Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Our Preoccupation With Ownership & The Backstories of America’s Favorite Dishes

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, Deja Vu, what it is, who it happens to, when it happens, and where. Then, why we like to own things and why possessions are so important to us. This connection, this emotional connection with objects, and in particular authentic original objects and sentimental objects, invokes in most of us this concept called essentialism. We think that there's a property of physical things which make them unique and irreplaceable.

Starting point is 00:01:00 Also, ever notice that when you think you look good, you have a better day? And the origins of some of your favorite foods, Also, ever notice that when you think you look good, you have a better day? And the origins of some of your favorite foods and how American cuisine came to be. We ended up over the years making a cuisine out of the foods of other countries and cultures. Everything from pizza to sushi to bagels. If we liked it, we incorporated it and we changed it to fit our tastes. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp.

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Starting point is 00:02:10 Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Welcome to a really interesting episode of Something You Should Know today. A little later on, we are going to take a tasty journey through the world of American cuisine and discover the origins of some of our favorite foods. And we're going to explore the whole concept of ownership, what it means to own something, why we as humans like to own things, why we like to own a lot of things, and why some people own too many things. First up today, the topic is déjà vu. Two-thirds of people say they have had the experience of déjà vu,

Starting point is 00:02:51 that feeling that what you are experiencing now you've experienced before. And there are all kinds of theories as to why it occurs. Some people believe it's a paranormal experience. Others think it's just a glitch in the brain. Another theory is that it is simply one eye perceiving an event a fraction of a second before the other eye does. Deja vu is really hard to study because no one knows when it will happen and there is no evidence to look at. Just people's word that it happened. But here's what we do know about déjà vu. It decreases with age.

Starting point is 00:03:29 It increases with education and income. It is more common in people who travel, are politically liberal, and religious. It's more likely to occur indoors during leisure activities, and when it occurs, it typically lasts 10 to 30 seconds. Déjà vu occurs more often in the evening and on weekends than it does in the morning or during the week. And we use the French word déjà vu because English doesn't have an equivalent word. And that is something you should know. Think for a moment about all the things you own.

Starting point is 00:04:12 You probably own a lot of stuff. You often hear people complain that they have too much stuff. They need to get rid of stuff. Maybe you've thought that. So perhaps you've had a yard sale, and people come and buy your old stuff, so you have room to go out and buy new stuff. What is it about owning stuff that is so important? What does it mean to own something? Here with some really interesting insight and research on the topic of ownership is Bruce Hood.

Starting point is 00:04:40 Bruce is a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol and author of the book Possessed, Why We Want More Than We Need. Hi, Bruce. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me on. Sure. Well, this whole concept of accumulating stuff and trying to accumulate better stuff and better stuff than your neighbor has and always wanting stuff, it must scratch some sort of psychological itch in people. Yes? Yeah. Now, this is a point made by Adam Smith, who many regard as one of the founding fathers of modern economics.

Starting point is 00:05:14 And he pointed out that there is an emotional relationship, a feeling of status and satisfaction when you accumulate wealth. And a poor person feels literally i think you use the phrase as ashamed of their their poverty so there is that sense of achievement and the fear of of not having things but around about i think torsten veblen is probably the sociologist who coined the term conspicuous consumption which was this really interesting phenomenon that he noted that people would assuming they had the money, would prefer to pay or buy, for example, a silver spoon as opposed to a spoon made out of base metal like pewter, because they used this as a way of showing off to others how much wealth they had.

Starting point is 00:06:00 So this is a way of signaling your success to others. Something I've noticed that I'd like to get you to comment on is that for many of the things that we want to acquire, it's the wanting, it's the thrill of the hunt of getting it more than it is having it. Like, you know, you really want that new car. But once you have the new car, very quickly it just becomes your car and you're not oohing and aahing over it every day. It's just your car. But it was the getting it that was so exciting. Same thing with a lot of the antique movie posters. That's my, I have a passion for the 1950s B movies. You know, those dreadful films. Oh yeah, right. And the horror, the science fiction films.

