Popcorn: Who doesn't love it?
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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 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. That's right. Popcorn, the snack, a dish, and I want to shout out listener Sean O'Sullivan. He came up with this idea, sent it along, and I'm trying to get better about crediting people when they send great ideas that we use.

Oh, that's a great New Year's resolution, Chuck. Yeah, which reminds me, I need to do a pickup for Cliff's Notes because I did not credit Mike D. of Overland Park, Kansas, or maybe that'll suffice. Yeah, it might. We'll have to ask Mike D. Okay. And you know what he'll say? He'll say that Mike stands for money and the D is for diamond. That's right. Was that exactly what you were going to say?

No, but that was better. Okay. So, yeah, we're talking popcorn today. And, Chuck, there's a lot, a lot to talk about with popcorn. Who helped us with this? Was it Anna? This was Anna Green. Very nice. So if you don't know what popcorn is, we'll wait a second. You go ahead and Google popcorn and then come back.

I'm pretty sure most people know what popcorn is because it's a global sensation. But I have to say I'm quite proud that popcorn is through and through American and not just the United States version of American. Mexico, Central America, South America, Canada. We'll include Canada. Sure. They love it.

American in that sense, that is popcorn through and through. Even still today, most of the popcorn in the world comes from the Americas. That's right. And we should talk a little bit about corn because popcorn is just a variety of corn. There are all kinds of varieties of corn and popcorn is the Averta variety. And if you are corn, you have three main things. You have a hull,

They might call it a pericarp or maybe even the bran. I like calling it the bran. The bran. And inside that hull, you've got the germ and the endosperm. Yeah. And popcorn-specific hull, that outer shell that has that stuff inside of it,

That is the main thing that makes it poppable corn. And that's what makes it different than other kinds of corn because popcorn has a really hard, hard outer shell, much harder than other varieties of corn. And inside that hull, there's a much higher ratio of hard starch to soft starch. And all that sounds well and good, but a little tidbit I never, ever knew until this episode was like,

What is making that stuff pop? And it's very simple, right? It is. It's awesome. It's a little tiny bit of water. Yeah. Apparently anything less than 13% water inside the popcorn kernel is not good enough. I think you mean the hull. Yes, you're right. Sorry. Or the brand, as you like to say. The brand, yeah. Brand to me is like mast. It's like one of those homey words. I love it.

The sweet spot is between 13% and 20% water content inside the bran. And when you heat that, because the bran is non-porous, that steam that gets generated gets trapped inside. Well, as we all know, when steam expands, it really expands. And it expands so much that it blows the popcorn inside out. Right.

Yeah. And that what you're eating, the white styrofoamy deliciousness that you're eating, that is the starch. While you're heating that kernel up, I'm sorry, that hull, I guess it's a kernel too. And that water is turning into steam and expanding. The consistency of that starch is changing, becoming more pliable, a.k.a. edible starch.

And you're eating that interior starch and you can still, you know, that little thing that gets stuck in your teeth. That's the last bit of that hull that has exploded. And like you said, anything like when you get that unpopped stuff at the bottom and you're like, what was your problem? Why didn't you do what you were told? They say, I had less than 13% more. Exactly. That's probably the case. It also could be the case where that hull was fractured or something was wrong with that hull. Yeah. Something's wrong with it. It ain't right. Yeah.

And so you're like, okay, well, why doesn't rice pop, suckers? Why doesn't wheat pop, smart guys? Well, it turns out it's because they have porous holes. So steam will come out of them. It will build up pressure inside like it does popcorn. So popcorn is a very unique, darling, peculiar little thing that everybody loves. Don't even come at us like you don't love popcorn. Everyone loves popcorn. Sorry. Agreed. And we're going to get some.

Some yum yuckers that are going to say they hate popcorn. I just don't get it. I don't get it either. There's a guy named Andrew Smith, and he's...

He's a popcorn aficionado and in popped culture, pretty, pretty great name for something on the Internet. Yep. He has gone through and shared popcorn varieties that were sold in the early, I guess, 20th century between 1901 and 1902. He said some of these may be different names, you know, like the same thing that was named different by whoever was growing it. But they had some pretty fun names like Tom Thumb Popcorn or Tattooed Yankee.

But popcorn wasn't sold commercially at scale like that. Maybe a couple of varieties were, but there seemed to be a lot more sort of local varieties that people could grow and just sell kind of locally. But again, it's not branded or anything at this point. You're just buying it by like the scoop or the bag.

