving pig meat and vastly decreased meat waste. Takeaway number two, Spam was one of the first ways the United States helped the allies in World War II. Takeaway number three, spam marketing created a smash hit music group and TV show that was

one of the best entertainment industry jobs for mid-century American women. Takeaway number four, the nickname spam for junk email came from the global ubiquity of spam, but also came from the Monty Python sketch and its timeline in reaching the United States. And then lots of numbers this week too, in particular numbers illuminating what spam is made of, how long it lasts, and also the spam can at the bottom of the ocean. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff

available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Budae Jjigae, which is the South Korean army-based stew featuring

spam. Visit safpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of max fun 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 expert writing from Ayala A. Rubio, assistant professor of

marketing at Michigan State University. Also a lot of digital historical writing from Smithsonian magazine, JSTOR Daily, the Minnesota Historical Society, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, and lots more places. Also linking the London Natural History Museum, they have a picture of that spam can at the bottom of the ocean, along with lots of other information about other stuff we found there. 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, Skategoat

people, and others. Also KD taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and 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 of the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 198. That's about the topic of wrestling. Fun fact, we have a papyrus from nearly 2,000 years ago outlining a bribe for a wrestler to lose a match in the Roman Empire. They rigged the wrestling even back then. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken, Unhaven by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Spertan 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. ["The New York Times"]

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