Starting point is 00:06:55 Well, their posters are generally very beautiful because they put all their money and resources into the posters and not in the actual film. But in any event, these are now works of art. So I went through a phase of collecting these. And I discovered you could buy them on eBay on online auctions. And I soon discovered myself bidding for things I didn't really want. But it was the whole thrill, the chase of the potential of acquiring the item that really was driving my behavior. And this actually borne out with some really interesting research looking at the activation in the brain. These

Starting point is 00:07:32 are using studies called functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, and they show you which areas are lighting up during various activities. And what Brian Knudsen, he's the researcher behind it, what he discovered was that the area of the reward center, the area which gives you that sense of pleasure and drive, when you're anticipating the arrival of the goal, then that's what's really motivating the behavior. When you actually get it, it doesn't seem to be so satisfying. So that's the pursuit of things.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And I think a lot of your listeners will probably recognize that the prospect of going shopping or the thrill of the chase, as it were, that's often really what we find so satisfying. And then you take it home and, you know, you get used to it very, very quickly. Because the other side of the human behavior is that we adapt to things very quickly. We think that this will be the most satisfying purchase we're going to ever make. We get it home and yeah, it's good for a bit. And then we want the next thing. So we're on this relentless treadmill of trying to find that, you know, to recover that joy of the chase, as it were. One category of stuff that I think many of us struggle with is the stuff we get from our parents that we get handed down. You're just so reluctant to get rid of it.

Starting point is 00:08:52 I have in a drawer in my office here a bag full of probably relatively worthless jewelry that came from my mother, and it came to her from her mother. I could no more give it away or throw it out. It serves absolutely no purpose except it takes up space in a drawer. Yeah, you're lucky. I have a whole attic full of furniture from my in-laws who fortunately passed away. Although to be honest, we are now working our way of getting rid of this. And I think that's a very important point you've made. Our connection with material things isn't just a financial transaction. When it comes to things which belong to people, especially relatives, then they acquire sentimental value. People feel very strongly about that. Sentimentality is a really important motivation, I think, in our emotional connection to physical objects.

Starting point is 00:09:50 And I've been doing research in this area for a number of reasons. Actually, you might be interested about this, but I got really fascinated by this by looking at my young daughter at the time, Martha, who developed this really peculiar behavior, attachment to a blanket. Now, I didn't know about this attachment behavior. Again, I'm sure many of our listeners, young children will recognize exactly what I'm talking about. It's usually a blanket or a teddy bear. And she became inconsolable if this object went missing. And so we had to take it everywhere. And it was just this ridiculous behavior. It was a blanket she had. we had to take it everywhere and it was just this ridiculous behavior it was a blanket she had we had to cut it in two so that we always had a spare backup because you know the worst thing possible was if we'd lose it and moreover when we bought a second one and she knew there

Starting point is 00:10:37 were two the second one even though it was identical she didn't like it it had to be the original now this connection this emotional connection with objects, and in particular authentic original objects and sentimental objects, evokes in most of us this concept called essentialism. We think that there's a dimension, if you like, if you want to use one of a better word, a property of physical things which make them unique and irreplaceable. So I often use this as an example for people who don't immediately get what I'm talking about,

Starting point is 00:11:09 a wedding ring. Imagine that your wedding ring needed to, say, go back to the jewelers to be repaired. Maybe it had a little nick of it in it or a little dent. And the jeweler decides just to remove the damaged bit and replace it with a bit of gold from uh his workshop would you think it's the same ring and people say yes it's still the same ring it's just been fixed it's been it's been modified uh and then i say well imagine that you go back you know every day for the next couple of years and each time he replaces a little bit of gold is it still the same ring and people generally think it's still the same ring if this transition is gradual

