Stuff You Should Know - Kombucha: Fizzy Goodness

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Kombucha is pretty popular right now. But what is it exactly and where did it come from? The answers await you!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Uh, a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a- What? Draft! Draft, really? Draft! Draft! You're not going to get it all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their age and size. Get it right. Visit NHTSA.gov. Slash the right seat. Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Although Jerry's not going to be around for long, everybody. So save her, relish her, smell her hair, all the stuff that you like to do to people you like. Awkward start for one on the boot. I should probably hold on. I should probably explain Jerry's not going to be here for this recording session. She's always going to be around around. Oh, sure.

Okay. Just wanted to make sure people weren't like, where's Jerry going? What'd you guys do to Jerry? Right. I don't need email like that. No, who does? So Chuck, you already let it slip. Boy, our topic is today, which, um, surprised.

That's right. The Booch, uh, aka kombucha, which is, which is some people call it kombucha tea, but everyone calls it kombucha really in practice. But we're talking about the beverage, the sort of odd tasting, fizzy, sweet, teed, probiotic drink that is very popular right now, that I don't drink. Emily drinks it every day. No surprise there, although she's switching brands now. We'll get to that later. Okay, can't wait to hear. Because I drink it almost every day too. Yeah, I don't like the flavor, so I just don't drink it. And it's just a simple one for me. Well, you don't like anything vinegar-y,

so of course you don't like kombucha. Yeah, that's a good point. You don't like mustard. You don't like white vinegar. I don't like pickles. You don't like apple cider vinegar. You don't like red wine vinegar. I mean, I'll take a little bit of that or maybe some balsamic vinegar on a salad.

But other than that, vinegar is a tough sell for me. But what the reason we're talking about vinegar is because kombucha has a kind of a vinegary thing going on. It's very tart, it's very acidic, and you said something in there that I don't think I fully realized although I Kind of knew it's one of those things where I had all the information I just never put it together into a cohesive whole okay, but kombucha is fermented sweet tea Yeah, and I mean of course there's other stuff in there

But to make kombucha and it just be raw pure kombucha. All you need is sugar, tea, and then something called a scoby, which we'll talk about soon. And you put those things together, let them sit in a glass jar with the lid off and a little bit of muslin over the top and a dark warm dry, very important place for, I don't know, a week, two weeks, you're going to have kombucha. for, I don't know, a week, two weeks, you're going to have kombucha. Yeah, and it sort of belongs alongside other things like yogurt and sourcrow where the microbes are a big part of the appeal of these things that you can put in your body. Yeah, can I just call out to sentence that live your row

because it's hilarious? Sure. She wrote that kombucha is a food in which microbes are a feature, not a bug. That was definitely worth a hat tip at least. Have you ever seen the Volkswagen Beatles with the license plate that says feature? No. It's always very cute. I don't get out that much, though.

So you mentioned scoby. Scoby stands for tenacronym, SCOBY, stands for a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast. Because that's exactly what it is. If you look at a scoby, you might heard it called a mother or mushroom like a sourdough mother. But if you look at an escobe, it looks disgusting. It looks like something out of a science lab, like out of a petri dish. It's round and sort of pancake-y and gelatinous.

Yes. And it looks like brain matter or something. It looks gross. It looks like the muffin top of a jellyfish, but just the muffin top part. Sure, that's another good way to put it. It's kind of gross, too. And that mother, that mushroom or that scobies, what I saw far and away, at least in America,

it's most people who grew kombucha call it a scoby. Yeah. There's a specific term for it, a solid phase cellulosic pellicle. And when you dig into it, microbial, it's astounding what it actually is. It's like a really unique kind of thing that seems to only grow in kombucha from what I could find. Yeah, and it's what it is actually, or how it functions, at least in kombucha. It's sort of the fuel that drives that fermentation process that take that sweet tea from just regular sweet tea to the fermented, bubbly, weird tasting thing that you enjoy.

Yeah, and it's really insolvable. You can drop it at just about anything and it will hold its shape. It has a lot of tensile strength. Apparently it can hold, so it's cellulose, made of little tiny fibros, and they're, I think, a hundred times thinner than the cellulose fibros you get from a plant. This plant's or lousy with cellulose,

but this cellulose is extruded from bacteria. Little tiny, tiny, little things of cellulose is extruded from bacteria, little tiny, tiny, tiny little things of cellulose that end up getting woven together to create this large structure that can hold, I think, a hundred times the amount of liquid or water that plant cellulose can. And it's a hundred times thinner than plant cellulose, and it's being extruded pooped out of these little bacteria that are building this thing over the course of weeks. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Like if you've made one that was the size of a hammock, you could put a house on it. Yeah, easy.

I'm just kidding. I haven't done the math on that. No, no, it's in there somewhere there. So Chuck, I think we should, we'll hold off on how to make a batch of kombucha, although it's not that hard. But it turns out that symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, it's a pretty good descriptor because that's what is in that scoby.