Yeah, it was all popcorn. It was just a generic term for popcorn. It was all called popcorn. But I think in the mid 19th century or later 19th century, companies started to come along and basically branded their own version. And there was even a mascot in the 1870s called Colonel Pop. Love that one. I couldn't find a picture of him. Could you? No, but that's because I did not look.

Same here. And there's actually a popcorn company from not too far after Colonel Pop was developed, 1914, called the American Popcorn Company. And they're the people who make Jolly Time popcorn. And if you've never made Jolly Time popcorn before,

you should just do it. Just go buy one of those little foil things that has all the stuff you need to pop the corn in it. And as it pops, like the foil expands, it's just such a great little thing. Word of advice though, I learned this the hard way, don't do it on a ceramic cooktop. It's really, really bad for the ceramic cooktop. Oh wait, I'm talking about Jiffy Pop.

Jolly time comes in the bags. Yeah, yeah. Still, you should try Jiffy Pop. I guess, I mean, before we go further, I'm curious of how you, how do you pop your popcorn? You know, I don't very much. We have like a stir crazy. I don't remember who makes it, but it's like the big like black heavy bottom with like a thing that spins around slowly on it.

So that it stirs your popcorn, apparently in a crazy way. And then it pop, pop, pops. But it's mechanical? A transparent... Well, there's a hamster that runs the whole thing. I guess technically it's mechanical energy. Okay.

But there's like a transparent yellow bowl that keeps it from popping out and then you just turn it upside down. Okay, yeah. And then you have your bowl of popcorn right there. So you got the old school sort of, you plug it in and it turns the little stirring thing. Yeah, but weirdly we got it in the last few years. We tried air popping for a while and that's just like punishment. Garbage. Yeah.

Uh, I use a whirly pop. That is the stove top thing, uh, that you put, you know, on, on your stove. Uh, I have a gas stove, so it's cooking with gas and you, you hand crank that thing and it stirs it around. You need a hamster. I do. Uh, those are like 70 bucks. So, um,

you know, not cheap, but not expensive. There's also more expensive brands like that that are like a couple of hundred bucks, like the Popsmith. But the whole point is you're cooking it on your stovetop and you're turning it yourself. Right. And that's how I like to do it. I use the, you know, that yellow oil that's got the butter flavor in it. And I just do a little bit of that popcorn salt because I love salt, but that stuff is super salty and goes a long way.

I saw, yeah, for sure. There's a specific kind called Flavacol, and that's what the movie theaters use. And it's designed to dissolve in oil and get in every part of a popcorn, pop popcorn. I can't remember. I saw the name for what, oh, flake. That's what a pop popcorn is called. Did you know that? Yeah.

I did not know that. Well, at any rate, it's meant to get in every crevice and nook and cranny of a popped flake. And yeah, I would guess it doesn't take very much of that stuff. Yeah. And we don't pop popcorn a lot. Like we should do it for every single family movie night because there's really no reason not to. But, you know, Ruby loves it. The family loves it.

So I'm going to start popping more popcorn. But let's go back. Wait, wait. I'm not quite done. I should say like more often than not, it's microwave popcorn that we make. Sorry. I'm judging you. It's all right. I can take it. I just don't like it. What about smart food? I like that stuff too. Yeah. Bagged popcorn. That's a whole other game, but a huge industry. Yeah. Remember it used to be on our, what do they call it? Our rider. Yeah. Yeah.

Like you had to give us smart pop popcorn backstage at our shows. Yeah, it's a good snack. Low calorie filling. For sure. And cheesy. Pleasing to the tongue. Let's go back a little bit, though, and talk about cultivation, because if you look at, you know, indigenous Americans before Europeans came along and wrecked everything, they were farming popcorn in South and Central America mainly. Yeah.

In North America, where it was farmed, it was in the southwest of the United States in Mexico. I guess most of that was Mexico at the time. But when non-indigenous Americans, you know, white Europeans came here, they started farming popcorn in New England. That was a surprise. Yeah. Through most of the 19th century, that was sort of the center of popcorn farming.

I guess, growing and manufacturing until eventually it moved to the Midwest and Chicago became the hub of popcorn. Yes, which explains why Chicago is a caramel corn town. And despite the fact that people in Chicago won't admit it, Chicago is a caramel corn town. But most of the popcorn these days in that comes from the United States, well, not most, but

25% of the popcorn popped in the US is grown in Nebraska. It should be no surprise, but also grown in places like

Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. Yeah. Apparently also Brazil and Argentina grow a lot of it too. Yeah. Okay. So Chuck, a big question is whether popcorn's healthy. And the answer is a resounding yes, if you just air pop popcorn and only eat popcorn undressed in anything and not cooked in oil. That's right. But what kind of serial killer does that?