Starting point is 00:11:45 but then i said imagine the jeweler then accumulates all the gold he's taken away and he creates a second ring which is the original ring and that really flummoxes people because they can't really figure out is it the same ring or not because if you went if you took your ring in uh the day on the first day that you were getting repaired and he gives you a different ring you'd say that's not the same ring it's as if there's a property within the things that we feel connected to that is it's it's organic like it's like it's this essence of the original ring and this factors into a lot of our rational thinking about the value of things and this is why an original work of art is worth so much more than an identical

Starting point is 00:12:26 duplicate even though you couldn't tell the two apart now some people say oh well that's all to do with supply and demand and so on it's not it's to do with a psychological connection of authenticity with who created the original piece of work who wore it before and this is why people value clothing that's been worn by celebrities. And it's one of the reasons that we value the personal possessions of those that we care about emotionally. And by the way, there's a flip side to this sort of positive contagion. It also explains why people would be very reluctant to put on the clothing of a killer, which is one of the stunts I did several years ago to demonstrate the power of it. I told

Starting point is 00:13:06 people, I showed them this cardigan and I said, how many of you be willing to wear this cardigan for 20 bucks? And people put their hands up and I said, would you still be willing to wear it if you knew it was worn by Jeffrey Dahmer, the mass murderer? And of course, everyone puts their hands down. So there is this belief that stuff, things have a kind of almost spiritual connection with the previous owners. There's an example of just what you're talking about that I remember from a few years back that I want to ask you about. I'm speaking with Bruce Hood. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol, and his book is called Possessed, Why We Want More Than We Need.

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Starting point is 00:14:24 So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Starting point is 00:15:01 Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Bruce, what we were talking about reminds me of John Lennon's piano, the piano that he supposedly wrote Imagine on. And it's not a great piano. It's kind of beat up old piano. But it sold for zillions of dollars because he supposedly wrote Imagine on it. And because of that, people attach a great deal of value to it. It actually went on tour, if you remember, and they went to different locations around America,

Starting point is 00:15:52 and people were encouraged to touch it and feel it. And there's this real strange behavior when it comes to physical contact. It's as if you can imbue the spirit or the positive energies, if you want to call it that. But it also explains, you know, why people will treat areas as sacred, why land can become sacred. You know, take a lot of the conflict in the Middle East. You know, some of that land is absolutely just desert. But because it represents, for many people, their origins, their homeland, it's sacred. And I think that's true for many artifacts. Things can, you know, suddenly take on this new dimension. But it's true of almost anything in the sense that it has value because people believe it has value.

Starting point is 00:16:38 And that's it. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, in economic and when we're talking about objects, you can talk about utilitarian value, which is the value of an object in terms of what it can do. So, you know, a tool, obviously, but gold, and lots of the other things that we use as currencies have no intrinsic value. I mean, they're just by convention. Money is a convention. Ownership is also a convention as well. These are things that we have to learn and discover. And part of my research agenda has been to try and discover when do children really understand what ownership is? Because they understand possession. They understand that, you know, if somebody's holding on to something, you can't just walk up to and take it away from

Starting point is 00:17:19 them. But ownership is a convention that means that we appreciate that if somebody owns something, they can leave the room. And even though they're not holding on to it, they still have control over it. That's not something that children immediately get until much, much later. And in fact, it's a series of rules and conventions that they have to learn. And our research and actually the research of many other psychologists has been documenting the different stages by which children come to appreciate the conventions of ownership. But it is no surprise that they don't understand money. They don't have a concept of money until quite late, you know, seven, eight years of age,

Starting point is 00:17:57 which is quite late for a lot of these concepts for children to acquire, which is interesting because I imagine that as cash disappears, as we move into the digital era, the notion of these bits of metal and pieces of paper will become interesting quirks to future generations because we probably won't see cash in the future. One story you tell that really demonstrates the power that possessions have over us and that power of wanting to own things is the story back from the 1800s about the ship, the Royal Charter. Which was returning from the Australian goldfields back in 1859. And it sank off the coast of North Wales on its return to Liverpool.

