Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Microwave Ovens
Episode Date: August 24, 2020Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Joey Clift (Netflix, Cartoon Network) and comedian/podcaster Eli Yudin (‘What A Time To Be Alive’) for a look at why microwave ovens are secretly incredibly... fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, folks, a quick programming note before we start. It's a quick thank you, and it's good news.
On last week's episode, I talked about having a clean rating for the feed. The public feed lets
anybody listen to it at all with a few cuss words bleeped out. And thanks to your wise advice,
we can keep that going, and we can add a whole new benefit for donors who support this show on
Patreon. Stuff stays the same, and there's one exciting new thing.
Because this main feed that has the main episodes is going to stay exactly the same, and starting
today, donors will get another download of the show with all the words left in, no bleeps,
in their bonus feed.
It's an extra thing I can give people for donating.
I'm really excited about it, and I think it meets anybody's needs for exactly how they
want the content to work.
And if you're not a donor yet, and that sounds like an exciting option for you, visit sifpod.fun.
You can get that, and you can back this entire podcast operation.
And hey, enjoy the show.
Microwave ovens, known for humming sound.
Famous for humming sound. Nobody thinks much about them,
so let's have some fun. Let's find out why microwave ovens are 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.
Two amazing guests join me this week.
Joey Clift is a comedian, television writer, and award-winning short filmmaker.
He's also the creator of The Meme of the Summer, Antifa Garfield.
That's right, Antifa Garfield.
And I recommend his Twitter account in particular for that last one.
Joey's account is at Joeytainment, if you want to see, again, The Meme of the Summer.
And then Eli Yudin is a fantastic stand-up comedian and is one of the co-hosts of an amazing podcast called
What a Time to Be Alive. And please support WOTBA, as I call it by its acronym, on Patreon. And just
please check them out in general. It's one of my favorite weekly audio things. Again, that title is
What a Time to Be Alive. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca
to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and
Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Joey recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino, Ortonva,
and Chumash peoples. A, acknowledge Eli recorded this on the traditional
land of the Lenape and Canarsie peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations,
native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode.
And today's episode is about microwave ovens, a medium-sized appliance and misunderstood marvel
that we had a lot of fun talking about. So please sit back or stand directly in front of your microwave, watching the sensual,
languorous rotation of the turntable thingy.
And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Joey Clift and
Eli Yudin.
I'll be back after we wrap up.
Talk to you then
Joey Clift, Eli Uden thank you so much for being on the show
and doing it, this is great
oh no problem, it's a pleasure
thank you for having me
yeah same, this is super fun
just immediately before we
started recording we were talking about uh whether it's okay to wave at each other at the end of
zoom calls and that was a delightful conversation so yeah i'm excited excited to hang out with you
guys a delightful conversation that the the listeners will never hear it's locked away in
the vault yeah vaulted away yeah and we're not gonna super secret patreon we're not
gonna talk about where we landed on if it's okay to wave at the end of zoom calls that's just that's
uh into the ether i've been doing the classic mime exit where i would pretend that i'm on a
flight of stairs or an escalator uh and i just descend out of my zoom uh window and then
disconnect and then never speak to any of those people again i just
completely cut off contact i do a lot of uh i'll like fly off frame like superman like i'll put my
i'll put my hands up in the air and then just fall out of my chair which uh hurts a little bit every
time because i'm in my 30s but like uh you know it's it's i'll do it for the bit it's worth it
yeah a complicated system of pulleys in your room to lift you out of frame.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's great.
Right.
A regional production of Peter Pan sold the stuff.
And now you are putting it to use.
Yeah, look, they're not using it.
Theater lives on.
Topic today is the microwave oven.
And every episode starts with me asking the guests, hey, what's your relationship to or opinion of the topic of the microwave oven?
What's it been in your life?
Close friend.
Especially in New York, I think it's a pillar of all of our diets here.
Not a lot of us making a lot of confections in a traditional oven.
So near and dear to my heart, I would say the microwave oven.
Yeah, it's always there.
I'm conditioned to listen for its ding.
And that tells me that it's time for my slop.
And I eat my little dish and then I go to bed.
And that's my life.
So, you know, I do love the microwave oven.
I feel like I've had an interesting relationship with microwave ovens throughout my life.
I'm somebody that i've got no
cooking ability so most of my meals when i was like in my 20s were definitely like made via the
microwave oven now i live in the uh the troop gala palace that is los angeles so i've got a regular
oven so i you know even if i make a microwave dinner i tend to like you know really class up
the joint and put it in an actual oven which is is, you know, I think worth the wait. But there are two interesting things with me in
microwave ovens. I was a really picky eater when I was younger. But one meal that I really loved
was microwaving tuna fish out of the can, which smells awful. Yeah, it's hot tuna. Yeah, hot tuna.
Yeah, heated tuna is what I would call it,
which even saying that as an adult,
I'm like, oh, that sounds gross.
What was my problem?
Tuna fish's odor is not great from the start,
from the jump,
and then to heat it up does not improve it.
But yeah, add microwave.
And it really just made it dry,
which like, it didn't add taste to it.
It just dried it out, which like if, it didn't add taste to it. It just dried it out.
Which, like, if you want a good warm, dry tuna, boy, can I not recommend microwaving a can of tuna enough.
Just the diet of a cat that's been a good girl.