Yeah, it is. It's low in calorie. Like I said, it's a really good source of fiber. It's 100% whole grain. And if you eat one serving is three cups of popped corn. If you eat three cups of popped corn, that's about 15% of your daily recommended fiber intake.

So if you double that, you're getting 30%. I saw, so I was like, there's got to be something wrong with popcorn. I searched dark side of popcorn. And the best I could come up with is that it's, there's enough fiber in it that if you have irritable bowel syndrome, you need to be careful of your popcorn intake. That's the worst thing anyone has to say about popcorn. Yeah. You can also get about three grams of protein per serving, 18 grams of carbs, one gram of fat. You

You can get vitamin B6, A, E, K, riboflavin, thiamine, niacin, folate. So it's pretty good for you. The nutritional values are going to shift some when you cook it in oil and add toppings and butter flavored stuff. But it's not like it destroys the nutritional value. That fiber is still in there, right? Yeah, for sure. It just makes it less healthy. You know, you've got all the problems that you have for eating butter and not just eating butter, but liquid butter. Wow.

You want to talk about where popcorn came from? Because I do. Yes. So like I said, popcorn is indigenous to the Americas, and that's because corn is indigenous to the Americas. As far as we can tell, especially if you read 1492, corn was domesticated from the wild Teosinte plant.

as far back as 9000 years ago. And the whole thing began in Mexico. And it was such a good idea that it spread throughout Central and South America. Right. Yes. Popcorn itself is not that much younger, maybe about twenty five hundred years or so. Yeah. I mean, sixty seven hundred years ago, there was popcorn. We just, you know, don't know exactly when people started eating it.

Right. But we do have archaeological evidence. I think people have found popcorn buried with people in South America. And I think there was one burial in Peru, maybe, where the burial was a thousand years old, but the popcorn was still viable, like you could have popped it. Imagine eating thousand-year-old funeral burial popcorn. That would really be something. Yeah.

Yeah, it's probably in some fancy menu somewhere in a fancy restaurant. Yeah, one of those underground restaurants for Richies where they eat people. Yeah, where they eat ancient foods. And people. Yeah, disguised as tasty.

There is written documentation. I believe the first written documentation of popcorn comes from when the Europeans came over again to the Americas. There was a missionary in the 16th century named Bernardino de Sahagun. He was not Italian. Really? No. And he claimed Aztecs were wearing popcorn garlands, so it was already being used as sort of a decorative. And they called it momochito. Momochito.

Okay. And there was a 17th century missionary name. I'm not even going to try his. His last name was Kobo. I can say that one. And he saw Peruvians toasting a quote, a certain kind of corn until it burst. Clearly popcorn. Yeah, they called it pins and cola. Cool. That's all I got. Good stuff.

Yeah. So, yes, they were they were these guys were witnessing popcorn and you would think like, OK, well, it would immediately become a big deal everywhere. That's not necessarily the case, despite there being a.

that popcorn was introduced to the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving, that seems to have been a 19th century invention, which is actually about the time that popcorn became a favored American snack in the United States. Yeah, we should probably take a break and come back and talk about what happened from there, huh? I think that's a great idea, Chuck. All right, we'll be right back. Want to learn about a terrorist order and call it Herodactyl? How to take a burger off fractals? Genghis Khan, Attila, and the Lizzie Borderman.

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So Euro-Americans knew of popcorn long before they started eating it. It was just associated with Native Americans. It was a Native American thing. They loved their popcorn. But in the 19th century, as far back as the 1820s, people selling seeds started selling popcorn seeds.

kind of slowly but surely started to gain traction. Thoreau was a fan. He called popcorn a perfect winter flower, which seems like a myth to me. And in 1848, popcorn showed up in the debut edition of the Dictionary of Americanisms. And I was looking through that, Chuck, and keep a stiff upper lip was in there too, which I associate 100% with the UK, but apparently that's American. Oh.

I never really thought about where that might have come from. I always thought it was the UK, but I was wrong.

Well, as far as popcorn goes, they used to make it in all kinds of crazy ways early on. Sometimes they would just throw it in a fire and wait for it to pop out, I guess, and eat it with a little ash on it. Sometimes they would put like an iron plank on a fire, like you might do steamed oysters or something if you're sitting by the beach these days. You've got some oysters and you throw a wet towel over those oysters with popcorn. You could just throw those kernels on that hot plate.

