Bittersweet Infamy - #63 - Raisin Hell

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

Josie tells Taylor about the juicy history of the California raisin industry. Plus: the origins of a deadly game—Russian roulette.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and indeed. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. How you been Josie? Um yeah, 2023 baby. It started. It has certainly started. No backsies. I don't know if I told you I'm um Michelin or doing a dry January. That's fun. What are you drinking? Seltzer or like, you know, a bubbly water with bitters. Okay. That's a very grown up flavor profile. Thank you. Thank you. It's surprisingly really nice. Put it in a cocktail glass and you're like, I got a cocktail. Yeah, gin and soda. It's not drunk at the end of it. Yeah. Nice. And

you, you're your little seltzer baby. I am a little seltzer baby. I don't drink much because it makes me sad. So gotta stay off that as much as I can. My mental health hasn't been so great folks. So if I seem a little bit uh, that's why. 2023 has not been super kind so far. I don't know. I know that to some degree we come out and we're cheery for you and stuff, but sometimes it can be a little bit tricky. I'm a sensitive dude. I've always had struggles with my mental health and unfortunately this January has been one of those patches for me. Yeah. But one of the things that pulls me out of myself, I guess, and makes me really grateful and makes me feel like I'm, I don't know, contributing something to help others is doing this show because, you know, we get really nice messages from you

all saying, hey, this podcast really helps me or this podcast is my comfort item. And so it kind is for me too. And so I'm hoping that spending some lovely time with my friend Josie and all y'all will bring me back a little bit closer to myself. Yeah. Do we get a very sweet message from somebody who is saying like, if you need a drunk lady? Yes, yes. I'm your gal. We did get a volunteer drunk lady. Thank you Miriam, I think. Thank you. Yes, thank you Miriam. That was a very sweet message. Especially since we're both dry January, so we might need a drunk person. Yes. And I think you came up with perhaps a segment for the future. Blotto suite infamy. Blotto suite infamy. If you want to hear the pilot for blotto suite infamy, go listen to episode 42, Moonstruck. Yeah, baby.

Fucking hear my individual eyes rolling around in my eye sockets. That was such a fun night. It was a fun night. You can always donate to our coffee account and get the beautiful, wonderful mixtape. I think you can hear some extra special features from that night as well. Things best left forgotten. Josie, how do people, if people want to go to our coffee account and access that mixtape, where should they go? coffee.com ko-fi, is there a dash? There's a dash ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy. You pop a little dollar bill, imprensise Z. Is that it? Is it there, thereabouts? And you will get access to the bittersweet infamy mixtape. And thank you so much for those of us who joined us for our launch on the 604 podcast network.

It went really great and we're just excited to have all of these new friends along for the ride. Josie, if someone has just joined us, brand new to the podcast, what episode do you think they should go back and listen to? Any old one doesn't really matter. Just the first one off the top of your head. Number 17, Dolphin House. Dolphin House is a good pick. Night Trap too. Night Trap is a good pick. We just had somebody saying in our comments on our Instagram that they loved Dolphin House and that they talk about it with their coworkers. There you go. It's a really good pick. It's about some fucking people who flood a house and live in there with a dolphin and try to teach it how to speak English. They don't succeed. Strangely enough. So weird. And number 19,

Night Trap is about a VHS video game that went horribly wrong and then made it to the US Congress to be derided and yelled at. Yeah. So really funny. You're kind of batting in and around time that I'm thinking of because I've got an update for you Josie on one of our stories. Yes, indeed, from the bittersweet summer of 2001. If you remember in episode number 23, we discussed the story of Harrison O'Kennay who was on a tugboat that got capsized by a wave man in a bubble. And indeed he was stuck in an air pocket a hundred feet meters very, very far down. Let's go meters. I think it was meters. Let's go a hundred thousand kilometers on the seabed. And he was stuck in there for the better part of three days waiting for somebody to come and

rescue him. And somebody did, mercifully somebody did. And I don't know if you remember Josie, but Harrison, when he was down in the steel belly of this thing, he made a lot of bargaining with God. And specifically he told, he promised God that if he got out of this situation, he would never go back to the ocean again. I have a feeling. He has broken his promise to God. Harrison is now an IMCA class two commercial air diver. Wait, air diver? Does he dive in the air though? I don't think that's what that means. Okay, just check. He can dive to a depth of 50 meters now. Damn. And he got his diving certification from one of the life support technicians, Alex Gibbs, who was on duty on the surface during Harrison's rescue. Whoa, that's so cool. I wonder

what it was that made him change his mind and decide that like actually the most horrific and frightening thing in his life up until that point was something that he kind of felt called back towards. Yeah. He says, I'm enjoying diving. It's life for me. It's fun. I believe the ocean is my world. I feel more comfortable, relaxed there. I like being in the environment. Okay. Yeah, dude. So there you go. Learning about ourselves more and more every day. But to me it's really interesting because I have a hard time with my fears and and staring down my fears and I like to think that I would have kept my promise to God there. I wonder what kind of, I had my fingers crossed, loophole he managed to pull out to get out of that deal, by the way. The ocean always changes.

You never step in the same river twice. Maybe that's kind of the vibe. Yeah. It's like that was that ocean, God. This one's this one. And the notion of maybe contributing to getting someone out of the straits that you were in, I don't know. That's, yeah, I could see that. Where'd you learn this information? I'm looking right now at an article by Raffaella Sicciarelli from July 25th, 2022 on news that confirms all of the above. Oh my gosh. That's very cool. Most notably, because I've been going through a little bit of a hard time lately mentally and I've been struggling to be present and put my best forward and a lot of it has to do with fear. I've been dealing with a lot of fear. I've been dealing with a lot of dread, anxiety, things like that. Yeah. And so Harrison ends

this story, this interview with a message for anyone who finds themselves fighting for survival. He says, the fear alone can kill you. I took fear off me and I believed that what will be will be. Believe in yourself and keep your faith and your mind strong. So, Harrison, if you're like me and you're having trouble right now with the fear, just remember that people are capable of some pretty crazy things. Fuck fear. Yeah. Yay people. Fuck fear. Yay people. And let's try to enjoy life for the wonderful gift that it can be. Yay. The subject of my minfamous is like unavoidably going to come off alarming now that I've alluded to the fact

that I'm struggling with my mental health. Okay, okay. So a little caveat. Yes, I am fine. It is fine. I am good. It is good. I mean, why don't I just give you an abridged history of the game, Russian roulette. Oh, shit, dog. If it weren't so horrible, or if it weren't so funny, it'd be horrible. If it weren't so horrible, it'd be funny. I don't know. Sometimes it's both. And often on this show, it's both. Bitter, sweet. Beautiful. So here's the story of the most high stakes and deadly game there is. Load a bullet in the chamber, spin the cylinder, hope you get lucky, Russian roulette. So before we dive into that history, let me give you a little trigger warning. And I do mean that

very literally. In this instance. Pun intended. Very much intended. Russian roulette is a life or death game where you put a gun to your head. Kind of not a game that way when it's life and death, you know. First of all, it's a game that we encourage you not to play under any circumstances. Hell no. Don't do it. And it's not funny. It's horrible. That's a clear distinction. And we'll also be hearing about why it's not funny and cute is by which I mean we'll be hearing the disturbing real life consequences of several such games. So if you don't want to hear about that, get ahead until you hit the jingle, you know? Yeah. I really can't say enough how much you should skip this particular minfamous if you're in any kind of weird place around life and death,

around weapons, around bullets. So please. Take care of yourself. Skip this one if you need to. So the rules of the game. This is a two player game, although you can play it alone if you're a real fucking psycho. So this game is played with a classic six chamber revolver. You put a single cartridge in a chamber more than one for increased danger. You spin the cylinder, you either point the gun at your opponent, or more commonly you put the gun against your own head, and you pull the trigger. If the bullet is not in the chamber, congratulations. You pass the gun and the game continues. And if the bullet was in the chamber, well, I'll let you fill in that blank. After you've passed it to me, there are different rules and variations. In sum, I spin the chamber again,

stop it at random. Assuming we've loaded a single round, I've got the same one in six chance you did. In other versions, I don't spin it, meaning I can't draw the same empty chamber you pulled in sequence, so I'm down to one in five. Let me tell you about the history of this game, Russian roulette. It's shrouded in mystery, but thankfully with the help of a pair of articles by Deborah, Kelly, and Grunge, and Gilles Messier, and today I found out, we're able to find a bit of clarity. Clarity in this stupid, stupid game. Yes. Well, there are apocryphal rumors that trace the game's legacy back to Lord Byron's college roommate in 1808, or the Russian Tsarists in 1917, but it's difficult to find actual historical records of people playing Russian roulette before the modern