Like, hot, dry tuna.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
I think that's what I realized is like oh i'm
basically was just a cat when i was like 10 years old um but uh then other than that like just being
in the los angeles alt comedy scene um there's like a comedy bit that i've always wanted to do
kind of like with that would have involved a microwave that's been my, like, Moby Dick white whale.
And for the longest time, it was, like, for context,
L.A. comedy can get kind of crazy, especially if you're doing shows after midnight.
Like, I've seen people drink their own pee on stage for comedy bits where the framing device is just, like,
Frazier from Frazier drinks his own pee or whatever.
So with that in mind, I've always thought it'd be funny to do a bit where you
just like put a microwave on stage and put a bunch of metal in it and turn it on and uh and
like i did a lot of research it wouldn't explode it would just spark up a little bit and the framing
device that i figured out for that was just like it was like mr magoo can't tell the difference
between his dishwasher and his microwave or something like that yeah
which is an extremely expensive bit if anything yeah yeah it would have cost me 20 at a thrift
store yeah and i kept on pitching it to comedy theaters and the response that i always got was
no you maniac so you know why don't you drink pee like the rest of us yeah why don't you do
some of that good normal what if fraser crane drank
his own pee bits so you know i haven't done that bit yet but uh you know someday yeah you gotta
kind of hope it's not like the greatest bit you've ever done because then you do have to
start purchasing a lot of microwaves very quickly yeah it's gonna add up i just go to the thrift
store there's nobody by name because I'm always the guy
that comes in and buys 40 microwaves
yeah here comes Mr.
Wave he needs his guy he needs his
stuff that's my worry would be
that the bit gets so popular that it becomes
my thing and it's just like I get
a Comedy Central special that's just like
Joey and his wacky microwave
yeah the
microwave is central in your Netflix cover art it's like really people
like what is this why although i do kind of like a bit that's like i'm gallagher but instead of
smashing things with a sledgehammer i just microwave it yeah tech gallagher high tech
gallagher high tech gallagher that's fun maybe that's maybe that's maybe that's the new me maybe
i'll do that yeah they would dress up like a Tron character with LEDs all over a bodysuit
and just microwave metal for an hour.
Yeah, I'm Daft Punk Gallagher.
I mean, this has stopped being a podcast about microwaves
and started being a writer's room for my Netflix special.
We're giving the ideas away for free, you'll know.
I expect an executive producer credit.
Yeah.
Well, now that we have our credits locked in, on every episode of this show, our first
fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics.
And we get those in a segment called Stats Away.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
I like it.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And that name was submitted by at Marharstar.
We're going to have a new name for this segment every week,
submitted by listeners like you.
Make them as silly and wacky as possible.
The less good, the better.
Submit your name for the numbers and statistics segment
to SIFpod on Twitter or to SIFpod at gmail.com.
I missed it. Could you do it again?
Could you please?
I mean, my warm-up process takes hours,
but I guess we can do it.
Seven hours of practice later.
Okay, hit it, Alex.
Just the classic improv thing of making someone do something
that makes them miserable for comedy,
just over and over.
That's the way, uh-huh way uh-huh like weeping really
but and uh so by the numbers just a couple interesting microwave oven things first number
here is 90 and that is the percent of u.s households with a microwave according to popular
mechanics there which is about as ubiquitous as i expected i almost thought it would be more than 90
yeah like everybody has one right when you break that down to like a nine out of 10, it's almost, it does almost seem low
that I think if I talked to somebody, they didn't have a microwave, I'd be quite confused.
Yeah.
I wonder like the people that don't have microwaves, is there like, is it, is it a, you know, in
some cases I'm sure it's a resources thing, but in some cases, is it a like, I just don't
believe it.
Like somebody that just like doesn't trust microwaves yeah i feel like it is that a little bit or or the people who are like oh you know the people who are still like it it takes
out all their nutrients or something you know like like these you're in los angeles the the moon juice
crowd you know that thinks the microwave is is making their food useless. My weird microwave story, if I have one, is that when I like first moved to LA,
I didn't have a place yet and was staying in an Airbnb.
And the owner of it like showed me around and they were like,
okay, and then this is here and this is there.
And I like this.
Don't use the microwave.
And like stared me deeply in the eyes about it.
And I was like, what do you mean?
They were like, I would take it out if I could, but it's bolted into the the cabinets don't use it it's like while you're
while you're while you're here i can't use it and they just wanted me to never use it at all
and then went into a monologue about like i do believe in science i do believe in vaccines i'm
not crazy but they were like concerned super specifically about the microwave and then i
didn't feel comfortable
using it the whole rest of the day they went on a vaccine thing because of them um they're like
for vaccines they said they're like no i believe in vaccines like i'm a science is real climate
change is real microwaves i believe in vaccines i just don't believe in microwaves yeah yeah that
definitely doesn't make you sound less weird at all. That's a really weird way for them to try to prove that they're normal is to go on a
medicine rant because they don't.
So it seems like the microwave probably did work fine.
They were just like, they were an anti-micro person.
It was some kind of concern about overall immune system health.
