Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Baking Soda

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why baking soda is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Baking Soda. Known for being white. Famous for becoming cookies. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Baking Soda is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of baking soda? That baking soda and vinegar volcano we all made. Remember that? That was great. I love building a volcano and putting baking soda and vinegar in it. And then pretending that all the little townspeople are getting rolled over by hot magma and pyroclastic flow. It influenced your future move to Italy, land of Pompeii. Folks, nobody does it better. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like baking soda. I like to bake. I have had some problems baking here in Italy because it's interesting.

So baking soda does definitely you can buy it here. It's used often in cleaning, though. It's really interesting. You don't often find it in the baking section. And what you do find is this thing called Lievito, which is like it's a mixture of, I think, baking soda and something else. It's kind of like baking powder. Some of it is like baking powder added with vanilla. But none of my like American recipes work when I just online and get baking powder in addition to like the baking soda that I got from the cleaning section in Italy. So I have figured out how to bake things. And I love blowing the minds of Italians by baking chocolate chip cookies because they are completely different in the U.S. than what they make in Italy.

I'm glad you're spreading the gospel of those cookies to Italy. Did I call it a gospel? Probably too elevated and religious. But oh well, here we are. Nope, nope, not for me. Chocolate chip cookies are so good. I love them so much. And I mean, especially like chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with like a little bit of salt in it.

It's just perfect. Yeah. You can't evangelize too much the chocolate chip cookies, in my opinion. And also with you is the Catholic thing, I would say, to round that off. Yeah. And shout out to the suggester of this topic is Brenda Young. Thank you, Brenda. Hey, wait a minute. Hold on.

Wait a minute. She might be somewhat close to the show. Nepotism. I love this topic idea because it's not just global, but in the background of all of our lives. It turns out in the UK and the British Commonwealth type countries, they often call it bicarb soda instead of baking soda. Then you've got this Italian name for it. I'd never even heard. Yeah, bicarbonato is what it's called in Italian.

That makes sense. Lievito is like baking powder something or other. But yeah, bicarbonato di sodio purismo. Yeah, there you go. Okay. And also, I'm used to calling it baking soda from the U.S. And as we've been kind of talking about, this has so many uses that people use it for, in particular cleaning or a little box in the fridge. There are some fireworks made with it. Wow.

We are not going to cover every use of it, partly because some of the uses are not super scientific. I could not find anything super solid and also interesting about a box of baking soda in your refrigerator. It just seems to cut down on some acidic smells. It's not some profound chemical thing. It's just something people like that seems to either actually help or make you feel better. Right. But just to be clear, baking soda is different from baking powder. Yeah.

I don't know exactly why it is, but it definitely is. And if you've ever baked, you realize that the difference is actually quite significant. I tried to make American biscuits using like baking soda instead of baking powder, and they came out super nasty. That makes sense. And I, like you, did not know the difference between baking soda and baking powder, really. And have now learned it by researching it. So I'm very excited to share that with people pretty soon.

Learning. We have like a few numbers to do in order to explain what baking soda and baking powder are difference-wise. So we'll get there. On every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Talking about the stats, do-do-do, and doing all the math, da-da-da-da, and an up-to-seat, ba-ba-da, what they could really mean. What they could really mean. Now I'm just bopping out these fat tunes.

You know what I mean? Yeah. An earth, wind, and fire idea from at doc underscore lobster on the Discord. Thank you, Doc Lobster. Very fun. A doctor in medicine or lobsterology? I mean, the second one sounds more official, so probably that. And we have a new name for this every week.

Please make a Vasily and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com. And we're going to get to the baking powder difference. But first number here is about the very first thing we talked about. The number is 8.62 meters. 8.62 meters, which is a little over 28 feet, three inches. It's the height of the world's largest baking soda and vinegar volcano. There's a world record for that science fair project that is maybe just a U.S. thing, but this record actually was set in the U.K. So good job.

So for those who are unfamiliar with the sort of volcanic tradition, you create a papier-mâché volcano. And then you put, number one, baking soda into the volcano. And then you put number one, baking soda into the volcano. Step two, vinegar into the volcano. Step three, pretend to be tiny people screaming as this foamy reaction comes out of the volcano and covers, you know, makes a big mess. And it's a lot of fun. And it's like purportedly to teach you about science. I didn't learn a thing from those volcanoes except for it was fun and cool. Yeah, there is science, but it's 99% a paper mache project and geography projects kind of. Yeah.

