Something You Should Know - Mastering the Art of Speaking on the Spot & The Surprising Story of Breakfast Cereal - SYSK Choice

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

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Today on something you should know, what's crawling around in the dirt in your backyard? Then a lot of great advice for the next time you have to speak to a large group or a small party or anywhere. Think to yourself right before you speak. I have value to brain. These folks are going to benefit because, and whatever you say after that because, and then see how you feel. Most people feel better. most people approach their audience rather than retreat. Also, why human feet are getting noticeably bigger quickly.

And the interesting people and fascinating stories in the history of breakfast cereal. In COVID, there was a run on grape nuts, and that created a robust black market for green nuts. And people went onto sites to buy black market green nuts. And some people paid up to $100 for a box of grape nuts. All this today on something you should know. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant, you're building something big, and Square's there for all of it,

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Something you should know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there, and welcome to Something You Should Know. So imagine this. Imagine if you were to go into your backyard and pick up just a, pinch of dirt, like a half a teaspoon. If you did that, you would be holding over a billion living organisms, perhaps 10,000 different species of life in that little pinch of dirt.

Now, this is about twice as many organisms as scientists thought just 20, 30 years ago. In fact, it's now believed that more than half of all earth life is going on underground. And not all life underground is friendly. Tetanus, for example. Tetanus spores are in soil, everywhere, even in your backyard. Luckily, most of us have been vaccinated against it, so tetanus is not a big problem here, but in developing countries, it is still a big health issue, and people get it from contact with dirt. And that is something you should know. Have you ever been in a situation where all eyes around? on you. Everyone is waiting for you to say something. Maybe it's in a small group at a party or an event

or even in a more formal environment where you're called upon to speak in front of a group. For a lot of us, it can be terrifying, even paralyzing, which can be doubly horrifying because not only are all eyes on you waiting for you to say something brilliant, but the situation itself tends to tie up your brain and your tongue into knots, making it harder to think and speak. Well, here to help understand why that happens and how to prevent it and really how to make speaking to people a whole lot easier is Matt Abrams.

Matt is a leading expert in communication with decades of experience as an educator, author, and coach. He is a lecturer in organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and author of the book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter. Hi, Matt. Welcome. Thanks for coming on something you should know. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. Everyone has heard and experienced to some degree, I imagine, how scary speaking in public is.

But I guess the question is like, why is it so scary? What are we, what are people afraid of? Well, it is. It's part of the human condition. When we look at surveys of people and they report anxiety around speaking, 85% of people report getting nervous in high-stakes situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying. I think we could create a circumstance that would make them nervous. Like I said, it's part of the human condition. We want to appear confident and competent in front of people. We see anxiety of speaking in front of others in every culture that we study. And we see it start to develop around the early teen years when people are expected to be part of the broader society.

So it's it's something we have to deal with. Well, it certainly is audience dependent. I can talk to, you know, my kids and not get too worked up about it, but talking to strangers in a formal setting and supposedly imparting some knowledge, that's scary. Absolutely, absolutely. And in those circumstances that you describe, the context does matter. In the context where we are more in jeopardy with our status, we get more nervous, you know, with your kids, you're pretty well established in your status.

But when you're in a work function and your big bosses in the room, that's a very different circumstance. So context does matter. And helping appreciate that and understanding that can be one of the steps to managing the anxiety. So what is the, maybe jumping to the end here, but what is like the first aid approach? If you're going to speak, even if it's just in a group at a party or something, but you're kind of on the spot and you're going to speak, is there anything the first aid like? that you can do that calms down the situation and makes your brain not do that thing where you

can't think straight? I'll give you three things I think that can really help sort of the panic button response that can help one deep belly breaths the kind of thing if you've ever done yoga or tai chi where you you really fill your lower abdomen make sure the exhale is twice as long as the inhale the the exhale is where all the magic happens you do a few breaths like that one or two and you begin to feel better and you can do that before you jump into a virtual meeting before you click the join button before you open the door to the room you can do that second remind yourself you are in service of the people you're talking to it's not about you it's about them and if we can shine that spotlight away from us and onto them it can be much it can be very liberating and much more