And there've been studies of what's in there. And what they found is that there's a ever-changing cast of characters. But that there seem to be a couple that are really responsible for forming the scoby and then intering creating kombucha. One is a bacterium called Chuck. Oh, you want me to do this? Sure. Come a gatti back to your backter. Yeah, I think that's right.

Yep. And then that's the stuff that forms that cellulose that gives the scobious structure. And then inside, there's some yeast and specifically the yeast from the genus, Brettonomous, Brettonom genus. Bretonomasis. Bretonomasis. Sure.

And those are the ones that actually seem to do most of the fermenting. Yeah, and we have, well, at least in this case, there were some Oregon State University researchers named Keisha Harrison and Chris Curtin, who a couple of years ago looked at 103 scobies that are used by brewers here in North America. That yeast, they call it Brett,

and it's sort of used to be used a lot for old ails in 19th century England apparently. Not used a whole lot for Bierney Moore because it tastes funny except for like lambics, I think. And also used in barrel aged red wines. And I think in wine, you just don't want too much of it. And in beer nowadays, like I said, unless it's a lambic, they usually try to get rid of it.

Things like a contaminant in beer these days even. So it sounds old-timey, I guess, then, the Brett. And that actually kind of dovetails with kombucha's image. It has an image of being like an old-timey Super old-timey ancient, I guess is a better word Brew fermented brew that a lot of people say dates back to all the way back to 221 BCE Which is when supposedly the Emperor of the Chin Dynasty started Brewing it himself

Mm-hmm and that it was considered an elixir of life, a tonic for immortality. The thing is, if you talk to anybody in the kombucha community, they'll give you that story, but it's just a story. It's really hazy when you start to try to trace the lineage of kombucha. Yeah, butchers. That's right. Yeah, there was another tale about 600 years after that from the fifth century CE about a Korean doctor and this is possibly a name origin because this doctor was named kombu, KOMBU, who brought a medicinal tea to Emperor, would that be in Kyo? I think so, yeah. All right, of Japan and said, and some people say,

well, that's clearly where the name came from. Other people say, well, I don't know about that because there's also this Japanese fermented tea from back in the day that was derived from kelp that was called kombu. And then cha is tea, so kombucha, but there is no seaweed in kombucha as we know it now. So I don't think anyone really knows the exact origin of the word.

No, but it is possible that kombucha, that seaweed fermented seaweed tea, just got used for the wrong thing and it's kind of went off on that lineage of history. And that's where it came from. Again, what we're talking about are stories. There are some ancient documents that I think mentioned that Korean Dr. Kambu. But still, it's just not definitive. To get definitive, you actually have to go to Russia

and Ukraine in the late 19th century. That's surprising. That's finally where you can definitively start to trace the history of what we call kombucha. Yeah, I was kind of surprised to see it there too, but apparently after World War I, they were lousy with the stuff. It started to spread around Europe. Apparently, in the Westphalian region of Germany, it became very popular for a little while.

In Italy, in the middle of the 20th century, it became so popular that a couple of things happened. There were people mixing it with holy water to use this sort of like a tonic and a folk remedy, which priests there did not love. And there was a song that you can go listen to. You can go to YouTube and listen to it from 1955 by a guy named Oranato Carazzone. And the song was called Stu Fungo, Chinesa, or the Chinese fungus. And it was a popular song that I listened to it, and it's not very good.

No, it's got a lot of, like mixed in with it, but it's also kind of like a mamba-wee thing, it's a mess. So strangely enough, Stu Fungo Chinesi did not kick off the kombucha craze in the United States or in the West. It really was kicked off by a Swiss study from the 60s. And I do mean switcherly, not Sweden. I apparently swapped the two when I was talking about the oldest periodical in existence in the farmers' almanac episodes of sorry to

everybody who wrote in. Yeah, we know that those are two different places and they're not even close together. No. So it was inadvertent. No, exactly., I mixed up the names. I'm not actually confusing Switzerland with Switzerland. Right. Like, I can, I know that much. So this was a Swiss, Switzerland Swiss study from the 60s that said, hey, this come butchers stuff that they're making over in Russia. That's associated with Russian grandmothers. This stuff is, it's like yogurt, man, but you can drink it.

It's like drinkable yogurt, and we don't mean kefir. No, we don't. It did, it's still popular actually, in some parts of Russia, it remained popular throughout. Soviet Russia, they didn't have like, you know, American soda and stuff like that. So this is a fizzy drink they could make, which sort of sub for that, it seems like. Prisoners would brew it there. There was even a case here in the United States

in 2015 where arm's dealer Victor Bout was brewing it in a prison in Illinois and we'll get to the alcoholic content later, but the prison officials basically said like you're making booze, you can't do that. So they added some time. And apparently like kids in Russia these days are not kids, but younger people are kind of on kombucha that they rejected when they were younger because they were like, we want American tasting sodas. And now there's a newer trend where they're like, oh no, this is sort of like cool. This is the old Russian version and they're back into brewing it again.