Stir them around just like it was on your stovetop and wait for it to pop. What's the towel for? The towel is for the oysters to steam them. Oh, so you cover the oysters with the towel and it keeps the steam inside. Yeah, yeah, with a wet towel. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, it creates that steam. But that's oysters. It's neither here nor there. Okay. So a frying pan, obviously, is one way you could have popped it early on. But those things...

were really, really heavy to work with. They still are very heavy to work with as far as like holding one and shaking it over a hot fire. And before they had gas stoves, you know, you got to nail the popcorn heating temperature or else you're going to scorch it and it's not going to taste great or it's never going to pop. So until gas stoves came along, it was just harder. Yeah. So it wasn't quite as popular.

You know? Yeah. Although you can imagine there were some country women who had like a much bigger, stronger right arm from popping popcorn in an iron skillet. Yeah. Dead giveaway that they were a popcorn fan. Yeah. Finally, in 1866, the first patent was issued for a popcorn popper. And it was essentially just like...

You know those old-timey toast makers? It's like an iron rod and it ends in like a mesh basket that you'd put the bread in and toast it? Yeah.

Something like that, but the mesh was thin enough that the popcorn brand wouldn't fall out. When you're popping it and it would just go pop, pop, pop, pop. My feet can't stop. They still make those for camping, you know. You can still get those. Okay, that makes sense. Well, that is the first patented popcorn popper that came on the market. And it was, I mean, still hard to do, but it was much lighter than holding an iron skillet over the fire until your popcorn popped. Yeah.

At the very least, it's lighter and had a much longer handle. Right. So people were like, OK, I can kind of get into this. And that's when it just started to take off. Yeah. So that was 1866, like you said. So in the 1870s, if there was a public event, you were going to be able to buy popcorn there. Anything that had a concession stand was going to be selling popcorn by that time. And in the 1890s, there was a guy named Charles Cretors, I guess.

In 1893, he was a confectionery shop owner in Ohio, and he patented, I guess, the first sort of mobile portable popcorn machine that he adapted from a peanut roaster machine.

and of his own design. And all of a sudden you could have like a popcorn stand on a sidewalk and that became like a thing. People were buying popcorn because it was always pretty cheap. Yeah, I looked at a picture that says glorious. It's got like the big old penny farthing wheels on it. It's just I would love to buy popcorn from it. You know why penny farthing is called that? No.

Because one wheel was relatively the size of a penny to the size of a farthing. Oh, wow. That's neat. Is that kind of like that thing where like if Earth was the size of a pinhead, the sun would be the size of a basketball? Exactly. So this is the 19th century. I think we made it through, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So by the 20th century, oh, no, we haven't quite made it out of there because I think we would be remiss to not mention Cracker Jacks.

Yeah. I mean, people in the late 19th century were into like sweet popcorn balls and making popcorn sweet and delicious. So it was a dirty lie when you said that we made it out of the 19th century. So,

so dirty. I mean, this was 1896. We were so close. But they were eating sweet popcorn in the 1840s. I think Cracker Jack came along in 96. Yes. So another thing that people put popcorn to use for, again, people are starting to get pretty crazy with this. Remember our live episode on the Kellogg brothers at the Battle Creek Sanitarium? Before they started serving cereal there, John Harvey Kellogg's wife, Ella Kellogg, was

introduced popcorn as a cereal, a breakfast cereal with milk and a sweetener. And it was essentially the predecessor to the Corn Flakes and the Bran Flakes and everything that came after that. And in my opinion, it was the direct, indirect predecessor of Corn Pops, which are still around today, but they came out in 1950 and were one of my all-time favorite cereals.

Oh, OK. I was like, what is corn pops? Yeah, corn pops. Yeah. She called it popcorn pudding. And there's a historian named Andrew Smith that was basically like popcorn may have been what cereal became if it hadn't been for other grain manufacturers really getting super aggressive with the breakfast cereal companies being like, no, no, no. You want to use bran or oat or whatever. Yeah. Don't be stupid.

Another thing you could use it for back then that I have recently used it for is for flour. You could grind popcorn into flour. And I have had this pancake popcorn pancake mix in my house, which is pretty good and way better for you than pancakes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's gluten free, right? Yeah.

