Stuff You Should Know - Toast: As in browned bread

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Toast is bread that has been browned by heat. It's delicious. This is our ode to toast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who

have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging out too, and that's making this Stuff You Should Know episode. So welcome, everyone, and welcome back, Chuck. Yeah, welcome back, Josh. Welcome back, Jerry. This feels weirder than ever before. I think, well, we should explain, we're recording our first episodes of the year, and it feels even weirder to ramp back up because we had such a long great break.

I grew a beard. No, you didn't. I just saw you in person. That's true. But I almost felt not nervous, but I was like, do I remember how to do this? Oh, of course you do. I guess we're doing it. How are you feeling right now? A little shaky? I mean, we're doing it, so I guess this is how we do it. This is how we do it. Also, Chuck, you're doing great, by the way. We have a big announcement to make. We want to bring everybody up to speed. We hit the $1 million mark. Oh, yeah. We being Stuff You Should Know listeners, and we hit it a little bit after the turn of the new year, right? That's right. For our friends at Coed, they're the cooperative for education that does

such great work, helping you break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala, and I know we sort of beat you over the head with it at the end, but we really wanted to get the Stuff You Should Know Army over a million bucks because that's a big number, and we did it. Yeah, yeah, we did it. So congratulations to everyone in Stuff You Should Know land, and a special thanks to everybody who opened up their hearts and their wallets and contributed to all those people in Guatemala, all the kids. Totally. All right, just wanted to let everybody know, and sorry for keeping you in suspense. I know this is going to come out in late January, but them's the breaks, everybody. Yeah, and our big beautiful stash of episodes that we recorded

to take that long break are almost gone. They're dwindled like a yule log burned down after the new year. Yeah, it's kind of what it feels like, and just seeing that shrink is exhilarating and sad. It is. I missed being kind of up to date when people send in a listener mail. I'm not like, what episode does that? I know. Because we're a couple weeks out, we're like right there on the edge like Al Pacino in heat. I know, but I was getting episodes, I was like, oh yeah, I forgot we recorded that one, you know, six weeks ago. Pleasantly surprised. So yeah, we're back in full form again, I guess is the point of what we've been talking about for the last three minutes. That's right, I'm ready to go. I'm feeling totally normal now, not weird at all. So I'd like to talk

about something that's not weird at all, and that would be toast. Yeah, who doesn't love toast? I genuinely don't know. I've never met anybody who was like, I hate toast. Maybe it's like, I don't like toast a certain way, but I've never met anybody who just generally didn't like toast. And I'm sure they're out there. If you are, go ahead and write in, let us know why you don't like toast. But I've never met an individual who didn't like toast. Well, I think we should clarify. If you like bread, then you probably like toast. Okay. I think there are non-bread eaters and likers, but if you like the bread part, surely you like it. And it's, well, griddle is pretty great too, but toast, I would argue, is its best form. Yeah. And I guess we are talking

about a specific way of heating and crisping bread. I think people actually get that pedantic about when actually does bread become toast in the toasting process, et cetera. We're not going to go down that road. We're going to keep this fun and light and talk about toast. Yeah, this is my pick and Livia helped us out with it. And here's my deal is I hardly ever eat toast because it's just, especially when you're carrying a few pounds extra around your middle, it's not like you jump up and say, let's throw a few slices of bread in the oven and butter and start our day that way. Toast is a treat for me, a semi-rare treat when I'm maybe out to breakfast or recording an episode on toast because after studying this morning, I was like, I got to go eat a piece

of toast. I have to. You know what's weird is I finally got to that point. I was telling you me last night, I was like, it's so weird. I've been researching toast all day and I don't have a hankering for toast and it finally got me this morning. You had some? No, not yet. I started looking up, all we have are tortillas in the house. I'm like, you can't make toast out of this. But so I started looking up the best white bread and I found a serious eats, I think, or no, eat this, not that, basically taste test. And they said that it was a type of pepperage farms, but they said it's pretty good. It makes better toast, but they said the overall better bread was nature's own perfect white bread, I believe is what it's called. So

I'm going to get me some of that and make some toast. That's a pretty bold name, perfect white. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it is, what it's called. Hold on, I have it written down. I made a draft in my email folder, so I didn't forget it. Let me tell you, Chuck, it is nature's own perfectly crafted white bread. Okay, perfect white. That has some bad insinuations, I think. Perfectly crafted. Their marketing team is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So here's what I did and I want to shout out a listener. I used the, we have had some oat nut wheat bread in the old pantry. So I threw that in a toaster oven, a Breville toaster oven, and we'll talk about the different kinds of toasters. We honestly just don't have

counter space. We don't have a huge kitchen, so we don't have enough room for the beautiful superior standup toaster. And then I used the butter bell, and this is from Amanda, who just wrote in, Amanda Plachal wrote in like last week that said, hey, you got to use a butter bell crock. Do you know what those are? Yeah, we had one and the butter kept growing mold. Are you changing your water every three days? Yeah. Really? I'm taking it like a shot, a little buttery water shot. All right, well, that's weird. Mine hasn't molded yet. So I use that, which keeps the butter nice and soft and spreadable. And then I, on a whim, took a little, and I go for sort of a medium dark. I like it. I don't like it. Oh, really? Yeah,