Yeah, it's so it got exported somehow to the US, it blew up in the US and we exported it back to Russia, now Russian hipsters are into kombucha, even though it was their grandparents like Homebrew. And I think it was also not just they wanted Coke and Pepsi and probably mostly Coke. They associated it with their grandmother giving it to them as if it were almost like medicine or a health tonic. And nobody sits around and drinks a health tonic. You rarely do. And this kind of had that association with it too. That got stripped of it, even though it's considered a healthy drink.

Health tonic is really stretching how it's considered in the United States. So it got kind of repackaged and gussied up and turned into a really fun beverage that kids are really into and that will just make you immediately cooler if you're seeing out on public drinking it. Yeah, as far as the Chinese connection, it sort of depends on who you're asking. It sounds like it may have been regional because there was this writer. What was her first name? Zong is her last name for Folklife magazine. Her first name, Chuck, is precisely Laura. Laura, okay. Well, she wrote about this in Folklife magazine and asked her

immigrant Chinese parents, and they were like, I don't know what you're talking about. She said, well, let me ask my friend who still has a bunch of contacts in China and her friend got in touch with her people in China and they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. But then there was another Chinese American writer named Betty Liu and her father recalled, you know, fond things about kombucha from Shanghai and these big neighborhood batches. So I think there's was green tea and honey though instead of black tea and sugar. So maybe it was a variation, a regional variation. Yeah, they called it hong cha jun. Yeah, not kombucha, but it does sound similar. And if you stop and think about it, just's just how it's a simplicity of what kombucha

actually is, fermented sweet tea. It's entirely possible that cultures that have tea and have had tea for hundreds and thousands of years stumbled onto this independently and just called it different things made it with slightly different ingredients. But it seems very clear that the kombucha we drink today was exported from Russia and Ukraine in the 19th century. Yeah, and before we break, I think we should cover this last little bit that's super interesting about how it regained popularity in the 80s here in the US.

It was for aids patients there was uh... specifically one aids patient uh... he was a uh... act up new york member and activist named sander cats who had this kombucha and it in you know these those uh... aids drugs early on at least were really rough on the stomach and it helped him and it helped him keep his food down and kind of settle the stomach and then it got passed around the gay community and I think he found out about it from a

friend in like 1994 who was you know a home brewer and went on to write a book called Wild fermentation in 2003 And so it was the AIDS community of the of the Northeast United States. It really kind of got again here. Pretty cool. Very cool. You want to take a break then? Let's do it. Okay, we're taking a break, everybody, starting now. This is in retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and best-selling author. I'm Susie Bette-Kerrem, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker.

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The small collection of your favorite recipes would be an amazing wedding gift. Listen to new episodes of Garnup Stuff, how to adult every other Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Mama, what's the chicken say? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh boop boop, dog, cat, giraffe, giraffe really? Giraffe,

giraffe. You're not gonna get it all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their age and size. Get it right. Visit NHTSA.gov. Slash the right seat.

Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the ad council All right, so now we are back in the United States Kombucha these days Well for a while before sort of of this modern time that we find ourselves in, who is spaceship just flew by. Someone should ask Chris Christie about that. Oh, man, that was crazy. What a terrible question. Yeah, he was pretty funny about it though. Yeah. He's so lovable. He is a likable guy.

So kombucha for a while was, and it's still sort of poppy with hobbyists because brewing in general and home brewing is really regained in popularity with beer and meat and all kinds of crazy things. And I also, I think there's a suspicion to among people who make kombucha that the stuff that's mess produced just can't hold a candle to the stuff you would make on your own.

Probably, but that's how it was for many, many years, starting in the 80s until about the mid-ish 1990s when a guy who we're going to talk about a little bit now, that you may have heard of named George Thomas Dave or GT Dave started brewing kombucha at home in his Bell Airhouse as a teenager. As legend has it, he got his scoby from a friend who got it from a trip to the Himalayas. His mom was drinking this stuff. Dave was making going through cancer and claimed that it helped her beat cancer, which was officially part of the company's lore until they were forced to remove it after a lawsuit in 2010 about deceptive health claims. But he is the maker, if you've seen Synergy, Kombucha in the store, it's the biggest player out there, and that's the one Emily

drank until today. And that's that's GT Dave. Yeah. If you've ever seen kombucha in the store, you've seen GT synergy. I mean, it's just there's such so many different flavors of it. And like the, it's just, it's clearly been around longer. It's got its, it's thing down pat. And like you said, this guy was brewing this when he was in high school and he started in 1995. In 2005, he took it national. And you can say pretty much as when kombucha really started to make headway. It didn't take off like a rocket quite yet.