And this volcano, I found myself really, really wanting to know, and the Guinness Book of World Records has covered this. In 2015, the combined students and teachers and parents of Elmfield Steiner School in Stourbridge in the UK, that's near Birmingham, they here because they measured the height of the eruption. It erupted 1.32 meters above the peak of the volcano. So just short of four feet, four inches. How much raw components we talking here? Like how much baking soda and vinegar was used? They tracked that, too. It was 100 liters of vinegar and 100 liters of a solution of baking soda and water. Okay. So one to one of those.

I see. And then, yeah, somebody will probably top it at some point. But that's the record. That would be funny if that's the way humanity goes out, not through nuclear escalation, humanity goes out, not through nuclear escalation, not through global warming, but an overly ambitious elementary school giant vinegar volcano. Yeah, it's Dr. Strange love, but with sweet sixth grade science teachers. Right, right. And that experiment, there is science there.

Why do vinegar and baking soda erupt? They hate each other. That's what I learned as a kid. The vinegar doesn't like the baking soda, and then they fight, and it creates this, like, foam. And who can forget the Romeo and Juliet tale of one baking soda and one vinegar falling in love? Their families oppose it. They don't like it at all. All right. But I would like to finally learn what exactly the science is behind these volcanoes and the lesson I guess I was supposed to learn as a kid, but I didn't.

Yeah, I found out too, because the next number is four. That's the number of different chemical elements in baking soda. And its technical name is sodium bicarbonate. And the American Chemical Society says baking soda is a salt. It is a crystalline salt. I always just sort of thought of it as powder, but it's a salt. Yeah. And it's made of four elements. It's one sodium, one hydrogen, one carbon, and three oxygen.

So that, yeah, that makes sense to me. Because like, wait, how many carbons did you say? Just one carbon. Yeah. One carbon. Then why is it called bicarbonate? Apparently it's an old naming convention. And there are some scientific situations where people call it something else that's like

slightly easier to understand. And this is why Katie didn't like organic chemistry. Yeah, it's like, hey, would you like to understand one of the main building blocks of all of creation? Well, first you have to solve my word riddle. solve my word riddle. Yeah, and I know this could just drift into straight up science textbook chemistry. So the fast version is that set of elements, one sodium, one hydrogen, one carbon, three oxygens, that contains the one carbon and two oxygens that can compose carbon dioxide. carbon and two oxygens that can compose carbon dioxide. The sodium bicarbonate is a base, stuff like vinegar is an acid. When they react, baking soda really easily and effectively splits off a carbon dioxide. And so that's why baking soda lifts stuff like bread and other baked

products. It gives off a bunch of gas when we give it moisture and heat. It's basic. It is literally basic. And acid-based reactions involve a hydrogen ion, and it's starting to just be stuff here that you could look up in a chemistry textbook. But that's the gist. So once they mix, what is that resulting foamy fluid? What does it become, the mixture of baking soda and vinegar? It's usually water and gas, but primarily gas. Okay. One key source this week is the textbook How Baking Works by food scientist Paula Figoni. They say that each molecule of

baking soda reacting with an acid generates an entire molecule of carbon dioxide. And gas is a much higher volume than that solid. So that's how you get so much lift out of so little baking soda. Like most recipes don't use very much of it. So if we made enough of these volcanoes, would that actually contribute to global warming? Yes. Let's say yes. That's thrilling. Wow. Now it's a disaster movie. But this also leads to our quick first takeaway. As promised, takeaway number one. Baking powder is baking soda plus a built-in acid.

Ah, okay. Interesting. So it's like already semi-neutralized then? It's like packaged in a way where they're not reacting yet. And once you add moisture and heat, it'll react. And if it's what's called single-acting baking powder, it just reacts the one time. If it's called double-acting, it reacts once to the moisture and once to the heat. So functionally, what is the difference? Like, does baking powder cause more air bubbles than baking soda? Like, there are some recipes that call for only baking soda or only baking powder or recipes that call for both. So what is the functional difference in baking and beyond of these two?