Starting point is 00:18:47 And the loss of 650 lives. But what makes it more tragic was that many of the people that drowned were the miners returning from the gold fields. And they drowned because they were carrying the gold. They had it sewn into their coats and they had them on money belts and they were carrying this gold and they wouldn't let go of it and of course the additional weight pulled them to their deaths and this gold is still turning up by the way people are still discovering on the beaches and it just struck me isn't it really true the folly of that i actually give a talk and i've got a great bit of video video of a car owner. Some thief has attempted to steal to hijack his car. And the owner has jumped on the bonnet of the car and they're driving off. And this is ridiculous. He's placing his life at risk by trying to stop the theft. Now, you know, I suspect that this is an emotional reaction. You know, when somebody starts to take something of yours, you immediately respond.

Starting point is 00:19:46 In the cold light day, though, none of us would literally jump onto a moving car to prevent it from being stolen. But there's something deep inside us, this emotional reaction when someone violates ownership, when someone violates our stuff by helping without our permission. You know, that really gets to us at a core level that really violates us with none of very few of us are that chilled or laid back

Starting point is 00:20:11 say yeah that's okay you just help yourself because our possessions are extension of our identity and in the west we are taught that our identity is tantamount to what we can claim ownership over but my point is is that these objects are an extension of our identity is tantamount to what we can claim ownership over. But my point is that these objects are an extension of our identity. So when someone takes them without permission, we feel that acutely. And in fact, when you speak to people who've been burgled, they describe it as a violation. And it can be traumatizing. It can be, you know, the actual financial value of the theft

Starting point is 00:20:44 is nothing compared to the psychological damage that a house invasion or someone burgling can do. So, yeah, that reflects our strong psychological connection with the things that we own. One of the strangest stories that I've ever heard about ownership is from you telling the story about, well, you tell it, of the foot. Okay. All right. I hope none of you listeners are eating at the moment. If so, you might just want to take a break whilst you listen. This is a great story. And it's about this dealer called Shannon Wishand. He went around buying up stuff and then selling on for profit. On one occasion, he went to a sale by the local storage unit company. And these storage companies, these containers, and the owners pay rent. But if they fail to keep up with the payments, the storage company is entitled to auction off the contents of the lockup. And on this occasion, Shannon bought what he thought was a smoker grill,

Starting point is 00:21:49 which is a little bit like a barbecue. And he paid a couple of dollars for it and put it on his truck and he took it home. But imagine his surprise when he opened it up and he found he got more than he'd literally bargained for because inside there was a left human foot mummified and this is all captured in the documentary you know he was he called the police and he said I'm grossed out got myself a left human foot and they didn't know whether it came

Starting point is 00:22:14 from a corpse or someone been digging up graves so they took it away but in the meantime you know he really wanted to get his foot back because it word got out that Shannon had this foot he, maybe I can make some dollars from it. So he contacted the police. He said, can I have my foot back? And they said, well, actually, the foot doesn't come from a corpse. It comes from a guy who's alive, John Wood. And as it turns out, John Wood was in this aircraft.

Starting point is 00:22:41 He was in a fatal plane crash. John was piloting the plane. Unfortunately, his father was killed and John was very severely injured to the extent he had to have his foot amputated. And he asked the hospital, can I have it back? And they gave it to him. Anyway, his life is spiring out of control. And he had to put his foot into the smoker grill and all his household possessions. And he put it into storage and he moved to South Carolina.