If you go back and look at the dates on a lot of the research articles that you'll find on kombucha, on like CNBC or Forbes or whatever. There's like 2017, 2018 and they're all like, what is this stuff? So it took a while to gain some traction, but he took it out of the health food store and started to get it into grocery stores. And that was what really kind of laid the foundation for K kombucha to be introduced to America as a whole. That's right. And the sort of unfortunate part that has come out more recently is that synergy is going through a few different lawsuits right now.

Because allegedly, it is even though this is a drink that is touted as being made with love and good vibrations. There are some lawsuits going on now because allegedly it is a terrible place to work and GT Dave allegedly would purposefully hire undocumented workers so they could be taking advantage of with brutal work hours, no breaks to eat, no breaks for breaks. Go to the bathroom super fast and get back to work. It's so hot in there that you're sweating into the beverage and then you have to go to a freezing place and your clothes freeze up. It just sounds like some pretty bad stuff happening there, allegedly. Well, you say allegedly, but you don't have to say that anywhere

because as of I think this month, California judge said, nope, this is all true. I'm ruling against GTE Dave. Yeah, well, yeah, that was a lawsuit from a long standing, but there are, I think, some new ones. And he's been denying this the whole time, basically, I think his quote was something like, I don't want to paraphrase it.

Well, I guess I have to paraphrase it, because I don't have it in front of me. But basically, yeah, lawsuits are just the cross I bear when you get popular like this, that's just how things go. Right. He just dismissed him all as frivolous in that quote, like indirectly, basically, although these have been brought by multiple people and multiple lawsuits over multiple years. So, yeah, this judge apparently does not like him. And the judge is in charge of all the cases.

And apparently has said before that Dave lies through his teeth and is totally not credible. And if you put him on the stand, I'm gonna tell the jury to not to believe him. Like this judge has said this like in court. So he's having a rough time of it for sure. Yeah, and of course I told him like this. She was like, oh well, I guess I'll find a new brand. Well, there's so many great brands out there too.

Like, I mean, there's a lot of, like if you are into kombucha or you're about to be into kombucha, if you're listening to this, you're in a beautiful time to be into kombucha because there's a lot of good brands that you could find in just about any grocery store. And yes, indeed, it is a golden age for kombucha right now. We love our golden ages. Sure. There's another big player in Kavita's K-E-V-I-T-A because Pepsi bought that one in 2016. And anytime in the beverage industry,

it's a tough bracket anyway. So you're probably looking to cash out to a larger company. Is the exit strategy generally for beverages? Sure. I watch a lot of Shark Tank. That's what they say. OK. Coca-Cola.

I got into it a little bit because they own honesty. I just got that name. Oh, honesty. Yeah, but I don't think they make that anymore, but they do have some sort of Australian kombucha Coca-Cola that's called Organic and Raw Trading Company. They don't like to talk about it, though. Right, I don't think they do. So it is a gold

age, and that's kind of reflected in the market. It's like a two and a half billion dollar industry, which is not bad. No, it's not bad. It's expected to grow to 11 and a half billion within the next seven years because kombucha is so good. And because we're living in that gold age, apparently you consider it a functional beverage with energy drinks and vitamin fortified waters. And you who? Yeah.

Because it gives you great strength. Yeah, exactly. But one, it's considered a non-alcoholic drink, but that was up in the air until fairly recently because there's a well-known story, at least in the kombucha community, about a, I think, an inspector for the main department of agriculture, who was going through a whole foods, and noticed that these bottles of kombucha, this was 2010, so he's still like, what is this stuff? That they were bubbling out from under their caps, and he's like, not a good sign. No, he's like, this is, that's fermentation. These things are fermenting before

my eyes. That means that it's producing alcohol by definition. And he's like, I'm going to, I'm going to test some of these and what he found. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, exactly. He went on a seven day bender. Right. And when he came to, he said, these things should not be sold as not alcoholic. Believe me. I went on a bootchbender, not good. Yeah, I think if you're home brewing it, and this is, you know, it's a variable product. Anytime you're making something where it's like alive for a little while, it's going to be different depending on the batch and the maker and all that stuff.

If you're home brewing it, you may get up to 3% ABV. There have been cases where I think the guy in Maine, some of those went up to 2.5 and that's when Whole Foods was like, we can't sell it. It's over the 0.5% threshold, so Whole Foods had to pull it there. And this industry was still in its cradle. This is a really dangerous thing to have happen all of a sudden. Yeah, totally, but that's why kind of around that same time, the Kombucha Brewers International was formed, which is a trade organization that basically is like, hey, listen, we need to sort of standardize this.