era, I guess we'll call it. Well, wouldn't that be the access to pistols? The access to the specific type of revolver, too. So like, you know how I said the Russian Tsarists supposedly played it in 1917? No dice, the type of gun they were working wouldn't have actually been useful for that, you know? Right, yeah, yeah. Instead, the actual origins of the deadly game may lie in a series of fictional depictions, the first of which known comes from 1840 via a Russian story called The Fatalist by Mikhail Lermontov. Okay. So this kind of makes a bit more sense to me, the idea that this is a creative writer's flight of fancy that kind of leapt off the page and came to life. It feels like it's from a movie, yeah, yeah. In Lermontov's story, a group of Russian soldiers

having a conversation about predestination, destiny, is our future written, you know? Yeah. They decide to test whether their fates are predetermined by betting on such a game. So take the gun, and it ends up jamming, but the survivor is ironically killed by a drunken stranger half an hour later out in the street. So it's like irony, you know? Also very like Russian lit. I'm pretty underrated in Russian lit. I don't know that much Russian lit. I read The Fatalist for this. I haven't read deeply, I will say that, but there's just an overwhelming sense of intellectual despair. All the choices are gonna hurt someone, so, you know, muddle through life. Yep, this is one of those. Then in 1937, Collier's Magazine publishes a short story

called Russian roulette by George Surdez. Good title. A Swiss American writer giving the game its familiar name, although in Surdez's version five of the six chambers are loaded, pretty steep odds. Definitely don't play that version. Again, in the Surdez version, the game is presented as having originated among soldiers, other than Lord Byron's supposed roommate, which I couldn't find any tangible evidence about. That's another creative writer somewhere. Hold up being like Lord Byron. Other than him, this tends to be depicted as a soldier's game. Makes sense. Okay. Probably the best known fictional depiction comes in the 1978 American war drama The Deer Hunter, in which American POW characters are forced to play the game by

their vehicle and cappers like Christopher Walken. Yeah. A De Niro or a Pacino, I believe. Those are the same guy to me. Well, De Niro was in Meet the Fockers. Okay. Does that help? Surprisingly no. This caught some flak for its historical inaccuracy, the vehicle didn't actually do that, it seems. It's a stupid game. But the film was broadly acclaimed and beloved, and may have the most to do with why the game has endured in the present tense. Oh, wow. Okay. Unfortunately, and naturally, fiction rarely stays rooted to the page. So there have been more examples than I can list here of real live humans playing the whimsically deadly game with tragic results. In 1946, James J. Malone was convicted by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

for the second degree murder of his friend in a game of Russian roulette gone wrong. While he argued his innocence due to lack of intent, the court found that participating in the game in callous disregard of its potential impacts was enough to constitute malicious intent. Wow. Interesting. Because he also could have been tried as manslaughter, where you don't intend to kill somebody, but it ends up, you know, you run someone over by mistake, that kind of thing. That's interesting. Wow. It is interesting. I didn't dig too far into the specifics of that case, but it seems to have been like a landmark appearance of it in American legal papers, texts, whatever. Yeah. This one sucks dirt and is incredibly, incredibly sad. So just a heads

up that it's about to get real fucking sad and miserable in here. Okay. In Dallas, Texas, on July 24th, 1973, Injustice One as a pair of police officers deployed the game against a pair of unarmed children with horrific results, quoting Deborah Kelly. A gas station had just filed a burglary report, and police officers Daryl Cain and Roy Arnold believed that they recognized the perpetrators based on the description. They picked up 13-year-old David and 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez at the home of their grandfather, cuffed them, put them in the patrol car, and drove them to the gas station. When neither brother would confess to stealing $8 from a Coke machine, this is a theft of $8 from a vending machine. Yeah. Human rights Dallas says that Cain decided

to play a little Russian roulette to get them to confess. That's when he held the gun to Santos's head. This is the 12-year-old boy, demanded a confession, and when it didn't happen, he fired. The gun went off and Santos was killed instantly. Jesus. Yeah. This appalling murder of an innocent child, later proven to have had nothing to do with the robbery. Of course, he was just with his brother at his grandfather's house. Yeah. Led to protests that became riots with 30 people arrested. It was a watershed moment in the galvanization of the Mexican-American community in Dallas, and its activist organization with other minority communities like the Black community. It resulted in a lot of minority hires to the Dallas police for the first time ever. Yeah.

Whatever you want to say about that, Cain was sentenced to a paltry five years in jail. Yeah, that's fucked. Though not until after being released on $5,000 bail while awaiting conviction. The Rodriguez family finally received a formal apology from the mayor of Dallas in 2013, bringing new meaning to the phrases too little and too late. Yeah. In 1984, an up-and-coming 26-year-old model actor named John Eric Hexham died on the set of the spy TV show Cover Up when he decided to play Russian roulette with a prop 44 magnum loaded with blanks. Blank round, if you're not a gun person, is a piece of ammunition that doesn't have gunpowder in it. Safety warning, you can absolutely, absolutely kill or seriously injure yourself with a blank round, especially if the

gun is fired at very close range because the weapon still releases an explosive muzzle blast. Ah, okay. So just because there's not a bullet being shot into your chest, there's still like a very hard, loud, shocking bang coming from this gun. Yeah. In this case, there was some downtime between takes. Hexham apparently thought he was going to be cheeky and play some Russian roulette to kind of shock people. The blunt force trauma of the muzzle blast fractured his skull, which caused a brain hemorrhage. He was declared brain dead at the hospital six days later. His organs were donated with the permission of his mother who would receive a settlement from 20th Century Fox television. The show rode off and replaced his character and aired a memorial to Hexham.

Cover Up would be cancelled amid middling ratings after one season. Another more deliberate brush between the television industry and the game of Russian roulette came in 2003 when UK illusionist Darren Brown played the game on live television. So dumb. Police would eventually publicly confirm that the round was a blank. Again, don't do that. Yeah. The stunt resulted in outcry from both disturbed audiences and those angry at him for misrepresenting the danger of the trick. Like, people who were pissed off that it was only a blank. Okay, well, get your priorities straight, okay? Either way, Brown was well advised not to use a live round. Perhaps he learned from the example of Finnish magician,

Imo Likeus, who died on stage in 1976 playing Russian roulette with a mix of live and blank rounds. Oh no. Most tricks when you fuck them up, somebody notices that you palmed a card. You know what I mean? This one's a little different. Yeah. I gotta get out of this minfamous. I need to wrap it up. Okay. I have held a gun. It sucked. I didn't like it. What was that like? My friends, Chelsea and Izzy came to visit me in Texas, and it was like, we're in Texas. Might as well go to a shooting range. Okay. And we went to like a mom and pop shooting range outside of Bryan College Station where my grandma lived at the time. And we got our little training, little safety training, da, da, da. And it was like an open air range. And so we were shooting and

it was just like a handgun, you know? Like, I don't even know what type of gun it was, really. And at first it was like, oh, I hit the bullseye, or ooh, I didn't hit the bullseye. And then probably after two times each of us shooting, at least for me, my arms started to get tired. And like, the sound of it was so loud, it was just like starting to really wear down on me. The force of it was so strong that I just continued to be overwhelmed by how much strength was in this weapon. Yeah, yeah. And how powerful it was. And it just like started to like take on this, this is a lethal goddamn weapon. Very much so. And we're treating it like it's the family dog or something. Like, I don't understand that connection. At the beginning,

I thought I could kind of understand it because it had this sporting, fun and games vibe. But then by the end, I was like, this is not, they're, no. I grew up in Canada. My grandfather was a hunter, but I never took to that particular aspect of the circle of life, or really any of them, if we're being honest. So I will really, I never acquired the level of comfort with guns and certainly not handguns that would let me feel emboldened playing any kind of Russian game with a gun. I don't know. I think that part of the reason that I picked the story, kind of give it a bit of context, I guess. This isn't the kind of usual story I would pick for a Minfamous. I usually like them infamous to be way more unambiguously like lighthearted and chill. And this has a lot of

really sad and violent deaths in it, including specifically these children who were killed by this racist cop, which is really, really upsetting. And I think that the reason that I picked it is, I guess, the cruel whimsy of the game in that even the term game, there's a carelessness in it, an almost boastful carelessness in it, that is so opposite of the way that I perceive guns and bullets. That's interesting to me that we've got this Academy Award-winning film about it, and that we've got this cultural fascination with it, such that, especially given the plentitude of firearms in America, I didn't actually see that many cases of it being played outside of America, although we have this Finnish magician, obviously, etc. Yeah. I don't know. I think I was

just kind of taken by the cultural fascination with this quote-unquote game that is really either a murderer or suicide if you play it to its completion. Yeah, yeah. Just to recap, this is a game that nobody should play. Absolutely no one, no. Yeah. Guns and games don't really go together. What about biathlon? Skying and shooting. You know what? It's not a game. It's a sport, Taylor. Put me in my place. Stop trying to belittle biathlon. I know that you have this campaign. You just want to take it down. Maybe this is all my long play to get biathletes kicked out of the Olympics. What about it? What about it? What are you going to do? You can't stop me. Nobody can stop me. I ski too fast, and I shoot too good. I've never seen a biathlon event. Am I even saying it right? Is it biathlon?