Starting point is 00:23:04 And that's how the foot ended up in the auction. But the really interesting thing is that when he was contacted the police to recover his foot, Shannon and John ended up having a fight almost, a real legal battle about who owned the foot and ended up actually going to court. And interestingly enough, the judge recognized that Shannon did have a legal right to the foot to some extent, but he had to be compensated. So the foot, he ruled that the foot should be returned to John, but that Shannon should be compensated to the sum, I think of about $5,000, which wasn't a bad return on the couple

Starting point is 00:23:37 of dollars he paid. But the point of the story is, you know, you would imagine that you shouldn't argue about body parts. You know, you clearly own your own body, but actually you shouldn't argue about body parts. Clearly, you own your own body. But actually, you don't. Because in law, outright ownership means that you can do with something as you wish. If you want to destroy a piece of property and you own it outright, you're entitled to do so. But you can't do that with your body. You can't do with your body as you wish. You can't sell organs. In some parts of the world, you can't have it tattooed.

Starting point is 00:24:06 You can't sell yourself. So you don't own your body outright. And I think people find that really quite surprising. But that's just another example about how this concept of ownership is really a convention. Well, there's so many consequences to ownership of this desire to own a lot of things that you talk about, and we don't have time to go into them all, but just as an example, you talk about the fact that because people own so much stuff and keep it in their homes, the risk of fire goes up because much of that stuff is flammable

Starting point is 00:24:40 and we have so much stuff that can catch fire. Home fire risk goes up. I mean, there's so many consequences to owning lots and lots of stuff. You know, one of the things I think that we do need to really consider is like, you know, environmental consequences. And hopefully, in time, we'll learn to not overconsume. It's overconsumption is the problem. It's not finances or economics. I'm not suggesting we all become hermits. But we really should try to limit the amount of purchases,

Starting point is 00:25:12 which are really things that we don't necessarily need. And that's driven by psychological processes. And I think we can do something about that. Well, it does seem that the drive to own stuff, to acquire things into our lives is a pretty strong drive in our culture anyway. And yet we don't spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of it and what it really means. So this has been really interesting. Bruce Hood has been my guest.

Starting point is 00:25:38 He's a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol, and he is author of the book Possessed, Why We Want More Than We Need. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks, Mike. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know,

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Starting point is 00:27:52 maybe I think of hamburgers or barbecue or breakfast cereal. But I don't have a really clear image in my head of what American food is. Because in a sense, there really is no such thing. American food is made up of lots of different kinds of food, and their origins are fascinating. According to David Page, he is a two-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer who has produced a lot of food-related television programs, including food segments on Good Morning America,

Starting point is 00:28:22 and he's written a really fun book called Food Americana, The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America's Favorite Dishes. Hey, David, welcome. Thanks for having me, Michael. So is there an American cuisine in your view? And if so, where did it come from? We ended up over the years making a cuisine out of the foods of other countries and cultures and changing those foods as we went, but basically incorporating them. And we're talking

Starting point is 00:28:53 about a wide range of countries and foodways, everything from pizza to sushi to bagels. If we liked it, we incorporated it and we changed it to fit our tastes and the raw ingredients that were available here. And so when you go around the world, I don't know if you know the answer to this, but when you go around the world in Germany and Spain and all these places and ask them what they think of American food, what do they think of? What is American food to them? It's the standard suspects.

Starting point is 00:29:24 It's pizza. It's hamburgers. I'll tell you a funny story. I was working as an NBC producer and had just moved to Europe for them and was making my first trip to Vienna. So I asked the locals who worked with us there. I said, hey, after we finish the story, could you take me to someplace you like to eat? Hoping that I would get an insight into Austrian cooking. And instead, they took me to an American barbecue joint.

Starting point is 00:29:52 So it's that sort of big, bold, cowboyish thing that seems to be American food overseas. So you say that the reason Mexican food became such a big part of American food is really all because of Taco Bell, right? Glenn Bell was a fast food guy in L.A. He was selling hot dogs and hamburgers and noticed when he went to eat at a local Mexican restaurant that he wasn't the only Anglo there. So he started to introduce tacos at his various burger joints, and then opened one devoted entirely to quote Mexican food, unquote. And from that, he began franchising. And that was for much of America, the starter food, their first exposure to Mexican, which opened the door to going a little farther and exploring Mexican food at restaurants owned by Mexican immigrants or Mexican-Americans