engaging and then finally anything we can do to get ourselves present oriented in that moment so approach it with curiosity or excitement and that can bring us into that present moment a lot of our anxiety is either ruminating about things we could have, would have, should have done, or the future consequences of what could happen if I make a mistake. So by being present oriented, by being focused on the value you bring to the interaction, and then taking deep breaths, you can actually turn the volume down quite significantly on the anxiety you feel in those moments. It's interesting that when you're in that position, you fear you're being judged by everyone watching you. When the roles are reversed, when you're in the audience watching someone

else, you typically aren't as critical as you think other people are when you're speaking. They're often very forgiving. They want you to succeed. They're rooting for you. But when you're up there, you think everybody thinks I suck. That's right. In fact, psychologists have a name for this. They call it the spotlight effect. We over-emphasize our view of how others are seeing us rather than just focus on what we're doing. And the reality is everybody's carrying around a little spotlight that's shining on themselves and we're all in our own head worried about what others think of us that we just don't have the bandwidth or time to think about other people. So you're right. It is ironic. And again, helping people to understand that can bring relief in terms of how

anxious people feel. You talk about or you suggest to people to dare to be dull, which seems very counterintuitive because when you're called upon to speak or when it's your turn to say something, you generally want to sound smart and clever, maybe even witty, knowledgeable, knowing what you're talking about. So dare to be dull doesn't sound like great advice. So can you explain that? Yes. Maximize mediocrity. That's how I start my classes I teach at Stanford's Business School. It's a real simple phenomenon. lot of us strive to be right when we speak. We want to do it right. And unlike sports or acting or singing where there is a right way and a wrong way, there is no right way to communicate. There's

certainly better ways and worse ways. But putting pressure on ourselves to do it right almost guarantees that we're not going to do it as well as we can. And it boils down to thinking of your brain like a computer. It's not a perfect analogy, but in this case it works. If you on your laptop or on your phone have lots of apps or windows open, your central processing unit in there is not working as efficiently as it can. It's stretched. The bandwidth is limited. So every one of those apps or windows is performing a little less well because they're all open. If I am constantly judging and evaluating what I want to say, my cognitive bandwidth is reduced because part of my brain is actually focusing on judging what I'm saying as I'm saying it. Dare to be dull.

mediocrity is all about saying, turn the volume down on that self-evaluation and judgment. Don't get rid of it. We have to think about what we say, otherwise we can get in big trouble, but don't do it as much or as intensely as we do. So when I say to my students, dare to be dull or maximize mediocrity, I'm explaining to them, and they understand it after we do some discussion and activities, that they are getting in their own way. Their pursuit of the perfect way of speaking and presenting is actually reducing the likelihood that they'll do well. And when they give themselves permission just to get it done, just be dull, just be mediocre. They then have all this extra cognitive bandwidth to actually do it very well. So I end that

very first class. I start by saying maximize mediocrity. And at the end of the class, I finish the quote. And I say maximize mediocrity so you can achieve greatness. And the students understand it. It's about turning down that striving for perfection. So can you give me an example of that? Because it's hard to imagine standing up in front of people and saying, you know, I'm going to dare to be dull here. I wouldn't know like, so what would I say differently? So when somebody asks, let's take a very specific example. I'll give you two. Let's say somebody asks you a question. And instead of saying, oh, I got to get the right answer here. Answer the question. Give just the first answer that pops into your mind. Give the answer. And in so doing, chances are you'll be able to say that

answer more eloquently than if you got in your head and say, oh, I could say it this way, I could say it that way. Is this the right way to say it? So just giving yourself permission to say it helps you say it better. Something that I've noticed, I'd like to get you to comment on this. I interview a lot of people. And so very often what happens, it seems to me, what I think is happening is I'll talk to people before the interview and it's all very easy and nice and conversational. As soon as the interview starts, a lot of people, it almost seems like they think someone is fact-checking every word they say. They become very cautious, whereas a minute ago they were having fun and just speaking to speak. Something happens, I think, when you're in front of people

you don't know, where you think like they know more than you do or they're fact-checking you or something happens that puts this filter on that makes things difficult. We see these types of communication as threatening and challenging. We see them as we are being tested. This is a crucible where we can demonstrate our communication prowess. And that changes our demeanor. It changes how we sound, what we do with our body, the length of our answers, the depth of our content. If rather we reframe these circumstances as opportunities, of an ability to collaborate, to extend, to expand, to get to know things better, that changes our demeanor.