Biathlon. Nor have I ever been skiing or held a gun, so. Okay. The Six or Toronto. Whatever you call it, you can fly nonstop to Toronto on Porter Airlines. When you fly Porter, you'll enjoy free fast Wi-Fi and beer, wine, and premium snacks included with every fare. You'll also love that our planes have no middle seats. Discover why Porter has been Eastern Canada's favorite airline for the last 16 years. Visit flyporter.com. Porter, actually enjoy economy. I want you to meet somebody, Taylor. Okay. I love new people. I want you to meet Harry Overly, a 30-year-old white guy who has a bachelor in food science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. We end up here so often. So often, right? Meetin'

Harry. He previously was the CEO of one of the largest olive oil brands in the country. Okay. And before that, he held marketing, sales, product innovation positions with other heavy hitters in the snack food industry, craft foods, the Wrigley Company, Best Sweet, you know, some of these big guys. He's a pretty run-of-the-mill CEO type. Until the spider bit him. He wears suits. Sometimes you'll catch him without a tie. Those are casual Fridays. He's got jokes that need to be workshopped and delivered better, but nothing offensive. He's just kind of down the middle. He's a guy living on his CV. At the time that we meet him in 2017, he's got a young family and he's moved to Fresno, California in the Central Valley because he's taken the job of CEO at Sunmade, one of the largest

world's largest producers of raisins. Yes. So, you know, pretty run-of-the-mill guy. He's the CEO. I mean, I guess not run-of-the-mill if you're a CEO. Yeah, I was gonna say he actually seems pretty accomplished. Yeah, no, very accomplished, but I feel like you might not know that if you didn't read his CV. Like a meeting him, he's kind of, you know, he's a guy. Quiet. Yeah. Sunmade, this company that he is taking over, it started in the San Joaquin Valley when grapes were first being grown in the valley in the late 1800s and Sunmade, this company, has been an integral part of the collective raisin farming industry since the very beginning. Back when they were grapes. Back when they were grapes.

You might be thinking Sunmade wholesome, iconic, healthy American snack, ting ting, shiny, shiny. Can you recall in your mind's eye the packaging of Sunmade? Yes. Beautiful lady working in a farm. Yeah. I've got it right here. Do you want me to grab a box of raisins? Why don't you go grab yourself a box of raisins? Let me go have some raisins. Hold on. There you go. It's just pulling them straight out of the pantry. So here she is. Oh my god, there she is. There she is. The woman herself. She has had a very good day at the harvest. She's got her red bonnet on and her white blouse and she's holding a big tray full of an abundance of grapes in front of a beautifully yellow sunshine.

Beautiful. That's the Sunmade. S-U-N-M-A-I-D. The woman herself. And I mean, obviously, you must have, you must like raisins if they're in your pantry. What is this fucking face that you're putting on? You're leading me down some garden path and I don't like it. I like raisins, yeah. Would you consider yourself a fan of raisins? I mean, they're in your pantry, but I found I also had some in my pantry and they were expired. Let me see. I'm eating the raisins now. Okay. Yeah, like raisins. Okay, can I do that? I like them best in the context of a cookie, I think, if I had to pick. Oh, yes. Mine might be covered in yogurt or chocolate. I think they're an easy food to let expire. Yes. They look it already. Yeah. Well, our man, Harry Overlead,

he had similar positive connotations with raisins and specifically Sunmade. He, in 2017, has been hired specifically because he's going to help revamp raisins for the millennial crowd. So, okay, you might have them in your pantry, but if you follow the Sunmade social media accounts, you will see plenty of instances where people are shitting all over raisins. They're not a fun. I don't want to negatively impact raisin stocks, but I could. I have, you have that power. I am a raisin influencer. It's not an influence that I wield often because I am conscious of how powerful my word is in this realm. I would say that raisins maybe have a little bit of a rep as an uncool snack or like a, they're not a full, you know,

you've had your box of raisins. Now what? That's not a full meal. What do you do? Yeah, if you're trigger treating and you go up to a house and they give you a tiny box of raisins, you're like, really? I told you I cussed out that old lady on Halloween back in the day. For raisins? No, it was a juice box. It's in one of our Halloween episodes. Oh, that's right. She gave me a juice box and I called her stupid and my dad took us home. I love baby Taylor. And the juice box stocks plummeted. So, that very nice juice box stocks juice stocks drained drained. So, overly needs to kind of get the millennials on board. He can't use the Emmy award-winning

claymation Motown inspired dancing raisins of the late 80s because that campaign has come to its end a little bit. Yeah, just slightly. And we'll talk more about that chapter of raisin history. Yay, I was hoping. I was hoping we might. Overly figures. He has his high-powered job out in California and he'll learn a thing or two about this part of the world and how it grows and produces the majority of the fruits and vegetables in the U.S. It's going to be a wholesome, iconic experience for overly running Sunmaid. And he returns home from a hard day at work in the Fresno corporate office of Sunmaid and he arrives at his new home. So, he's just moved that thick October sunlight is streaming

through the windows, catching little specks of farm dust dancing through the air. Inside the house is his seven-month pregnant wife. It's all very idyllic. Is his wife named Raisina? No, because he came from olive oil. Olive. Yeah. I don't know. And my children, Oliver and Olivia. All of it is very idyllic. All of it? All of it. Until, until he plex a piece of paper shoved into his door jam, he unfolds it to see a sentence viciously scrawled, you can't run. This is the start of a series of threats that overly endures in his new position as the head of Sunmaid. All these threats include ominous phone calls, intimidation, death threats. He's terrified for his family. So, he installs security cameras at his home

and even at the Sunmaid offices. The company decides to run all personnel through active shooter training. Wow. But what overly is really scared about is that he is convinced someone will set fire to the Sunmaid crop, decimating the campus and the entire year's supply of Sunmaid raisins, essentially putting the 105-year-old company out of business, not to mention the potential harm that it could cause to Sunmaid staff and farmers. Yeah. Overly thought he was just getting into some wholesome raisins, getting a raisin cookie. Yeah, but no. He was getting into way more than he bargained for. Taylor, this is the long sordid history of the California raisin industry and how deep in the heart of Fresno, California,

the raisin mafia reigns supreme. Oh, dear. Dust off your copy of Grapes of Wrath. Pour yourself a big old glass of raisins to Monk Shan because we're going to start at the beginning. It's the best place to start. Oh, wow. Okay. First off, how does one make a raisin? Try a grape. A recipe for raisins. Try a grape. Pretty much. You get to Fresno or more likely nowadays you get 20 miles south of Fresno to Kingsville, California in the Central Valley. You grow Thompson seedless grapes and let them mature on the vine until about August or September of the year. You can either harvest them. I cut them from the vines and then let them dry on these long sheets of paper that they lay down between the trellises or you let them dry on the vines themselves, what in the

industry they call DoV, drying on the vine. Beautiful. And after about two to three weeks, you process out the stems, the seeds, the leaves, everything else and boom, you got raisins, dried grapes, the end. Boy, howdy. Sweet. Great episode. They dry in the beautiful San Joaquin sun, just pucker on up. You get delicious little droplets of nature's candy. Could they ever use like tanning oil? They'd be cute. They'd be cute till you have to eat them. The tiny sunglasses, they just get in between your teeth. It's disgusting. Shut up. So, Raisin Farms first got to the San Joaquin Valley in 1873. I told you this was either going to be like really entertaining or really boring. So, I'm into it. No, I'm into it. I'm into it. We're on the edge, razor's edge of very boring.

Raisin's edge. Raisin's edge. Raisin Farms first got to the San Joaquin Valley 1873 with a different varietal of grape than the Thompson seedless. It was a muscat grape. As in Moscato. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I don't know if that's actually true. Yeah. I say that like I know. Yeah. Now we're lying about raisins. Yeah. I reached out to my sister-in-law, Nicole, who's a, she's a smallie. And I was like, have you ever heard any of this stuff? And she's like, no. Haha. No. No. Okay, sorry. You're right. I'm sorry. It's a whole different grape, a whole different Napa Valley is not the Central Valley. These are different places. 1903, California is producing 120 million pounds of raisins a year

and distributing them across the country, mostly at this point by railroad. Raisins prove a relatively easy transport because it's fucking desiccated grapes. Like, you don't got to refrigerate them. They have a shelf life beyond what you could imagine. Oh, yeah. I'm going to eat the expired ones for sure. I'm pretty sure these are expired. Probably shouldn't eat them for whatever. No, I think you're fine. Yeah, there you go. They do, raisins do kind of taste like the back of a pantry to me though. That is the vibe. I know we're important raisin influencers and what we say, raisin stocks drop in as we speak, but no press is bad press, right?