Here's an alcohol test that everyone should be using and we should all be on the same page about the ABV. Right, so they really kind of swooped in to standardize things and save the day. And there is hard kombucha apparently, they're crazy for it in California. It goes up to 11% which man that'll knock you on your duff. But for the most part the the people who make kombucha figured out how to

keep it from going beyond the 0.5% 0.05% alcohol point I think 0.5. I don't know if I've ever told this story before. Have I about how when I was a youngster, I really loved Nick at night. And sometimes on Fridays and Saturdays, I would go to the open pantry, which was a convenience store across the railroad tracks from my house. And I would buy some slim gyms, get some twigs, maybe some starbursts, really load up. And then one of the things I would get every time was a six pack of Kingsbury non-alcoholic beer. And every time, I'm like 10, 11, 12 maybe. Oh, dude.

Every time I had to argue with the person checking me out at the register, this is non-alcoholic. It has nothing to do with any age limit. I'm allowed to buy this and every time I was successful, I think most of them were just like, okay, if this kid's going to say that to me, then fine, you can have this non-alcoholic beer and I would go home and crack some Kingsbury and eat some Slim Jims and watch Jeff Troop and stuff. It was amazing. Good Friday. You know, I do have a new answer now. And when they say if you could go back in time, because it used to obviously be go back

and kill Hitler and do some good for mankind. Obviously. But now it's go back and live next door to young Josh. So we could have been kid buddies. Yeah, that would have been fun. I would have been older. You would have been the one corrupting me, been kid buddies. Yeah, that would have been fun. I would have been older. You would have been the one corrupting me though, somehow. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It would have been pretty funny. You would have been, I would have been like, what do you

six years younger, seven? No, I'm like five. Five, you would have been the 10 year old corrupting like the 15 or 16 year old. But I would have my license first. And we'd like, yeah, and now you can drive us to all the bad places. Yeah, let's go get some Kingsbury. Chuck, should we take a break and come back and tell everybody how to make kombucha? Cause I'm ready to do that. Yeah, okay. Let's do it. This is in retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us.

I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette-Karim, an award-winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student-teacher relationships, and one, very memorable red swimsuits. I found myself in Pamela Anderson's attic, as you do. I put that red swimsuit in a safe because it seemed everybody wanted it. We're digging deep to better understand with these moments taught us about the world and our place in it.

I want you to really smell the axe body spray that emanated during this time. It was presented more as kind of like a crime topic. Okay, that's not a long story. It's not a love story. It had been branded on the uteruses of every single woman from C to shining C. Listen to In Retrospect on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Have you ever woken up by a tiny hand prying your own eyelid open? So glad I bought that pricey, gradual light alarm clock to help me ease into the morning

because that's never happened. Hey, I'm comedian, parent, and shell of my former self, Ophira Eisenberg, and I host a podcast called Parenting Is A Joke. Each week I talk to a different comedian and we celebrate the absurdity of shuffling a creative career with raising a kid, highlight less traditional parenting journeys, all while relishing the fact that nobody knows what they're doing. But we're all trying.

Sometimes even our best. I mean, not me, but others. And this season is a banger with guests including David Cross, Amber Tamplin, Michelle Boutot, and so many more. Co-produced by Pretty Good Friends and I Heart Podcasts, you can listen to Season 2 of Parenting as a joke on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to coronavirus stuff. How to Adult. A new podcast from I Heart. Join us as we tackle the complexities of adult life with help from experts. From understanding finances and health insurance plans, to mastering practical skills like meal prep and laundry, we'll break it all down for you. Get ready to navigate adulthood with confidence. Here's some great advice from our recent episode. When it comes to gift, stick within your budget. you can go off registry if you want to,

and you can also use the registry to inspire you to get a sense of their taste and the things they're interested in. Let us not think that wedding gifts have to be crystal and silver and cappuccino makers. Like they just don't. They can be very sweet, very simple things. The small collection of your favorite recipes would be an amazing wedding gift. Listen to new episodes of Gurnup Stuff, how to adult every other Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Mama, what does the chicken say? Uh, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um You can say, boop boop boop boop, dog. Bokka. Giraffe. Giraffe really? Giraffe. Giraffe. You're not going to get it all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly

in the right seat for their age and size. Get it right. Visit NHTSA.gov. Slash the right seat. Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the ad council All right everybody as promised we said that we are going to teach you how to make kombucha and it is super duper easy. It's really easy. But you should also really look if you're going to. Oh yeah, that's a really good point. The kombucha brewing community is really supportive and helpful and nice and not snipy or

caddy. They're just very, like whatever information you need to brew your own kombucha, they'll give it to you. And you could probably also make friends with somebody who will send you your first scoby. Yeah. Because here's the thing, you can't make kombucha without kombucha. You have to have kombucha, which I think Chuck and I couldn't find this. That would mean that all kombucha is related in some way, shape, or form. Because if you just took tea, it's sugar, and water, and left it out to be inoculated with whatever yeast and bacteria in the air, you're not necessarily going to attract the same yeast and bacteria, those breaths,

and the other one that are in kombucha. So you'll make something that isn't actually kombucha. So to make kombucha, you need kombucha, which means all kombucha is related, they have some sort of shared lineage over time. Okay, that's kind of cool. I like it. I like it. Yeah, it is.