not a really light toast, but not dark dark either. But I really love that sound when you're spreading it, you know? And then I put some Cloister cinnamon honey, like the spun spreadable honey on there. Okay. And it was so good. So you butter and honey, butter and honey. Yeah, but it could have been just butter or just, I mean, there's a lot of things I can put on toast and enjoy it. I like butter and jam for toast. Yeah, I like jam too. If I do honey, I need to do peanut butter. I'm not crazy about the butter and honey combination, although I do love a good honey butter, but that's not the same thing as butter and honey. And I just don't know why they sound like they'd be spectacular together, but they just don't hit me quite right. Kind of like bourbon

and grapefruit juice. Sounds like it'd be great. It's actually kind of awful. Yeah, I don't think that sounds great though. Okay. All right. Should we talk about butter or toast? Is that what we're talking about today? We should do one on butter though. That's a good idea. Sure. That's a great idea. So we should probably start with the history because we don't exactly know who started making toast, but most people chalk it up to the ancient Egyptians. They think the Greeks or the Romans stole it from the Egyptians and kind of made a big deal out of it, actually named the stuff. We call toast toast because in, I guess, ancient Roman. Yeah, Latin. No, Latin. It's the new year. Yeah. Toast them is Latin for scorched. So that's kind of where we get the word toast from. So

that's where toast kind of first appears, but they're basically saying like, and Libya helped us out with this, that as long as people have been making bread, they probably very quickly after that started making toast. Yeah. And that's toast them as in TOS, T-U-M. It's not T-O-A-S-T apostrophe M. Right. Because that's probably some highly manufactured food product. Probably. It's delicious. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. There was fire. There was sort of staleish bread probably. And they said, hey, we can, the air fryer's not around yet. We can revive this sort of stale thing by putting a little brown on it. Meaning toasting it. Sure. Okay. Oh, were you going dirty? Yeah, I was. Okay. So really, I guess in medieval times, they were

kind of like, okay, we'll see what we can do with this toast. And that's where cinnamon toast comes from the 15th century. There was something called golden sops, which was kind of a predecessor to French toast. And that came around in the 13th century. I think it was associated with the alchemists because it was supposed to be associated with gold, which was attributed to immortal life. Yeah. That sounds really alchemist-y to me. Yeah. And I think that's just like dip and toast and egg yolk, right? Yes. And eating it. I believe so. Not like frying it. No, you fry it up or cook it in some way. Oh, I thought you would just eat the toast and dip it in that yolk and eat it. I don't think so. I think you dip the bread in the yolk and then cook it. Okay. All right. Well,

that is French toast. That is French toast. But none of that matters. It does not matter from the time of ancient Egypt through to the 15th century because nothing important happened until I believe the people, the great people of Naples, Italy invented cinnamon toast. Yeah. And this is straight up cinnamon toast. They toasted the bread over fire and we'll get to the implements they used to do that. And they would put butter on it. They would put cinnamon and sugar on it. But this sounds so key and delicious. It says here that they would add a creamy cheese and then cook it some more. Yeah. I can't. I mean, does that mean cream cheese? Because it can be kind of good. It sounds delicious to me. It does sound pretty good. But regardless, I think cinnamon

toast is one of the pinnacles of human cookery. Oh, yeah. I agree. Have you ever had, have you ever had Welsh rarebit? No. And I want to try it now. And I know I've looked it up before and realized it's not what I thought. But I always thought it was a rabbitty meat dish and just always avoided it. No. Well, the legend goes that the poor Welsh peasants called it Welsh rabbit because they used the cheese instead of meat because cheese was cheaper and easier to get than rabbit meat was. They also heard that that was kind of a derogatory or scornful thing. Like to the Welsh, this is what rabbit is, you know, this cheese substitute. But it's a cheesy, really delicious, cheesy sauce that includes beer and worcestershire. Okay. And then you put that over toast. And I can't

remember. There might be some other component to it. Yeah, I had this restaurant in D.C. And I can't remember the name of it, but it's where JFK proposed to Jackie O. Oh, so I'm sure there's some D.C. people who know, but they had Welsh rarebit and I was like, I got to try this and it was really good. I'm going to try it. And it's again, it's nothing to be scared of. And I didn't feel as dumb knowing that it originally like may have had rabbit and they use cheese instead. Yeah. Because it felt like a dummy because it doesn't even say rabbit. Well, I mean, yeah, it's a it's a bastardization of it. It's like, instead of rabbit, it's like

RABB apostrophe IT. Things really cooked up though, in a big way, no pun intended in the Victorian era in Britain, when they went wild for toast, all kinds of great recipes. We're going to highlight a few of them here that Libya dug up, including bone marrow toast. I have kind of turned on bone marrow. I was enjoying it for a little while, but the last time I had it, I didn't really like it and it kind of grossed me out. Oh, yeah, I can see that. If you stop and think about it, it can gross you up pretty easy. Yeah. So I think I'm off of it now or maybe just a tiny bit goes a long way for me, I think. Yeah.