And it is good. You're not just saying that. Yeah, it's pretty good. Because you spent some money on it. By God, you're going to like it. I can't remember the name of the company, unfortunately, but you can find that out pretty easily. I saw a recipe for popcorn bread, and I was like, wow, that sounds interesting. And if you look closely, there's like five other types of flour in it. Popcorn is just part of it. Yeah. I'd still eat it if somebody else made it, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

So we finally made it to the 20th century. And the reason the 20th century became such a big deal as far as popcorn goes is because that is when movies started to come out. At first, they were silent movies and then talkies and movie theaters started to open throughout the United States. And very quickly, people were like popcorn and movies go together really well. But it turns out the theater owners were the last ones to figure this out. Yeah, they were like, this stuff is a

disaster of a mess, it's all over the floor, and it still is,

But they deal with it because they make a ton of money selling it. It was the depression coming along where theater owners were like, hey, wait a minute. People don't have a lot of money right now. Popcorn is very, very cheap. It's a very affordable snack. So they people were selling popcorn outside of theaters that people could bring in, much like my mother did in the 1980s in her purse. Yeah. And they finally were like, hey, maybe we could lease lobby space. These popcorn vendors are

and just have them sell it in here. And then someone was like, wait a minute, what are we doing? We're doing this all wrong. We need to pop and sell this popcorn because the markup is incredible and we're just losing money. So they started, you know, it became hand in hand with theaters making profits from the concessions, largely popcorn. Yes. I mean, like,

a lot of money off of popcorn. There's a well-trod story about a theater owner from during the depression named R.J. McKenna,

who found that popcorn was basically keeping his theater afloat during the Depression. People didn't really have much money for a movie theater ticket, but if they did, they still had money enough for popcorn because it was a cheap snack. So R.J. McKenna made the very wise business decision of lowering his ticket prices below what he would have made a profit on

Because he made so much money off of popcorn in the concession stands. And I think the number that's bandied about is $200,000 from popcorn alone, which is more than $4.5 million today if that's in 1936 dollars. From popcorn. Big, big profits. Yeah, for sure. And he said a bit of a tradition, as we'll find out, that popcorn is still big profits.

Yeah, big time. During World War II, there were sugar shortages. So sweet treats were on the wane, I guess. And salty treats rose and popcorn was right at the center of that. Apparently, Americans were eating three times more popcorn in the 1940s than they ever had before.

And also in the, you know, the connection to movie theaters strengthened during the 1940s. In 1945, more than half the popcorn people were eating in the United States was in those movie theaters.

Yeah. And there's another really great, I want to say it's an urban legend, but it actually happened. A guy named James Vicari or Vicari, who we've talked about before because he was basically the inventor of subliminal advertising, even though subliminal advertising isn't really a thing. But the reason he ties into this is because he supposedly experimented on people showing

frames interlaced within movies that popped up so quickly that you couldn't perceive them. You only perceived them subliminally. And they said things like, go eat more popcorn. And popcorn sales tripled, supposedly, even though the whole thing was a total fraud. And the guy made it up. It's still worth mentioning, if you ask me. He didn't actually even do that. He said later that he made all of that up. He never even did the subliminal advertising. Yeah, I saw that too. Yeah. So that was just a...

Fraud from top to bottom. Prior to the 30s, most of the popcorn was white corn, but movie theaters moved to the yellow corn variety and it just looked better. It looked buttery, even though it wasn't. And people that just became the de facto popcorn that you mainly eat here in the United States is that yellow corn. I think by 1990, 10 percent of commercially sold popcorn was white corn. Let me ask you, do you get buttered popcorn at the movies?

I get popcorn and the AMC that I go to here has the do your own butter. That's not butter, by the way, at all. It's butter flavored oil and stuff. But I add, you know, when I was a kid, I would just drench it in that stuff.

Uh, now I do not. Now I, I, I do like that flavor, but I'll just do a pretty sparing couple of squirts and shakes. Yeah. I never was into it. Even as a kid, I tried to be, and I just couldn't get into it for some reason. I think cause it just wets the popcorn and I don't like popcorn wet.

I love it, but it's just you can't have it drenched in that stuff. Like that's when it's really bad for you is when you're just like dumping all that oil on there. But a little bit I like and I'll shake it up and you get, you know, I get enough of that flavor just from a dab. Good. I respect our differences.

Here's the thing, though, with TV coming along, the popcorn industry was really, really worried that like, oh, no, like, you know, all this popcorn is being eaten. Movie theaters like we're toast because people aren't going to go to the movies anymore because of TV. Right. A, that didn't really happen. People still went to the movies back then. But what they found out was.

People loved popping that popcorn at home while they watched TV. And you can also have popcorn ads on TV. And so people with their televisions were eating more popcorn than ever in the 1950s. Yeah. Well, you know what stuck out to me from that anecdote, Chuck, is like.

