Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Cabbage

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why cabbage 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

Cabbage. Known for being shredded. Famous for being fermented. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why cabbage 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 cabbage? Cabbage. Cabbage. Cabbage. I'll mess with a good cabbage. I'm not going to sit there eating a whole head of cabbage raw on my stoop, but I'll mess with it in recipes. I'll have it incorporated into cooked meals. I think raw, not so much a fan. In a nice spring roll, in a stew, you know, it's really good. I'm more the reverse. I think it's mainly because I'm not that into pickled flavors.

So unfortunately, I'm an awful germ, but I don't like sauerkraut. And I'm not that into kimchi. But like raw, especially crunchy red cabbage and some kind of salad, that's pretty good. Kimchi I actually like, and sauerkraut I don't. And it's weird because I do think they're very similar, but there's a subtle difference. Maybe it's because kimchi often has sort of a spiciness to it that kind of like covers up some of the pickled-y flavors. Yeah, there's that prep difference. Yes.

Different ingredients. But yeah, cabbage, not against it. I think I also found my favorite Cabbage thing when the pandemic started, because the first show we laid down and watched was Avatar The Last Airbender, where they had the amazing joke where a guy is a cabbage salesman and always gets flattened or obliterated by the actions of the characters. Yeah, the magical children's hijinks as they control the earth, water, wind, and sky. They should have made the fifth element, wind, and sky. They should have made the fifth element cabbage, and he turns out to be heroic. Because in Legend of Korra, there's a huge public statue of him. And I think the implication is that as time has passed, his business worked out, which is great. A really funny joke.

Yeah, a cabbage bender. Someone who can control the flow of cabbage. Which would actually give you power over a lot of vegetables as we're about to talk about. Yes. Hey, here we go. One of the most tasty sounding words too, cruciferous, which I love. I love that word. Even just the word cabbage.

Pretty good. Feels nice. Yeah, it's crunchy. We got some crunchy words for you today, folks. And the folks we have to thank for this topic, in particular, thank you, fakely, on the Discord, who really steered this one. But lots of support from Like the Buffalo, Jeff B., Chris, and many others. And tons of numbers this week. On every episode of First Fascinating Thing is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that is in a segment called...

It's a stats world after all. It's a stats world after all. It's a stats world after all. It's a stats world after all. It's a stats, stats world. Oh, you did some stats. Wow. Stats. Wow.

Here I am feeling German again. Great. Yeah. I was down on sauerkraut, but now, oh yeah. Stats. Stats. And that was submitted by ZombieChef on the Discord. We have a new name for this every week.

Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com. But this week's first number is 2021. Wow, recent. That is the year when a new study claimed to have found the origin points of cabbage, which is actually a couple of origin points. A fossilized cabbage skeleton was found. Right, like eating a triceratops or something?

Like, whoa, this is a very different plant. So this is a global team. They sequenced the genomes of more than 400 plant species in the Brassica genus of plants. And then they also cross-referenced that against historical records where there are written mentions of cabbages. And after all that effort, they basically found two answers for the genetic historical origin point of cabbage. And there's two answers because there are a ton of plants that we call cabbage. Many of them descend from

a plant with the scientific name Brassica aliracea. And Brassica aliracea originated on coastlines of the eastern Mediterranean before kind of working its way up temperate Europe. And I've seen like pictures of Brassica. It doesn't look anything like cabbage or any of the other cruciferous vegetables that it is the alleged progenitor of. It looks kind of like a mustard plant. It's like yellowy little flowers. It's kind of like a leafy but long plant. I've seen that it is supposed to be the progenitor of cabbage as well as a number of other vegetables, which is wild to me. Yeah, and that and more is our first mega takeaway of this topic. Ooh, mega takeaway.

Because mega takeaway number one. Across history and to the present day, a humongous range of vegetables have been named cabbage or declared related to cabbage. I mean, I know at least two types of cabbage, the green one and the red one or the purpley red one. And the green one is is the one that doesn't taste like much. And then the red one is the one that tastes of bitterness and lack of hope. And I'm such a bitter flavor fiend. I'm like, good, give me that red cabbage. It's almost like raw onion. Amazing. That's so interesting. So you really like bitter flavors? When I drink wine, I want it to be a red wine that tastes like popsicle sticks.

I want there to be almost no sweetness or joy. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So do you like 100% dark chocolate? Yeah, great. I actually do mess with dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate. It depends on the type of bitter flavor, though. I'm actually a super taster, not to toot my own tongue horn. Whoa. Whoa. Okay. toot my own tongue horn. Um, but yeah. Whoa. Okay. Wow. I got, you know, more taste buds than the average bear. Uh, but yeah, so, so sometimes it's like weird cause you'd think I would hate dark chocolate, but I actually love dark chocolate. Uh, but certain bitter flavors I cannot handle. Uh, I also can't handle the flavor of the, uh, of the food coloring the food coloring red, which has a certain ingredient in it that only some people can taste. And it tastes very bitter to me. So I struggle very much with the purple cabbage.