Not too much marrow. So the marrow toast was from a book in 1867 from Charles Elm, Fran Cattelli, I guess, and he was in Queen Victoria's Kitchen and said the queen ate this basically every night for dinner. And that was kind of a fun line and it's fun reading his old recipes always. One of them says that you should get the butcher to break the bones, as this is a rather awkward affair for ladies, I guess, to break those bones. Not very ladylike. I mean, it's an awkward affair for anybody, really. And what's the other funny line in that recipe? That it should have just a mere suspicion of shallot.

I love that. Yeah, it's a strange way to put it, but I like that guy's writing. Well, you see a hint of something, so that makes sense. Right, a mere suspicion. I've never heard anything like it in a while. Yeah, I haven't either. So there was another cookbook in Victorian England called The Book of Household Management by Isabella Beaton. I think everyone referred to her as Mrs. Beaton, and she came up with a couple good ones, a couple good contributions. One is the toast sandwich, and it's exactly what it sounds

like. Yeah, it's like the Blues Brothers Wish sandwich. Do you remember that? No, huh? Where you had two slices of bread and you wish you had some meat. That's basically it, is it was a meat substitute. You take two pieces of bread and your meat was a piece of toast. Yeah, and like the bread would be buttered and everybody calmed down, but it was just dry toast in the middle. That was the substance of the sandwich, and people would eat them. Kind of, yeah, I guess a little bit, but without the meat, without the dressing, without the sesame seed bun, without the lettuce, without any of that.

I'm surprised you didn't say it like the old commercial. I can't remember. I've got the BK jingle in my head, and it's not jibing. I think it was to all beef, patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese. Pickles on your non-assisting sesame seed bun. Yeah, there you go. And two octaves. I've got have it your way, have it your way in my head, all the time, not just right now, by the way. What did that mean? Was Burger King known for saying you can get a special type of hamburger and not get spit on? It was hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders, don't upset us. Did they upset us? All we want is that you let us have it your way.

I don't remember going to McDonald's though, and them being upset when I said no pickles or whatever. Oh man, they were well known for their people's just going into a rage if you asked them to hold anything. Like you knew better in the 80s than to open your mouth at McDonald's, aside from ordering directly off the menu. Hold this, buddy. This recipe is pretty fun. Toast water? I think if you gave people a test and said, guess three guesses on what toast water would be, they probably wouldn't guess what toast water is, even though it's exactly what it sounds like. I think the mind repels it thinking of it, you know? It's just making toast, pouring boiling water over the toast, and that's not the meal. It's

not like milk toast, which we'll get to in a second. You just let it get cold and then you strain out that toast and have toast flavored water. Like kind of, as Olivia puts it, a toast-based iced tea. I kind of want to try this. I don't. I don't want to try it at all. I think it sounds really awful, but let me know how it is. I'm totally going to try this. Okay, seriously, dude, let me know how it is. I will. So you mentioned milk toast. We can't not mention milk toast. Not to be confused with milk steak. This is milk toast. And although it was a rage in like the 19th century, they think it was actually invented in New England. And it was basically toast with warm milk and then something like cinnamon, sugar, maple syrup, something like that. It could

be eaten as a breakfast. It was frequently given to people on their sick beds. It was just comfort food, early comfort food. And it actually gave us a comic strip character's name, Kasper Milk Toast. Right. And I looked up Kasper Milk Toast. I've heard of him plenty of times, but I never actually saw a Kasper Milk Toast comic strip. And it was like looking into a mirror. I actually didn't look it up. I'm doing so right now. This guy, life is just so hard for this guy because, no, no, no, his like the things that, the way he sees the world is like looking into a mirror. Everything's so hard and difficult and everybody just wants to beat him up. And it's just, I was like, wow, I got more than a little strain of Kasper Milk Toast to me. It's worth looking up for

sure. Like a tear in your eye. So Milk Toast is, I had kind of had a vision for it as like toast floating in like a thin plate of milk. And it turns out there's kind of all kinds of ways. I've seen it recipes where it's toast with like a milky cream that you kind of drizzle over it. But then I've seen it also like as if you just chop up toast and eat it like a bowl of cereal. Yeah. I don't think there's any specific rules on eating Milk Toast. I'm going to try that too. I would try that for sure. Okay. It sounds pretty good. One thing I came across Chuck that it just kept popping up is apparently toast back in this time was way thinner. I saw it cut, it should be cut to about a quarter inch, which is a really thin toast. Yeah. Almost

appallingly thin toast. It's almost a Melba. Yeah. It is very much Melba-like. I think maybe twice as wide as your standard Melba toast. But I mean, it's still pretty thin. It would be brittle really fast if you ask me. Totally. Should we take a break? We should. Did you forget that part? I did. All right. We'll be right back, everybody. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends. Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill, and we, you know, at Questlove Supreme like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking

about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS Team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving into music, everything, all manacking your musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought. Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio app. Have a podcast wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup?

Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to

Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of

MySpace, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. So this is going so, so far. So, so, so far? Yeah, it's harder to say than it sounds. You got to practice in your head right before you said it. I did not. By the way, I really love, I didn't want it to go unmentioned that I really dug your milk steak ref. So you slid it in there so quickly that I didn't want to get, because sometimes we'll do that and we'll get letters or like, I can't believe Chuck did laugh when he said milk steak, boiled over hard. Oh, okay, there's one other thing we got to talk about. And that is means of creating toast from bread. Yeah, these are the implements that I mentioned, which it's funny. A lot of these

implements look, basically are just like modern camping implements. There are all kinds of little camping toasty things, including telescoping, which was invented, it looks like in the Victorian era. They're not as fancy as they used to be, but all kinds of things that are basically kind of like camping toasters. Yeah, because that's basically what everyone was doing in the 19th century was camping indoors. So they had those, they had toasting forks, and they had toasting forks for hundreds of years. There was not a lot of innovation on that, although they, they tinkered with, you know, how many tines it had or just kind of trying to improve the toast fork. But that was how you made toast for a really long time. And then they came up with stoves and somebody very quickly

said, we can attach like a little thing onto the front of the stove and direct some of that heat onto a little toast rack and make toast that way. That was a pretty big innovation, I guess. But it wasn't until electric power came along that toast really started to come into its own, if you ask me. For sure. But I also want to shout out the toast rack, because that is a thing I didn't know was a thing until I saw it. And I was like, I love this. It's brilliant. Why don't they still have these? And they do. They do. I saw somebody on like some toast form or whatever saying, like, do not eat toast without a toast rack. And if you don't have a toast rack, like, lean your toast up against like a glass or something like that. Like that's how you store toast until

you eat it. And you should be eating it pretty quickly after you make it. Yeah. And to be clear, this is not a means of cooking. But if you're serving like a brunch or a breakfast at your house, you toast all the toast. And it's sort of like a little miniature bike rack with a caddy handle. I think of it more like a little, remember those little 45 record stands? Sure. Oh yeah, that too. Kind of like that. Yeah. But it keeps, you know, I think the ideal way to, like you said, to store toast until it goes in your mouth is not to laying down on the plate where it can collect that condensation and moisture because the heat gets the heat. My God, the heat. Like you pick up a piece of toast. If you see water on your plate, you're doing it wrong.

Right. And the toast rack gets around that. So yes, hats off to the toast rack. And yes, if you were a toast aficionado and you're not using a toast rack, you got a whole world that's about to open up to you, buddy. That's right. But we were talking about electricity and specifically the innovation that came along, which was nichrome. And you think, what is nichrome? And I'll say, well, it's a nickel and chromium composite invented by an engineer named Albert Martian 1905. And you say, well, what is that? It's just a heating coil. Right. It's this really neat alloy that has a high electrical resistance, which means that if you run an electrical current through it, it doesn't like that. And it responds by getting really, really hot, putting out infrared

radiation and turning bright red. And if you say, well, that sounds a lot like a toaster's heating element, that's why. Because apparently, nichrome is still in use today. I saw court says as well, but I think in your average $15 toaster that your bank gives you for opening an account, I don't know if they still do that or not. It's going to have nichrome heating elements in it. Yeah. And I assume it's the same thing in like a space heater, right? Or is that different? The most dangerous ones, yeah. Man, I don't like a space heater unless it glows. You know what I'm saying? Oh, really? Yeah, I love those. I do too. It's kind of nice. It's fire-like because it almost is fire. It's almost fire. That's how they should market it. That actually would be good marketing.

Can we talk about the D12? Because I'm in love with this thing. That was a GE product. And they basically say this is the first mass-marketed commercial toaster. When you're in a safe space, you're not driving your car or something, you can look this thing up. Just look up on an image search GE D12 toaster invented by Frank Schaler. And this thing is beautiful in its simplicity. I would love to be able to find one and have an electrician like Rigit to work in my modern kitchen because it just looks super cool because I love those coils. That thing would catch on fire so fast. I mean, you just plug it in and it just immediately catch fire, I think, for the first time. Can you describe the shape?

It's like if you took the guts out of a toaster, one side of the guts out of a toaster and kept the cord and plugged it in and did not have any kind of guard or anything around it and just laid the toast on it. That would be the D12. It looks to me kind of like it's the toaster version of a wicker wheelchair. I find it deeply uncomfortable. I love your fear of wicker wheelchair. Your long-standing fear of wicker wheelchair. I don't think it's ever going away. I don't see my fear of wicker wheelchairs ever. Oh, man. I'm going to, upon retirement, you're going to find one of those on your front porch with a big bow on it. Oh, man. I wouldn't come out of the house for so long. That's a great Casper milk toast comic strip. The D12, the toast leans,

like you said, it's at a bit of an angle. It's like a little pup tent with heating coils. The problem with the D12 was that you had to obviously flip it over. I don't say it's a problem. I think that's a fun, interactive way to make toast. You'd have to flip it over to toast both sides. I think the first pop-up toaster was the first one where they said, hey, why don't we see if we can toast both sides of this thing? Yeah. The guy named Charles Strite from Minnesota invented the first pop-up toaster in 1919. It went on to be manufactured and marketed as the toast master. I think that brand might still be around. It sounds familiar. The thing is, is Charles Strite invented this thing pretty much perfectly right out of the gate, where,