Starting point is 00:30:54 whose grandparents, let's say, were originally Mexican. And it started there. And, you know, Taco Bell will tell you, no, we're not Mexican food. We're sort of an homage to it. But they're very proud to have opened the door to Mexican throughout the country. When you go to Mexico, is the food in Mexico Mexican food the way we think of Mexican food? Or have we Americanized it? Well, some of it is. We've Americanized almost all of it,

Starting point is 00:31:37 but you'll certainly find tacos and tortillas and tamales in various parts of Mexico. But Mexico, like almost any other country of any size, doesn't really have a national cuisine. It has regional cuisines. When my wife and I go to the admittedly tourist area of Puerto Vallarta, the local tacos are small. There isn't a lot on them, and they're delightful. Compare that to the oversized, overheaped tacos that we expect in America. We have supersized that element of Mexican food. There's a dish right now that's having a moment called birria. Now, birria originally was goat stewed in chili peppers in the central area of Mexico. It then expanded to birria de des in some places, which means beef birria. Somehow, and no one really has documented this, somehow that dish ended up being served in Tijuana as tacos. But of late, birria tacos in Tijuana have been a big thing. They jumped the border to L.A.

Starting point is 00:32:46 And now they've crossed the country and they're available on both coasts and increasingly, I think, to some extent between the coasts. It's a remarkable dish. It is this incredibly tasty, spicy, shredded beef that's on top of a tortilla. Cooking liquid from the making of the beef is then added to the mixture. It's folded over and grilled on both sides and served with a cup of the cooking liquid into which one dips the taco, kind of like a French dip sandwich. It's extraordinary. I grew up in New England in a pretty much a meat and potatoes household where we didn't eat a lot of food from other parts of the world. We ate, you know, steaks and meatloaf and maybe once in a while lasagna, but usually it was meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. And I think a lot of people would consider that kind

Starting point is 00:33:46 of an American cuisine is it American well it's very British it came over with the settlers especially in New England where the concept of taking a hunk of meat and boiling it or doing something else to make it as bland as possible was the cooking style. Yes, Americans do like meat and potatoes and have for quite some time. So I guess that makes that American, but it certainly wasn't invented here. Barbecue seems very American, is it? Well, barbecue was named after a means of cooking that explorers first saw among the Taino Indians in the Caribbean, which was to put four sticks in the ground, then create a grill surface atop them out of other sticks and cook small animals over coals. The Spanish version of the Taino word became barbacoa.

Starting point is 00:34:49 The English version of barbacoa became barbecue. But the spicing and means of cooking the whole carcasses that initial barbecue required were provided and used by the people who were being forced to cook the food, enslaved Africans. So this American dish gets its flavor profile and culinary heritage from West Africa. Even within the world of barbecue, though, there's different kinds of barbecue that I imagine are regional differences, are they? You talk about the differences in barbecue, like is Memphis different than St. Louis? Is St. Louis different than North Carolina? Most of these regional styles were eventually created out of the minds of individual pitmasters. So if Fred down the street decided to add a little ketchup to his vinegar sauce after Heinz introduced ketchup at, I think, the 1904 exposition,

Starting point is 00:35:53 and people liked Fred's barbecue sauce, then his competitors started cooking with it as well. All of a sudden, you have, let's say, Piedmont style barbecue in North Carolina. Every place that barbecue has has moved, somebody has developed some flavor that has become the regional favorite. But it really began with individual pitmasters. Chinese food has certainly become part of American cuisine. How did that? Well, I assume it came here from China, but how did it get here? What happened was gold was discovered in California in the mid-1800s, and a substantial number of Chinese men came over to hunt for gold. And with them came a supporting group of merchants and restaurateurs who were focused on feeding this particular group. And what has happened over a very long