This is such a feature of every food we'll ever talk about from here. I didn't know this about you. This is cool. Yeah. Yeah. I can taste the bitterness of plants and of life. Yeah. And I called this a mega takeaway because there's just a ton here. Back to that study, they said, okay, Brassica aleracea, that is the progenitor of

what I've often called green cabbage and red cabbage. Yeah. That's from the Eastern Mediterranean. But in order to encompass all of the things we call cabbage and also its relatives, they also looked at the origin of a plant's scientific name, Brassica rapa. And this is the ancestor of stuff like bok choy and what's called chinese cabbage and also many other plants from there but that plant comes from mountains near the afghanistan pakistan border today rapa must be latin because in italian rapa i think means turnip top like the green leafy part of a turnip. Oh, yeah.

And turnips are somewhat related to these plants, too. Yeah. That's so interesting. So there you go. OK, good. Man, you're a super taster and you become familiar with a language very closely tied to Latin, Italian. Buongiorno. So this is great.

You just add like super Italian speaker to the list of skills. I wish it were so. My Italian is molto bene. Like it's just really. But yeah, so we're about to talk about what could be a really astonishing range of vegetables to listeners who are not aware of the Brassica genus of plants, because it turns out many, many plants are descended from it, including cabbage. And then also from there, humans have additionally put the name cabbage on some other unrelated plants.

I think partly just because humans, especially going to new places they hadn't been, are just used to cabbage being related to everything. So they're like, this is also called cabbage, even though it's not genetically similar. It's a world of cabbage out there. It's like how we call tuna the chicken of the sea. Yes, yes. And we call cows the chickens of the fields. And snakes the legless chickens of the dirt.

I do want to call snakes the chicken of the wiggle or something. The chicken of the wiggle. Wiggle chickens. Aw, that makes them cute. I like snakes. Tons of sources here. The book Vegetables, a biography by culture historian Evelyn Bloch-Dano. The book called Cabbage, a Global History by food writer Meg Muckenhaupt. A book called How Carrots Won the Trojan War by science writer Rebecca Rupp.

And a lot of digital stuff, too. But they all say that cabbage is one of the first plants domesticated by humans. Interesting. And we've apparently been farming brassica plants for about 7,000 years. It really is mind-bending to me. I do know a fair bit about evolution in terms of animal evolution and a small amount about plant and fungal evolution. a small amount about plant and fungal evolution but like the thing that is always mind-blowing to me is artificial selection uh by humans because the the weirdness that we can cultivate in plants and animals through our uh very very particular needs is so wild. Like it is, I guess it's hard to think of this with plants because like, it's hard to think of a domesticated plant as being like deformed. But like when you

compare what we've done to it with like the original version, it's like, and then you look at like what part matches with the original part. Like this was a leaf bud, or this is like the stem, or this is like the flowering part of it. And then seeing what we've done with part, like this was a leaf bud, or this is like the stem, or this is like the flowering part of it. And then seeing what we've done with it, like seeing a cauliflower versus what, you know, that part is in the original brassica plants. Like, how do we do that? Like, I mean, yes, it's taken thousands of years, but man, we've created like this delicious monster. Especially because that brassica ala racia, that original sort of wild mustard, is useful. The greens are edible and the seeds are for oils and stuff. That was

plenty on its own. Through just farm breeding and raising of Brassica ala racia, farmers have generated cabbage. As we think of a green or red cabbage, they've also generated kale, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts, to name a few crops. And they just did it by selecting for different traits of this one plant. Could you describe a kohlrabi for those of us who are are vegetable-y ignorant? The other names for it are German turnip or turnip cabbage. And when I look at it, it sort of looks like a big white turnip. But I actually don't know if I've ever eaten it. I just know it's cruciferous and a friend to these vegetables. Many of them have a leafy green on top, and kohlrabi does have that. What about bok choy? Because bok choy to me has a very similar flavor and is similar.

Or is it related, but like a different sort of family of vegetables? Or did it also come from brassica? Yeah, it comes from brassica, but not from brassica ala racia. Okay, so a different Brassica. This is a lot of scientific names. Two-step, fun, Latin. But this Brassica rapa gave us a lot of other vegetables, in particular bok choy, often called Chinese cabbage or Napa cabbage. Those plants have also been bred and managed into other things.

And then there's a set of hybridization where people have combined cabbage and turnips and black mustard into various different kinds of plants. Rutabagas are a combination of cabbage and turnips. And then broccolini is a combination of broccoli and then a brassica rapa based cabbage called chylon. So we just won't cover all the many brassica plants. But cabbage is a core member of this weirdly giant family of leafy and green and cruciferous stuff. I mean, if you've seen like what we've done with dog breeds versus the original wolves that we can look up where it actually points to basically the parts of the original brassica plant and then matches it up to the modern domesticated version of it because we're targeting the things that are tasty and edible. And yeah, it's really interesting.