And they were worried that being bombarded by the rays, even though that doesn't happen, would mess him up. And so they were like, just never use it at all. I don't want
any loose microwaves in the air when you're done here and I come back. It was a very strange
experience. Yeah. Was there ever a point living in that Airbnb where you just heard a loud pounding
on your wall and that person's voice screaming, are you thinking about using the microwave in there yeah that's the thing like because it's it's an la one so like they were
in the main house and i was in like a guest shed behind it but if it was any sort of denser city
they would have been like probably monitoring me because the waves could get through yeah
it's like poked on your window with a stick you hear like an air raid siren like they're like that's my microwave alarm
that's just the that's instead of a beep when the time is up it's just yeah full air raid siren
and they come running in and they're like did you use the microwave i told you i warned you
yeah i've been watching like a lot of that show Dark on Netflix.
And so I'm just, like, locked in on that as part of the microwave.
You know, an essential part of this Gordian knot of, like, time travel where they're, like, please do not use the microwave.
And if you do, everything starts unraveling.
Like, just whole family lines disappear like it was like
everything hinged on you not using the microwave and the guy was like well how else am i supposed
to heat my hot pockets yeah i guess i'll just have wet tuna like an idiot
oh that's great when we got a next number here the number is three thousand dollars and that's
the dollar cost of the first commercial microwave in 1947 that was the first year that it was sold
to people and that was three thousand dollars in like old money which is actually like thirty
five thousand dollars today to get a microwave wow yeah that's like a super computer level yeah punch card operated it's
very funny to think when when obviously that was like the first commercially available microwave
because a they're so ubiquitous now but also microwaves now because we're so used to them
they have such a kind of reputation as like lazy food that yeah you know like if you microwave
something it's like i don't really have time i know it's not going to be as good as if i cooked it but for them they had this you know unbelievably
expensive it's probably some very rich person some rockefeller and they're like you know i like i
think they probably had people over they're like we're gonna all have microwave dinners tonight
and then everyone came over and was eating like like dry meat and being like wow science is incredible yeah yeah this is
just like poor quality meal that is the bleeding edge of science for them yeah what i really want
to see is the first microwave oven the first person that was like we're gonna microwave our
full turkey for thanksgiving this year they put a full turkey into the microwave.
It kind of explodes a little bit because that's what happens
if you put something like that in your microwave
and they just scrape turkey meat
off the roof of the microwave
and they're like, dinner is served.
Yeah, part of it is scraping the meat off the walls.
It's like a stir fry.
You just kind of mix it all up in there.
Yeah, and then it's essentially like,
yeah, it's just like dried like turkey jerky yeah well and also like both for technological reasons but also i think because
that's what people are used to like we'll have linked on patreon a picture of this first microwave
it was called the radar range and like it it kind of looks like a real oven like i could see somebody
sticking a turkey in it because it was the size of a refrigerator,
almost six feet tall and weighed over 700 pounds.
And like,
it looks like a giant industrial,
like how do I cook four turkeys at once kind of machine,
even though it's just a microwave that's old.
Yeah.
It looks like a confectionery oven or something.
It definitely looks like part of a,
like a restaurant setup and not not
something you'd have in your home in any sort of situation yeah i think that that's something
that's like worth thinking about too is like they didn't have like i assume that when the first
microwave was invented microwave dinners weren't a thing right like they didn't have the like put
this plastic thing in and poke it three times and lift the film or whatever so yeah people were
probably microwaving like anything that you would the film or whatever so yeah people were probably
microwaving like anything that you would put in an oven so like people are probably microwaving
like cake and and they're like oh like let's stir up this cake batter and put it in the microwave
there we go yum yum yeah that was during a time where even when desserts were cooked correctly
it was like a jello with hot dog pieces in it.
So they were just like, everything we eat tastes awful regardless.
So this is all fine.
We haven't figured out food totally yet.
So they were like, well, tastes the same to me.
Cooked not at all evenly.
Where like the inside is burned, but the outside is soggy.
Normal for me.
Yeah, they're're like it's better
than salted meats before we just ate long strips of salted meats and this is this is better also
with like how nice microwave food can get another number here is 514 dollars and 63 cents which is
the u.s dollar cost of as far as can tell, the world's most expensive microwave dinner ever.
$514.63. It was rolled out in 2013 by British microwave dinner company Charlie Bigham,
and it's a dinner called a swish pie, which is like a microwave dinner version of salmon, scallops, oysters,
lobster tails poached in Dom Perignon, truffles, caviar, and then an edible 24 karat gold garnish.
And just like a tray that you stick in the microwave.
Yeah, I'm looking at this photo and it's not looking great, I would say.
It's swish pie.
You know, you could think, oh, that's probably just going to be like a very expensive microwave dinner.
And those tend to be, if not the best quality.
But I feel like a $500 microwave dinner, they probably did some insane like,
you know, cooking thing where it's like specifically designed where microwaving is
the best way to create this meal for it to taste the best. So I'm sure it probably tastes really
good. The other side of me is, wow, $500 for a microwave dinner definitely makes me relate to all those people that want billionaires to be guillotined.
It's just like, oh yeah, there's a lot of wealth inequality out there that somebody's like, yes, $500 for a microwave dinner.
That sounds good.
Yeah, this is the billionaire microwave dinner.
They're like, I'm just like a regular person.
I don't always cook.
Sometimes I have a simple $500 microwave dinner
of poached lobster tails,
and that's normal for me as well.
That's how they connect.
Delectable gold nougat in the middle for dessert.
Nom, nom, nom.
This is one thing that I don't...
They've done this with a couple different foods,
and you see these news stories,
and everyone's like, have you seen it?