I open up, I sound more conversational like myself, I give more depth to my answers, richness to my thoughts. So reframing these situations, and how do you do that? It's one thing to say it's another thing to do it. Part of the way you do that is remind yourself of successful communication interactions you've had. in the past the ones that were successful chances are are not the ones that you found threatening and challenging they're the ones where you felt invited connected and collaborative so part of it is reminding yourself that hey when i get in that space good things happen and then the other thing to do is watch others who are the way you would like to be and

notice what they do to make them feel more collaborative and less challenging so by reflecting on your own seeing it and other people that helps you take that step to begin to adopt that mindset yourself And when you do, you'll avoid the things that you're noticing that you see in others. I'm speaking with Matt Abrahams, and we're talking about how to be a better speaker. He is a leading expert in communications, and he's author of a book called Think Faster, Talk Smarter. This episode is brought to by Tron Aries. For the first time, the captivating world of Tron breaks out of the grid. Aries, a highly advanced program, journeys into our world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's

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So, Matt, you know the experience, I think everybody's had this experience where there are just some people that you can talk to that somehow enable you to be a better, speaker. Like you like talking to them. They make you feel good so you keep talking to them and you sound smart or you think you sound smart. And then there are people that make you feel like an idiot. And I don't, I never really understood that. Um, but I've had it happen. Yeah. So have I. So have I. And I hope at this moment, I'm not making the negative of a perception of yourself happening. No. But the good. Thank you. I think what goes on there. One is that we get in our own head. And for some reason, we are in. intimidated by another person. And then that gets us locked up into all the problems we've talked about just a few minutes ago. The other thing is those who help bring out the best in us, I think do a few things. One, they listen well. So we feel like we're being listened to and we feel validated. They might even ask follow-up questions or paraphrase what we're saying to make us feel like they really care. They're doing things with their nonverbal presence. If we see them,

either virtually or in person, they're probably in an open body posture, they're probably nodding as we speak, looking at us. If we only hear their voice, they're probably doing what we call back channel things like, uh-huh, and really. So I think they do things that make us feel better, which empowers us to communicate better, and we also are less intimidated by them. So I would challenge you and everybody listening to think about the people who really help us communicate better? And what are the things that they're doing? How are they inviting us, either explicitly or implicitly, to be better at our communication? So you've given the advice and pretty much anybody who talks on this topic says, you know, preparation is important. I think, though, the people

don't know what that means. So does that mean memorize what I'm going to say? Does that mean? Oh, absolutely not. What does it mean to be prepared to talk? In terms of going, either if it's a plan presentation, then prepared to talk means you've thought through your content. And by thinking through your content, I mean you've reflected on who your audience is. You think about their knowledge level, their areas of resistance, their likely attitudes. You think about your goal. What is that I want them to know? How do I want them to feel?

And what do I want them to do as a result of my communication? And then you think about how do I package up this information in a clear, concise way that engages the audience? That's preparation. And then you can actually practice delivering some of it. At no point are you memorizing. Memorizing gets you in so much trouble because it feeds right back into that cognitive load issue.

If I have the right way to say it and I'm speaking, I am constantly comparing myself to what I intended to say, which means I have less energy and focus on what I'm actually saying and connecting with my audience. Now, when you're speaking spontaneously, preparation looks a little different. So obviously, you might not know who your audience is. Sometimes you do, and if you do, you should reflect on characteristics of them. But if you don't, in the moment, you need to be observing the environment.

Preparation might mean, wow, I notice everybody looks really tired. And I could think, well, maybe this is their fifth meeting in a row. That might change how I say something. you do have to think about your goal immediately just in the moment how do what do I want to get across how do I want people to feel what do I want them to do and then the second half of the methodology I talked about the six steps is really about messaging and that's where structure and prioritization come in so you can do a lot to prepare if you're going on a job interview or you're giving a presentation and you know Q&A is coming you should think about questions that you might get

In fact, you could use generative AI, chat GPT and the like. Type in, interviewing for a job at this company and this role. Give me five questions. The tool spit out questions and you can practice answering them. That's what I mean by preparation. There is a moment right before you speak that I think many people feel very intimidated and kind of shrink and lose their energy. And what do you do in that moment?