Starting point is 00:36:56 period of time is that Chinese food in America has been made almost entirely in a modified form for the American palate. I was taken pre-pandemic to a huge food mall in Flushing, Queens, New York, and a couple of Chinese students took me, and the food was incredible. Some of it I recognized in terms of hand-pulled noodles or dumplings. Some was completely new to me. For the most part, the various Chinese cuisines, as to some extent do most cuisines, especially in countries that have experienced poverty, it is a crime to not eat the whole animal. So I enjoyed a dish called dry pot, where you get to pick your ingredients. And among the ones I picked for it were artery and duck blood and liver and tripe and things like that. And it was fantastic absolutely fantastic one of the big differences between

Starting point is 00:38:07 chinese cuisine and western cuisine is a chinese appreciation for the differences in textures as well as differences in flavors it's something that that americans for the most part get squeamish about but i gotta tell you tell you, I could eat there all day. In all the stories that go together to make up American cuisine, talk about one that you find particularly fascinating. Because I was originally from New York and because I'm Jewish, I was fascinated by the bagels, lox, and cream cheese story in that this was not a dish any Jew

Starting point is 00:38:48 in Europe ever ate. What happened was the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, which made it possible to ship salmon from Seattle to New York. This was pre-refrigeration, so the only way to keep the salmon from rotting was to pack it in copious amounts of salt, which brined it and turned it, no surprise, incredibly salty. But it then became a dish that fit comfortably into what were called appetizing stores, stores where New York Jews went to get such items as smoked fish, herring, that sort of thing. The standby dish of the early Jewish immigrant was herring. It was the cheapest thing you could get. Lox slid in there. It was more expensive. Mel Brooks actually told me that growing up in Brooklyn, they can only

Starting point is 00:39:46 have lox once a week because of the price. But it then became natural somehow to put lox on bagels. And the addition of cream cheese actually made scientific sense because it was the cream cheese that would blunt the sharpness of the salt. Now, there is no record anywhere of who first suggested cream cheese with lox, although the Breakstone company owned by a couple of Jewish brothers was advertising in the Yiddish newspaper, The Forward, specific uses for cream cheese with Jewish foods. And I guess it just makes sense that it eventually ended up on God's gift to perfect food, which is the bagel, lox, and cream cheese sandwich. Over the last couple of decades, it seems, chicken has gotten to be huge. I mean, it's everywhere. even burger places that used to sell just burgers now probably have a chicken sandwich somewhere on the menu.

Starting point is 00:40:52 Chicken became a big part of American cuisine lately. How? Well, to some extent, it was probably pushed starting in the 70s by increasing concerns about health. We are at the point now where there is more chicken sold in the US than beef. And the experts tell me that's never going to change. But the oddly American element to it is, yeah, we all jumped on the chicken bandwagon, but we all eat it fried. So I'm not sure how healthy that is. Was Colonel Sanders really the launch point for the big fried chicken boom? Yeah, it was. He was. It opened the door to the concept of the fried chicken chain in America. I am pretty clear that it helped expand America's interest in fried

Starting point is 00:41:49 chicken beyond the South or areas such as Chicago, which had a large Southern African-American population that had come to Chicago as part of the Great Migration. But yeah, it was Harlan Sanders who kicked it all off. And then there's pizza. And everybody knows that there is some Italian heritage to pizza, but it somehow seems to be very American, and pizza is everywhere. Well, it's a wonderful food. There's just something terrifically warm and tactile about picking up a piece of pizza, which, by the way, is not done in Italy. There it's eaten with a fork and knife. But pizza, I guess, was the right place, right time. It came to New York with immigrants from Naples, the hometown of pizza. It immediately changed because the ingredients that we had here and the method of cooking were different. Wheat in America had a higher protein content