I just mimed a press. So raisins profitable in their early days, especially I'm just gonna shit on raisins a little bit more, but like they also feel like very old-timey to me. They are, they are. Yeah, it's like your great-great-grandmother was like, oh, and on a special treat for Sundays, we got a box of raisins. And then we use that box for a toy for the rest of our childhood. I don't know. This is horrible, but you know, this is why the raisin lobby needed a new Man Friday, right? To zhuzh it up with the people like us, the millennials, the Gen Z, whoever comes next, who aren't used to seeing raisins as the height of luxury, because we have all of these food options. I have a warhead at my disposal. There's a

raisin or a warhead. I'm gonna do a warhead. You can go to a store and get an Oreo that Lady Gaga designed. You know what I mean? You don't have to go get raisins. You have, especially in America, my God. Yes, oh gosh. It is overwhelming to say the least. Do they still have warheads? Yeah, I think so. Nice. You know me? That's a one-time gag. You try that once and you're like, oh, this is really sour. Yeah, I think the one-chip challenge. Have you heard of that? No. It's supposed to be like so fucking hot that all you need is one chip, and you like, dare your friends to do it. That's kind of how warheads were, but the one-chip challenge is taking it to the next level. So I should have mentioned this in order to add any kind of levity

whatsoever to my information. Russian roulette has such good branding that you can say it, and people know what it is. We also get things like Doritos roulette, where one in every six chips in the bag is very spicy. They did a GSN game show network, Russian roulette, where everyone was just standing on these holes, and if you get the question wrong, they pull the lever and they drop you through the stage if it lands on you kind of thing. So what is, what's raisin roulette? There's a chocolate chip. One of them's a grape. Yours makes more sense. Yours makes, or one of them's just like a bug. One of them's just a bug that died. Oh, that's good. That's good. But back in the good old days, when raisins were treats, it was profitable, and Sunmaid first appeared on the

scene as the California associated raisin company. Kark. Kark. I see where they changed it. Yeah, Kark wasn't selling the raisins. It was essentially a grower's collective. So all these growers would say like, well, we're going to band together and sell our product as a group, as a collective. It quickly dominated the raisin industry. By 1910, Sunmaid owned over 85% of the raisin farms in the Central Valley. And it should also be said that everything is like pinpoint pricked to the Central Valley in terms of the raisin industry. You really can't grow raisins or do you find it a bother if I say grow raisins? No. Okay, I'm just checking it. You seem to. Well, I was reading multiple articles, and then I would read the comment section. And then

the Washington Post had people just going off on this author because it's the growing raisins. And I'm like, well, I mean. These are grapes that are explicitly grown for the purpose of becoming raisins. Amen. We can just skip the middle part and just, folks, when you listen to this podcast, we want you to be able to spend time with your families. There's only so many seconds, beautiful precious seconds in a day. And if Josie's sitting here every time, grow grapes, which will become raisins. For what? For who? Not you. You're smart. You're not like these Washington Post commenters. You're discerning. You can tell what's going on. There you go. I covered it for you. I handled your shit, babe. Let's go. Thank you. I appreciate that. Democracy

dies in the darkness. It's so true. Oh my god, they are. That's that right. That's their phrase, yeah. How's that going, fuck? So how does Sun Maid get so big? Question mark. Was it the wholesome parades and April 30th celebrations of raisin days? Yes. Was it the advertising using young women in the white smocks and red bonnets that workers in the production factories would wear? It's an iconic piece of brandy. Very iconic. Yes. A little side note here. It originally started as a blue bonnet, and then this young girl was drying her ringlets in her backyard, and she had a red bonnet on her head. And one of these advertising executives saw her in Fresno and was like, girls, ditch the blue ones. We're wearing red from now on. So. Imagine being that

hot. Right? Yeah. That is an influence. One guy sees you. We're pivoting in the business. And that advertising agency also came up with the name Sun Maid, the idea being that raisins are made in the sun, M-A-D-E in the sun. So these are sun and A-I-D-S in the sun. So, you know, cute, cute. Sure. Sure. And the advertising proofs so popular that they very wisely changed the name from Kark to Sun Maid. So was it all this expert advertising? Could it have been the Sun Maids, the young women themselves, dressed in these costumes, passing out raisins at the 1915 Panama Pacific Expo in San Francisco? And even these same girls throwing raisins from a plane that flew over the festivities? Like loose raisins? Yeah, just. That's a fucking dreadful idea. Open your

mouth. Ah, raisins. That's ow. I know. I know. No, don't open your mouth. Close your eyes. Yeah, 1915, man. This was cool and raisins were a treat. I guess. Well, okay, so 1915, planes are pretty new. That's gonna have a whiff of the future about it. Raisins are the future. It's probably just like a kite that you throw raisins from. I would prefer that. That is less dangerous. So could it have been all this very time specific, excellent advertising that made Sun Maid so big, so fast in the raisin industry? Yes, maybe. But also, according to writer Victoria Saker Ouest in the Washington Post, growers were putting pressure on each other to join the Sun Maid collective. So she writes, under the cover of darkness, bands of night writers

armed with lists of growers not yet under contract to Sun Maid paid visits to the holdouts. They chopped down raisin vines, shot up buildings, and intimidated people in a variety of ways. One grower was dunked in a nearby canal by a rope tied around his neck. Children were bullied and beaten at school to get their parents to fall into line. That's horrible. All for raisins. Yeah, it's a pretty mid crop. We're not talking corn here. We're not talking wheat. We're not talking corn. Yeah. This is like an opium poppy. So like, well, yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot of money there. I guess there's a lot of money in raisins though. There's always money in the raisin stand. Yeah. Sun Maid vehemently disavowed the violence and said that any contract signed under duress

would not be dignified. But at their height in World War One, Sun Maid owned over 93% of the American raisin crops, making them undoubtedly a monopoly in the industry, which is not exactly how American economics is legally arranged, right? American capitalism wants to encourage competition, and that's why we have antitrust laws in place. Antitrust laws, how well they are employed varies, right? Yeah. What is Amazon? Is that not a monopoly? I would argue that Amazon is a monopoly. They don't even pay taxes. Come on. A little shout out to Bittersweet Infamy's lawyer, Isabel Agnew, who works in antitrust law. Oh, nice. Hi, Isabel. Is that busy? So, hi. Oh, of course, hi, Izzy, of course. You referred to her by her Christian name there. I didn't know. I don't

know her that way. But her lawyer name, Isabel Mary Agnew Esquile. Big shouts. Big shouts. We've got a deep team. The monopoly of Sun Maid is very apparent by World War Two. But you know, Sun Maid making money, they didn't really care. When executive at the time put it, call us a trust if you want to, which is kind of another word for monopoly, antitrust laws, right? Call us a trust if you want to. But we're a benevolent one. If this is a cult, I would love to be one. So, wait, your argument is that raisins aren't benevolent. Yeah. You think that they're a sucky food. Yeah. You know, I've often thought that one of the things that I really like about our show is

how, like, earnestly and seriously, we take any, any old thing. So, for example, last week for our Minfamous, you did the butterheads. Yeah. I think we were quite upbeat about the butterheads. I'm not that there's any reason not to be, but some people might come in there and look to make fun. Raisins, no. Raisins is the line. No. Raisins, we can't do it. Raisins, we're just bagging off. They just, they just, I can't, I'm sorry. They're inherently funny. They are. They look like balls. They look like balls. Like ball sack balls. They really do. They really do. They're inherently funny. And they don't make up for it in taste. I'm sorry. They just don't. I've had good raisins. I've had a fine raisin here and there, but... Yeah. So, when I say good raisins, I mean, what's,

like, a seven and eight, you know? Like, eight is me being real generous. Yeah. But I don't mind them. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I, I... I simply wouldn't. I wouldn't. Simply, I think you're right. I simply wouldn't. I have this where, like, after dinner, I'll have, like, a really strong sweet tooth and I'll just be, like, digging through the pantries. Like, what is here? Oh, look, there's some old, oh, there's peppermints in my jacket pocket. I'm going to eat those. That sounds great. And then I, like, take out the box of raisins and I'm like, oh, I'll just, I'll see what else there is. Well, maybe if there's an earthquake. In a hurricane, that might prove very helpful. The fiber.