So by reminding ourselves that this adds value and reminding ourselves in the moment that these people have something to get from us, that can really change that intimidation and make it exciting and invite you to engage. Think to yourself right before you speak, I have value to bring, these folks are going to benefit because, and whatever you say after that because, and then see how you feel. Most people feel better. Most people approach their audience rather than retreat. And most people put energy into their voices when they have that approach in mind. So since you're the expert in this, people must ask you questions. What do you get asked about a lot? One is the biggest thing I get asked about is what do I do if I forget, if I blank out.

It's the number one thing people struggle with and are worried about. And I give them two ways to approach this, one before and one after. So before you speak, if you're really nervous about blanking out, first, ask yourself this question. What is the real likelihood that I will blank out in this upcoming situation? If you're like most people, most people never go beyond 20, 25 percent. They say 25 percent chance I'll blank out, which means 75 percent of the time you're not. And those are good odds.

If I were a betting person, I would take those odds. Second, you can structure content. Put your content in a structure. I'll give you an example, problem, solution, benefit. If you've ever sold anything or watched an advertisement on television, they use this structure. Here's a problem. Here's how we solve it. Here's the benefit.

If I know that structure, it's really hard to forget or get lost. So if I finish the problem and I'm like, what comes next, I always know solution follows problem. So by rationalizing, asking yourself the likelihood something will happen and using a structure, it reduces the likelihood that you'll blank out. Second, if you do blank out, do what you do if you lose your keys or your phone. Go back to go forward. Repeat yourself. Often we can get ourselves back on track just by saying what we just said.

And most of us can remember what we just said, even if we can't remember what comes next. And then the final thing to do is that doesn't work and you blanked out and you still can't get back on track, ask your audience a question. And that question will distract them from attention on you, get them. engaged with whatever the question is and it gives you a sense and a time to catch up. When I teach, sometimes I'll blank out. I teach the same class over and over again. I think, did I say this in this class? I should think about that for a second. So I'll just stop and I'll say, let's pause for a moment. I'd like all of you to think about

how what we've just discussed applies to your life or you have this project. And the students don't think, oh, man, he's forgotten. They think, oh, how does this apply? So the biggest thing I get asked about is blanking out. There are things you can do prior to the communication and things you can do if you actually blank out to help you. Is there, is there something, that's number one. Is there a close number two that people ask you about? The other thing people ask me about is pretty straightforward. What do I do with my hands? People always want to know what do I do with my hands when they speak. And the answer is, do not hide them, not in your pocket, behind your back. Use them to help emphasize your points or describe what you're saying. My rule for gesturing is

very simple. Go beyond your shoulders. Many people gesture in front of their chest. and it makes them look nervous, defensive, and tight, and if you just you're broadly beyond your shoulders, and it doesn't have to be full extended like I'm king or queen of the world, it's just going beyond your shoulders, helps you look confident. So use them as an aid to help you communicate with your audience. Those are the two big questions I get. What do I do with my hands?

What do I do if I blank out? Mostly what we've been talking about is really more about formal speaking, but people also struggle with just making small talk and I know you talk about that and what's the what's the magic there because some people are so good at it and some people just dread it so and feel awkward and don't know what to say so what do you say so I think small talk gets a bad rap I think we need to rebrand it small talk allows for really big things to happen it allows you to connect to learn to really collaborate with people so when we go into small talk situations. A couple rules apply. First, and this comes from a colleague of mine, a fascinating woman.

She is a professional matchmaker and an academic, really interesting combination. Shea has this saying that I think is really powerful for small talk. Your goal is to be interested, not interesting. And that means you have to ask questions. You have to be connected and listen well. That helps you get through most small talk. The second rule is to keep things moving. Many of us go into small talk like we're playing tennis or volleyball where we want to just spike something over the net. I'll say something great and it goes over the net and then I'm done. Instead, it's more like that game hacky sack. Do you remember that game with the beanbag ball? And the whole goal there is just to keep the ball off the ground and everybody participates kicking it. That's your job in small talk.