Yeah, I was surprised how simple this is. The whole difference is just acid. It turns out that many baked recipes have a major ingredient that is acidic. And examples include buttermilk or cocoa powder or brown sugar is actually pretty acidic. And so in those recipes, we can use baking soda and then a corresponding amount of just acidic ingredients. And that gives us lift. I see. We developed baking powder for recipes that don't have an ingredient with a lot of acid in it. Right. And so then the baking soda is like bringing the acid to the party in the form of baking powder. Like if you don't already have acid, the baking powder is there to drop the acid into the whole party.

Yeah. Those are regular phrases that kids don't need to think about more. It turns out that's just it. Like baking powder is baking soda manufactured with some mixed in acidic stuff. It's often something that's also powdery and white looking such as cream of tartar.

Okay, cream of tartar. Yeah, okay. So cream of tartar, that's what that is. It's like sort of an acidic thing. It confuses me what it is. Like it's rarely sometimes in recipes. I'm like, what is cream of tartar? Because it's not a cream. It's like a powder. What's up with that? I guess that's for a separate episode. That's for a separate episode. I've had that exact reaction to snickerdoodle recipes specifically. Right. I was like, what is this weird tub of cream I need to go find in Tartarus from Greek mythology? I don't know what's going on.

Come on. You're like, you know, chocolate chips, walnuts, flour, shaved giant's toenail. Okay. I don't know if I can get that at the grocery store. Yeah. I love that that's the entire difference. I just didn't know that. Right. And so also it explains if a recipe has both things, they're just really precisely trying to add the right amount of acid.

Right. They want a little bit of extra acid beyond what's in the other ingredients, but not too much. Right. It's fascinating. I'm glad other people figured that stuff out because then I can just create brownies without having stuff taste terrible. Yeah, me too.

And I'm also, I'm going to link the Arm & Hammer company website. Arm & Hammer is, as far as I could find, the top U.S. brand of baking soda. But they just have tips on substituting one for the other. You can do it both ways. And the gist is you add or remove acids. So that's a very common Google for people who are halfway through a baking project and realize they have one but not the other. Side note, is Arm & Hammer, the actor slash cannibal, named after Armie Hammer, the baking soda company?

You know, huge takeaway about that question of the actor Armie Hammer. It is. It is, not expecting. I was like, I'm sorry for taking the podcast off the rails, Alex, but this has always bothered me. But apparently it's baked into the podcast. All right, I'm sorry for taking the podcast off the rails, Alex, but this has always bothered me. But apparently it's baked into the podcast. All right. I'm excited.

Let's go. It is baked in. And we there's like other chemistry to talk about. But we have some weird human drama to talk about in Takeaway number two. The baking soda brand Armand Hammer almost got taken over by a guy named Armand Hammer. What? This is real life stuff going on. So wait, no, hang on. And then I could also just say the guy Armand Hammer is the grandfather of actor Armie Hammer, whose full name is

Armand Douglas Hammer. I'm hyperventilating. So Armand Hammer, but it already exists. Armand Hammer didn't create the company. So, okay, the company existed before Armand Hammer, and it was already called Armand Hammer. Yes. And then Armand Hammer had a grandchild named Army Hammer? Yes, that's right.

And Army Hammer, cannibal slash actor, currently has no ties to the company Armand Hammer? Yeah, this is mostly about his grandfather. But then the actor is also how a lot of people have found out about any of this. Because, yeah, if people know the movie, The Social Network, he plays the Winklevoss twins. He's in a lot of stuff. And then he also might be a cannibal based on some social media posts. We'll link about accusations of cannibalism with him and also worse stuff if he can believe it yeah he's maybe not a great guy he's a terrible guy uh according to you know so okay yeah this is tell me why armand hammer took almost took over armand hammer go for it yeah this is maybe one of the weirdest name coincidences in modern history.

And I hope people know the first name Armand. It is a regular first name. It's spelled A-R-M-A-N-D, just like the words arm and. Yeah. We're living in a simulation. Continue, Alex. Takeaway number three, nothing's real. Folks, sorry to break it to you on the Baking Soda podcast, but yeah, this is an amazing guy.