The $1,000 hamburger.
And it's always just gold leaf.
It's always just 24-karat edible gold leaf, where they're just clearly kind of just spiking the price.
Where it's like, somebody's like, it's a $1,000 hamburger.
And then it's just like, oh, well, you just covered it in gold.
Like this very weird
bond villain strategy of like why is it so expensive oh you just put a lot of gold in it
for some reason i want to take this moment to announce my uh new product it's the thousand
dollar mcchicken sandwich where i just take a mcchicken sandwich and staple a thousand dollars
to it yeah yeah i'm also launching a food it's just a gold
ingot with a barbecue dip in sauce cup that you can just suck barbecue sauce off of this gold ingot
and it's one of the most expensive meals you can have so uh did we just come up with a new
restaurant craze yeah it's fondue but it's gold we just dip chocolate gold in chocolate
just a bubbling forge in the middle of your table where you can dip any sort of thing that you want
there you can dip food you can dip yeah dip people who are a threat to your claim to the throne you
drop them in there and boil them up in some gold yeah yeah yeah that's a that's an actual game of
thrones murder right like that's in the show and the books and stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they pour it up all over his head.
He does not go well for the man
when he's having the molten gold poured into his brain and head.
I really want to see, like,
if Game of Thrones was based in the 1940s,
the classy way to execute somebody is to microwave them.
Put somebody in a giant microwave.
Yeah, that's their version of the brazen bull.
Throw someone in a huge microwave in the town square.
I mean, that'd be definitely a grisly way to go.
But even since it's that era, even the person being killed is like,
what a miracle of science!
They're still excited about it.
Yeah, just like,
if this was 50 years ago, we would have to guillotine
people, but now we're able to give them
the relatively painless
death of the microwave.
We'll be on the moon in 29
years. I can feel it. And then they
pop like a gerbil.
And we've got three takeaways on this
episode uh that we can get into here takeaway number one microwaves don't work how people
think they work there's like a there's like a surprising number of myths about how they cook
food and what they do to it and the safety stuff about it like we all have and we've talked about
a few of them like preconceptions about the microwave. Let's bust them. Let's bust some myths. Here we go. Okay, so I feel like I
always hear that they cook food from the inside out. Am I an idiot? Alternate title for this
podcast. Am I an idiot? The weird thing is that's like, kind of true. But the first thing we have
here is like how microwave ovens cook food yeah
i'd like to guess can i guess oh yeah go ahead i think i know but i might also be an idiot
isn't it isn't it it is from the inside out i i thought it was part of it is that it makes the
the moisture inside the food it's like vibrate very quickly and turns the kinetic energy into
heat that's why stuff tends to dry out that's how they that's how they cook food yeah hell yeah i'm a bit of a genius who read about microwaves once that's sort of my
specialty yeah uh they technically don't add any heat they add energy and then the energy becomes
heat yeah oh got it linda and then with the inside out thing, we'll link to a video
by the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory in Newport News VA. According to
their video, microwave ovens use a standing wave, which is a thing where the microwave doesn't
travel, it just oscillates in one place. And so what happens is inside your microwave, there are
parts of the wave that are moving a lot and parts of the wave that
are very steady and almost not moving at all. And so the moving parts add more energy and the steady
parts add less energy. So it's from the inside out because like the inside of your food might
be in a hot spot. But otherwise, it's just kind of unevenly heating everything.
Oh, that makes sense. That's why they spin. That's why everything spins in there.
Yeah.
We're learning.
Yeah, they're like,
if it moves enough,
eventually it'll get into that spot
that's heating it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I think that's a universal microwave experience
is just hitting that kind of
like ice cold rock
in the middle of whatever you're eating.
You're like, oh, okay,
the microwave I just didn't get here I guess
I have a microwave question
a microwave experience question for both of you
I feel like when I used to
eat a lot of microwave food there's always
that warning of like let cool for
60 seconds
you know like for microwave pizza or whatever
and when I was in college
I would always count to like 20
and then think to myself, that's probably fine.
Take a bite of whatever the thing is and then just burn the F out of myself.
Is that a universal experience?
I did this multiple times, not just the one time.
Did you guys do that?
I've made that mistake.
But now what I do is I'll stick my finger in like a mischievous boy trying to get a bite of pie from a windowsill. I just poke my finger in
to test the heat throughout. And that way, if I burn my finger, I only look a little bit like
an idiot when I pull my finger out and go, ow. We all see a microwave instruction where it says,
like, wait a minute or two, and then microwave it some more. And then we're like, mad?
And with the way microwaves cook food, and we're looking
off to good housekeeping for this, apparently water and fats are some of the things that are
excellent at kind of conducting the microwave energy. But ice is not so good at it. So a lot
of times when they say wait a minute or two, it's so the ice can melt more. And so you can ultimately
get a more evenly cooked, more effectively cooked piece
of microwave food. But none of us want to wait, so we just run them through ice, and then we get
bad food. That's, yeah, so I guess it's like, because it's a solid, it's harder to vibrate
efficiently or something? Yeah, more or less, yeah. This explains a lot of why it's so difficult for
me, who, my only source of water is microwaving large chunks of ice that I find. So it does take quite a while.
And also with metal in a microwave, I feel like it's like a semi-myth that you just shouldn't put metal in a microwave no matter what.
The actual thing is that...
You should for comedy. You should for comedy bits.