Set people up to keep the conversation going. If you go in by asking questions, listening, commenting on what people say, adding where appropriate, these conversations then go really, really well. So it's about being interested and not interesting, keeping the conversation moving, being curious and being a good listener. That makes small talk so much easier. Well, that's great advice, because I think what people struggle with with small talk is they don't know what to talk about or what to say. And your suggestion is be more interested than interesting, and it takes the pressure off. I've been speaking with Matt Abrams. He is a communications expert, a lecturer in organizational behavior at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business,

and author of the book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Matt. Thank you so much. It was great to chat with you. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you as a trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

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Conditions apply. Every morning, people all over the world start their day with a bowl of cereal, breakfast cereal. When you think about it, modern day breakfast cereal is kind of a weird food. I mean, how in the world does corn become a corn flake? I have no idea. Today, there are so many cereals, but where do they all come from? What is it about cereal that makes it such a popular choice for breakfast?

Joining me to reveal much of what you never knew about the world of cereal is Catherine Cornell Dolan. She is an associate professor of English and author of a couple of books. Her latest is called Breakfast Serial, a global history. Hi, Catherine, welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. And please call me Casey. Okay, Casey. So I guess I first would like to know, because I have a sense that cereal seems like a very American thing, but I don't know if it is.

I mean, do people eat Cheerios and Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies all over the world, or is it pretty much an American thing? Good. That's the excellent question. And the answer is really, of course, like all these answers are, yes and no. Serial as a first meal that you eat, usually sometime in the morning, is universal and has always existed and goes way back to Mesopotamia times. But the boxed grocery store, corn flakes kind of cereal is absolutely started in America, in Battle Creek, Michigan, with these really wacky cast of characters like Kellogg and C.W. Post, and a guy named James Caleb Jackson. So the breadth of Syria that we usually think about is absolutely American. But there's a really interesting history that goes before the kind of American inventions happened.

And that history starts when and where? So up to, depending on the historical source you're looking at, eight to 10,000 years ago, if you're talking about the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent area where they've got those eight founder crops, some of the most important, of which, for my purposes, include barley and two ancient forms of wheat. Those all get cross-bred with an early goat grass, and they become bread wheat, which is the wheat we use now and think of as wheat. And that's what people would use to start making porridge. These kinds of porridge, oatmeal, all these kinds of warm breakfast cereals that you might have yourself now. People are just eating those always. So that, you know, as far back as we can chart, people who are

have been eating those. But then in the 19th century, so 1863, that is when someone invents this thing called granola. And that's where the history gets real interesting. Because that's the beginning of the All-American breakfast cereal. So explain how that happened. So James Caleb Jackson in 1863, he went to a health spot in Danville, New York. He'd been sick. It made him feel a lot better and it basically fixed him entirely. And he was really impressed by the very simple diet. And so then he started his own health spa. And he wanted to do more with that very simple idea of the very simple diet.

And so he created this biscuit. So it involved baking, twice baking, a very large flour wafer, so like a big cake, but very thin. And then breaking it up into smaller nugget-shaped biscuits. And that was the first ready to eat breakfast cereal. So that was 1863, and he did it. And he would serve it to the patients at the health spa that he then started. The next step in that whole history came along because John Harvey Kellogg and Ellen White went to this Danville spa to get ideas for their health resort, which was back in Battle Creek, Michigan. And that's where things get real familiar sounding to all of us.

And so in America, when whatever, Kellogg or Post or whoever, you know, was first, when they started cereal, what was it? Was it corn flakes? Was it Cheerios? What was it? Right. And that's, yeah, I got to give you some back history there. So they started with, so it was Kellogg, John Harvey Kellogg. He goes to the Danville spa.

He gets the idea, if you don't mind, I'm going to take you back a step. He gets the idea for this granula, and he actually designs his own form of granula that was so similar to the one at Dandel Spa, that Jackson's version, that there was a fear of litigation, and John Harvey Kellogg was being sued all the time, actually, throughout his life. So this was the first of many threats of litigation for him. And so he changed the name of granula to granola, and that's actually the first time we hear of granola's is the 1890s. And it's fine. It's a better product than the one Jackson had produced. It was more palatable, quicker. But he then gets all excited and goes to his test kitchen and experiments with all these different products and recipes and all that. And he comes up with, in 1894, he patents flaked cereals in the process of preparing same, which is what we now know of as corn flakes. So corn flakes is really where it all starts.