Exactly. Yeah. Selecting for bigger leaves gave us kale, selecting for bigger leaf buds where it bunches gives us heads of cabbage eventually. I also, going into this, I thought I would find out all kinds of amazing differences between green cabbage and red cabbage. It's actually not that much difference. It turns out that red cabbage looks purplish, so confusing, but its genes express pigments called anthocyanins. And that's pretty much where that coloration difference comes from. It's a pigment thing. You find those same pigments in the purple or other very dark colors of carrots. It's a pretty common plant's pigment. And so that's a lot of where we get what, especially to a U.S. listener, might feel like the difference between the two kinds of cabbages. Even though, as we're saying, there's like a bajillion brassicas that are all its friends.

There's also like purple cauliflower, right? Like naturally purple. Not like they don't diet or anything. I think it's like they just selected for that. Yeah. Humans are just kind of fooling around with it's like they just selected for that. Yeah, humans are just kind of fooling around with all these species and doing stuff like that. And have been for a long time and then have also done it in some cases relatively recently. An amazing number here is

the year 1481. 1481. That is the apparently first written record of Brussels sprouts. And it also recorded them being served at a royal wedding feast in Brussels. So I like that it's legit. It's from Brussels. It's from Brussels. So is it sort of like a champagne situation where you can't really call Brussels sprouts Brussels sprouts? campaign situation where you can't really call Brussels sprouts Brussels sprouts unless they're from Brussels you have to be like it's a um clustered green sprout Prosecco sprout they they generated these by selecting for bigger lateral buds on the plants like more lateral buds and then you get Brussels sprouts. And so even a few centuries ago, they've been doing this. Yeah, beefing up the lats. I know a thing or two about

selecting for the lats. Hey, turbo muscles, what's up? Yeah, and if you look at the past, you can see people applying the name to the new varieties before we come up with new names. For one thing, the genus name Brassica derives from Greek. It comes from the Greek word prosica, and that just means vegetable. Like the genus name is just, oh, you know, vegetables, because so many vegetables ultimately came out of this. There's also situations where people got a new brassica plant and put cabbage on it before they put a new name for it. Apparently when cauliflower came to late 1400s Europe, people usually called it Syrian cabbage or Cypriot cabbage. And then later thought of, let's give it a new name. We're eating a lot of this. We don't need to just call it another cabbage.

I get it. It's the power of branding. You've got a known brand, which is cabbage. Everyone's crazy for cabbage. Everyone's got their cabbage merch. And so you want to go with the flow and keep that brand identity strong with new cabbage. Yeah. It's like calling it a Knives Out mystery instead of just giving the movie a new name. Sure. Yeah.

it a Knives Out mystery instead of just giving the movie a new name. Sure. Yeah. Like the early humans have been doing cinematic universes for a long, long before cinema, just with vegetables. Like a caveman's body starts catching on fire. They're like, I don't like fire phase two. I'm not into it.

I liked phase one where it was just in front of me. I'm not burning. phase two. I'm not into it. I liked phase one where it was just in front of me. I'm not burning. There's also, there's a type of kale that's found on islands in the English Channel, such as the island of Jersey, where the kale is on huge stalks that can be 12, 13, 14, 15 feet tall. And the scientific name is Brassica alaresia longata, but it usually gets named Jersey cabbage or tree cabbage because it's another thing where people said everything's from cabbage. So call it that. We've got like such a sharp divergence from this long, fancy Latin name to like, it's Jersey cabbage, you know. And yeah, and then there's just separately other plants that we named cabbage. There is something called swamp cabbage.

Yes. It's not related to these. I want to mess with swamp cabbage. That sounds great. Is this edible? I want it. It is apparently the state tree. What?

Huh? The state tree of tree. What? Huh? The state tree of Florida. What? And resembles a small palm tree and thrives in the Everglades. This doesn't sound related to cabbage or edible, and I'm less thrilled about it. Yeah, it's just Americans being like, I don't know, when I see a new plant, there's a lot of cabbages. It's probably a cabbage, or I should just call it that. So we just called it, is it like a small tree, or is it a big, full-grown tree that we just called a swamp cabbage? Like a small, scrubby palm tree.

Okay. If that makes sense. So maybe it's like, it could be a cabbage for Shrek. Like Shrek could uproot this shrub and eat it like a cabbage. I can see it. Get out of my swamp cabbage. That's my Shrek. It's a I've been working on it for like

30 years. A super Shrek-er. Wow. Wow. On the show. Another weird one is skunk cabbage. Again, not related, but it's a flowering wetland plant in the northeastern U.S. and into Canada. It's known for its bad odor. And then another weird one is Macquarie Island cabbage. That does sound weird, but I want... Alex, can I eat the skunk cabbage?