And also, it's a really interesting story of a symbol being really prominent across thousands of years of culture and in a few different ways. across thousands of years of culture and in a few different ways. So the key sources here are the newspaper Haaretz and the website Slate.com. Starting with the guy, there was a businessman named Armand Hammer who was born in 1898 in New York City, and he lived to age 92 to 1990. Wow. So for the whole 1900s, we have a prominent businessman in the United States named Armand Hammer. And his parents were Ukrainian Jewish people. They emigrated from Russian controlled Ukraine to New York. And they were also very, very devoted socialists and communists,

highly involved with the Socialist Party of America. They were in touch with Vladimir Lenin. They were big people in the socialist and communist left in the turn of the century. Now I'm wondering if my great-grandfather ever rubbed shoulders with these Armand Hammer clan because my great-grandfather was Jewish from Ukraine, involved in social or like labor organization. There's a family legend that he saw Lenin once heading to a union meeting. I doubt that's true because that just sounds like something that my family would make up to make him sound cool. But, you know, it's possible that he met Armand Hammer. I only knew the Ukrainian bit.

I didn't know the rest. Wow. Yeah, yeah. He was like, he was a labor organizer in Ukraine in the Odessa region. And he and my great grandmother had to flee for pretty obvious reasons, being Jewish, being labor organizers. The whole there is a lot of problems being both around the turn of the century. Sure. Yeah. And this is a similar phenomenon, it seems like. Yeah, that's amazing.

But they went to Winnipeg, Canada, and did not almost take over a baking soda company. That is where our fates diverged. Me and Armie Hammer. And I'm not a cannibal, so. True. That's at least two ways you're different. I could have easily become a cannibal, though, if things had been slightly different. The butterfly effect.

I give Canada and Winnipeg credit for all these good things. Good job, Canada. It was too apologetic and polite to consider cannibalism. Anyways, enough about me. Let's talk about Armand Hammer, the one who went to New York and almost took over Arm and Hammer. The one who went to New York and almost took over Arm and Hammer. Yeah, and I couldn't find anything about whether this last name Hammer, because that's just their last name. I don't know if there was anglicization of something else or something. But by the time they were in New York City, they were called Hammer. That was their real last name, which is a cool last name.

It's pretty rad. Yeah, Hammer, I barely know her. Kermit the Frog joke. Anyways. And we have a whole bonus about Alice Island trying to get last names right. But also, I like the idea of an agent just seeing a hammer on a table. And like, your last name is Hammer. And that's just what they saw. Like, it doesn't sound like the first last name at all yeah like golden golden is not i don't think it goes back that many

generations i'm pretty sure it was either adopted by um my great-grandparents to sort of escape basically enemies from uh ukraine but then also it could just have been an Ellis Island agent or someone in immigration going like, ah, that's too hard to pronounce. You're a, let's see, a golden. That sounds, that sounds good. A future podcaster could probably brand themselves with that name and it'd be good. Really? Like one Ellis Island agent, the first thing they saw was a hammer.

It'd be good. Really? Like one Ellis Island agent, the first thing they saw was a hammer. Right. And then another agent, the first thing they saw was a gorgeous golden sunrise over the Statue of Liberty at the harbor. Very poetic agent. Really good. So here's the thing. ran with this because when their son was born in 1898, they decided to honor the Socialist Party of America because its symbol was a longtime symbol of labor and labor movements, which is

an arm holding a hammer. Ah, okay. I always thought that was just coincidence. Yeah, they said we can do like almost a pun or a play on words. We can combine our last name with the real first name Armand, and it will match the phrase Armand Hammer, which is a centuries-old symbol of labor and labor movements and also of blacksmithing. It's a popular symbol of the Roman god Vulcan, who was a blacksmithing god. Because it makes sense. It's blacksmith stuff, Arm and a Hammer. Okay, wait. So, hang on.

Armand, so Armand Hammer, the guy, Armand Hammer. Yeah. Created the name Arm and Hammer. No, he did not. Wait, okay. Katie confused. Yeah, so he's born in 1898 and then totally randomly in parallel, 1867, more than 30 years earlier, the company Church and Dwight makes a new baking soda brand.