After World War I, sun maids started setting the price of raisins. Just they flat out. We're just like, this is how much raisins are. We don't care what the market says. This is how much they are. And Washington DC starts to take notice when sun maid decides to double the price of raisins from one year to the next. Yeah. That's ballsy. Yeah. Speaking of wrinkly balls. Testicles, yeah. So federal investigations were conducted into the violence that I mentioned before, but also this price setting that seems to be happening. And it was determined that there indeed needed to be more oversight over the raisin industry. Right. Things were getting very robber, barony over there in Fresno. Oh, dear. Exactly. So the Department of Agriculture gets

involved and it's decided that the cooperative, so the whole group of raisin farmers, they can pool their crops and set the prices as long as the price does not exceed an, in quotes, fair and reasonable rates. So essentially the law changes so that the raisin farmers can set the price. They can kind of do what they've been doing. That's okay. But the government, specifically the Secretary of Agriculture, they can keep an eye on things and they have the legal right to bop in if things start to get fishy. So not much really changes in terms of price setting, besides the fact that the government can come in and do some oversight. And it should be said that this happens in a lot of our food production. I got kind of fascinated by it because I never

really think about the food industry and like farming and growing. I think about farming in terms like small plots and like the farmer's market, but I never think about like. Industrial, big, there's a lot of food moving around everywhere all the time, corn going over here, wheat, flax going over there. Yeah, no, exactly. So this does happen a lot. But what's unique about the raisin industry, according to our Washington Post writer, Victoria Saker Woostay, in the 97 years since when the Secretary of Agriculture was given this ability to have oversight, the USDA has never once used that power. Rather, the USDA's most important function has been to administer an enormous subsidy program to keep food prices high enough that producers will continue

to farm. End of quote. Okay. In other words, the US agriculture has bigger fish to fry than what the raisin industry is doing because they have to get people to grow food. They have to feed America. Right. I feel like the stakes for the USDA and US agriculture are just very high compared to like how much is your box of raisins? Yeah, because nobody's buying. No one really cares. It's true. But that was not the case after World War II. Apparently the GIs loved their raisins. I can see that. The MRE situation for soldiers isn't very good, whereas raisins are something commercially available, commercially available that people buy as a snack, right? Exactly. Yeah. So it probably has a little taste of home. It's probably, it's not a fresh food, but it might be fresher than some of

the other stuff that they're getting. It's sweet. Totally. And it's not like a highly processed food either. It's just dried in the sun, sun made. World War II raisins hide their power. After World War II, we enter the 1950s, the baby boom, and raisins take a dive. What happened? Well, it's the era of our fascination with quick made food at home, kind of sciencey food. So you get like velvety cheese. Is it real or is it plastic? We don't care. It's fun. Jello is taking the country by storm. You know what I mean? Not a lot of nutritional value, but you know what? Scientists made it. It isn't that cool. Don't we love it? It's cool looking. Yes. No one is super interested in dried fruits. They're starting to take on that back of the pantry vibe. Raisins are starting to

feel kind of depression era. It happened that quick. I think so. Yes. Geez. Yeah. Easy come, easy go, folks. No one's interested because they can get as much chocolate as they want. They can get as much yellow as they want. There's so many other kind of sweet snack foods that are readily available. Yeah, abundance. I mean, hostess, right? Like all of those, the Twinkie was made in the 1950s, right? Tang, the astronauts drink it. Boom. I think it was a little later. But still, same principle. The raisin industry kind of bumps along. They rebrand the sunmaid, the lady on the box. She goes through a few iterations. She gets skinnier. Her boobs get bigger. The sun kind of shifts behind her. We get like a shadow or in later iterations, like the one on your box. I think

she kind of gets color black vibe. Is that what's happening there? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, more or less. And I'm going to jump us forward. It's 1980s, Taylor. Thank God. Are you ready to dance? Because here come some dancing raisins. Yeah, I like them. 1980s, the raisin industry in California, it's no longer dominated by sunmaid in such a way. There's concessions that have been made. The industry has kind of bumped and bumbled along. Sunmaid is still a major contender, but more to the tune of 40% of the industry rather than their like wartime 90th percentile. Who the fuck else is there? There are other growers who are part of different collectives. Okay. That's the thing is like I can't even name you a brand. I've been reading about raisins for weeks and I like...

Is your nails are raisin colored? They're a bit of a cranberry vibe, but they have a little yellow dye. Yeah. I like that. I like that. That's the sun. Yes, that's the sun. Oh, I should have done them in the red, red, but you're right. They are kind of raisiny. That's the reflection of the sun in the grape before it becomes a raisin. Shrivels into a testicle. Yes. Speaking of testicles, the California raisins. So the raisin industry has an overseeing body called the Raisin Administrative Committee, RAC, which is the entity that determines the price of raisins in the country. So what we were talking about in terms of that post war governing body. So this is the entity that does that, RAC. I mean, it's essentially big raisin. That's what it is. I mentioned before that a lot

of other produce does this. This is kind of how the food industry works in the U.S. at least, but the RAC or big raisin is notably at odds with each other. There's a lot of infighting. It's very contentious, more so than the other governing bodies. Is it like this in other industries, or is it just like the insularity, the geographical specificness, the history with this collective and people bullying other people into joining it? Is this like a raisin specific thing, all of this infighting and backbiting? I think all those elements do kind of make a perfect storm for raisins. Distinct from the storm that happened when the raisins were thrown out of the way? Yes. Yes, the raisin rainstorm. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. Like

other big industries, there might be a lot of them that are based in California, but there's dairy cows all over the Midwest. Like they're not just in California, and corn is grown all over the Midwest. So it's not the same intensity maybe. So yeah, I think there is something very specific about raisins and this infighting because of how close everything is, this history, all of it. So big raisin, RAC, they really can't get along. And one of the things that they should be doing, besides setting the price of raisins, is advertising for raisins. I'm sure you remember the Got Milk campaign. Yep, very popular campaign. Celebrities with milk mustaches. Got milk, drink milk. Couldn't do that now. Good for your bones. Couldn't do that now. It would be a lot of Cummys jokes. Yeah,

that's true. Oh, that is very true. I thought you were talking about like an increased lacto intolerance, but yeah. Possibly. That too. You couldn't advertise milk now. Gives everyone the shits. But this is essentially the same thing. Like they're supposed to be doing advertising, not for like sunmade specifically or for, you know, like horizon milk or whatever, like brand. But like eggs, dairy, eat beef, whatever. Yeah, which is kind of funny because as it goes down in the history books, the RAC with all this infighting is still responsible for one of the most successful ag campaigns in the history of ag campaigns. That's not a fucking joke, my dude. No, I know, I know. The California raisins. God bless them. Taylor, can you tell me a little bit about the

California raisins? Sure. So these are before my time because this is a mid 80s campaign, right? Yes, sir. And I was, I'm a late 80s boy, but my understanding of them is that they are claymation raisins at a time when claymation was like a pretty new technology. I think there are four of these raisins. There might be more and they're a band. Yes. They're like a jazz band. And they've got little shades that get in your teeth when you eat the raisins. And and I think one of them plays this, I don't even, I couldn't tell you what kind of songs they sang. In my head, it's songs about raisins, but maybe not. That's kind of all I know. Let's go ahead and and watch the first one. I would love to. So this is 1986. Oh my god, it is. I heard it.

I heard it through the grapevine. Raised in the California sunshine. California raisins from the California vineyards. Don't you know I heard it through the grapevine. Sounds great, doesn't it? Okay. Sounds great, doesn't it? I don't know that it makes me want raisins. No, no. I think it's a cool commercial. I think it's a cool piece of art, for sure. Yes. It doesn't give me that craving, really. Yeah, I think that's that's a really good point, because they definitely look like little wrinkly balls. But I think that it was the 80s and I am going somewhere. I think it was the 80s and it was sort of a time of maybe style over substance. So the fact that there was this really cool, modern, buzzworthy commercial campaign maybe changed a few minds and hearts,

because look how much money they've poured into this. They must be good. Yeah, and it's clever and it's cute and yeah. We're also seeing them in isolation. I bet when you compare those to other commercials of the day, that probably does really stand out. Yeah, yeah. The musical group that are the raisins are called the California raisins. Right. That's their title of the band. Right. And they were a brainchild of an advertising firm, not unlike the original Sunmaid. So there's a San Francisco agency, Foot, Cone and Building. And they're the ones who came up with the idea based on the song, heard it through the grapevine, made popular by Marvin Gaye. And the concept just kind of jumped from there. So, you know, they're sitting around their big glass table in the 80s

big shoulder pads and were like, heard it through a grapevine. That's cute. Oh, we'll make them all kind of like Motown inspired singers. Oh, why don't we make them claymation? That's new and current. Speaking of claymation, this is actually the first use of claymation. Really? Yes. That's very cool. I understand why people responded so well. Then it was like nothing they'd ever seen. Yeah. The guy who invented claymation, Will Vinton, he was asked by this advertising agency if he could do some type of animation for this. And this is what came out. I'm sure the claymation was kind of like in process and other places. And you could probably find it in some smaller instances. But this was like the first major like household recognized view of claymation.