That's an example of early disruption, right? Yeah. Where people are like, oh, there's a change. There's a huge sea change in the way people do things. So this thing is going to totally go away forever. Right. And just since the internet age, we found that just doesn't really happen. Like,

Everything from bookstores to paper to, I don't know, seeing people in person were all just destined to just go away because they'd been replaced. And it's just not how it goes, which I think is kind of neat to understand because it makes you a little less fearful of.

change or technology or progress in some ways. I agree. Although anyone who's listened to the end of the world knows there's plenty of technology to be scared of. It's got to be selective. Yeah. And, you know, there are dents in industries for sure. Like, you know, newspapers and magazines, some have shuttered. But if you believed, you know, what the scare tactics, everyone's going to be like, you're never going to hold a newspaper again after a certain year.

Yeah, newspapers, though, that one did take a pretty hard hit, but it wasn't necessarily because of the internet. It was because of...

Captains of industry essentially realizing that they could capture journalism if they defunded local news. And that's exactly what happened. And I don't remember what episode it was on. There's a YouTube podcast that I love. Yumi introduced me to it, one of the two, called Doom Scroll. It's hosted by a guy named Joshua Cittarella. And he has the most interesting story.

guests on who are just they just think and talk about their thoughts and I mean like it's it's all rooted in you know like academia or research or something there's not just riffing or anything like that but one of them was talking about that that capture and what happened to it and it

It's just so strange to think like, yeah, local newspapers went away. But the effect that that had on democracy and on people being informed and just generally caring about stuff, that was a huge, huge deal, allegedly. Did he eat popcorn while he said this stuff? No, I don't think he did. No, he drinks like LaCroix instead. No. All right. Well, let's take our second break and we'll finish up with popcorn right after this. Want to learn about a terrorist or a color? How to take a break?

Word up, Jerry.

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All right. So we talked a little bit about innovations and how to pop popcorn over the years. That is still evolving. I feel like every few years there's some new sort of weird gadget to pop popcorn with. I did not know that, man. Yeah. Electricity coming along was a big deal, obviously, for electric popcorn poppers like you have. Well, you and your electric hamster, that is. Yeah.

They had a drawback, though, because they were dangerous. The early electric popcorn poppers were like fires waiting to happen, essentially. I think in the late 60s, Consumer Bulletin examined all the most popular ones, and one of them they determined did not pose safety hazards. Yeah, that's the one we have. Yeah.

From 1968. Although the hamster that runs our popcorn popper did come with a little fire chief's hat that he wears. It's so cute. So, yeah, that's another interesting thing about popcorn. If you kind of track its trajectory, it just keeps evolving with new stuff. Like anytime something new comes along that you can apply to popcorn, whether it's movies or TVs or electricity, it's

People apply it to popcorn. Like it's just this little thing lurking in the background that's been woven into our culture so thoroughly and for so long, you just look right past it and then it trips you as you walk by and you suddenly recognize how important popcorn is. Yeah, TV time was another one. We already mentioned Jiffy Pop, but TV time was a, it was just a packaging innovation where they had like,

sealed popcorn to keep it really fresh. And then also separate, kind of like Fun Dip, separate compartments for seasonings and oil. So it was kind of an all-in-one thing. So just even little innovations that aren't

mechanical, like packaging innovations, like microwave popcorn, I guess we could get to, because that really changed the game. Yeah. And we've talked about this guy plenty of times. He was kind of like the Hayflick limit for a while and early stuff you should know. He came up a lot, but a guy named Percy Spencer worked for the Raytheon company and he was in charge of creating magnetrons. I can't remember what he was doing with them. I think they were for like radar or something.

And he was standing next to one at some point, and he had a chocolate bar. I'm guessing Mr. Goodbar. That's what I've always envisioned. Yeah. In his front pocket, like a total nerd, because obviously his shirt was also a short-sleeve button-down shirt. And the Mr. Goodbar melted in his pocket. And he thought, hmm, that's curious. He's like, I was saving this for after lunch. Exactly. Now, it's just oozy.

And then he decided almost immediately to see what happens with popcorn, if you could do the same thing with popcorn. And he he did it. Yeah. And so like microwaves and popcorn, microwave popcorn grew in lockstep from the very beginning. In fact, he even in his 1946 patent for the microwave showed popcorn being popped.