Okay. And they call the baking soda brand Armand Hammer, named after the Armand Hammer symbol of the Roman god Vulcan. Okay. It's not socialism. It's not communism. It's not even labor. It's just, this is cool and baking soda is for hard work, like a blacksmith god.

Okay. Okay. And then Armand Hammer comes in and makes the connection to like labor. And then Armand Hammer becomes a hugely successful capitalist. Okay. And toward the end of his life, it seems like almost for fun, his company starts buying up pieces of Church and Dwight, the maker of Armand Hammer baking soda. And so at one point, Armand Hammer is a minority owner with a seat on the board of directors of the company making Arm and Hammer baking soda.

Be honest with me, Alex. Did I get incepted? Tell me right now. It's the law. You have to tell me if I got incepted. It's like a cop has to tell you if they're a cop. You got to tell me if I got incepted. It's like a cop has to tell you if they're a cop. You got to tell me if I got incepted. Yeah, it's these two shocking paths. It's an 1860s baking soda, basically named after Roman mythology. And then a boy named after socialism and a fun play on words of his own real last name. and a fun play on words of his own real last name.

And then, yeah, Armand's father owned a small drugstore chain and a little bit of a pharmaceutical thing in New York City. His son expands that into an importing and exporting business, primarily with Russia, because they have connections. Then he gets into asbestos mining, pencil manufacturing, makes alcohol during U.S. Prohibition, and then really makes a fortune in oil drilling. And then late in life, he's endowing an entire art museum in Los Angeles called the Hammer Museum. That's from the baking soda family. Me and Katie have hung out there.

And yeah, it's named after this guy, the Hammer Museum. I love the Hammer Museum. It's free. It's really good. And he was a very famous guy as businessmen go. He donated so much to cancer research, it led to a 1988 guest starring role on The Cosby Show, just to talk about cancer as an issue. He had a popular autobiography. He was a positive version of a famous businessman, more or less.

Yeah. Those are two things that haven't aged well, cancer and The Bill Cosby Show. Right. Yeah. He should have caught Cosby. Darn it, Armand. But along the way, apparently Armand Hammer was at least somewhat embarrassed about the concept of his name coming from socialism and essentially the Soviet Union and the general vibe there. And according to Haaretz, in 1986, he had bought enough of Church and Dwight to be a minority owner with a seat on the board of directors. And he joked to somebody that he bought a piece of the company so he could claim he was named after the baking soda instead of a symbol of socialism and communism. I see. Okay. Did his parents name him Arm and Hammer only after the socialist symbol or after the baking soda? Only after socialism.

Okay, okay. Baking soda was not part of the inspiration at all. It's just a coincidence. So he wasn't named after baking soda. He was named after the concept of owning the means of production. Yeah, which felt awkward to him, I guess, as an oil tycoon thriving in capitalist 1900s America. I can see how that's a little awkward, a little bit of an awkward situation for an oil tycoon. Yeah. And it's definitely a gag to buy baking soda shares and apparently nearly by the company. They just didn't quite work it out. So it's

a gag, but also the fact that he bothered and bought this instead of anything else in the world is definitely sparked by the name thing. It's pretty random, except that Armand Hammer's name matches Armand Hammer baking soda. Yeah. it's like someone is named Lennon McMarks, and they're like, no, no, no, I'm not named after the, I'm an oil tycoon. I'm not named after those ones. I'm named after Lennon and Mark's the cat food. If someone started a Lennon and Mark's cat food, a lot of the internet would buy it. Yeah.

That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Own the meows of production. Stop. Stop talking. Too good of an idea. Too good of an idea. Keep it for us. But folks, that is just profoundly weird about baking soda, and I love it. Now, when I see that brand, I guess we're kind of advertising it, but it's already number one. What are we going to do to make it bigger? And it's so weird that that is in the background of it. Arm and Hammer.

It's pretty good baking soda, and it does not endorse cannibalism. So, yeah, I think we've hit the weirdest name thing I've ever heard about the most popular brand of baking soda that has been, I think, in every place I have ever lived my whole life. That's wild. My brain is now the end result of a vinegar and baking soda volcano. It's kind of an inert foam. And we have so much more to say about this ordinary seeming stuff, baking soda. We're going to do a couple more takeaways about that after a quick break. See you in a sec. Folks, as you know, this show exists because of direct support from listeners.