The skunk cabbage? I don't know if it's poisonous or anything. I just didn't find anyone eating it. It's just real stinky. Well, that sounds like a challenge. All right. So what's this other weird cabbage? And also, can I eat the other weird cabbage? And the other other one got its name because people ate it. What happened is Macquarie Island is a sub Antarctic island. It's in the far south of the world near Antarctica. And 1700s European sailors, it turns out they ate a lot of cabbage to prevent scurvy, at least on some ships, and it contains vitamin C. It works for that. And so some sailors found this flowering leafy plants when they were on Macquarie Island. They ate it to try to get

some vitamins and it worked. And so they also named it cabbage. Oh, okay. Basically based on European maritime uses of brassica. I see. So just anything that a sailor would eat for vitamins, I see. So just anything that a sailor would eat for vitamins, he'd call it cabbage. Yeah, limes, you know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sour cabbage, or like when they resort to cannibalism, calling it Jimmy cabbage. You know, just anything is cabbage. It's in my mouth now, well, that's cabbage. The crew is going to cabbage me. I know it. I know it. Very paranoid captain character working on. And so, yeah, cabbage. That's a mega takeaway, right? Like we could make an entire

podcast weekly about various vegetables that are somehow cabbages, either biologically or culturally name wise. It's incredible. Cruciferous cast. It sounds pretty good, yeah. Sounds good, yeah. But then the rest of the episode's mostly about a few Brassica aliracea and Brassica rapa that are perceived as cabbages. They're not just this interesting relationship. All right, Alex, let's perceive these cabbages. All right, Alex, let's perceive these cabbages.

I love making this podcast because statements like that are the thing we do. It's great. And the next one here, this is about like green cabbage to me in the U.S. The number is 62.71 kilograms. That's a lot. Which is over 138 pounds. That's a lot. Which is over 138 pounds. That's a lot. That's a lot of what I assume might be cabbage mass.

Yeah, it's the world's heaviest cabbage ever recorded. Wow. World record. That's as big as me. That's a cabbage as big as me, Mr. Scrooge. It won't as big as me. You want merooge. They want it as big as me. You want me to get that cabbage? Remember that part in the Christmas Carol?

He gets the cabbage as big as himself. Yeah, Tiny Tim is so much smaller. Wow. He's like, this is like three Tims, right? I don't know how big he is in real life. No, Alex, you don't know your Christmas Carol? This is the boy, the random boy that Scrooge yells at to go get a goose. right i don't know how big he is in real life no alex you don't know your christmas carol this is the boy the random boy that scrooge yells at to go get a goose for the cratchits it's not tiny tim popular misconception no this is a random non-tiny tim boy that scrooge calls upon and pays like a

whole guinea to find the christmas goose that is big as the boy, I think either his head or the boy's whole body. And he brings the goose to the Cratchits who eats it and it cures Tiny Tim's rickets. I'm not exactly sure what Tiny Tim has. Anyways, cabbage. Yeah, this heaviest cabbage, it speaks to a wonderful cabbage tradition in the world. Because takeaway number two. The U.S. state of Alaska grows annual super cabbages in the summer.

Wow, that almost feels threatening. Like Alaska is just on some kind of super cabbage mission here. So it's just like a contest for who can grow the biggest cabbage? There is an actual contest at the Alaska State Fair every year. I wouldn't think Alaska would be like the best environment to grow cabbage. Like why is it in Alaska? cabbage? Like, why is it in Alaska? It's a weird combination. It's land in an area, especially called the Matanuska Valley. That's just good soil. But the really helpful things are American 1900s farmers, especially starting in the 1930s, saying like, how do we just engineer the biggest crops? And then the biggest key thing is sunlight. The magic of the midnight sun in Alaska means that these plants can just photosynthesize for, on some days, more than 20

hours per day. Yeah, it's that northern hemisphere weirdness where you have really, really long days and then really, really short days. Yeah, so the long days in the summer, the cabbages just do their thing all day and become humongous. Cabbage is a hardy plant and thrives in cooler temperatures where some other crops don't. And so this like mild, eternal all day summer, plus the super specific Alaska soil and super specific United States, let's maximize everything in the atomic age mentality. It all it all made this perfect recipe for the world's biggest cabbages. And it's so weird. Alaska is just a cold Texas. I think that this is something that maybe Europeans don't understand. Alaska just a cold Texas. I think that this is something that maybe Europeans don't understand. Alaska is a cold Texas. It's the same state, essentially.