So it was always sort of tied together. The first commercial microwaves were very big and expensive and not really for the home. They were more for restaurants. So once they went to the house, microwave popcorn was right there along with it. In 1951, a gentleman named Orville Redenbacher got together with a guy named Charles Bowman and bought a corn plant in Indiana and experimented with different versions of popcorn varieties and landed on the Red Bow variety.

And in 1969, started selling Orville Redenbacher branded popcorn. And here's what I didn't know. They sold that brand six years later. They sold it in 1976 to hunt Wesson Foods. But he was just the name and face of it. So he stayed the name and face of it. Wow. Yeah. And Red Bow Variety, you said? I wonder if they named it after his penchant for red bow ties or he started wearing red bow ties because of the variety. Yeah.

I don't think they named the variety. So I bet you he started wearing that thing because of that. There you go. He also just said one more thing about Orville Rittenbacher. His Eames lounge chair, you know, the one with the ottoman?

Yeah. He had one in his office in, I think, Nebraska, Omaha or something. And it's still out there. Orville Redenbacher's Eames lounge chair from his office is out there somewhere in the world. Like someone owns it? Yes. I've coveted it ever since I first heard about that.

Not just an Eames chair. You want Orville Redenbacher's Eames chair. Yes. Okay. And I still, I don't know why I've never really stepped back and asked myself, but it's, it just got me for some reason. I mean, you can't be a Gen Xer and not have a soft spot for Orville Redenbacher and the Bartles and James guys. No. Yeah. They were great. They were wonderful dudes. They were the predecessor of Penn and Teller, I think. Yeah. I think you're right.

So, yeah, we talked about microwaves and how microwaves started coming to the home and microwave popcorn came along quickly after that. I think 1981 was when you could start buying microwave popcorn. And like I said, it's like a global phenomenon. I think I said it at the outset. Everybody knows popcorn, whether you love it or not. You know about popcorn. You know where to buy it.

And there's different tastes around the world, as you might imagine. Apparently in the United States, the favorite flavors of popcorn are salted, buttered, white cheddar, regular cheddar. So white cheddar is finally overtaken regular cheddar. This is a big deal. Yeah, as it should. And then kettle, which is the sweet kind. I like a kettle corn. That's all right. I've never been crazy for it, but if somebody put it in my mouth, I wouldn't just spit it out. Right.

I'm going to try that sometimes. Backstage at our next live show, I'm just going to stuff some kettle corn in your mouth. Do you remember when we were filming a, we were filming some commercial, I think.

And we were eating popcorn at the movies for this part of the commercial. And we did like one take. And then Chad, our friend, the director, who directed the stuff you should know, TV show, he came over. He's like, just one note. Don't mash a handful of popcorn into your mouth all at once. And he goes, that's a note for a regular life, too.

Oh, no. Yeah. And so are you supposed to eat it? I don't know. Like, I guess you hold it in one hand and then like daintily pluck a few out with your other hand. That's what I've seen people do in the movies. But like that. Yeah. I just put my hand in a bag of popcorn or a bowl of popcorn, just shove it into my face as best I can. OK, I'm on your side. It's not just me, but Chad made it seem like it was just me.

Isn't it a little funny that you ever think about that we used to get way more opportunities to do that stuff very much earlier in our career? Yeah, I think also that we've kind of

mellowed out in our quest or our willingness to do stuff like that. We kind of like we said no too much. Yeah. We're kind of like, hey, we're happy podcasting. We tried so many different things and it's always just come back to podcasting that I think we're just like, yeah, we're happy living this way. I mean, I am. I'm kind of glad now that I'm older and have a family at home and I have to travel to do that stuff. It just seems weird. Like earlier on, I felt like

TV shows were trying to get us on to be like talk show guests or like Toyota commercials. Hey, come on and talk about the housing crisis for NBC. And like just nobody asks anymore. And it's it's quite wonderful. Yeah, it is nice. Yeah, I love it. Anyway, if you go around the country, you're going to get some interesting flavors in Japan. Apparently, there's a bagged popcorn company called Mike that Frito-Lay owns. And they have, of course, like yuzu salt.

Or Kishu plum popcorn. So you're going to get some pretty exciting flavors when you travel around the world, depending what they like there. Yeah, and I know for a fact it's not pronounced Mike, but I failed to ask Yumi how to pronounce it. What is it, Miike? We'll go with Mike, but it's not Mike. Well, of course it's not Mike, but I'm an American, so. No, I'm with you. I just wish I knew how to say it, but you probably were right with Miike.