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Again, it's out October 24th. It is looking at something that basically no other podcasts are looking at at all, let alone just media or museums or anybody. So I'm thrilled. There's about to be a podcast miniseries exploring more stories about the people doing that and exploring, you know, under-reported, under-covered people doing that. Even in the peak of the space race, we were kind of not talking about LGBTQ plus people as a society. And so this really fills a gap. Listen at museumofflight.org slash podcast or search the flight deck on your favorite podcatcher. New episode every Tuesday, beginning October 24th. Folks, we are back. And this is such a humongous topic. The next thing here is where does baking soda come from?

Right? The grocery store, you ding-dong. I've never been outside of a podcasting bunker. I don't know things. Food and other food accessories magically appear in the grocery store where they are delivered by the groceries fairy.

Yeah, exactly right. Fairies is the explanation of most things. Ferries. We should do a ferries episode. We should do a ferries episode. So where does baking soda come from? Part of the answer is takeaway number three. In the mid-1800s, one Belgian industrial chemist figured out how to make baking soda from seawater.

Oh, okay. So it comes from mermaids then. Right. We had the wrong magical being. Yeah. Right, right. The wrong fae entity. So...

Arm and hammer boxes? I've got plenty. I want more. and hammer boxes? I've got plenty. I want more. And then she just kind of like the whole cave explodes from an acid-base reaction. So how we do it, Alex? Is it the fish pee? Is it the salts? How we get baking soda out of seawater? It is salts, basically. Yeah, this stuff is a crystalline salt, even though I have always thought of it as some sort of powder. And it turns out there was a revolutionary scientific discovery in the 1860s that pretty much invented baking soda in the format and way that we all use it as consumers today. Before that, people were leavening everything with yeast,

and it was a different world. Yeah, we kind of talked about this on the yeast episode a bit, where yeast was kind of the OG leavening agent, and cakes and desserts and everything was once made mostly with yeast. Yeah, we have a whole yeast episode to show people. We'll link it. You're going to love it. And the key sources here are a reference text called The Chemistry Book by professional chemist and science writer Derek B. Lowe. Also a piece for a magazine called Today's Chemist from the American Chemical Society. That's by David M.

Kiefer. And they talk about how there's a humongous history of people figuring out ways to get salts that do various things, but it was mostly for industrial processes. The ancient Egyptians and the Romans and other peoples were able to heat wood ashes and mix them with chemicals or sand to get carbonate salts to make soaps and to make glass. There are various world societies, including some Native Americans, who generated salts that are sort of like baking soda today. They would create what some people called pearl ash, which is where you soak wood ash in water,

and then the residual salts can be used to leaven baked things, but the salts are also smelly and bitter on top of being hard to make. This was not as universal of a practice as modern boxes of baking soda from the grocery store. Hmm. A really weird thing happened where demand for various salts, often for industrial stuff, led a lot of chemists to try to figure out an easy way to synthesize them. Caustic sodas is usually the name for it. And the word soda has its own etymology. Today, it mostly means something that fizzes or effervesces. But a Belgian chemist named Ernest Solvay, in the 1860s, he developed a process where you can combine brine, which is salt water, can be seawater.

You combine brine with limestone and also recycle some ammonia through that. Hmm. And the result is sodium carbonate. And that precipitates out sodium bicarbonate, which is baking soda. Huh. Okay. I know that was a huge string of chemistry, but the gist is salty water and limestone and some ammonia. All right. I'm going to start mixing ammonia with a bunch of different things just to see what happens.

Oops, I made mustard gas. Yeah, all the descriptions of this were the nicest stuff I've ever heard about ammonia. Apparently this process, they can just recycle the same ammonia a bunch of times. It's very low pollution and positive for being ammonia. Yeah. So that's cool. I'm always like scared of cleaning supplies like ammonia and bleach and various other things, because I know that like I can accidentally create like war crime level chemicals if I'm not careful.