Is that you should do bits.
No, it's that it's like partly dangerous and also it's kind of pointless to do it.
And also a lot of the
things that we put in microwaves have metal in them like it is another good housekeeping thing
they say that quote believe it or not many packaged microwavable foods rely on metal for a variety of
functions in popcorn bags metal susceptors help promote a thorough popping uh susceptors are also
used in microwavable pizza packaging and then a a Hot Pocket sleeve has a metal lining that's super, super smooth in a way where
it won't catch on fire.
It'll actually help the thing cook in the microwave.
So we're putting metal in the microwave all the time.
Yeah, the crisping sleeve.
I was going to say, if you're a fan of microwavable pizzas, Mama Celeste has a little crisping
disc.
They're pioneering it. They're making big moves
in the putting metal in the microwave space. Yeah, my heroes.
According to Wired, they say that at a microscopic level, metals are a lattice arrangement of atoms
with a bunch of electrons flowing through them. So the really dangerous metal in a microwave is
something like a fork where there's a bunch of sharp edges and weird corners to the structure of the metal.
So then the electrons have reason to jump back and forth and then you get sparks and fires and
burn your house down. I thought they were saying that the sharp edges on the fork were dangerous.
Right. I mean, just a fork. Forks are dangerous to put in the microwave because they've got four
points on them and they can stab yourself putting it in there if you're not careful. mean just a fork yeah forks are dangerous to put in the microwave because they've got four points
on them and they can stab yourself putting it in there if you're not careful yeah don't get so
excited about your hot pocket you accidentally stab yourself on that sharp fork yeah well i think
that that's the class that is the classic like metal goof like the blooper that you do is like
someone who's tired like throwing you know a bowl of whatever in the microwave with a fork in it and then just absolutely torching their microwave you know
like uh that that's that that's the classic one where it's like one of these is like like
sometimes metal is okay in microwaves but then you know the the actual takeaway once you read
the article is like okay metal that's supposed to go in microwaves is all right but it's definitely
not definitely not recommended so you say that putting one fork in a microwave accidentally
is a classic blooper but just going back to my bit what if you put a ton of forks in a microwave
on purpose that's got to be more funny by the more forks you put in there that's math that's
simple math yeah it's just that comedy man it should be three forks actually i don't know if
you're familiar with the rule of threes but microwave you're right it's like it's just comedy, man. It should be Three Forks, actually. I don't know if you're familiar with the rule of threes, but microwaving Three Forks is comedically the funniest.
And you have just, this is your bit.
It becomes so famous that you do it three nights a week, every week.
And you just have massive tumors on your microwaving arm
because you have massive goiters everywhere.
I was like, oh.
you have like massive goiters everywhere i was like oh that was a part of this bit was i was going to ask for an audience volunteer to press start on the microwave
yeah and then i was going to be standing behind like a lead shield with like a surge protector
so if it catches fire i can turn the search so don't worry i figured out the version of this bit where i'm fine yeah well there's also
that we have one more like myth about how microwaves work and it's basically the myth
that you're not safe near a microwave because that's that's the fun bit is you get huge tumors
from this copy show but in real life uh like basically every source i can find says that
you're safe being near your microwave as long as the door works, as long as the door is not broken or latching funny or something like that.
They have a bunch of shielding on them.
They have a bunch of safeguards so they don't run with the door open.
And according to Scientific American, they asked University of Florida professor David E. Hinton-Lang, and he said that microwaves could affect your tissue in a similar way to food
if they were able to escape the microwave oven in a really large quantity, but the modern ones
are designed that that just can't happen unless something's wrong with the door. So you're okay.
You can just like hang out in the kitchen while your microwave's running. I'm gonna try it. I'm
gonna go micro some of the door open as soon as we're done here and check it out. That way you
can just warm yourself on the microwave. Like, look, I know it gets cold in the winter in New York.
I think that's a good way to heat up your pizza as well as to keep yourself warm.
My pizza.
It's the most New York thing that I could possibly.
My daily pizza.
My pizza rations.
Your daily pizza covered in delicious hot dogs.
Yeah, since quarantine, we all line up, actually.
We just get our pizza rations for the day.
Yeah, Mayor de Blasio just slops pizza into people's hands.
Yeah, get three slices a day.
I share them with my beleaguered children,
one of whom has polio,
and we all split our pizza rations.
Look, I've been to New York. I get it.
Next thing here is a big trumpet sound
for a big takeaway.
Before that, we're going to take a little break.
We'll be right back.
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.
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 also just one more thing with the microwave safety. This from Timothy J. Jorgensen,
who's a professor and health program director at Georgetown University. He says, quote,
the leakage standards for modern microwave ovens are so stringent that your candy bar is safe from melting, even if you tape it to the outside of the oven's door, which is a fun
mental picture. And it also takes us into takeaway number two. The microwave oven was invented by
mistake, and it was through a military accident.
And that whole story might be a myth.
We're not totally sure.
I know that's a long takeaway, but there's a fun story about the microwave being invented.
It happened through military research.
Also, there's a pretty good source saying it might be made up.
So we're going to get into that whole story.
Was it a weapon?