That's the very first one. And is there an easy way to explain what a corn flake is? Because I don't think anybody really knows how, when you look at that stuff in the bowl, how did corn become that? You take a biscuit, a small biscuit of wheat, or corn, when it became corn flakes, it became a cornmeal, and you twice bake it and you break them up into little flakes, and then you bake it the once, you break it up into the little flakes, and then you bake it again, and then you have this very thin cornflake, basically.

So when breakfast cereal takes off, when does it take off and why does it take off? Sure. It takes off. So John Harvey Kellogg patents, this specific kind of flaked version of making a cereal. So what we now picture is cornflakes in 1894. And basically in that moment, it is world famous. It takes off instantly. Battle Creek, Michigan is on the map. It's got all these fun nicknames like the serial capital of the world, it's the mecca of cereal. And all the get rich quick people come and they have the next big formula for cereal. There's a man, C.W. Post. So you've all, we've heard of the word Kellogg and we've heard of the word Post. And these are two of the main people that get it started back in the 1890s.

CW Post is also very unwell and goes to the Sanitarium, the Kellogg Sanitarium, the Battle Creek Sanitarium that John Harvey and Will Keith Kellogg work at. And he gets all better. And just like the earlier stories, his health recovers. And so, and it cracks me up. So C.W. posts, the way he decides to thank the Kellogg's, and John Harvey Kellogg is a great self-aggrandizer and quite a character. He's got all kinds of personality, good and bad. And he was very proud of showing off his test kitchen. And so CW. Post goes through and looks at how Kellogg had made everything. And the first thing he does is go across the street and do it himself.

And just try to undercut the market. And so he goes across the street, starts his own LaVita in, and then packages a version of the flaked cereal and starts selling that under the brand post. And that's when Will Keith Kellogg, so John Harvey's brother, starts yelling at John Harvey and says, we have to get it in the market. We have to start selling this globally. We have to get big. We can't just do this in a little spa because.

This guy across the street is taking the market, and he shouldn't. We're the ones that invented it. And so that's when the Cala Company begins, and that's under Wilkeith, not John Harvey. And they add sugar to the cereal to when it was in the spas only, it was far less sweet than what we're used to tasting and breakfast cereals. And it really took off from there. Pretty soon General Mills gets involved. People are inventing shredded wheat, and John Harvey Post goes and tries to sue them because, He thinks that he has patented the process of making any kind of cereal.

And then the law, the judges come back and tell him that you actually can't patent the process of just making cereal in general. So it's shredded weed, of course, has a slightly different makeup, you know, so that's a slightly different process. So that got patented separately. CW Post does eventually invent one of his own that isn't just a theft. And he patents grape nuts. Yeah, well, I always liked as a kid, I always liked grape nuts. but you know the question everybody asks is there's no grapes and there's no nuts so why is it grape nuts exactly made with neither grapes nor nuts he so post thought that um the sugar he was using

which is slipping my mind at the moment he called it grape sugar i think it's maltose and um so he called it grape sugar and then he thought that the twice baking process of the little nuggets made them kind of nutty flavored and so that's where the name grape nuts comes from. At some point, I mean, it seems that mostly up until some point in time, serial was really more of an adult thing, more than a kid's thing. But it's not today. It seems much more of a kid thing. It has for decades. So when did that change? Sure. Especially in the post-World War II time, and especially, especially when both parents start going to work out of the house, that's when cereal has this real advantage in the fact

it's not a hot breakfast. And so you don't have to leave kids unsupert. Kids can take care of themselves. They can provide themselves with breakfast unsupervised. They go to the kitchen. This is the fridge. They grab the milk. They go to the cabinet. They grab the cereal and they pour it. They, you know, they take care of everything themselves. They're not lighting fires or, you know, turning stoves on or anything to make porridge that could, you know, result in chaos and burns and that kind of thing. So it was really popular. It just went through the roof for kill it, for children specifically and then in the 1950s when they started marketing them in commercials to children they started putting the little toy surprises in their plastic you know we were able to

