Today, Explained - The Island of Explained: Plant-based party

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

An invitation to a vegan party sends producers Kiarra and Izii to the Island of Explained, where a giant who once ate people explains why he switched to a plant-based diet — and why that diet might be beneficial for humans, too.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Today Explained to Kids. This one's for the children, adults, if you're around. Break out the earmuffs. I'm going to hand it off to producers Kiara and Sarah, who may just be heading back to our favorite island. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's try something a little different. Today! Explain! What. Today! Explain! What? Today!

Oh. Explain! Okay. Today! I get it. Explain! Today! Today!

Explain! What? Explain! Today! Today! Explain! Sarah, you there? Hey, Kiara, come on in.

I'm almost done making this guacamole for Izzy's party. Ugh, did you read the part about bringing a vegan snack? Yeah, guacamole is all fruits and veggies, so it's totally vegan. Nothing comes from animals. What are you bringing? Well, that's the thing. I wanted to bring my all-time favorite signature dish. My meat lover's nachos. I mean, they have everything.

Gooey cheese, crispy chips, steak and sausage, and the world's best sour cream. Stop, I am drooling. Well, I have to stop, because it turns out that almost nothing about that is vegan. Not the cheese, not the sausage, not the steak, not the world's best sour cream.

They all come from animals, so what I'm left with is plain chips. Ah, well, what if we went to the island of Explained again? Izzy told me they actually have a whole vegan community out there. Maybe we could find a recipe. That's not a bad idea.

Do you know where the nearest portal is? Sure. I actually set one up near my computer. It is way more fun than looking stuff up. Wow, this farm is huge. Look at all those crops. And what is this? Giant tree? Oh, it's a beanstalk, actually. Like the fairy tale? Yeah, exactly like the fairy tale. And I think this is the plant-based farming community that Izzy was talking about. They're at the base of this giant plant, so they're called plant-base. Very literal. Nice.

So should we talk to someone? Uh, all farmers look pretty busy, but Izzy told me that if I ever came to visit, I should go up the beanstalk to talk to beans. Who or what is beans? Are beans? I don't know. I guess we'll find out. Do we have to climb all the way up? That's a long way. Nah, look. There's an elevator. This elevator moves fast. Oh my gosh, my ears are popping.

Oh wow. We are literally in the clouds right now. Can I really walk on them? I mean, I'm not falling through. Oh my gosh. What's that? Fee-fi-fo-fum. Uh, hello? We're looking for Beans?

Yes, that's me. I'm Beans. This is my stock. Okay, well, hi. I'm Kiara. Hi, Mr. Beans. I'm Sarah. Mr. Beans is my father. Just Beans is fine. Nice to eat you. I mean, meet you. Sorry, force of habit. What can I do for you? Well, someone told us you were a good person to ask about plant-based eating. Oh, that's my all-time favorite subject. Let me sit down so I can see you better. Do you have time to hear a story?

Sure. Great! Settle in and get comfortable. You comfortable? It is like resting on clouds. Good. So my story starts when I was a tiny baby giant, only about the size of two houses stacked on top of each other.

Even at that pipsqueak size, I was eating people whole. I loved the taste of people. Feeling a little less comfortable now. I loved their yummy little bones, and especially their feet. Feet are the most delicious part of a person. Okay, feeling a lot less comfortable. I got very big and very strong eating lots of humans. But then, one day, around the time that I was the size of an apartment building, a human named Jack climbed up my stock. It was right after I'd just had a big meal, so I was too full to eat him right away,

and he explained that I was actually making a lot of people very, very unhappy. It turns out that people don't like it when you eat their feet, or really any part of them. It was very surprising. Mmm, yeah, shocking. Everything Jack said got me thinking. Maybe I didn't have to eat humans. Maybe I could eat other animals like cows and goats and chickens. That made Jack very happy and he said that the people of Plant Base would raise some animals to feed me. That's nice of them. So that worked for a bit.

But then I started thinking, again, even though these cows and goats and pigs can't talk like Jack can, maybe they don't like being eaten either. I told Jack how I felt, and we agreed it would be best if I stopped eating animals. So then, what did you eat? Plants. So instead of growing food to feed animals and raising those animals to feed me, the farmers began to use their land in a different way. They started growing plants to feed directly to me. And you can really survive on just plants? Oh, yes. There's so many different kinds. Carrots and spinach, blueberries and pears, sweet potatoes and beets, oats and lentils. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. And there's another good reason I stopped eating animals.

The burps and farts. Uh, excuse me, burps and farts? Yes, burps and farts. You see, it turns out that cows burp and fart a lot. And their burps and farts contain methane, which is very bad for the planet. It goes into the atmosphere and traps lots of heat. More heat than we can handle. And that can throw the balance of nature out of whack. So, because the people of Plant Base were raising so many cows to feed me, that meant that all those cows were wandering around for years, burping and farting and farting and burping, which was very bad for the island of Explained. Whoa. So, hold on. You

realized animals might not like being eaten, and then you learned about the burps and farts, and you figured it would just be easier to eat plants? Exactly! If I stopped eating meat or drinking milk or eating cheese, it would make things a lot easier for the planet. Huh. Well, I'm not a giant like you, but I do eat meat a lot and I love milk and butter. Is that bad? Should I stop? You can stop if you want to, but even just eating less meat or fewer dairy products can make a giant difference. Giant, get it? If a lot of people change what they do, it adds up. Okay, got it. But now I kind of want to try eating more plant-based food. I just... My main issue is that I love food with meat and dairy in it.