again, if you go to a bank and you ask for the toaster that they give you when you open your account, they probably are giving you a Charles Strite version of a toaster. He just created it correctly right out of the gate. That's right. The plus here, again, is you don't have to flip it and had a very key component, which was a timer. You don't have to sit there and watch it. It would just pop it up, spring-loaded, and here's... Well, we'll get to in a second, but the startling revelation of this episode to me is I thought that's how all modern pop-up toasters worked today, was you set a little brownness variation, which was just essentially a timer, and put a pin in that because that's not how modern toasters work, and I was blown away to learn

that. Well, I say we talk about that right now because I'm raring at the bit. All right. So, I guess somebody came along and said, how can we make this harder or more complex? And they did. They took the timer element out of it, and instead, they now have a current that's created. I guess a circuit is closed, right, which means that the electricity can flow through it, which heats up the heating element. That happens when you press down the lever, the handle, to sink the toast into the toaster, but it also triggers something that connects an electromagnet that holds that basket that the toaster in down, but eventually, enough electricity flows through that a capacitor that, I guess, is set to some certain voltage

reaches its limit, turns off the energy to the electromagnet, which now releases the basket, which pops the toaster up, so the handle comes up with it, which means that the circuit is now open. There's no longer electricity that can flow through it. And the other way, and this is the one that really blew me away, because to me, nothing is more simple than just a timer, but it can be controlled by a switch that is made of two metals. It's bimetallic, and these two metals expand at different rates. So, one of them is getting hot at a rate that the other one is not getting hot at, and once they reach a whatever certain point, they will push apart and break that circuit. So, I always just figured it was a timer, and it's one of these

two things, which, like you said, just seems infinitely more complicated, but there's got to be a reason, right? I guess it's probably because it's cheaper to make in... Than a timer? That's what I would guess, yeah. Okay. Yeah, because think about it, the timer has, you have to have a clock, you got to have some spring. You have to have a mouse attached to the string that sets off that ball that goes and hits the little pole with the boot attached that knocks over the water that ends the timer. I forgot about all that stuff. Yeah, that's expensive. I also do want to shout out my favorite toaster, which I... I guess people might have these in their homes. There's probably a home version, but the one you get at the Hampton Inn Lobby Breakfast

or in the Delta Sky Club, the beautiful conveyor belt toaster. The Quiznos toaster. Oh, I've loved... I've never been to Quiznos, but I love those conveyor toasters. Oh, you're missing out. Quiznos is one of the best. Oh, yeah? Yeah, because they toast everything. They don't ask you if you want your subtoasted. They do it, and it goes on this cool little conveyor belt toaster, and it comes out delicious every time. Man, they need to... Why aren't they sponsoring us? I don't know. They've really greatly diminished in size. I thought maybe they'd gone out of business, but they just closed a lot of their stores, but they're still around apparently, but I guess that's probably why. Well, I mean, we're giving them pre-advertising. I called out Jared from Subway years before his

great shame. Like, we're doing everything through Quiznos we can do. That's true, man. For $0. Anyway, I love the conveyor toaster. I think they're awesome. I wish I had one in my house. Maybe I'll do that one day. Yeah, just go to stay at a Hampton Inn and walk out with their toaster. Yeah. Oh, and those little waffle irons. Yes. They need to triple the number of waffle irons that they have in my experience. Yeah, and don't let children operate them because they screw everything up. Did you see the Balmuda toaster or Balmuda toaster, essentially? Yeah, that is very appealing, but boy, is it expensive. It is. It's $300, but it does other things rather than just toast. If you hear somebody say, it's a $300 toaster, just be like,

actually, it does a lot more than just toast. It's a toaster oven. It is. First of all, yeah. So, I mean, $300 toaster oven is... I mean, that's an expensive toaster oven, but it's not astronomical compared to other toaster ovens, I think. Yeah. Compared to the $15 bank toaster, yes. Sure. No, no, no. I'll give what you mean. It wasn't $1,000, but it's a luxury item. I think the trick here is, or at least they say, what I want to do is try one out because you pour a little bit of water in it, right? And that's supposedly the steam helps the toast taste better. Yeah. You toast your bread with steam, which apparently heats up faster than air, which makes sense because steam can burn your face off faster than air can. And that's what they do to the toast. They burn

the face off of the bread using hot steam, and it crisps the outside, turns it pretty brown, if you want it to be. And then the inside stays like chewy and soft. It's kind of like searing the juices inside a stick. Hold on a second. It is only steam? Yeah, it's hot steam air. That's what, that's my understanding of it. I thought it was a coil and with some steam addition. So it's the same thing. If you're not actually cooking the bread on your heating element in a toaster, the air is cooking the toast, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just a variation on that. They're using steam rather than just air. So they're using water and air heated up rather than just heated air. Okay. I didn't know it was only steam. That is pretty wild. Yeah,

weird wild stuff. And that company, I'd never heard of that company. I hadn't either. And I looked into it a little bit. It's a Japanese company that I think they have like four things. They make a tea kettle, a toaster, a Bluetooth speaker, and what else? Oh, a lantern. Right. For very disparate things. Even weirder than the parent company of Quiznos. They should be doing pretty well then with those $300, $400 products. That's right. Can we take a break? Oh boy. Yeah, sure. All right. Or should we wait? I don't know, man. It's 2023. All bets are off. How about this? Let's tell this awesome tangent story that Livia dug up, which I think is kind of one of the coolest parts