produce much more cheap more cheap toys and those kinds of things out of plastic because of new technologies and that was all on purpose all marketing it straight for children the number of cereals in the supermarket is is really astounding and when you think about it you know there was a time when there was you know frosted flakes and cheerios and and whatever. But now there's honey nut Cheerios and there's, you know, five other kinds of Cheerios. And it's just like this monster that keeps growing and growing and there's just more and more. And there's the monster cereals and there's the, this one is really made out of Oreos and there's every kind of gimmick you can possibly think of. Someone will try it and see if it works.

And breakfast cereals is really very American in the sense that it is the innovative, the, let's try a gimmick, the next big thing, like aim at nostalgia, but also aim at innovation. Maybe we'll get them this way. Cross marketing. How can we make advertising work for us? It's all connected in cereal. When you look at the cereal aisle in the grocery store, you will see the ones that you've always seen. Cornflakes, Wheaties, Cheerios, they're always there and they've always been there. But then there's a lot of these, maybe they're like gimmicky series. or cereals that kind of come and go. And I wonder, why do they go?

I mean, why do cereals, some cereals stay and some cereals go? Is it because it just the taste isn't very good or they're just gimmicky and they just fall out of favor or what? All of the above. And interestingly, not so much the flavor because people will work with recipes to make it so that the flavors, whatever we have decided we want it in that moment. The cornflake, I mean, the basic ones, cornflakes, grape nuts, shredded wheat, cheeryos. And then if you're in the UK or the Commonwealth, weed abics and wheat bics, there's a couple of other ones that are like kind of mainstays.

Those will, it seems like those are just never going away. Those ones have ridden every kind of high and low. And interestingly, we just had this, the COVID epidemic. And breakfast cereals, especially the traditional breakfast cereals, had a boom. And it turns out there was a very similar boom back in the Great Depression. In times of stress, we go back to those really basic cereals, it turns out. But the kind of flash in the pan ones that you're talking about, it could be a number of things. It could be a taste combination people weren't really interested in.

It could be really bad marketing and business models that they just got knocked out of the market, that there was nothing wrong with the product, but it just didn't sell. and food has a very limited, very small profit margin. And so if you're not going to, if you're not a good business model, you're not going to survive. Well, let's talk about that because one of the complaints people have about brand name cereal is it is so expensive. Yeah, right, right. And that you can get knockoff brands at Trader Joe's or even now in the supermarket that seem to be pretty close, if not almost on the nose that's a lot cheaper. So is it just the marketing and what makes a box of cereal

costs, you know, $7? Right. Right. It is. It's largely marketing and because the product is cents on the dollar. It costs maybe 10 cents to produce. You're using maybe 10 cents of wheat and sugar and all those kinds of things. The, you know, the industrial scale of this all has made the production of the actual items so cheap. Yeah, there really isn't any. other costs associated with it. It does seem that television has a lot to do with the growth of cereal, that TV advertising of cereal aimed at children has had over the last several decades has had a lot to do with the success of cereal, yes?

Largely, this is because the cereal companies have always been on the cutting edge of advertising. So however they could find a way to advertise their product more than the next guy's product, They were finding it. And so every technological advance, cereal was right there figuring out ways to market it. If you think about Breakfast of Champions, right, that slogan goes back more than 100 years to billboards in a, I think it's Minneapolis baseball stadium. And now all of a sudden, Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions, we've kept that slogan ever since.

So people are just always coming up with clever ads, sophisticated technological ads. And so if it was newspapers, they'd be ads in journals and newspapers. When it went to radio, then serial companies are sponsoring whole programs that are on the radio. And then it just transferred straight over to TV. The minute the TV happened, the serial companies were right there with their various ads, with their mascots, with their cross-branding, with the most popular shows. Is Superman going to be advertising a cereal? Is Mickey Mouse going to be advertising a cereal?