Yeah, folks, Google if you're going to mix bleach with stuff. There's lots of ways you can. Just don't clean. Don't clean your bathroom. Finally, the anti-cleaning side gets a voice. Finally. Our ideas are too dangerous. Only this podcast.

And yeah, this process is something I think most people have never heard of and i had never wondered where baking soda even comes from but this 1860s development suddenly makes stuff like sodium bicarbonate baking soda very cheap very plentiful and produced in a way that's not weird tasting. So for basically the first time, sodium bicarbonate is so commonly available, we start to bake with it. Like that's kind of where the name baking soda is invented, is that suddenly we have piles of it if we want to for very little money and easily and without much pollution. And that was a sea change that invented the baking uses of it that we have today.

We're just like Scarface, but with baking soda and it's like, got to make a bunch of muffins. It is also the main thing in my life that looks like cocaine across my whole life. Yeah, it's just very, very similar looking. Yeah. So that's fun. If I ever want to do like a comedy sketch about Scarface, that's what I'm going to use. I wouldn't like, I wouldn't snort baking soda. I'm going to say that's not going to be good for your nasal lining. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a your eyes, nose, throat doctor, but I will say snorting baking soda and then following that with snorting vinegar might be a bad idea or really cool.

Another movie to reference. Look at me. I'm the volcano now. Look at me. Captain Phillips. Here we are. Call me Mount Vesuvius. Captain Phillips.

Here we are. Just call me Mount Vesuvius. And yeah, and this crystalline salt, which is why you shouldn't snort it. We, to this day, worldwide, get it from the Solvay process. We've made that a better process and more efficient, but that's the gist. Also, I said it's worldwide. There is one big exception. Italy? And the weird exception is one big exception. Hmm. Italy?

And the weird exception is the United States. Oh. Okay. And that is our next quick takeaway, because takeaway number four. The United States mines its baking soda from a gigantic and seemingly endless deposit in Wyoming. Why, Oming? It's basically an accident of geography and geology. And also, this is a relatively positive process.

Like, it's not bad that we do it this way. Okay. We don't have, like, child labor in the baking soda mines just so we can make our muffins. I mean, they have a Republican governor in Wyoming, right? They might try to do it. But but for now, no. When did this show get all political? I'm in favor of child labor.

I'm going to link to some more news about Republicans try to put child labor in again. It's great. You guys did a great job. And a hot take coming after child labor, real controversial. Right. A listener in the 1800s is like, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, like their monocle is spinning. They type it out in the podcast reviews, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa. Yeah. So it turns out that just as a variation on the Solvay process can also be done with specific ores and salts that are in the ground. You can just combine brine with that with no ammonia elements. That is another way to get baking soda.

baking soda. And the U.S. does that because in Wyoming, there is the most humongous deposit of this kind of stuff in the world, and by a wide margin. There's just a weirdly huge deposit of it. I feel like God loves baking and decided. I'm an agnostic, but this is evidence that either there's a God or we live in a simulation. Actually, the latter becoming increasingly seemingly more likely. Yeah, Armand Hammer was the pill from the Matrix. And now we're seeing it all, baby. Now we get it. Yeah, the basic reason the rest of the world doesn't do this is they don't have a deposit like this. But once we had the Solvay process, we figured out you can mine a rock called Troma Ore, or you can mine deposits of what are called Nacolite salts. The name Nacolite is based on the N-A-H-C-O of the chemical equation of sodium bicarbonate. N-A-H-C-O of the chemical equation of sodium bicarbonate.

And so you can mine that. It's a little easier and cheaper and there's no ammonia. The whole world would do it if the whole world was sitting on these deposits. Right, right. But we, I mean, I guess it's good it's in the U.S. and not like, say, the Middle East so we don't have another war so we can make our cookies. Our delicious American chocolate chip cookies. That's true. If I get bad news about chocolate chip cookies as a concept, I'm going to take it real hard.