of this episode. And then we'll take a break. Okay, fair enough. All right. Hit me with it. Who is Alan McMasters? The inventor of the toaster dummy. He invented it back in 1893. Don't you know? Yeah. He was from Edinburgh. And he was an electrical engineer. And he worked for the British electric company Crompton & Co. And came up with the first toaster in 1893. And we know because it was on Wikipedia. And there was even a picture of this, all-timey picture of this guy. Yeah. So it had to be true. But it turned out it wasn't true at all. And there's a 15-year-old British boy who said, that picture does not look like it's from the 19th century. And if you look at the picture, it doesn't look like it's from the 19th century at

all. I mean, just running a slight sepia filter on it does not a 19th century picture make, right? But it was enough to fool everybody for a very long time. So in 2012, there was a college student. I did not see where he went. But his name was Alex. And he had a friend whose name was Alan McMasters. And just as a joke, Alex edited the Wikipedia entry, I believe for toasters, to say that Alan McMasters was the inventor of the toaster. That's a good joke. It is a good joke. But then it got picked up by the press, starting with the Daily Mirror. Yeah. And not the hoax picked up, but just the story. And there are articles in Livias Innocent Link. There's one from 2012 that is still not corrected online. I think it was

from the Daily Mirror, right? Yeah. The Mirror said they did a list of things that were invented in Great Britain. Right, right. And they chalked it up to Alan McMasters. But he didn't exist at all. Like there wasn't Alan McMasters. But again, he was a college student in the 2010s. He was an 1890s Scottish inventor. And yet once that Daily Mirror article went up, it kicked off other citations. And then the beauty part of all of it, Chuck, is that those citations or those articles that sprung from the fake Wikipedia entry became citations in the Wikipedia entry. So it was a self-sustaining support system for itself. It was amazing. There was a BBC show called Great British Menu that

created from scratch a dessert named after McMasters. There was apparently a school in Scotland that had an Alan McMasters day in his honor. And it's a harmless prank. That's why I think it's so great. I'm normally not a big fan of pranks, but I don't think this really hurt anybody that I can think about. Can you imagine it hurting someone? Or am I being... I don't know. Well, I wonder if they ever told the school kids that there was no Alan McMasters after they celebrated Alan McMasters day. Okay. So maybe a small lie to school children. But otherwise, I think it's hysterical because it really... I mean, I'm sure these guys were like, I can't believe this worked so well. But they were eventually found out and

McMasters was revealed. But I think that's one of the great pranks. Yeah, I agree. And you misunderstand me. I think the fact that these school kids were lied to accidentally makes it even funnier, not like that's a problem. Okay. And this is also why we've never used Wikipedia as a source, which we really haven't. I kind of had to just tune out people that in our reviews over the year say, these two numbskulls just read Wikipedia pages when we've literally never... And it's a point of pride. And we tell... When we started getting freelance writers, we were like, can't use Wikipedia as a source. And now I can say, and this is a great reason why. Excellent lead put, Chuck. All right. Break time. It is finally break time, everybody.

What's up, y'all? This is Questlove. And, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends, Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill. And we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS Team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving and music, everything, all monacking your musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought. Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme.

One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeart Radio app. Have a podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Supreme! What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost

experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub, and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace

because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the Story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, the Story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. All right, so now we get to talk a little bit about the mall yard. I always said mall yard, but is it mallard? Because the I is not after the L like I thought it was. So, his name was Louis Camille Maillard. I don't think it matters at this point.

That's the reaction. If you've ever heard fancy chef types or people at a dinner party trying to impress someone else, talk about the mall yard reaction. That is this, you know, there's a chemical reaction that takes place when you eat foods. And this specific one is like when you make toast or toast a tortilla or make popcorn or like sear a steak. I think that's the same thing too, right? Yeah, the chicken skin browning. Yeah, that's this reaction named after this French chemist. And that's kind of the magic of where this taste comes from. It's how these chemicals are reacting to one another. Yeah, specifically amino acids and sugars that form all sorts of new smells and new tastes. One of the new compounds that they create is

acetyltetrahydropyridine, which is the smell, the taste, the aroma that gives toast its smell, gives popcorn its smell, corn tortillas baking its smell. It's just one of many compounds that are made by the Maillard reaction. But in the case of toast, that's where it comes from. And apparently, depending on the kind of bread you use, you'll get different kinds or different color toast, like your darker toast or lighter toast. And the more alkalina toast is, the browner it will get, which is why it's very difficult to toast sourdough to a deep brown color, because it's actually very acidic as far as braids go. Yeah. And if you've heard in the news over recent years that toast can be bad for you or anything sort of seared might be bad for you, it's because the jury is

kind of out whether or not. Well, I think the American Cancer Society said that there's definitely potentially carcinogenic compounds. Definitely maybe. Definitely maybe. That can be created through this toasting and searing. And that's like grilled meats. We talked about that before. But they don't know if you're eating enough of that stuff to really be dangerous to you. Yeah. They just basically said, just be careful. Don't eat dark toast. No one likes burnt toast anyway, so don't be a jerk and say you like it. Yeah, you got to keep your eye on it, because caramelization can happen, which is great if you're an onion and maybe a tiny bit if you're some toast, but you don't want to make that toast black, that bitter black, and no amount of