And that kind of lends itself to the hippie-dippie community aspect. For sure. So like you said, you need a scoby. And like you also said, you can probably find some hippie online that will send you some. You can buy it too. There's everythingcombocha.com recommends fermenta hallix. They'll send you a scoby for $13 and $49 cents on Amazon. All right. And you get that gross little membrane looking thing. Maybe look up a recipe that you might want to use.

There are lots of recipes online, of course. But like you said, you got to have that unpasteurized, unflavered kombucha at the root of it. And you know, you kind of teased it earlier. You put that kombucha in a glass jar. Everything's got to be super, super clean, of course. You're going to want for your tea a few specific things. You want organic tea, because if it's not organic, then that tea you get hasn't been washed yet and it's got pesticides and stuff on it. No good. Not just for you, but also for the scoby,

because it's a living thing. Yeah, scoby's going to eat that stuff. You want to use pure tea because it tastes better, it's a cleanest flavor, it's got the most nutrients. And you're also going to, it's going to be caffeinated, you can't make decaf kombucha as far as I know, right? You literally cannot because the caffeine is one of the most essential nutrients for the bacteria and or the yeast. They convert it into nitrogen, which they use for all sorts of stuff during the fermentation process. So you cannot make kombucha without caffeine.

All right. The thing is you got your tea, you got your caffeine and what else? You need sugar? Yep. You want to use cane sugar, I've seen. And all of this, like you can get organic cane sugar for very little money, even compared to like this cheap white, granulated sugar, splurge for that, splurge for good, loose organic tea, use filtered water. Or you can just get like a gallon of distilled water while you're at the grocery store buying cane sugar. It's that whole garbage in in garbage out kind of mentality. It also applies to kombucha too.

All right, so you've got your ingredients. You've got your scoby from a guy named, you know, scoby, scoby, scoby bro, scoby bro one, two, three. And you get your sweet teammate, you add your starter, kombucha. You put in your scoby and then you put it in that jar, like you said, with what's it called, the... Muslin? ...over the top.

Yeah, the muslin' over the top. And then you put it in that dark, dry place, like a cabinet or something, and let it do its thing for how long, Like a week or so? Yes, if you're fermenting kombucha, it takes seven to 14 days for the first ferment to finish. All right. Then after that, you bottle it and that you leave it again for another usually a few days, maybe seven days, and it does its second ferment in the bottle. And that's where the alcohol and the bubbles really start to come up out because there's both byproducts of fermentation, CO2 and alcohol. Again, though, depending on, I'm not actually quite sure how you control the amount of alcohol that gets developed. I think it's maybe the amount of sugar you

add initially and then also how long you let it ferment to you in that second fermentation. And then to stop it from the second fermentation, you start refrigerating it and that makes everything go dormant. Yeah, and when you bottle it, that's when you're also going to juice it up a little bit. If you want to put some ginger, some herbs, some other kind of like fruity juices or something. That's where you can experiment with your own taste and flavor profiles at your lab. Yeah, and you want to use glass for everything.

The reason why is because it's so acidic, as we'll see, that it can leach metals right out of a metal container. Yeah. And you can also leach lead out of the glaze of a ceramic container. So you basically just want to use sterilized glass, like really well washed glass. And you also want to keep yourself clean. And this I'm sure is very hard for a lot

of the kombucha brewer community. But you definitely want to wash your hands thoroughly before you ever touch your scoby. Because again, it's a living thing. And if you accidentally get some bad bugs on it, it can grow mold, it can get weak, it can die, all sorts of stuff can happen. So you want to be very gentle and kind with your scoby and very clean too. So you want to make sure you and your glass bottles are all super clean before you make kombucha. Yes, scub, a bro, one, two, three in his video.

It's like, all right, this next part man is a real bummer, but you're gonna have to take a shower. Me and the hippies are not gonna like this. Oh, that's okay, they're surfing right now. There's one other thing you can do too, or one other thing you're gonna have to do, you remove your scoby from the bottle, or from the glass that you

fermented in after the first ferment. It doesn't go into the bottles, but it's reusable. It actually will grow. I wondered about that. Yes. So it actually will grow as you're fermenting new kombucha each time, because it's sitting there eating, loving life. And after a while, it'll grow thick enough that you can just basically peel off from what I understand, the bottom layer is the youngest layer. Ah, okay.