Kind of, yeah. And Texas is missing out on this. Like, in particular, in the 1930s, a New Deal program from the U.S. government encouraged farmers, some of them Texans, to move to the Matanuska Valley in Alaska. They've been developing constant sunlight, huge vegetables ever since. And in 2012, farmer Scott Robb of Palmer, Alaska, grew this world record cabbage, more than 62 kilograms, over 138 pounds in weight. How big was it in size? Like, was it just like a super dense neutron star cabbage or was it like the size of like a boulder? Let's ask State Fair Cabbage Judge Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan, is that a moon? Do you think

that's a moon? That's no moon. It's a cabbage, actually. It's a cabbage. Yeah, it is huge. We'll have a picture length of a group of people standing around the one cabbage celebrating its world record. And this farmer is apparently particularly skilled, like his record stood for more than a decade. And according to Steve Brown, an agricultural agent at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, these are kind of the main crop Alaskan farmers do it with, but they also grow huge broccolis and other cruciferous cold weather stuff. He also claims that the extra sunlight generates sweeter flavored cabbage than other varieties of cabbage in the world. So it even sounds tastier and more delicious. Yeah, that was going to be my next question is like, do they actually use these giant vegetables as food? Is it more of a kind of gimmicky traditional thing?

Because I assume they grow like actual crops that they sell. But like for the huge ones, are they eating the big ones or are they just sort of celebrating the big ones? It seems like they're doing both. Yeah. It is at least plausibly usable as a food. It's not just some kind of freaky thing where it's no longer for people. They shred it and put it in the world's largest taco.

That would be some true northern Texas stuff. The world's largest taco. Wow. And folks, now that we've revealed Alaska's secrets, I think we can take a quick break. And when we return, we'll explore the heroic role of cabbage in feeding the world. Good job, cabbage. Just one really big cabbage could feed the world. A planet-sized cabbage. We could use a moon made of food, right? I was told the regular one's made of cheese. I want an actual one made of cabbage. That'd be great.

Much healthier moon. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience.

One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And folks, we are back with many more numbers. The next number takes us way back. It's the year 323 B.C. Before cabbage. So this is the approximate death date of the Greek philosopher

Diogenes. He lived in the 300s B.C. is the point. My boy Diogenes. Are you legitimately excited about him or no? I didn't know much about him going in. Yeah, I'm excited about him. I kind of forgot who he is or what he did, but his name, I always thought sounded cool. That's how I feel about a lot of those guys, actually, until I look it up.

Yeah. And Diogenes, he basically spent his life, in my opinion, bothering people. This is why I like him. Because that's what I spend my life doing. So Diogenes, he founded the philosophical school of cynicism. And he was famous for, I feel, combative stuntsts his most famous one was he would wander the streets of greek cities and towns carrying a lantern like looking around with a lantern and people would ask him what he was doing he said i'm searching for an honest man and sort of the

premise is he struggled to find an honest man in the world. Oh, what a ding dong. So he was like the world's first debate bro making YouTube videos where he's like trying to he's he's like the early version of the guys who like have a camera and then they like go up to a random person and they're like, what do you think about this issue? And then the person's like, uh, they're like, ha, see, you're so dumb. Right. And they're like, clearly just getting fro-yo. They were just out for the day. Right. But Diogenes, the other story we have about him here is a cabbage story. Because in Rebecca Rupp's book, she covers an argument between Diogenes and a friend of his. Diogenes'

friend was rich and successful and was known for flattering rich people and benefiting from that is apparently his deal. This may be an unfair take on the friend, but that was what we're told about him. And so they had an exchange. Diogenes told his friend, quote, if you lived on cabbage, told his friend, quote, if you lived on cabbage, you would not be obliged to flatter the powerful. Right. Right? Like if you lived on cabbage. And then Diogenes' friend replied, if you flattered the powerful, you would not be obliged to live on cabbage.

Yeah. Sick burn. Really. All around. Really roasted Diogenes. Yeah, I think his friend kind of got him. Yeah, I'm into it. Yeah, got him. Nailed him. Yeah. No, I mean, I get it, though.

You get punished with cabbage if you, like, we have to be nice to our sponsors on this show. Otherwise, we're going to have to start eating buckets of cabbage. It's in our contract. I love me undies and not having to eat a whole head of cabbage in punishment. But so was the idea that cabbage was like a poor man's food. Yeah. And we have a bunch of stuff here about basically why that's been a pretty consistent take across cultures and societies and time.

And this Diogenes story is my favorite example of it coming up, especially because Diogenes gets burned. But there's kind of a consistent through line across a lot of cultures and societies where people say cabbage is for poor people, even though it is simply a hardy and healthy vegetable that grows a lot of places. I mean, it is like I do get it, though. If I had to live on cabbage alone, I would probably go around with a lantern going like, don't see any good people over here. Nope, none over here either, because all I get is freaking cabbage. Oh, is that some stew with meat in it?

Sure would love that. But I don't see any good people over here giving me stew. All I get is this crappy cabbage. Oh, is that some stew with meat in it? Sure would love that, but I don't see any good people over here giving me stew. All I get is this crappy cabbage. So now I get it. Like, I actually used to do that because burgers hadn't been invented yet, and candy bars and stuff, just like fun treats. So there's a lot of reasons that cabbage has been variously perceived as being for the poor one is that it's hearty grows well in cool weather grows without much space or land like it's just a common crop for a lot of situations where you can't have something i guess fancier or more difficult to grow. It's like the potato of non-potato vegetables. Extremely, yeah.