knife scraping. Mom will make that taste any better. Totally agree with you, man. You want to talk about toast around the world? Yeah. All this does is make me hungry. These all sound so good. So there's one called Kaya toast from Singapore and Malaysia. So you charcoal grill the toast. You would love that, right? Oh yeah. And then you make a sandwich out of the toast with butter and a jam that's made from coconut and eggs called Kaya. Delicious. It's the name Kaya toast. I would try that any day of the week. All right. What about our friends from Italy? Of course, they're going to serve you something with garlic and olive oil. And that's exactly what they do. It's called Fatunta. We call that garlic toast in the Midwest. Yeah. Garlic, maybe a little salt,

little olive oil, bing, bang, boom, done. I've got one I want to try as soon as possible. It's from Sweden. Where I'd like to go, by the way, I have a real hankering to go visit Sweden sometime. Me too. They have a toast called Toast Skoggan. And you, it's basically a shrimp toast. You mix together creme fraiche, butter, shrimp. You put a little dill on it, some capers. You put it all on a toast, maybe with a slight, a little bit of lemon juice or a lemon slice on it as a garnish, and then you eat it and say, man, I feel like I'm in Stockholm. Our friends down under, what's going on down there? I love you. We get so much support from Australia, but, and you've got your Vegemite, of course, which is divisive, of course, but we're

not here to talk about Vegemite. We're here to talk about making toast, buttering it, and then covering it with like ice cream sprinkles. Yeah. Also called, yeah, sprinkles, non-perils. That's what we call them here, down there. And I think in the UK, they call them hundreds and thousands. But there's those multicolored, tiny, little round sprinkles. I know we're going to get emails saying like, just try it, mate. Trust me. Yeah, they call it fairy bread, which if you put that together with a good Instagram photo of that stuff, it's like, wow, I would try that sometime. Which other one should we highlight here? I think the Pancon Tomate, because I would like to try that one too. All right. That's Spanish, right? Then what do you do? How do you make it?

Well, you just grill some bread again, little olive oil, so you think, well, I'm making Fortuna. We already talked about that wrong, because you add some grated on a box grater, a big old beefsteak tomato, so that you just have the innards of the tomato and not the skin. And you mix that with some stuff, like some basil or some other spices. And you put it on some toast and eat it almost immediately. Maybe put a single anchovy on there. Maybe put a little aioli dab on there too. I saw, what's your buddy's name? Kenji Alt Lopez. Kenji Lopez Alt, sure. Yes. They had a pretty good little entry and recipe for Pancon Tomate that I would like to try too. That sounds really good. It almost started out sounding like

what's the nice Italian appetizer with just the tomatoes and olive oil on the toast points. Bruschetta. Yeah, bruschetta. I love a good bruschetta. I used to make that all the time. I don't make it much anymore. Yeah, it's good. The simpler, the better with that I found. Yeah, I do want to shout out toad in a hole, or toad in the hole, which I've only had a few times, but whenever I see it on a menu, I'll order that. And that's when I think there are casserole variations, but the kind I've seen is just toast with the center cut out, and then you fry an egg in the middle of it. And then you top it with a live toad. Right. All right. That's cool. I would try that too. I mean, it's just,

I love toast with fried eggs, so I don't know about losing any of the toast by cutting a hole out of it. What do you do with the whole toast? I don't know. Make a Big Mac? Sure. There's one other thing we got to talk about, Chuck. Well, maybe two. Yeah, two. But if you'll remember back, not too long ago, less than a decade ago, there was a pretty big toast craze going on in the United States. It was hipsterrific. It's where we got avocado toast. So I'm very glad that it happened. I love avocado toast, but that's where it all came from. There was a toast movement for a little while, and it just was a huge flash in the pan. It came and went faster than you can say, lickety-split. But it was still kind of interesting because, again, it gave us some

good toast. It introduced people to toast, but at the same time, people were like, well, this is millennial's problem. This is why you can't buy a house because you're spending five bucks on a piece of toast. Yeah, I don't know, man. I've seen, you know, I watched a lot of Top Chef, and there was a couple of seasons there where there was a lot of like little toast added. But to me, it's just sort of like beautiful, simplistic cooking, like toast with some, you know, some nut butter and banana or, you know, any little like nice thing you can throw on top. Is it nice? I think it just is one of those things that got like Instagram too much, probably cost a little too much. Sure. And there was a bit of a revolution against it, but

at its core, I love the idea of taking toasts and putting delicious things on them. Yeah. Just to kind of button that up, the artisanal toast fad was traced back by Pacific Standard to a woman named Giulietta Corelli, who owns Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club. And they said this is, this was ground zero for where people started getting the idea to make toast. She just offered in San Francisco, and she just offered like a really good cinnamon toast that would knock your socks off. And then other people were like, yeah, toast, that's a great idea. And it just kind of spread from there. Yeah. That's kind of a become a thing in more recent years, which I like in the chef world,