And there's stuff you can do with old scoby. It's cellulose. Some people cut it up and dry it out and give it to their dogs. Some people eat it directly because it's full of probiotics, as we'll see. But you can also just toss it out or compost it, I think, is another thing people do. And you take that younger part and just start over. It's the healthiest, it's the most vibrant, it's the youngest part of the scoby,

or you can also take that part and give it to a newbie as their first scoby too if you want to be super kind as the hippies calling. Yeah, or you can rub it under your arms to prevent yeast growth there. Gross. Your armpit. Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about health benefits. They have done not a lot of like controlled human trials in these published papers. There was a 2019 review at 253 papers, they call them the Booch Bapers. And there were, they were,

my dream. I'm sorry. No, that's fine. But there were no controlled human trials. So it's like, you can't really point to hard science, but it is, you know, it is something that contains good stuff like there are probiotics, and we do know that probiotics are good for your gut. We've talked about them before.

I take a probiotic every day now, and it's really helped my system out in a hugely noticeable way. Yeah. But if you read the bottle of a synergy or another brand, if you're making that switch, you're going to see stuff like you find on a pill bottle of other probiotics, like bacillus coagulins or lactobacillus, like these really common probiotic bacteriums. It's what's going on basically. Yes.

So, yeah, we know probiotics are good for you and kombucha is lousy with probiotics. That's the upshot of that. And there actually was one human trial very recently. It came out in the last week from Georgetown University that found that it actually lowers fasting blood glucose levels. So it could be useful for people with type two diabetes to drink kombucha while they're eating a meal because it will keep your glucose from spiking according to this newest trial.

And it's one of the first human clinical trials ever done on kombucha. I got two words for that. Go Hoyas. There you go. It's been a while. Have you ever understood what the difference between a hoya and a bulldog is? Because I've never heard anything call the hoya except in the context of Georgetown.

I've never even thought about it now that I think about it. But that's their mascot. It's a bulldog, but they call it a hoya like they're out of their minds. Is it the same, like is it supposed to be the name of the bulldog? I don't, or not the name of, but does it mean bulldog? I don't know, in Georgetown it does. Because I'm seeing that the Hoyas are a plant. Yeah, it is. It's called the Indian Roe plant now that you mentioned it, or one of the Hoyas,

I think it's a family of plants. Well, somebody, because we're not gonna stop to look this up, because I'm sure the answer's out there. I would love a Georgetown hoi to write in, let us know. Okay, fair enough, moving on then, right? Yeah, what about antioxidants? Well, that tea that you make this out of is lousy with polyphenols,

depending on which kind of tea you use. Apparently green and red have the highest amounts of polyphenols in the end result of kombucha, but you can't really sneeze at the polyphenols in black tea too, which is traditionally the type of tea that's been used to brew kombucha. Those polyphenols do all sorts of things, like they neutralize free radicals in the body. And we did our episode on whether or not free radical And we did our episode on whether or not free radical health theory is legitimate or not, but considering that the jury is still out, if it is legit, then the antioxidants in kombucha are really super helpful.

I wonder if you could make a matcha kombucha. I don't know. I don't know. I wondered that myself. From what I saw, you want loose leaf tea, but I don't know why you wouldn't be able to use matcha Might be interesting. Sure Also vitamins there's lots of B vitamins in kombucha B vitamins are great for you But again because it's a variable product

It's not like you can say all kombuchas have this amount of this vitamin I believe some of the leading brands tout as being like, you know, it's a great source of V12 or whatever, but it's not like listed out on the ingredients, like exactly how much. No, and the reason why it's like you said it's variable because this stuff is grown, it's not manufactured.

And B vitamins are a byproduct of fermentation. So unless I guess they test every single batch and create a new label every single time, they can't say accurately how much B vitamins is in there, but usually it's enough to knock your socks right off. Yeah. As will the acid, right? Yes.

So acids are antimicrobials, and they've been found to fight off stuff like E. coli, Shigella, salmonella, cholera. Again, this is in vitro. This is like putting some of the acids from kombucha in a petri dish with shigella and seeing what happens and this acids kill the shigella. So this is all just like assuming that the same stuff is going to happen in the human body because again, there hasn't been a lot of human trials, but we know that the acids that are produced in kombucha, as it ferments,

do have antimicrobial properties in a petri dish at least. Yeah, exactly. As far as if it could be bad for you, probably not. I mean, it might upset your tummy a little bit as any probiotic could initially at least until your thumbs gets used to it. Anything unpasterized, like if you're having, if you're trading like homemade kombucha's

with friends and stuff like that, there could always be a chance that there are some bacteria is in there that aren't great for you. I think you can get a pasteurized, like professionally pasteurized kombucha, but that would kill off the live culture, so it's kind of like what's the point? Yeah, I mean, it still has the acids in it, so it's going to have some benefits, but yeah, the kombucha brewing community is like, what? You don't want to kill off all of this beneficial bacteria, you know?

It's very anti-booch. It is super anti-booch. It is super anti-booch. I say before we wrap Chuck, we name Chuck a few other brands because I love a few here. So, health aid is really, really great. They're like Lady Apple, I would point people to. 221 BC, I think is made in Florida. They make a lavender one that's just amazing.