There's a thing in Meg Muckenhop's book where they surveyed working class people in Massachusetts in the United States in the late 1800s. And most of those people said they did not really eat vegetables often or ever besides cabbage and potatoes. Like they were just eating those two vegetables. And if folks have heard the potatoes episode, we talk about them being so packed with nutrition, they became the only food in a lot of situations. And cabbage contains two kinds of fiber, calcium, potassium, folate, carotenoids, lutein, vitamin C. When you ferment it, it can increase the vitamin B content. It can't cover all of your nutritional needs, but cabbage is the other potato, truly. It's a low-to-the-ground vegetable that everybody's just depended on for a long time.

It's still like that sounds pretty good to me. I think if I had to eat it every day, I would start to get sick of it and start sharpening my pitchfork for a revolution for sure, though. Yeah, and that's kind of the trick is it's generally been affordable, in particular in some medieval societies in Europe. Apparently, lords would tax croplands more than they taxed vegetable gardens. So it was even like a tax dodge to focus on garden plants like cabbage that you could put a lot of in a small space. But the thing is, this affordable and vitamin-packed vegetable, to some people it can be particularly pungent and unpleasant. And so that's sort of where we also get this trope that people perceived it as, they're stuck eating that vegetable that's gross to me, a person who particularly can't stand the mustard oils and compounds called isothiocyanates, stand the mustard oils and compounds called isothiocyanates that can create a ammonia or sulfur or skunk smell to some people. Yeah, raw cabbage to me has that smell.

That's interesting. Maybe that's why I don't like raw cabbage. Like once it's cooked, I feel like it that becomes milder and I don't taste it as much. But for raw cabbage, it's a little bit, yeah, skunky is kind of the word for it. Yeah, and I get it more from the cooked kind, oddly. Whoa. Heating can release more of that, but also it's just there. And I know I mentioned ammonia and sulfur. None of this is harmful. It's just part of what's in the cabbage.

And also those compounds help cabbage not get eaten by pests. It helps make it a hardy crop that you can successfully harvest any of before like bugs get into it most of the time. Right. There's a lot of plant defense mechanisms against herbivores that humans, it's not deadly, against herbivores that humans it's not deadly and actually can be quite delicious like for spicy vegetables like uh spicy peppers uh it's also what coffee coffee beans that the caffeine is actually a meant to be an insect deterrent but for humans it gets us buzzed and now we have mugs that say like uh don't talk to me until i've had my insect death bean we i feel like we could actually sell that mug that'd be great we'll do a coffee episode and then yeah put together let us know let us know in the discord if you want the don't talk

to me until i've had my insect death bean uh and you know maybe we'll make it happen no promises but maybe yeah and another reason many societies have called cabbage sort of a poorer person's food is that a lot of big like labor forces and armies and groups of working people across history have been fed cabbage in various situations. My favorite one is a combination of those involving the Great Wall of China. Hmm. Because it turns out, another number here, the 600s BC, that is apparently when laborers constructing the Great Wall of China began eating a fermented cabbage meal made of cabbage and rice pickled in wine. Hmm. That sounds pretty good.

I mean, again, like if you're having this every day, no, it wouldn't be good. It would stop being good. But like I would like definitely try that. And you can pretty much try it today. Chinese culture has one of the longest running traditions of fermenting either brassica rapa or pickling brassica mustard greens. This food is usually called swan sai. It's a very common side dish or big vegetable in Chinese eating. Then there's also a little bit of irony there because fermented cabbage fueled the building of the Great Wall and also fueled successful Mongolian invasions that passed through it or were not stopped by it.

The cabbage cuts both ways. Yeah. It's a double edged, completely round food. Yeah. Mutually insured dietary fibers. mutually insured dietary fibers. Yeah, the armies of Genghis Khan carried

cabbage simply fermented in brine as a portable and lasting food on campaigns. That's so Genghis. Just brining up those cabbages. And brining cabbage, there's a hotly debated

claim about whether German sauerkraut, which is brining cabbage, there's a hotly debated claim about whether German sauerkraut, which is brined cabbage, whether that originated from trade with the East. There's some people claiming that it was brought by Chinese or Mongolian traders through Russia, but there's other people claiming that people in Europe simply figured out you can put cabbage in salty water and weren't, depending on that. So that's a vague possible connection there. Well, if Germany and Genghis both were brine and cabbage, I mean, is there something about brining cabbage that makes you want to take over other countries? Yeah, big German move. I can verify it. Then also there's a fuzzy start date partially for traditions of making kimchi in Korea, because that is a spicy fermented cabbage. It's unclear exactly when people started making it, but there's hundreds of recorded versions. We do know that the ingredient of hot peppers depended on the Colombian exchange.