I heard that it was something like, you know, the government's testing a weapon or you know a military death ray or probably realistically it was like microwave
communication or something yeah and i isn't the story that somebody had like a meat pie in their
jack in their in their like lapel pocket and then they like after they tested it they like lifted
the meat pie out and they were like this pie is cooked through all the way through or something
and it's in their jacket pocket so they're also like my heart hurts it's dying
yeah that's like more or less the story yeah uh it's specifically a guy named percy spencer
that who was a self-taught it is absolutely it's a Absolutely. It's a guy named Percy Spencer. I thought you were
going to say a guy named Microwave. Michael Wave. And he was a self-taught engineer and physicist
and member of the Navy. And then he joined up with the folks at Raytheon in the 1920s.
Raytheon is a military production company. And by 1939, he was the head of their radar tube
division. And the way radar works is basically bouncing radio waves off of objects to locate
them. And so his job was to make their cavity magnetrons work better. And a cavity magnetron
is the main like part that helps them shoot these waves. And then he was standing next to one
that he was trying to make run much more powerfully
with a peanut cluster bar in his pocket.
That was it.
And it melted.
And he's like, ah, ha, ha,
I've accidentally cooked something.
Look at that.
More or less what you said,
just a candy bar instead of meat
is basically the upshot.
Yeah.
He said like, oh, my loose ham that I keep in my pocket.
My ham for later.
Instead it's just this weird old school candy treat that's just like peanut clump.
That makes sense because especially like a candy bar, there is kind of like a metal foil in the wrapping.
So yeah, I believe that.
I'm choosing to believe that that's fact.
That's how facts work, right?
I'll allow it.
That's how facts work, right?
I can choose to believe what facts I want to believe that that's fact that's how facts work right oh that's how facts work right i can choose
to believe what facts i want to believe and it's like and it was weird researching this because
like that's what popular mechanics says that's what the american physical society says which is
like a big organization for physicists and then uh that georgetown professor his book is called
strange glow the story of radiation he says that's what happened like it's it's basically everyone says that they were trying to make radar work better
in world war ii to beat the germans and then a guy accidentally cooked his candy bar in the process
and realized it could be microwave oven technology because within a year raytheon was selling that
first huge microwave raytheon invents that's very funny that raytheon invented the microwave i
didn't know that yeah yeah i think it's actually kind of lucky that he had a candy bar in his pocket
that he could see melt because if he didn't,
they might have just been like, well, this works great.
And then they would just like immediately put it into use.
And like that's when everybody would have goiters forever.
Everyone that went to war would have these microwave injuries
because they didn't know that it actually cooked you. Yeah,
because also a few of the sources write it up as
like, as he was building up to lunch
he checked on the candy bar in his pocket
and I'm like, was his lunch just a candy
bar? Like, is he okay? I don't know.
It's weird.
Yeah, I have a lot of questions about like, yeah, like
that guy at that point had just given up on
he'd given up on everything. He's
probably going through a divorce.
And he was just like, this candy is the only
this candy is my lunch and the only
thing I have.
Yeah, I love it.
It feels like such a slice of old
American worker life.
You know, like strong unions
and he's just like, at lunch
I get to have a candy bar.
That's like his big treat.
It's like my candy bar and my cocaine for a snack.
Yeah.
At one I have a candy bar, and when I start to crash from that,
I have my cocaine.
I have my big bottle of cocaine.
Yeah.
But also then, so we have these sources saying that's what happened,
and then the skeptical sources,
specifically it's a publication called Spectrum by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the IEEE.
It's the world's largest professional organization for these kind of people.
They say that Percy Spencer did lead the way on it.
But according to researcher John M. Ossipchuk, quote, legends exist about a serendipitous
discovery of microwave cooking by Percy Spencer.
All of his subordinates remember the discovery
as a gradual process involving chance
and deliberate observations by many individuals,
end quote.
They say it was just an on-purpose science experiment
to come up with microwaving.
It's totally normal.
It's not fun.
Yeah, you dorks.
Bunch of nerds trying to ruin our fun
get out of here get out of here with your scientific method that's how microwaves were
invented reese's you know reese's cups were invented when somebody was holding chocolate
somebody was holding peanut butter and they knocked into each other and that's what i choose
to believe don't lie don't don't wreck my my fantasy yeah and my that's my entire belief system is based around
that reese's peanut butter cup story so don't break the world for me yeah i think everything
was invented by two people running into each other holding the pieces yeah yeah the microwave
was uh that was uh that scientist was walking to lunch with his thing in his pocket while another scientist was walking down the hallway with a running open
microwave.
Yes.
And they bumped into each other and he was like,
your microwave,
uh,
cooked my candy bar,
your candy bar,
cooked my microwave.
My microwave covered in chocolate.
It was like,
he was like,
microwave cooked my candy bar.
And the guy's like,
your candy bar cooked my microwave.