And their kombucha is real mild. I think it's made in Florida. They make a lavender one that's just amazing. And their kombucha is real mild. It's not nearly as tart and it's not nearly as fizzy as most other kombuchas. It's not quite as dense, so it'd be a good introduction at kombucha. Home is another great one, and then Big Ezebucha. All of those make really good kombucha

and you can usually find all of those brands in just about any grocery store. That's great. I'm going to pass those along to Emily. Do you take a probiotic in a dish or is this sort of covering your bases? I take mine intravenously. Okay, just a slow drip. I don't actually take a probiotic. I'm really terrible at keeping up with supplements on a daily basis. I kind of take them when I think of it. And probiotics definitely fall into that category for me. Yeah, I've gotten good at it with my diverticulae problems.

So I've a friend of mine sister said, you should take this probiotic every day and it really has changed my Toilet routine. What's the do you know the brand and or the what's in it? Oh? Can picture it in my head No, but I could always follow up if people are interested. It's sort of just a good all-around probiotic and it it is right at my tummy Nice. That's awesome. In a good way.

Yeah, I don't take probiotics, but I eat so much fermented stuff every day that it's kind of a tan amount to it. Yeah, we should do one eventually on the other thing that I don't enjoy, which is kimchi. Man, I eat that almost every day too. I know, you love all that stuff. I do love it. And if you're nowhere near an Asian market,

there's something called Cleveland Kim Chi. And you can find that in like your, I think your produce section, along with like tofu and stuff like that. And it's really good for packaged kimchi. You could make that to at home. You don't need a berry kimchi. I think so, That sounds very familiar.

All right, we'll have to look into that. That'd be a good topic. Okay, so while we go off and think about kimchi, let's all just wait a second and pause for listener mail. Should I read one or are we really pausing? Go ahead and read one. Okay, hey guys, recent-tish listener, discover you during second year of the pandemic, you've gotten me through a lot, including graduate school, and the beginning of my most recent career transition, which brings me to the point of this email.

At a really difficult time, shifting my career trajectory from engineering to veterinary medicine, in the sense of making such a major time commitment to pursue more schooling after completing a master's degree. I desired to learn far outweighed my concerns, though, so I applied. Needless to say, I was extremely nervous going to bed school. Through the interview process, it was an absolutely wild coincidence that you released your podcast,

the large equine history of veterinary medicine, the day before I had my two interviews. That episode reminded me of how much I love this field and how fascinating it is. And I accepted this as a happy coincidence that calm my nerves a bit allowed me to go into my interviews the next day with a high, sorry, with the level head, and renewed faith in my decision. I was accepted to both programs I interviewed for that day, as well as a few other. Fast forward to today, my second day of veterinary school, and you released how we're learning to talk to animals. I've now accepted that you're somewhat my guardian angels, as you're shepherding me through this very exciting and very scary transition. Aside from those specific times the podcast gave me so many laughs, fun facts and overall sense of calm, and what can be an overwhelming world. And I know you hear a lot, but I'm officially joining the ranks.

You have made such a positive impact on my life. Please keep doing it. Can't wait to see what the future scenarios that you hold my hand through. Sending love, you sign-offs are getting so good. That is from Gabby. Thanks, Gabby. I remember the email I responded to, say congrats. That was great.

I love it. Love it. That was great email, Gabby, I remember the email I responded to, it was taking grats. That was great. I love it. Love it. I love it. Gabby, thanks. If you want us to sing your praises about what a great email you wrote, take your shot. You only miss the shots you don't take. You can send that shot off to StuffPodcast.

at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannockerim and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect.

Where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us, and probably you, to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to InRetrospect on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. Mama, what does the chicken say? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh Giraffe! Giraffe, really? Giraffe! Giraffe! Giraffe! You're not going to get it all right. Just make sure you know the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled correctly in the right seat for their age and size. Get it right!

Visit NHTSA.gov Slash the right seat. Brought to you by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Ad Council. Welcome to coronavirus stuff. How to Adult. A new podcast from I Heart. Join us as we tackle the complexities of adult life with help from experts. From understanding finances and health insurance plans,

to mastering practical skills like meal prep and laundry, we'll break it all down for you. Get ready to navigate adulthood with confidence. Here's some great advice from our recent episode. When it comes to gift stick within your budget, you can go off registry if you want to, and you can also use the registry to inspire you to get a sense of their taste

and the things they're interested in. Let us not think that wedding gifts have to be crystal and silver and cappuccino makers. Like, they just don't. They can be very sweet, very simple things. The small collection of your favorite recipes would be an amazing wedding gift. Listen to new episodes of Garnup Stuff,

how to adult every other Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just before midnight on September 8th, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Morocco, killing over 1,000 people and sending thousands more into the street. Families have lost everything and are in desperate need of basic items. Care is working in the country to get emergency water, food, and medical support to survivors.

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