Right. And definitely why it was so popular. Nancy Reagan invited Nancy Reagan invited the California raisins to the White House for a Christmas event in 1988. Does she know? Does she know? They're made of clay. Yeah. Well, that's very first lady, isn't it? You know, Michelle Obama would have done the same. No, exactly. Exactly. Because they are, you know, a healthy, healthy snack. Milani would be like, get me the testicles. The dancing testicles. The purple testicles, the children. They love the purple testicles. Big time stars got involved, wanted to be in the advertisements. Ray Charles is featured. He's raisinized. Wow. Michael Jackson asked specifically to be raisinized. And he reached out to Will

Vinton, the claymation inventor himself. Wow. That ad would appear in movie theaters. So it was like a little higher caliber. Right. And Will Vinton, he tells the story about working with Michael Jackson, quote, it was really quite a problem getting the character of the Michael Jackson raisin to be good enough for Michael to approve. Finally, I put Janet's nose on him, and he loved it. Okay. Right in the midst of MJ's body dysmorphia. Yeah, hard to get your likeness and a raisin, end all be all, end of sentence, you know, but but then I'm trying to imagine what a raisin of me would look like. I kind of got there. I just put a big nose on it. I think the nose is pretty crucial. I think you would have a like a nice hairdo though. Like that raisin scrunch would be

like a cool vibe. I hope so. You have a good jacket too. It's never closed. Because yeah, because your face is under the jacket, right? Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, you're just one big Mr. Potato Head kind of vibe. Yeah, exactly. California raisins had an incredible line of merchandise, lunchboxes, watches, a t-shirt, anything, everything, little hats. They had their own kids cartoon. There were other product collaborations. Hardee's worked with the California raisins, as well as Raisin Bran, which makes sense. They even had a spin off show called Meet the Raisins, which was a mockumentary style, half hour show that Taylor, it was nominated for a 1989 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. Rightly so, I'm sure. This is a high

caliber of animation. Yeah. A really good advertising campaign. One thing that was not really discussed in the moment when the California raisins were so big, but we need to discuss it now, is that they were definitely appropriative of black music and stereotypes of what a black body looks like, too. Very that, very that. They wore the minstrel gloves, the Disney-style minstrel gloves. Pretty intense. Also, raisins are kind of a darker hue. Their voices singing are otherwise. They're supposed to be Motown-vibed out, but Motown is black music, and white culture has appropriated black music in all different types of ways. This is just an absurd strange way to do it. To self-freak, yeah. But you've also got celebrities, black celebrities,

like Ray Charles and Michael Jackson lining up to get raisinized, too. It's true, yeah. It was definitely a different time, a different relationship, maybe, to black music, too. I think just an important little 2023 note that I don't think that these raisins would exist now. You can't do any of these ad campaigns anymore. You can't do Got Milk, you can't do the raisins, you can't do... Which type of world are we living in, Taylor? Fucking cancel culture is run amok. Everyone's so sensitive and cares about how other people feel. Can't even have a cum mustache in a newspaper anymore. He looks off wistfully into the distance. Back to the come days. I'm thinking of the come days,

Jersey. So this huge campaign, obviously wildly popular, runs for eight years. How are those raisins selling? Pretty good. They're going pretty good in the beginning. People are excited. They're raisins. Oh my god, I forgot about raisins. Oh, I thought raisins were pretty much candy. Blow the dust off and back in the pantry. Let's go. These are expired. They don't taste it. I'm fine. Okay, let's eat them. But even still, Raisin Town is not all stoked and happy about what's happening. And that is because Sunmaid, who is one of the larger collectives under the umbrella of Big Raisin, Sunmaid has a tight hold on the California Raisins, their image. And they were the only ones who were allowed to use the trademark.

Other growers were closely watched by Sunmaid and so they wouldn't and couldn't use the California Raisin image on any of their packaging or in any of their marketing. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I don't know if that's fair, but that makes sense. It's a little bit of a raw deal because the RAC, the Raisin Administrative Committee, Yeah. Big Raisin does help pay for these ads though. Sure, sure. This is, you know, not inexpensive stuff. And now the other Raisin growers have to come up with their own, ignoring the fact that this was like a once-in-a-lifetime brilliant campaign that made people like raisins out of nowhere. Yeah, they got to do that again. Come on, that's tough, that's steep.

Yeah. And so all those other growers are pissed, but Sunmaid is getting testy too because they feel like they're the biggest chunk of this, so they've put in the most, so they need to get them, you know, all this stuff. So everybody's just kind of pissed at each other. Whatever Goodwill has been created by this, as you say, like once-in-a-lifetime ad campaign, it doesn't last very long. It just kind of ratchets up the stakes. This is why we can't have nice things. You know what I mean? Sure, yeah, yeah. Finally, in 1994, a majority of the Raisin growers, they hired a lawyer and they petitioned to terminate the funding, which would essentially halt all the commercials. Wow. At that point, we're talking like eight years in, these Raisin

growers are also citing the fact that they're not really selling any more raisins anymore. What is getting sold and what is getting bought is the merchandise. Yeah, California raisins. So everyone's like, I don't really like raisins, but I love those California raisins. That's what I'm saying. The entrepreneur in me says this. Just stop growing raisins. True, yeah. If the raisins aren't making you money, but the California raisins are, switch to a t-shirt company, sell stuffed raisins. That's an option. And then people are going to be like, what's that? And then you're going to be like, well, we don't grow those anymore. You didn't like them. This is why we can't have nice things. Exactly. That's why we can't have

raisins. So even the dancing, singing raisins couldn't keep the industry happy. That's how at odds they were with each other. So when a raisin grower unconnected to Sunmaid, their own independent entity under the jurisdiction of the RAC, which in the nineties renamed itself the RBA, which stands for Raisin Bargaining Association. There's always a little bit of bargaining when you're trying to convince people to buy raisins. That's it. That's true. So there's a raisin grower unconnected still under the jurisdiction. And this grower decides they're going to go ahead and fight the big raisin power. So things get even more sour in Raisin Town. This independent grower, Marvin Horn, he's been growing grapes for raisins for a while. And part of the Raisin Bargaining

Association, or big raisin, we'll just call it that, part of what big raisin is doing is they're trying to level out price of raisins from crop year to crop year. So one year, you get a huge crop. Oh my gosh, so many raisins. So many raisins on the market, you have to drop the price by quite a bit. So raisin farmers are working really hard to produce all these raisins, but they're not getting paid as much. Then the next year, there's a huge drought. There's a fire. There's something goes awry and the raisin crop shrinks. You'd think that would be good because of raisins. They shrink. Oh, you're good. Yeah. They shrink. There's little baby raisins. There's less of them on the market, which means the price gets driven up. So these fluctuations in the market are pretty natural,

but what big raisin is there to do is to kind of even those out so that farmers can reliably get some type of stable income from year to year, which, you know, makes sense. We talked about this, other food industries do this. But what big raisin is asking raisin farmers to do is in a big crop year, they need to give a certain percentage of their raisins to the raisin reserve. And then big raisin takes those raisins and they do not sell them on the market. That hit me wrong. I didn't like the raisin reserve. I was like enough of it. I'm done with the raisins now. No more. What were you seeing? What was happening in your mind? That was a vault full of raisins. Ew, musty smelling. Well, it's a reserve. They're old raisins. It's the back of the pantry at large.

