Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Microwave Ovens

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Alex 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)
Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:38 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,
Starting point is 00:01:08 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.
Starting point is 00:02:05 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,
Starting point is 00:02:51 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
Starting point is 00:03:35 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
Starting point is 00:03:55 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
Starting point is 00:04:38 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.
Starting point is 00:04:56 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.
Starting point is 00:05:26 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
Starting point is 00:05:45 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,
Starting point is 00:06:28 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.
Starting point is 00:06:44 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
Starting point is 00:07:13 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
Starting point is 00:07:51 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
Starting point is 00:08:32 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
Starting point is 00:08:55 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
Starting point is 00:09:23 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.
Starting point is 00:09:49 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.
Starting point is 00:10:08 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?
Starting point is 00:10:26 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.
Starting point is 00:10:43 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
Starting point is 00:11:20 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.
Starting point is 00:11:56 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
Starting point is 00:12:24 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.
Starting point is 00:12:56 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
Starting point is 00:13:50 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
Starting point is 00:14:32 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
Starting point is 00:15:22 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
Starting point is 00:16:08 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,
Starting point is 00:16:23 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,
Starting point is 00:16:56 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
Starting point is 00:17:19 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.
Starting point is 00:17:50 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
Starting point is 00:18:20 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.
Starting point is 00:19:02 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.
Starting point is 00:19:40 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.
Starting point is 00:19:58 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.
Starting point is 00:20:20 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
Starting point is 00:20:58 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
Starting point is 00:21:32 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.
Starting point is 00:21:58 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.
Starting point is 00:22:18 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
Starting point is 00:22:49 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
Starting point is 00:23:40 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.
Starting point is 00:24:22 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.
Starting point is 00:24:33 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
Starting point is 00:24:47 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
Starting point is 00:25:03 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
Starting point is 00:25:32 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
Starting point is 00:26:10 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.
Starting point is 00:26:44 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.
Starting point is 00:27:15 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.
Starting point is 00:27:49 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
Starting point is 00:28:29 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.
Starting point is 00:29:09 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
Starting point is 00:29:47 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
Starting point is 00:30:30 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.
Starting point is 00:30:55 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,
Starting point is 00:31:20 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.
Starting point is 00:31:46 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.
Starting point is 00:32:37 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
Starting point is 00:33:23 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?
Starting point is 00:33:42 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
Starting point is 00:34:34 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.
Starting point is 00:35:10 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.
Starting point is 00:35:20 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.
Starting point is 00:35:43 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
Starting point is 00:36:18 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,
Starting point is 00:36:45 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
Starting point is 00:37:01 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.
Starting point is 00:37:18 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.
Starting point is 00:37:34 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.
Starting point is 00:37:57 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.
Starting point is 00:38:20 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
Starting point is 00:38:46 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,
Starting point is 00:39:12 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,
Starting point is 00:39:22 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
Starting point is 00:39:59 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
Starting point is 00:40:36 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?
Starting point is 00:41:14 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
Starting point is 00:41:33 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?
Starting point is 00:41:58 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.
Starting point is 00:42:28 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
Starting point is 00:43:13 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.
Starting point is 00:43:48 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,
Starting point is 00:44:03 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.
Starting point is 00:44:33 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,
Starting point is 00:45:10 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
Starting point is 00:45:46 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.
Starting point is 00:46:21 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
Starting point is 00:46:57 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.
Starting point is 00:47:37 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,
Starting point is 00:47:56 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
Starting point is 00:48:16 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
Starting point is 00:48:51 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.
Starting point is 00:49:40 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.
Starting point is 00:50:23 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,
Starting point is 00:50:59 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
Starting point is 00:51:53 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
Starting point is 00:52:31 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.
Starting point is 00:53:09 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
Starting point is 00:53:40 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.

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