Wait,
what? Okay. We do need to do more experiments yeah that's unusual both of them are just melting
as they have that conversation like weird yeah interesting yeah weird yeah one of my uh one of
my first jobs in los angeles is that i was like a researcher writer for like a bunch of national
geographic specials and that's something that I definitely learned in that process is like a lot of those
like cool stories were definitely like one person trying to make something boring seem way cooler
than it is and it's like every single source points back to this one thing so like realistically
I buy that it's probably a bunch of dorks doing an experiment and not the cool version of that
just because I feel like that's just how stuff like this goes yeah I mean I think it's it's probably a bunch of dorks doing an experiment and not the cool version of that just because i feel like that's just how stuff like this goes yeah i mean i think it's it's also
just to think of like when stuff like that happens it's like even if it started with that where it's
like oh my chocolate bar got a little melty and then they're like time to do eight weeks of you
know like double blind experiments to see why but they just that's not fun so they're like yeah it
was done they did it and then you know they put the microwave on sale next they just that's not fun so they're like yeah it was done they did it and then you
know they put the microwave on sale next day like that's just more fun to think of that way i guess
what i'm saying is science isn't fun yeah science is for nerds they're gonna make it fun science is
for dorks that's all dead on because it is like constant labor doing science the the other thing
that ieee brings up is, the idea of heating food with
radio waves was not new. Bell Labs, General Electric, and RCA had all been working on
variations of the technology for a long time. And at the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago, Westinghouse
demonstrated a 10 kilowatt shortwave radio transmitter that cooked steaks and potatoes
between two metal plates. And I sent you guys a crazy magazine cover that depicts people enjoying that.
But that was, you know, more than a decade before this Percy Spencer story.
All the giant American companies were like, how do we use these waves to cook food?
Like it was not a new idea to people.
Yeah.
So my favorite part of that illustration that you sent me is it's clear that the woman
sampling that food is forcing a smile.
It's very clear that she does not. She's just like
I gotta do this for the guy drawing
me. I do like
that this seems to be from
it's from the Radio Experimenters
Magazine
is the title. Yeah.
An entire periodical. Yeah, that sure
is an interest that you could have
I guess.
As a proud current subscriber of Radio Experimenters Quarterly,
how dare you badmouth my favorite magazine?
Yeah, I was like, what's the publishing schedule of Radio Experimenter magazine?
Is this monthly?
How many experiments are there to do? Oh, it's daily.
That's a daily that's a daily
rag yeah getting my daily digest from radio experimenters yeah just like oh like i need
updates on all these radio experiments yeah and speaking of experiments weird microwaves we have
one last takeaway takeaway number three there are several hilariously specific microwave ovens
in the world uh people people think they're all same box thing, but we have a bunch of weird ones here.
And the first one is called the Heinz Beanzawawe.
And according to Serious Eats, this was rolled out in 2009 in Britain.
And probably only a prototype.
I don't know that anyone bought it but it is a like portable usb powered microwave from the heinz company uh specifically
geared toward getting like office workers to microwave packets of beans and eat them in
britain this is the most british thing i've ever heard in my life of course this is from britain
like are you tired of cold beans for lunch it's like no it's not a problem i've ever had it's uh it's also it's the most
british thing i've ever heard of but it's also the most on-brand think geek purchasable item
that i've ever heard where it's just like oh it's like right up there with like bacon salt that
makes everything taste like bacon where it's like who use who would use that who would buy that
other than as a weird novelty you know yeah that was everything i think geek was like you bought it to show somebody once and
be like isn't this weird and then you just like put it in a drawer and you're like that wasn't
worth it i don't know why i got this it's like i got a i got a waffle iron that makes uh my waffles
look like jar jar banks that's weird right and then people are like yeah and then they're like
that costs 70 bucks and they're're like, oh, cool.
Yeah, I was like, yeah, it was fun.
I don't know. When I'm cutting into
my 400th Jar Jar Bing
shaped waffle, it does begin
to grate on my psyche.
But, oh, this little
beans a wave is so gross.
There's a picture with this hot little tin
of beans in it. It's just like,
oh, you'll get fired for using this, I feel like.
Your boss will just be like, hey, whatever this thing is, don't do this, please.
It's the first time in an HR meeting where they're like, first off, what's your problem?
We've had some complaints that you're microwaving small packets of beans at your desk.
Please don't do that.
You're using our company computer to microwave beans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just, everything about it would be, if I had like my, you know, next to me at work,
like a coworker that sat next to me used the beans a wave.
I think after about three days, I would have to have a conversation and be like, you can't do this.
I wonder if this is an audio medium.
At what point in the conversation we're going to reveal that while we're having this conversation, we're all microwaving beans with our beans waves.
Yeah, we took a quick bean break halfway through the episode.
You edited it out so you guys didn't hear us.
Yeah, Alex is editing out a lot of chewing sounds of us eating beans,
eating beans out of our cans of beans that we microwaved.
Hey, is it cool if I eat beans during this?
Another microwave here, and this is not being used for food.
This is a microwave oven that somebody converted into a pc
tower and it's from pcpartpicker.com i hope that wasn't a crazy amount of plosives on the mic
pcpartpicker.com is apparently a site for people to like show off their builds of pcs
and somebody spent uh twenty five hundred dollars on parts to then put them into a microwave oven
as the tower for their pc and apparently also
they rigged it so that the quick start button on the microwave is the pc power button uh so you
like quick start your computer like it's a you know beans it's great yeah like you're getting
some beans that's fun i mean it's honestly as someone who has like a gaming PC, like this looks less dumb than most gaming PCs.
So it's, it's like less obtrusive in your room.
My only thing about it is that I can see in it that they have like a fan
hooked up,
but in general for building a PC,
something that very specifically contains and keeps heat inside is terrible.
Like it's a really bad decision.