The hot peppers came from the Americas. And so that's the origin point of that flavor element of kimchi. For me, that's really critical. Somehow the spiciness, because I'm actually also somewhat sensitive to like, like I like pickled cucumbers because I think I grew up eating them. So I'm used to it. But a lot of other pickled vegetables, it's like too strong of a flavor but the spiciness like helps uh kind of I guess overwhelm that that sort of sour flavor so oh there you go yay for Colombian exchange

boo for Columbus that guy's but the Colombian exchange definitely there's some great cuisine But the Colombian exchange, definitely, there's some great cuisine. Yeah, this is the perfect month to bring it up, too. That guy stinks. Yeah, boo. But yay kimchi. And there's actually, there's more numbers here about cabbage feeding the world. Because cabbage also did exchange to the Americas.

And one number here is the 1840s. Because the 1840s is approximately when the name coleslaw entered U.S. vernacular. Oh, interesting. Because coleslaw is cabbage mixed with either salad dressing or mayonnaise. Ugh. Probably not a Katie food. We've had a whole episode, I think, on mayonnaise where I've gone over where mayonnaise is essentially food lotion and I hate it. Yeah, we've confirmed this. And so I knew I knew this was not for you.

But it was for the Dutch who did invading and colonizing in North America. Gosh, darn it. If there wasn't another reason to get mad at colonizers, they're also spreading mayonnaise around. also spreading mayonnaise around. Yeah, the Dutch word koolsla, Dutch word koolsla means cabbage salad. Gross. Basically in Dutch and English, New York State, that invasion and colony that morphed koolsla into coldsla and eventually koolsla. So that's where we get that cabbage food name. All right. So now I know the get that cabbage food name. All right. So now I know the origins of the food that I hate. And then another number here is 1861. Because 1861 is when Abraham Lincoln got inaugurated as president of the United States.

And his vice president was Mr. Cabbage. And it was just a giant cabbage. He sort of inaugurated cabbage because for his inaugural dinner, he personally selected corned beef and cabbage. He said, that's what I want. He's the everyman. Yeah. And because of this cabbage trope, people saw it as a man of the people move.

Like, that's cool. Yeah, it's regular stuff. It's like that he's like, it's the John Fetterman wearing a hoodie, except that it's a cabbage and corned beef. That, yeah, it's really that. And because yeah, Lincoln was seen as not resembling other politicians. It also is a distinctively U.S. choice, because according to a few sources, including Smithsonian Magazine, corned beef and cabbage is not really an Irish dish so much. It's more of an American move. And it's mainly because Irish farming didn't really center cattle until invasions by British people, especially in the 1600s, who then brought a lot of cattle to just make more beef available in the empire. The more common Irish food was bacon and cabbage.

Okay, but hang on. How come on St. Patrick's Day, my mom would make us eat corned beef and cabbage then. Yes, because we're American. Yep. And it's great. You know, enjoy it. But yeah, it turns out that the beef is a little bit of a British addition. So boo the British. And also Americans are way into that. The Irish is more of a bacon and cabbage thing.

But everybody likes cabbage. That's the most Irish part. I just like how we're booing the British. Boo! a bacon and cabbage thing, but everybody likes cabbage. That's the most Irish part. I just like how we're booing the British. Boo! I know it's in the context of, you know, the problems that the British caused with Irish, but it is, to me, fun to just occasionally boo the British. I also like that last week we had two just absolutely delightful guests who are British. And I think even with them, we were booing the British. It's just a fun move to do. Fun times all around. British will be the first to boo.

I think so. Well, and for this main show, we have one final takeaway that is also about cabbage food culture. We love eating it worldwide. And takeaway number three. A Russian recipe for cabbage soup helped ease Cold War space race tensions. Oh, man, were they eating soup in space together? Oh, if only. The least space-worthy food, soup. Or I guess most if you drink it.

I don't know. We'll see. I feel like borscht would be the least, because that beet juice would get everywhere. Oh. It would look like a murder scene in space. Yeah. And you think your fellow astronaut is bleeding or something? You're confused?

Oh, man. Tough. Borscht is the one with beets in it, right? Or is that... It is. Yeah, okay, good. And it's actually the other food that helped here. Borscht made a beetroot.

Oh, okay. Yeah. This is a really fun early space race story that I had never known until researching Cabbage. It might be my new favorite one. So it's the Cold War. We're both trying to get to space. We're having a lot of sort of like little, little, little nuclear disagreements. It's a little tense, you know.

So how does Cabbage save the day? Yeah, perfect question. This is it's March of 1961. And this is on the immediate eve of the first human going to space, Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut. And this is also that really early step of especially Russian space launches where Americans thought every one of them was a missile, you know, and thought, oh, like the first Sputnik, that's probably a bomb was the fear, you know. And so there was a lot of tension going on. Yeah, we got close to just kind of turning the planet into a crater a few times, more times than is fun to think about. But we didn't. Hooray. We didn't. We just kept eating our cabbage. Feels good. And so this launch, March 25th,

1961, it's a mission in the Vostok program called Korobel Sputnik 5. And it was the last Soviet launch before April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin goes to space. They did two test flights before that, including this Karabal Sputnik V, where it's basically the same spaceship, but with a mannequin in it. And they even named the mannequin Ivan Ivanovich was the mannequin on board Karabal Sputnik V. I mean, that's, they're, that feels self-aware. Yeah, it feels like a, it's like the laziest stereotype of Russians, but it's by the Russians. So that's fine. It's fine.