It's kind of like a Narnia closet vibe. It's just raisins. The back of the pantry, you open the door and it's just like a screech deck swimming in raisins or something. Yeah, yeah, very that. Marvin Horan, he's been growing for a while and he's like, excuse me, you want me to give you, give you 40% of my raisin crop. 40%. 2002, there was a huge crop. He was like, you want me to do that and you're not going to compensate me. And they said, well, we never sell these raisins. And if we do, we sell them to school markets or overseas and any money that we make, it goes to the administrative work that big raisin does. Anything left over, we give to you. We give to you, Marvin. Fucking overseas. No. Yeah, I know, right? And they

essentially like, they could do anything they wanted with them. They could just keep them in the reserve. They could throw them in a river. They could burn them. Like doesn't, doesn't matter. I hate this raisin reserve. I know. I know you like even from the word go, you're like, fuck you. Hit me all wrong and I wasn't mistaken. Marvin Horn, he's pissed off and he says, no, I'm not going to do it. I'm an independent grower. I'm going to sell all the raisins that I drive. Right. Sorry, let me swallow this raisin. It doesn't taste very good. I have to chew it a lot. Yeah, mine sucked too much fat. Right. Usually we're so like, so upbeat, open-minded and like, yeah, happy to get it on. But the

evidence is right there on my tongue. Just still on mine. I'm going to choke on it. Don't choke. Don't choke. I'm not going to choke. I got water here. I'm good. Get that down. Marvin keeps his raisins and he sells them for his own profit. Of course, all the other raisin growers are like, fuck you, Marvin. Last year, I had to give away half of my crop and then I lost my land because I couldn't pay for it anymore and you get to break the rules and nothing happens. My goodness. You can imagine, tensions are extremely high. A group of other raisin growers hire a private investigator to keep an eye on Marvin and his dealings. They take, you know, grainy video footage of trucks going into Marvin's farm and trucks coming out and it's all very, you

know, Fresno noir. What is this nonsense? Raisin noir. The Maltese raisin. The U.S. Agricultural Department fines Marvin. There's a fine for not yielding your raisins, but there's also a fine for the cost of the raisins that you kept. The bill that comes to his door is almost like $400,000. Jesus. It is steep. It is very steep. 2003 comes around. They ask for something like 20% of his crop. Doesn't give them to him. Fuck you, big raisin. Yep. I'm going to sell them all. Things, again, are not very happy in raisin town. The other farmers feel super cheated. Big raisin is, you know, you're not following the rules. What are you doing? This is against the law, blah, blah, Marvin Horn hires himself a lawyer, the same lawyer that got big raisin out of the California

raisin commercials. The lawyer is just like, I thought I was done with the raisin people. I guess I'm the raisin lawyer now. Yeah, he's officially the raisin lawyer. Oh, wow. You can be thankful for some things in life. You're not a raisin lawyer. I bet it pays well. There's money in raisins, apparently. Somewhere deep inside their shrivel bodies. In their reserves. So Marvin's court case gets bandied all the way up to the Supreme fucking court, 2015. Oh, quite recent. 13 years. It goes from the local courts up to the Ninth Circuit. And then finally, they just like, we don't know. This is a weird raisin law thing. Yeah, you deal with it, Alito. Pretty much. Yeah. It gets to the Supreme Court and it's finally decided that raisins

are private property. That is a direct quote from Justice Roberts. Okay, raisins are private property. What the Supreme Court is essentially saying is you can't take somebody's property, somebody's private property without giving them compensation, reasonable compensation. You're good. Without reasonable compensation for your private property. And it's kind of a majority decision. Everybody is pretty much on board like, no, you can't take his raisins without paying the man. The end all be all is that the Supreme Court sides with the raisin growers and not big raisin. Things in Fresno are still a little contentious for 2015, trying to roll through the crops, get raisins on people's tables. Everybody hates them, you know. Yeah,

you wouldn't really eat them off a table either. Just eat them out of the little box. Yes. Around this time, in this millennium of raisins, the growth has nearly been halved. From 2000 to 2019, the US used to provide about 50% of the global raisin market through this time period. It's down to about 20%. It's taken quite a little dive there, diveier than any other dip. Yeah. And because these times are so bad, big grape is feeling like they really need to push the prices as high as they can. It's all the same work. It's all the same labor and costs of the machinery, all of it. So there's this idea within big raisin that like, okay, let's keep pushing up. Let's keep pushing up. Raisins are good. We love raisins, but the world doesn't. So let's try and get our

monies worth here. Inter, CEO from the beginning. Harry Overly. Harry Overly. You have an excellent memory. It's because his name, if you flip it around, is Overly Harry. Overly comma Harry. Oh my God. Yeah. That's so good. He's hired, as we mentioned at the beginning, to millennial-fi sunmate. Raisin awareness. His focus is really on, I mean, he has a food science degree. So he's really on like, how can we adjust the food and the marketing and all that promotion? So he comes in and he's like, you know what? We're going to make the raisins sour and we're going to give them cool little flavors. So it's a sour snack now. Yeah. I know that's a little rough. They have flavors like a sour cherry, a peach, a grape flavored raisin, question mark. Yeah. I don't know, Harry.

I'd be leaving some notes too, Harry. I think one thing that Harry does understand very well is that the snack culture now is all about like healthy snacks. You know, like you need fresh foods, but maybe like hummus in the little cup that has the little cup of pretzels on top and then that's your little thing. Banana chips instead of chip chips. Right. And raisins fit beautifully into that because it's a healthy vitamin packed, fiber packed snack. He also makes a mandate to hire more top female executives into the sunmate company. Break that wrinkled ceiling. Puncture right through it. It might take you a few times, but you can. It's got some give to it. It's kind of weird, but we'll get in there. This is what Overly had walked into. He was like, I'm going to make sour

grapes. I'm going to hire some ladies. We're going to like bring raisins onto TikTok. This is going to be great. What he gets instead in 2017 when he's hired is this crazy big raisin where all these growers are pissed at each other. For one, the singing raisins of the California raisins didn't make anybody happy. Marvin Horne pissed everybody off because he disrupted big raisin. It's embedded in the very way this industry works and has worked since the beginning, this combativeness and this hostility towards one another and this strong arming of one another. Beautifully put. Thank you. Big raisin who is represented in 2017 by a man named Clemen Barserium, and he wants to raise the base price of raisins to a record high. It's more than $300 higher

per ton than the previous year. Okay. Overly's here. He's like, let's make him sour and hire women, and Barserium is with big raisins saying, I don't give a shit about that. Son made you do what you got to do, but we're going to lift the price of raisins because we need more sales. We need more money in here, and I'm thinking of you, the growers. So, Overly is the new guy in town. He's not from Fresno. He's not from California. He's not really a farmer. He's a CEO type. He might not wear a tie, but he's still wearing a suit. Nobody is really super trusting him, but he's also looking at Barserium and this cryptic rise in the price of raisins that doesn't really reflect the market or the crop, and he's saying, how is this a good idea for anybody,

for growers or consumers? And he's quoted as saying, I don't think these guys are understanding the supply and demand dynamics here, like the very basics. Yes, but in the past, we didn't justify raising the prices. We just did it, right? Yeah, it's still not very satisfactory to Overly, and so October 22nd, 2017, he pulls Sunmaid out of the RBA. Wow, because this was like a Sunmaid centric in its infancy, right? Yes, it's not as big at this point. It's only 40%, but still, that's a major shareholder right there at 40%. What happens next? Harry Overly and Barserium, even before all this contentious negotiation, they've agreed to be on a panel at the Grape, Nut and Tree Fruit Expo. The G&D. The G&TF Expo, classic. Which takes place at the Big Fresno

Fairgrounds. In spite of everything we've said about raisins, we would love to attend. If anyone listening wants to give us media passes, we will lavish praise, praise in. Maybe we'll meet the acclaimed agriculture reporter Matthew Malcolm, who covered the expo, and does so in his magazine, American Vineyard Magazine. Beautiful. And he has a YouTube channel, website. Cool. The whole shabu. Nice. He's quoted as saying, I think everyone was very nervous about these two big contenders. Being on this panel, yeah. Being on a panel and standing up in front of all these people. There's about 500 to 1,000 people that would be attending this panel. Which is kind of funny because those are very different numbers and I love the idea that they don't know. Sorry,

what was it? The Grape, Nut and Tree Fruit Expo. So, you know, who knows the numbers you're going to get, right? They're standing up there. Harry Overly gives his little spiel about the raisin industry in California and the global market, da, da, da. And he also explains the price raising and his feelings towards that and supply and demand. And he shares pretty clearly his reasons for leaving the RBA. Everyone really likes this quote, apparently, because it showed up in multiple places. In his speech, he says about the raisin society, you know, the world of raisin, raisin town, if you will. We need to spend more time focusing on growing the pie than fighting over our piece of the pie within the industry. This fighting needs to stop. It's ironic because you imagine a raisin pie.

It would be pretty shitty. It's so bad. So bad. One wonders if he might have done a non-pie metaphor there. Perhaps the large oatmeal cookie. But his point is well taken. His point is well taken. There does seem to be a tremendous amount of backbiting in raisin land. Yes. But is he best positioned to be the one to name and exclaim that perhaps as a relative outsider, yes, but he's also the CEO of like the largest raisin company that has all of this historical baggage and that just left the union, has it worked? Yeah. You know, big raisin is made up of growers and farmers, and he's not one. He's a food industry guy. He's not a farmer. Yep. Apparently, there was a lot of tension in that room. You could hear a pin drop. I love it. I love it. Because that is rightly

these people's entire world. It's their industry. It's their piece of land. Exactly. It's their crop. Of course. This is high-stakeship. It's their day-to-day. No, totally, totally. So, Berserian is up on stage with him, and it's open for questions and comments for these two men who are undoubtedly the most powerful people in the raisin industry. And they've had this big contentious kind of blowout, and everyone's like, oh, fuck, here we go. It's like Real Housewives reunion, but raisins. Exactly. Beautiful. A farmer, Mr. Phillips, Jim Phillips, he stands up. He sells his raisins to Sun Valley Raisins. There's another raisin name. I don't know Sun Valley very well, but okay. Sounds familiar, but it just might sound familiar. I don't know.