I assume they planned around it like i
see the fan but i feel like if you put a pc in the microwave you wouldn't be able to run it for
more than like two minutes because yeah it would get incredibly hot then shut off yeah so uh as
somebody who went to a lot of like land parties in you know high school and college this is i was
very cool growing up um this is
definitely one of those things where like oh like the funny guy at the LAN party would show up with
like a PC where the case is like a cardboard box or like a milk crate or like yeah microwave or
something like this so like this tracks is something that like you know within just kind
of like gaming culture I could totally see somebody doing but yeah you're right like what the what the hell what is what is cooling for this look like
so i can see one fan and that doesn't seem like it's gonna do a lot yeah like something that's
meant to enclose heat is not what you want a motherboard in yeah yeah just immediately fries
yeah yeah that i hadn't even thought of that. It's like, look at my new computer. No vents. Like, oh, okay, that's a bad idea.
Oh, she runs it at toasty 200 degrees Celsius.
Just completely melting everything.
One last weird microwave here.
This is a, it's called the Cast Oven,
and it was built by two researchers
from Japan's Keio University.
And the hook here is that it is YouTube-enabled.
And so what happens, according to TechCrunch,
is you run the microwave to cook food,
and then it's connected to a Mac and has speakers.
Quote,
The main idea is to display a YouTube video whose length depends on the time
you need to heat up what's inside the cast oven.
Say you want to prepare a lunchbox that takes three minutes, 30 seconds to be ready.
The cast oven would automatically pull a video
from YouTube with that length
and display it on the screen
until the meal is finished, end quote.
Yeah, it'll just pull up an appropriate length
Nazi screed from YouTube
while you make your beans.
Yeah, it's like an anti-vax video
that's exactly 45 seconds long
yeah i mean i was ready to hate this but that's kind of cool i will say like you know i it's
unnecessary for sure but i like i i appreciate it as an invention but it does feel like one of
those things of like i need to be constantly entertained at all times if there's even a second
where i'm alone with my own thoughts i will die kids today don't have that hum we all grew up on
you know the drone uh it's great what happened to watching the numbers go down not enough fun
for you kids nowadays watching the magic clock tick down to zero doesn't thrill you so yeah i have a before we finish up uh i have a question
for alex about this episode um are you going to share this episode with the airbnb guy that hates
microwaves you could educate i should yeah yeah you should email to him do you remember me from
seven years ago? You were wrong.
Goodbye.
Yeah, I don't know.
Folks, that is the main episode for this week.
My thanks to Joey Clift and Eli Yudin for taking a spin through microwaves with me.
Specifically, a very slow spin on a weird plasticky plate under a tiny bulb. 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 on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show
every week where we explore one
obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic,
Parkes Observatory. That is Parkes spelled P-A-R-K-E-S. It's a major astronomical observatory
in Australia, and it's home to the funniest story about microwave ovens I have ever heard.
So visit SIFpod.fun to hear about that and back this entire podcast operation.
And thank you for exploring microwave ovens with us.
Here's one more run through the big takeaways.
Takeaway number one, microwaves don't work how people think they work.
Takeaway number two, the microwave oven was invented by mistake
through a military
technology accident, and that story might be a myth. And takeaway number three, there are several
hilariously specific microwave ovens out there in the world. Those are the takeaways. Also,
please follow our guests. Joey Clift always has stuff going on. Social media is the space to find out
about it. He is at Joeytainment on Twitter, and he's at Joey Clift on Instagram. It's Joey Clift
with six letter I's in the word Clift. I tried to say it right. And then Eli Uden, last name spelled
Y-U-D-I-N. He is on Twitter as at Eli Uin. And he is on Instagram at Chili's Restaurants. And that's
not me doing a bit. He got the at Chili's Restaurants handle. You know, it's really him
doing a bit, as I say it. And please check out his podcast, What a Time to Be Alive. You can
search the name in your app. And they're also on patreon.com slash whatatimepod. And for Joey and Eli things, we have plenty of links on this episode's
page at sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article
from Popular Mechanics titled The Amazing True Story of How the Microwave Was Invented by
Accident, written by Matt Blitz. Also a great book entitled Strange Glow, The Story of Radiation by
Georgetown University's
Dr. Timothy J. Jorgensen. And then I ought to highlight that article that pushes back on the
Percy Spencer story from the middle of the show, because again, I legitimately don't know which
trusted source to believe. That article is from Spectrum, which is the publication of
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE. And the title is A Brief
History of the Microwave Oven. It's written by Evan Ackerman. And you can find those and more
sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken
Unshaven by the Budos Band. Get more Budos into your life by visiting daptonerecords.com.
Band. Get more Budos into your life by visiting daptonerecords.com. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. See more of Burt's art on Instagram at Burt Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for
audio mastering on this episode. And another thank you here for a website that is helping this
podcast get out to more people. The AV Club is a like arts and entertainment site run by the folks
at The Onion. It's not satire like The Onion.
It's actual information.
You probably know the site.
And I feel very proud because Michaud's Secretly Incredibly Fascinating was their top pick
for the entire week in their long running Podmass feature, which is pretty much like
the main piece of internet journalism covering podcasts.
Like it's the main one.
It felt really good to
be their pick. I think your enthusiasm as fans did a lot to make it happen at all, you know,
because they could see that people were excited. So as much as I'm excited about it, I mainly want
to thank you guys because you made that happen. And I think it grows the whole community around
this show and learned about microwave ovens this week, grocery stores last week, and other stuff
from there. So thank you for that. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love
this week's bonus show. And thank you to all of 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.