Right, it'd be like naming an American mannequin John Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. American mannequin, John Johnson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And these test missions by the Soviets were extremely high tension for the Americans. They thought it was going to be a bomb or some kind of spy thing. There were also immediate at the time conspiracy theories that Ivan Ivanovich was not a mannequin. It was a failed launch of a live human. And like, oh, the Soviets probably

killed a bunch of guys before Yuri Gagarin succeeded, you know. But we have lots of evidence that it was just mannequins. One is that we still have the Ivan Ivanovich mannequin. It's been in museums to this day. But my favorite sign that nobody was on the ship is the radio transmissions to the spacecraft. Because, you know, you don't need to talk to a mannequin. And Meg Muckenhop's book says that between not needing to talk to the mannequin and wanting to make the Americans less nervous, the Soviets did very funny nonsense broadcasts to the spaceship. And quote, to reassure any Western eavesdroppers that there wasn't a secret spy mission going on, the ship's communications consisted of a tape loop

repeating songs sung by a choir and instructions for making Russian cabbage soup. And then apparently they also threw in recipes for Borscht made a beetroot. But most of it was songs and cabbage soup recipes that was it can you imagine being a kid in the 60s on your ham radio accidentally picking up on this uh signal and it's like the russians are teaching me how to make cabbage soup right i guess uh like, did the CIA learn how to make some good cabbage soup then? What's that smell from the kitchen?

The Soviets must be testing human spaceflight. Yeah, so I love knowing this. The last mission before we launched a human to space as a world was a launch of a mannequin hearing cabbage soup recipes and it's good to me a single tear rolling down the mannequin's cheek as it misses earth and its home and its beautiful mannequin wife Ivanka? Yeah, yeah. Ivanka Ivankovich. Yeah, and oddly, cabbage might loom large in our future in space.

There's recent experiments on the International Space Station. I said cabbage might loom large is a sentence that I can only hear here. Or Alaska, but yes. Yeah, they've successfully grown cabbage on the International Space Station. Space cabbage. Yeah. And and one crew member has been an astronaut from South Korea and they successfully sent them up with a packed and formatted space version of kimchi so they i mean yeah okay i like kimchi but it it is it has a very powerful smell so like i'm just wondering how that works in an enclosed space on the space station because like i like the smell it's just like how do you how do you package that and then like not have the space station just smell like kimchi 24 7 but maybe that's what you want because like space has a specific smell i think space doesn't space have like a weird smell like maybe the

kimchi actually helps that's the thing apparently space smells kind of oily and machiny from what i read and it might partly be the ships they're, but this story about the kimchi says that they were self-conscious about the kimchi spell and formulated it to be less pungent than usual kimchi. I see. I see. But I think you would just prefer that. I feel like I'd prefer the kimchi smell to the vast void of space smell. of space smell. Yeah, and we're growing cabbage in space because on long distance, deep space missions for years, we might want to grow crops on the ships. Yeah.

And so we might make cabbage or even kimchi as we travel to other planets. Could be a thing. Can you imagine Korean barbecue in space? That would be transcendent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just little banchan's going on, floating around you. Floating in space.

Yeah. Like the potato chips around Homer. You're just eating them. Oh, good. 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. Mega takeaway number one across history and to the present day, a humongous range of vegetables have been named cabbage or declared related to cabbage. Takeaway number two, the U.S. state of Alaska grows annual super cabbages each summer.

Takeaway number three, a Russian recipe for cabbage soup helped ease Cold War space race tensions. Plus a ton more numbers and stats and years about cabbage consumption, cabbage's global spread, the concept of cabbage as a poorer person's food, and the Great Wall of China. 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 two prized and sought-after examples of cabbage art. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show,

for a library of more than 13 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs 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 whole dang library of books about cabbage and vegetables and why they're amazing, such as the book Vegetables, a Biography by culture historian Evelyn Block-Dano, that's also translated from French into English by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Also use the book Cabbage,

a Global History by food writer Meg Muckenhaupt, the book How Carrots Won the Trojan War by science writer Rebecca Rupp. Those and other sources are linked on this episode's page at sifpod.fun. That 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, Skadagoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. I want to acknowledge that in my location, taped this in the country of Italy, 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 68. That's about the topic of keyboards, as in computer keyboards. Fun fact there, technologists and engineers almost developed a world of primarily spherical computer keyboards. Sphere keyboard, I know. So I'll 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 bybroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode and engineering advice as well. 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 that talk to you then maximum fun a worker-owned network of artists Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.