which is like back to simplicity and just like a few simple ingredients. And you don't have to, you know, because for a while they're like molecular gastronomy was the thing and making these foams and, you know, beads that popped and smoke would come out. And there's room for all of it. I love cooking and I love cheap dining and I love fine dining. I love it all. So I think there's a place for all of it. And just, I don't know. I hate when something delicious happens and people are like hipsters like it. So I hate it. Right. Yeah. You shouldn't do that. I mean, just make your own mind up. Don't identify with something or against something because someone else you don't like likes it. And why don't you like

those people in the first place? Have you really stopped and invested any time or thought into yourself? Maybe you don't like what you see in them that reminds you of yourself. Maybe that's what you don't like about people like hipsters. From the mouth of Casper Milt Toast himself. All right. We're going to finish up a little bit with, Libya, just knock this one out of the park with a fun little thing that I wouldn't have even thought to research probably is the word toast as a, it's like a lot of things, but like as a verb, like we're making a toast. That started apparently because they would drop spice toasted bread into a drink to help flavor it up a little bit and then pull it out, let the

dog eat it maybe. And then that was a toast. Yeah. And that just became the word that was used anytime you held up a glass and said something nice about somebody else. I love that. Makes sense. Sure. I like that there's an actual origin story to it, right? And then apparently from that, all sorts of other usages of toast kind of spread like the toast of the town, something that's really great. That dates back to the 18th century. Apparently toast was used in the early 70s to mean like awesome today. That's toast. Okay. Yeah. She put in here in 84, there was a phrase, something was bad as toast. I've never heard that before in my life. I've never heard that before in my life either. But speaking of 1984, the way that you and I use toast all the time, like

they're toast, they're done for. Yeah. They're finished. That actually traces back to Bill Murray and Ghostbusters. Can this be true? George Will said it in 1988 and George Will knew what he was talking about. He was a language columnist. Sure. And in 1988, he traced it back to Bill Murray. Instead of saying, I'm going to turn this guy into toast, which the script called for, Bill Murray said, this chick is toast instead. And it just kind of took off from there. If that's true, I love that because what a great sort of tie-in to a movie that we used to talk about a lot. Yeah. Remember, we used to mark time by how many years before after Ghostbusters it was. Yeah. And I think I mentioned on the show that I thoroughly enjoyed that brand new version,

even though it got wisely panned. Yeah. And speaking of panned, that's another name for bread or toast. Look at that. Yeah. What was I nervous about? I don't know. Like I said, this one went pretty so-so. Okay. I'll take it. Okay. Yeah. Same here, especially for the first one back. Since Chuck said, I'll take it, that means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail. That's right. I guess the first thing we should mention is a quick correction in the Edmund Fitzgerald episode. Oh, boy. We got the location. Well, a couple of things on that. We got the location of Zug Island, incorrect? Isn't that right? Yeah. We said it was in Lake Michigan. Wrong. It's in the Detroit River, which flows into Lake Erie. It was never in Lake Michigan.

And, boy, I made a lot of Canadians angry because I did not like that song. And Gordon Lightfoot is apparently the pride of Canada. I did not mean to knock anyone. I do not like that song, but I got to say this, though. I got accused of yum yucking. And I think that phrase has been taken a bit too far. Now, that's been used against you? Well, no. Let's all stop using that. No. The way it was written in was basically people were saying, like, you're not allowed to express an opinion about something anymore. Right. Because that's yum yucking. And that's not true. You can have opinions. I don't like this thing. I think yum yucking is when you're like, I don't know. It's a step further, which is like, how can you like

this awful thing or something? Well, I think some Canadians feel like you hit that line or crossed it. You think? Yeah. And I can tell people would like it. If you like that song, fine. If you like that garbage song, that's your business. There you go. All is right with the universe again. Oh, boy. All right. So, on to the mail. This is a very sweet one from Anna and Carter in the great city of Cleveland. Okay. Hey, guys. I've been listening for many years. I'm an Army Sergeant. And about every two years ago, we were in a month-long field exercise, one week every night. Helicopters practice night landings in the same field we were sleeping in. After a few nights, constantly being up to what felt like a mechanical tornado,

I decided I'd be up anyway. So, I might as well put the podcast in my earbuds. And I fell straight to sleep and slept all night. I'm doing it ever since. Flash forward to present day. My son and I have made the podcast part of our nightly routine. We played on the phone under a shared pillow to snuggle and cover mostly bugs and animals. It makes for great discussions with a four-year-old. Last night, he wanted Godzilla's or butterflies. And Tracy and Holly have covered Godzilla. So, my son requested you guys with butterflies. Nice. So, my son Carter and myself say thank you for the info, work, peaceful sleep, or an exhausted mom and soldier have a good night. And that is Anna and Carter in Cleveland, Ohio. Thanks a lot, Anna and Carter. That's a great email.

And Anna made reference to Holly and Tracy. She was saying that Stuff You Missed in History class apparently did an episode on Godzilla, which I didn't know, which I wanted to go listen to immediately. My colleagues, we don't get to see anymore, but we go way back and they're the best. We presume they still exist. I got an email from Holly, and they're alive and well. Okay, it's confirmed. So, thank you from us and from Tracy and Holly to Anna and Carter. And if you want to be like Anna and Carter, you can send us an email to StuffPodcasts 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. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the

early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I am Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.