You know, these things are all happening as soon as TV is coming about. And now with the Internet and with social media and all this kind of stuff, these breakfast cereal companies are right there trying to figure out clever ways to do like something that becomes viral and has clever markets where there was one that happened up in Vancouver and where it was like a really big box of cereal and a civic came out of it. So the toy surprise in this really huge box of cereal was like a car, but it was like a real car. It was big enough to be a real car. These kinds of ads that they're hoping will get put on all the various social media channels and everything. So in the timeline of the development

of cereals and people eating it for breakfast, can you pick a point or two along the timeline that's a really interesting, quirky, amazing story that I wouldn't know, but people may not have heard of before that that you could tell actually there's a really recent one um you said you liked grape nuts right and so in covid do you i don't know if you remember this there was a news report it was vaguely viral not hugely but that there was a run on grape nuts you you know you couldn't get toilet paper you couldn't get soaps and sanitizers and stuff you also couldn't get grape nuts in the store for love or money you know they just they sold out there was a run on cereal and other breakfast foods just in general. But for some reason, that one, grape nuts, was the one people could not get

enough of. And then, of course, people were closing the factories at the time, too, for a few weeks. So there was a reduction in production, and then there was also a run on the desire for it. And that created a robust black market for green nuts. And people went onto sites to buy black market grain nuts. And some people paid up, we're up to $100 for a box of grape nuts. And grape nuts is not the the cereal that you're imagining is going to be the one that everyone has to have and is going to run out and people are willing to spend $100 for. But it was. And then a couple of months later, Post was back to full production and they ramped everything up and they were able to get boxes out on those shelves and everything. And so people could buy the cereal again and post-marketed

the heck out of it and they posted to their website. Here are coupons. Thank you so much for loving us. you know, if you, if you can send us a receipt for the fact that you bought something for significantly more than what the shelf price was, we'll refund you that money. That was, there was a bit of a news report. In and amongst all the other news reports happening in 2020, there was one about grape nuts. Anything else that, you know, kind of a strange and unusual, quirky thing about breakfast cereal. Did you know that Andy Warhol, in addition to his Kellogg's, the Campbell soup can, he did a Kellogg's Corn Flakes. installation that was really famous in his time. It was 1964.

A box, one box of this installation sold at auction for $900,000 in 2015, U.S. dollars. So that was one. There's also festivals all over the world that are based on either box cereal like the grocery store kind of cereal or porridge is. So there's a great one in Scotland that I would love to visit at some point that's a porridge-based annual festival that's called the Golden Spurtle World Porridge making championship. So every year, people go to Scotland and they make their best recipe of oatmeal and they win a spurtle is this, it's usually wooden, but of course there's as golden because it's a trophy that you would use to like stir things to mix it around and stuff. So it's like a kitchen

implement. You know, I haven't actually had a bowl of cereal for a while, but I'm kind of craving grape nuts now. I think I'll get a box. Plus it might be worth $100 one day. I've been talking to Catherine Cornell Dolan. She is a professor of English and author of the book, Breakfast Serial, A Global History. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Catherine. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. I'll bet you didn't know this, but our feet are getting bigger by the decade. According to the National Shoe Retailers Association, shoe sizes for both men and women, have grown about a size and a half over the past three decades.

For women, the average size 7 is now an 8.5. Evolution experts say it's our food to blame. The more we eat, the bigger we get. And the bigger we get, the bigger our feet need to be to accommodate the extra weight. Another factor is what we're eating through childhood. Kids who eat high-density food during puberty, like pizza and high-processed foods, are stimulating their growth hormones. Those kids are likely to end up with bigger, grown-up waist sizes, hands, and feet.

And that is something you should know. If your to-do list isn't completely filled today, I have one thing you could add to that to-do list, and that is tell someone you know about something you should know and tell them to listen. I'd appreciate it. Thanks. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thank you for listening today to something you should know.

You know, a lot of the guests who appear on something you should know have their own TED Talk. And did you know that TED has a podcast that drops a new TED Talk every day? If you love hearing fascinating stories, insights about human behavior, and mind-blowing concepts that weren't even on your radar before, I recommend you check out TED Talks daily. You'll hear hot takes and deep dives from the world's leading thinkers. and learn answers to questions like, how do I stop caring about what other people think,

or is my partner the one? Do aliens actually exist? Don't miss out on your daily dose of inspiration. Listen to TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.

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