I'm going to, the show's going to shut down for a few weeks. I'll be grieving in the woods, you know, like, forget it. Chocolate chip cookies made up out of ground-up sweatshop orphans and baby seals. Ah, I'm going to the woods. Yeah, and this deposit was discovered in 1938. And, of course, the whole United States, this is a thing. Wyoming is the unceded land of Native peoples. In this case, the Shoshone and the northern Arapaho.

in this case, the Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho. From there, United States companies found a game-changing amount of troma ore near the Green River in what's now Wyoming. It's even different from how I think of stuff like oil, where we think about, oh, we're going to run out of oil. According to the Wyoming State Geological Survey, this one deposit that we've been mining for almost a century still contains over 127 billion tons of mineable ore. And quote, at the current rate of production, Wyoming's reserves should last well over 2000 years. Wow. 2000 years of perfectly fluffy pancakes, which is good because I feel like, you know, there's often stuff about like, oh, these resources are running out. Helium is running out. We're just not going to have

balloons anymore. I guess the more important things that we use helium for were something in the next. I don't know. I don't actually know how much helium is left. I'm not a helium expert. I just know I've heard stuff about like helium's running out. I've been hearing this for like 20 years. Helium's running out. We won't have balloons someday. So I don't know what's going on, but I'm glad to hear that pancakes are sustainable and we won't run out of them. It's for good reasons, but we primarily hear about the resources we're running out of, I feel like.

Yeah. And if these people are right, we are mind-bogglingly stocked up on baking soda. Yeah. We are doing great. Yeah. As a United States, and by extension, the world, we can just export it if places need it, you know? Yeah. So, you know, I think that is good.

We may have a wasteland of a world if we don't play our cards right, but we will still be able to create the most fluffy banana bread. I actually hate banana bread. I don't know why I use that as an example. Yeah, your banana struggles, right? My banana struggles. Yeah. Yeah. I guess in an apocalypse, I would bring myself to eat banana bread.

Well, at least you like baking soda. Right. Eat it straight out of the box with a little spoon. Yeah. And the U.S. used to have Solvay plants. We closed our last one in 1986. Oh, what happened? Because 50 years earlier, we discovered this deposit, and it just changed the economic game.

Oh, okay, I see. I also found stuff vaguely saying that Canada now mostly just imports from this deposit, and it wasn't clear if that's true or not. But our part of North America, we're just digging it up. And if you're a US listener, you have baking soda. It's probably from a motherlode in Wyoming. Now it's a thing, you know. I feel like I have some kind of Dune analogy to make here, but no, it's, I don't. I was going to say something about Dune, like baking soda, control the flow of baking soda. You control the universe when it comes to baking. But it's just funny to me that you have to come to Big Papa America for making your Canadian waffles.

You know, like we have some kind of baking soda for maple syrup exchange. So both both countries can peacefully have our pancakes. Yeah. The baking soda version of Dune should be about one chosen Canadian who is as good at mining as an American. Yeah. Like Americans are the Fremen. And then there's a Canadian Paul Atreides where they're like, wow, look at that guy. Yeah.

Or a gal. Or a gal. And then there's, you know, giant worms, which is like beavers. Anyways, let's not continue this farce. hey folks that's the main episode for this week welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, baking powder is baking soda plus a built-in acid. Takeaway number two, in one of the greatest name coincidences in history, the baking soda brand Armand Hammer almost got taken over by a guy named Armand Hammer. Takeaway number three. In the mid-1800s, one Belgian industrial chemist figured out how to make sodium bicarbonate from seawater

and basically invented the baking purpose of baking soda. And takeaway number four. The United States mines its baking soda from a seemingly endless baking soda deposit in Wyoming. Oh yeah, and a bunch of numbers about chemistry and volcanoes. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org,

members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the two bloodiest stories about baking soda, a real tale of the French Revolution, and a myth about exploding cockroaches. French Revolution, and a myth about exploding cockroaches. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 14 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, plus an extra large bonus show from last week, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus audio. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being people who back this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week

include a couple of reference volumes. There's The Chemistry Book by Derek B. Lowe, the textbook How Baking Works by Paula Fagoni, digital resources from the American Chemical Society and Smithsonian Magazine, also Mining in Wyoming, documented by The Science Channel on cable and on YouTube. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy,

and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode?

Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 135. That is about the topic of duct tape. Duct tape. Fun fact, there is a myth about an American working mom popularizing duct tape by winning over the president. The truth is a lot more industrial. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members, and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that?

Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.