What else could it be? Miike. Nike. Yeah, Mikey. What else, Chuck? Is there anything else to say about popcorn? Oh, I know one. Apparently people have used popcorn as like a packaging stuffer.

Like packing peanuts. Yeah, packing peanuts, but popcorn instead. Since like the 1950s. But the problem is, is if you use popcorn, it can get kind of gross, especially if you didn't think and you popped it in oil and covered it with butter before you put it in as a packaging material. It'll just get gross. It can attract pests and stuff like that. So no one's quite figured it out. But I guess a few years back, 2021, there's some German researchers who were like,

hot on the trail of this using scraps of

corn that is like that you get off the floor of like a cornflake factory that they figured out how to pop and it's essentially styrofoam, but it's made of popcorn. And I'm like, hurry up with this because styrofoam is one of the worst things humans produce on this entire planet. Yeah, totally. Packing peanuts are a nightmare. They really are. Uh, so yeah, maybe popcorn could, could help out with that. Um,

Just a couple of things to finish on. It is an $850 million industry, I guess, in the United States alone. That bag popcorn, like the SmartPop and all that stuff combined is about $1.5 billion. So it is... It's popping. Yeah, it's popping. And I'm glad that we held on to the stat because we kind of teased about movie theaters and how much the markup was and how much money they made. The popcorn markup in movie theaters is...

1,275%. I totally buy that. That actually seems low. Yeah, it's such a moneymaker because it's just so cheap to get. And you get that machine that runs forever, maybe a little maintenance on it, and then the stuff goes with it. And then you sell it for a gazillion dollars for a bucket. Then you got that butter flavored liquid. That's no good. If you do like real butter on your popcorn at home,

I encourage that because real butter is great. But you got to use clarified butter or ghee. Right. Because the water and the milk solids are removed in those. And that's what's going to make the popcorn soggy. So if you're just melting butter and pouring on your popcorn, you're like, why is my popcorn soggy and gross? That's why. Use clarified butter or clarify your own butter and pour it over your popcorn. And it is delicious and not soggy. Very nice. I think that's it for popcorn, right?

I've got nothing else on popcorn. Go forth and eat it. It's good and pretty good for you. Yeah. And check out that book by Andrew Smith, Pop Culture, because it's the definitive tome on popcorn. That's right. Well, since we talked about Andrew Smith, it's time, obviously, for Listener Mail.

This is from Cecilia S. And it's about our music bumpers that we've said before, but it always bears repeating. They are made by Stuff You Should Know listeners. They always have been. Every single one of them are made by listeners. And they send them in. And it's a really cool, like, interactive part of the show for the listenership.

Guys, in terms of your music bumpers, I love how they relate to the episode subject. If it's about an eerie subject, the song reflects that with an eerie tone. Or if it's a somber, sad subject, the song reflects that and there are many other examples. This brings to mind my father, who was a music director at the church we belonged to growing up. He would sometimes fill in when the organist was unavailable. And before and after mass, he would softly play hymns but insert a bit of whimsy. For example, at the start of baseball season, he'd play a little take me up to the ball game in the style of a hymn.

Or during football season, the university fight song could be heard in the fashion of a solemn liturgical piece. Many other instances of his playfulness, he had a big band combo in college in the 1940s and into the 70s, and they could sometimes be heard in church. Anyway, love the show. You both display such curiosity and knowledge and with wonderful wit and sensitivity when needed.

Thank you to whoever is responsible for the music. It's not often I would say that about a podcast. So Cecilia, like we said, those are from the listeners. But Jerry, our esteemed third leg of our stool, is who ties those so aptly together.

to the subject matter with her own wit and whimsy. Yeah, Jerry deserves way more credit for that too because sometimes it's just like, man, you just knocked it out of the park with that pick, Jerry. She does. And we're never like, hey Jerry, this is a Halloween one, so make sure to use the scary bumper. Yeah, we don't do that. We leave it to Jerry. She does her thing.

Yeah, and also a huge, huge heartfelt thanks. I think I just said thanks, but I really meant thanks to every single person who's ever sent in a music bumper because that's just such a cool, just little subtle part of the show. Having all those different great little pieces of music. Thank you to everybody who's ever done that. Thank you to everybody who's going to do it in the future even too. Yeah, 12 seconds or less. I think we say 16.

I thought it was 12. Somewhere in that neighborhood, between 12 and 16 seconds. How about that? Yeah. But if you send in one of those 30 second long ones, you'll hear from me saying, this is great, but cut it down and we'll use it. Yeah. That's a note for real life too. That's right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Cecilia, you can send us an email too. Send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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