Like, my signature meat lover's nachos dish is full of both. And this is what I'm struggling with. I'm supposed to bring a vegan dish to my friend Izzy's party. And I don't know how to replace this dish I love with something else. Well, you should talk to the best cook I know, Witch. Uh, Witch what? No, no, her name is Witch. She also used to eat people, and especially children. But after the whole situation with Hansel and Gretel, we set her down and showed her the error of her ways, and now she's turned her gingerbread house into a vegan kitchen at the very edge of the village

of Plant Base. Here, let me carry you down there. Hop into my hands. I, uh, here goes nothing, I guess. Fee-fi-fo-fum. Eating people's really dumb. I used to grind their bones for bread. Now I'm grinding wheat instead. Fee-fi-fo-fum. Eating people's really dumb.

I used to grind their bones for bread. And now I'm grinding. Support for today explained comes from ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions

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Terms and conditions apply. Looks like we're at the gingerbread house. Should we knock? I'm a little nervous. Come on, this place looks great. Look at all the gumdrops and candy decorations. It's super friendly. Yeah, that's what Hansel and Gretel thought, and then the witch literally tried to turn them into dinner. Hello? Oh, hi. I'm Kiara. Sarah. I'm Helen, but my friends call me Witch.

Welcome to the gingerbread house. How can I help you? I'm trying to figure out a plant-based dish I can bring to my friend's party tonight. Oh, then you've come to the perfect place. Come in, come in. See? Lots of kids here. Maybe she is saving them as a snack for later. As you can see, this is our test kitchen. All the kids in the community come here to work on their favorite plant-based and vegan recipes.

Everyone, come here. Tell our guests what your favorite dish is. My favorite dish that is vegan is popcorn, spiced apples. Garlic pita chips dipped in hummus. Tacos with cauliflower. Lemongrass curry with noodles Salads and fruits and apricots Breaded tofu sticks Because, well, they're good

It's a great alternative to chicken You can dip them in ketchup or in a barbecue stock They taste a little bit like chicken And you can make them yourself And they're really good with rice and broccoli Wow, all these dishes look amazing You can make them yourself. And they're really good with rice and rye. Wow, all these dishes look amazing. Did you want to make one and take it to your party?

I guess. I'm just, I'm sad because I have this one signature dish that I always bring. It's so good. Nachos with cheesy cheese, sour cream, bits of steak and sausage. Hey! You could make a vegan version of your signature nachos. We could do that? Sure! Let's see. Spippity, spabbity, spud!

We'll start with some chips, same as you used to. And a little Shazam seitan. We call this wheat meat. It's made from gluten. We'll use this to replace the ground beef. Then miscawizo soy chorizo. That takes care of the sausage bits. And hmm, what else? There's the cheese and the sour cream. Let's try this. Abracadabra cashew! We'll blend those nuts up with a couple other things, and there's your vegan sour cream. And let me just poke around in the fridge here.

What are you looking for? Ah! I knew I had a bag of vegan cheddar cheese. This kind is made with coconut oil, tofu, and a few more ingredients. Let's give it a little zap to heat it up, make it nice and melty. That should do it. Wait a second. Did you actually need magic to make any of that stuff appear? Nah.

A lot of grocery stores have vegan substitutes now, but I just thought it'd be more entertaining this way. It was. Well, give it a taste. Mmm, wow. Tastes pretty similar to the original. That's incredible. That's delicious. Well, don't eat it all here. You said you needed this dish for a party, right? Good point Sarah, we should probably get going There's a portal right outside underneath the red gumdrop Thanks for all your help Hey, you two finally made it.

What took you so long? Hi, Izzy. Sorry, I had to get my vegan dish together. My guacamole was already good to go. What do you mean you had to? Isn't this party fully vegan? I thought the invitation said to bring a vegan snack. Oh, no, I meant like if you had a vegan snack, that would be great.

But I just, I wanted to make sure that there were vegan options available, but it wasn't, like, mandatory. Oh. But I really appreciate the effort. I mean, I love to skip meat whenever I can. It's such a small thing I can do to help out the planet. Anyways, both of these dishes look great. Nachos and guac is a classic.

Totally. Wait, you said this was vegan? I see sausage and cheese and stuff. I'll explain everything. This episode was produced by Kiara Powell, Bird Pinkerton, and Noam Hassenfeld. The team at Transmitted Media includes Shashi Shmulevitz, Isabel Kada, Kiara Powell, Daphne Chen, and Sarah Nix. The team at Vox includes Noam Hassenfeld and Bird Pinkerton.

Our executive producers are Greta Cohn and Catherine Wells. Meryl Agish is our fact checker. Sophia Landman sound designed and mixed the series. Beans was played by Don McDonald. Special thanks to Liv Peterson, Junia Spellman, Lennox Conkling, Vivian Palmer, Asha Gosses-Lopman, and Alex Bent. You can hear all of our episodes and find related activities at vox.com slash today dash explained dash two dash kids.