Yeah. He's not a sunmate grower. I think that's what's the most important thing. Jim stands up, and he says, and I quote, I'm not a politician. I'm a good Christian country boy. Oh, dear. And I just want to do what's right. He starts talking about what overly has said. He kind of touches base on all of it, and he finally sides with overly and sunmate. He's not a sunmate grower, but he says, Kalem to the big raisin guy, which I love that he just calls him by his first name, because he gives you a sense of like how insular. He's just a good Christian boy. He says, Kalem, you don't have a plan. That sunmate guy is talking sense, and he's thinking about the future in a way that I don't think you are. Grower after grower stands up in this carpeted little conference room

and sides with overly. Wow. Interesting. Yes. Very interesting. Apparently, this Matthew Malcolm, the reporter of the GTF Expo, he refused to give the footage of the whole meeting because Mr. Malcolm, an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, thought that the recording had too much foul language in it to be shared with the wider audience. Oh, dear indeed. Oh, my. But he did say this in his article. Many growers left the meeting with their blood pumping fast and excitement for the industry to finally get together and trigger some much needed changes. Why was everyone cussing? I don't know. They're good Christian country boys. I don't know. This is the raisin language. Welcome to Raisin Town, baby. Baby.

In this kind of contentious battle that could have, you know, exploded in some ways, I suppose, it gets solved with talking, which is a beautiful, wonderful thing to happen. Rare and delightful. Rare and delightful. Berserian and overly still work together later after this. Berserian has said, like, I don't like the guy, but I'll work with him. We got shit to do. We're fine. So very adult, very mature. Later that same year, there was a contingency from the raisin growers that went to Washington, D.C. to talk to U.S. agriculture. They were excited because there's a little bit more cohesion to the group. Dealing with the federal government is just going to be a little bit easier. And in fact, overly, she says, quote, it went very well. The overwhelming response we got

was that it was very unusual for them, meaning the government officials, to see the raisin industry come as one group. I'm not kidding. That was said in three or four of the 10 meetings we have that day. What is this? Seems like you all are getting along. What is this? I don't like this. This isn't right. Y'all, do you want to know what he said to me on the phone about you? This isn't right. I don't get this. This was 2019, 2020, when all of this was kind of cohesioning together, which was very nice, shrinking into one mass of raisin, you know? Nice. I love that. No more are we disparate grapes on the vine. We are one shitty raisin standing alone. We're one shitty bunch. Yes, exactly. Yes. But then of course, 2020 hit, everybody stayed home and I guess didn't eat raisins.

I don't know. The industry has taken quite a hit and I don't think it has to do with or North American raisin consumption. It has to do more with supply chain and inflation. The cost of paper went up, so to put the raisins in boxes cost more. All these tiny little cogs in the wheel were getting caught and this big mechanism that could still run couldn't run. Supply chain shit is very intricate. Agricultural shit is very intricate. When we're getting into industries that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever, billions of dollars, whatever it is, the amount of how much the boxes cost is a very important piece of data. Yes. Yeah. This is raisins. They are dried fruit. Imagine if you have refrigerated stuff. Ice cream. Fucking ice

cream. Any type of frozen food. Wild, wild. To get a full state of affairs these days on the raisin industry and how contentious Fresno is, I recommend you read American Vineyard, Matthew Malcolm's publication. But certainly the inflation and the supply chain are huge challenges for the industry and hopefully the goodwill that was built up via the G and T and F pin drop conference. Sounds like a sick conference. I wish I went. I know, right? It's probably delicious food unless they're serving raisins. It's just a drop of raisins. Raisins dropping from drones now. Is it a bug? Oh my God. That's huge. Excuse me. I think a rat may have defec- Oh, never mind, never mind. Just a raisin. It's just a bunch of raisins again.

Our dude, Harry, overly, overly, Harry has moved on to another snack food giant in Minnesota. He's climbing the ladder of snacks. Didn't think it could get any higher. Wow. But he did so much for Sunmaid. Really what it is is he kind of balanced a lot of personalities in a very careful way that worked out for him. I mean, he was getting death threats and he stuck around. So, I mean, obviously, I don't like raisins enough. If I were getting death threats because of raisins, I would bail. But do you have any info on the provenance of that death threat? Was anybody ever damn blah, blah, blah? Or was that just an example of one of the things that happened to him? So when asked about it, Harry overly didn't want to name any names. Obviously, it's a very like

tight-knit thing. Bursarian claims that he knows nothing about it, but he also stated like, well, you know, it's the farm. And you know, maybe he was taking things a little too seriously. He needed the room full of like steely-eyed old Christian raisin farmers to shame him a little bit. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. I think especially after that expo and that face off between them, the farmers heard both sides and chose sides and that was kind of resolved in a way. Interesting. You don't really hear that much about stuff like that. I'm telling you, American vineyard gripping, gripping. I bet. It seems like baked into the raisin brand of this industry. There was a sort of a power

hungriness as to how everyone was operating. And this guy overly doesn't seem to have operated in that way, really. Yeah. Which allowed him to do things that might be really controversial, like pull from the raisin association, etc. The way that I see it is he was just like, you guys, what about supply and demand? Like, raisins? Yes. But also like, I've worked in olive oil, like we can't switch things up that quickly. It's not good for us, nor the consumer. And I think people were like, getting out of the raisin butthole and being like, oh yeah. At the end of the day, it wasn't even really about raisins at all. Like, honestly, no, I'm dead serious. You're

laughing at me as you eat your raisin. But at the end of the day, it wasn't even about raisins. It was about people. It was about economy. It was about the way that American agriculture has run. It was about, like I said, some power hungriness in there, people needing this metaphorical pie, which I maintain, we should look for something different than that. But of all the things. That's such a depression. But it can't be raisin pizza. It's got to be raisin something. In any case, this raisin quiche that we're cutting into equal parts, it wasn't even really about the raisins. It was about wearing our get along shirt. You know what I mean? Sometimes you need to look inward. That's true. To the raisin inside.

To the inner raisin. To the inner raisin. That eats within us all. Overly, obviously impressed Sunmaid enough that they have kept him on in like an executive consultant position. So he's a full-time job in Minnesota, but he like probably like zooms in once a week. To mediate amongst the raisin people. I think so. Yeah. I think that might be. You're the raisin whisperer. You're the only one who's been able to do it in 100 years. Yeah. I think that might be kind of it. Yeah. Yeah. Though these bunches have been sour for a long, long time, it seems like in these coming years, the raisins will be sweet. I hope so. I hope. And you know what, there's an answer for every seat. We say it all the time. Some people even like raisins. I do.

Like I've basically, I mean I'm eating them. I've been shitting on raisins. I just want to say we've been shitting on raisins for the bit. I actually kind of like raisins. Like, anyway. It's not about the raisins though. Exactly. It is not about the raisins. This is about learning not to shoot yourself in the foot by being competitive or greedy or maintaining a raisin reserve. I still can't quite wrap my head around that. I really hated that. I know. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I really hated it a lot. I'm so sorry. I'm feeling good. We got to the back of the pantry. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinthamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the

podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthamy. Or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this episode's Minfamous are The Messed Up Truth about Russian roulette by Debra Kelly for Grunge, August 23rd, 2021. Who invented Russian roulette and has anyone ever actually played it by Gilles Messier? For today, I found out October 4th, 2020. Dallas apologizes for 40-year-old murder for Rebecca Tate for the Daily Campus, September 26th, 2013,

and they read the Wikipedia page for John Eric Hapsen. The sources that I used for this episode were an article in The New York Times entitled The Raisin Situation written by Jonah E. Bromwich, published April 27th, 2019. I read an article published in The Washington Post, How Growing Raisins Became Highly Dangerous Work by Victoria Saker Rooster, published May 17th, 2019. Another article from The Washington Post entitled One Grower's Grapes of Wrath by David A. Favrentold, published July 7th, 2013. I listened to an episode of NPR's Planet Money, The Raisin Outlaw, episode 478, which aired June 24th, 2015. I watched a few episodes on Californiaagnet.com, which was hosted by Matthew Malcolm, the reporter that I mentioned

in the episode. I watched his interviews with Kevin Kister, the Sunmaid Chairman of the Board, as well as with Harry Overley. Taylor and I watched the California Raisin commercial, the first one ever, that aired in 1986, posted by MyCommercials on YouTube. And lastly, I looked at the Wikipedia articles for Sunmaid and California Raisins. The interstitial music you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins, and the song you are listening to now is Tea Street by Brian Steele.