Starting point is 00:42:52 than the wheat in Southern Italy. Bakers in America were baking with coal, not wood as was used in Italy. So right off the bat, the New York pie was crispier than anything you'd get in Naples. But also, it's a relatively simple item to make and was carried throughout the country, for the most part, by Italian-Americans moving west. The interesting thing is that you can make pizza, you can top pizza with pretty much anything. So it became highly regionalized based often on what the local ingredients were. In St. Louis, a favored cheese, for example, is something called Provel, which is a processed cheese, heavy, if I recall, on Swiss. So that's what pizza gets topped with. And now you've got St.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Louis style pizza. It was a relatively easy business to afford to get into. And it was not restricted by lack of ingredients, let's say. It does seem that California Pizza Kitchen, that chain, really had something to do with the creation of more, I guess you would call it gourmet pizza. Well, California Pizza Kitchen started its unusual menu because they recruited a guy named Ed Ledoux to supervise their pizza program. Ed Ledoux was much of the creative genius behind the pizza served at Spago. Ed Ledoux went to work for Wolfgang Puck and basically was the brains behind his alleged creation of gourmet pizza. When Ledoux went to California Pizza Kitchen, his big contribution, and he was responsible for the whole menu, but his longest lasting contribution turns out to have been a barbecue chicken pizza,

Starting point is 00:45:01 which is now pretty much an American standard. One thing that does seem very American is ice cream. Except it was in the form we know it invented in Italy and then passed through other European countries and likely came to America via the British in colonial times. It's a fascinating topic because it can be anything to anyone. There's a real renaissance now in what is called artisanal ice cream, which is ice cream truly made by hand. At the same time, you can still get your cheap 10% butterfat pint in the grocery store. There's an ice cream for everyone these days. Although interestingly, a lot of that is because the ice cream market is stable, but not growing. There are so many competitive dessert items now available, especially in the frozen area, that the ice cream manufacturers have to fight hard to keep up.

Starting point is 00:46:12 And the latest push is ice cream with benefits, ice cream that will help you fall asleep, supposedly, ice cream with probiotics, ice cream with vegetables hidden in the mix for your kids well I've always figured that one of the reasons ice cream became so popular and everybody loved ice cream is the convenience of ice cream on a stick it was a great idea well you know that stems out of sanitation issues originally on the streets of New York the so-called hokey pokey men that's Well, you know, that stems out of sanitation issues. Originally on the streets of New York, the so-called hokey pokey men, that's what they call the ice cream vendors, most of them Italian immigrants, would serve ice cream by the scoop in a glass bowl. They would give you the bowl and a spoon and you would eat your ice cream and then give them back.

Starting point is 00:47:04 And then they would use them on the next customer uh the spanish flu of what was it 1917 that helped put a crimp in that ice cream cones became quite popular and then the brilliant idea i think it was eskimo pie that did it first of putting in the stick. Well, this has been a fun little tour through American cuisine to discover where some of our favorite foods came from. I appreciate it, David. David Page has been my guest. He is a two-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, and he is author of the book Food Americana,

Starting point is 00:47:41 The Remarkable People and Incredible Stories Behind America's Favorite Dishes. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, David. Michael, thank you very much. When it comes to your appearance, you've probably noticed that you have good days and bad days. Some days you just seem to look better. And have you ever noticed that on those days when you look better, things seem to go better all around? Psychology professor Brian Meyer conducted a study in which

Starting point is 00:48:12 candid photos of men and women were shown to strangers. The better-groomed subjects were perceived as more attractive, friendlier, and even smarter. It's the halo effect, which subconsciously signals that beauty is good, a stereotype that we can't seem to escape. A lot of us have that natural boost of self-esteem when we look our best, which makes us more approachable. So if you're having a good day and the people around you seem more agreeable, it may not be a coincidence. It may be because you just look so good. And that is something you should know. You know, people love to get recommendations

Starting point is 00:48:53 for podcasts because, you know, searching for a new podcast from scratch is so effortful. I mean, it could take forever to find one that you like. Since you like this one, you have friends who would probably like this one. So recommend it. I think they'll appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk

Starting point is 00:49:14 and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real.

Starting point is 00:49:34 Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up,

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Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Our Preoccupation With Ownership & The Backstories of America’s Favorite Dishes

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