Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pickles

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why pickles are secretly incredibly fascinating. Special guest: Elliott Kalan.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.Hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Hear Alex's new "explainer podcast" about all things MaxFun: https://youtu.be/6kNplapKs-w (It's uploaded to YouTube because he filmed his face while he taped it.)

Pickles. Known for being sour. Famous for being green. Nobody thinks much about them unless they're mid-bite or something. So let's have some fun. Let's find out why pickles 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 not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, happy Maximum Fun Drive starting today. Wow.

Amazing. Wow. I feel it. I feel it in my bones. Yeah. I woke up this morning, and I felt very Maximum. And I was like, why do I feel so Maximum today? I just imagine you having Maximum Bones somehow, like you're the giant person that is in the

Motor Museum that I saw a few weeks ago. That's why it's on my mind. That's why. It's a medical problem. My bones are too big. It's actually quite serious. I see when I went to a museum of medical oddities, I should have not taped podcasts for like a year.

I don't want to bring that stuff up. It's a weird vibe. I should have taken a retreat, cleansed, and then come back. But we're so excited about this. This is our first one of these drives being on this network. We've done membership drives for past versions of the podcast before, but we're so excited to bring people in, encourage people to support what we're doing, what other shows are doing, and also celebrate, do fun things. And that means a bunch of amazing guests for these couple of weeks here. And the first one joins us today. We're so glad to have returning guests of the show who joined the two of us for a show about musk oxen before. Please welcome co-host of The Flophouse, co-host of the new

podcast Be Potting You about the prisoner, comics writer, TV writer, so many things. Elliot Kalin, welcome to the show, Elliot. Hello. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. I'm so excited about this MuskOx reunion, just like Paul Simon sang about. It's the MuskOx reunion. We were only a moment away, and now we're here, and it's so wonderful. I just want to say Maximum Bones sounds like the kind of movie that Keanu Reeves or Skeet Ulrich or someone of that type was making in like the 90s. And maybe it didn't get a full theatrical release, but it got at least a cable and video release. And I guess he has something about someone like a hacker hacked into like a genetics lab and the DNA code got into his bones.

And now he has super bone powers and it's called Maximum Bones. And it's based on a Dean Koontz novel. Like that's the, that's the movie that's, that's generating in my head right now. I'm Keanu Reeves. I mean, Max bones.

And I accidentally maximize my bones. That's true. His name would also be Max bone or it'd be, it'd be like Max Ulma or something like that. Like Max tibia. Max radial Ulma. Yeah. bone or it'd be like max ulna or something like that like max tibia max radial ulna yeah like you can't do that keanu i'm reporting you to captain pelvis and it's all bone characters all the names all the i've never seen the show bones so i have to assume that's what it's about i assume that's it's just characters is named after bones yeah the same way that i mentioned

i've never seen the show numb three years and i, and I'm always like, this must be about people who are named. It's like, I'm Johnny Five. I'm Ricky Six. You know, that kind of stuff. God, life would be so much simpler if that was our naming system. Yeah. Just numbers. Yeah.

I only learned this recently when I read a biography of Malcolm X, that in the Nation of Islam temple, that is kind of how they do it, is that you get a number on your name, got the same name as someone who's already in the group, then you get a number in your name. You mean Malcolm 10? Well, exactly. Exactly. So many Malcolms. What do we do? It's tough to be— That was another movie that Keanu Reeves did in the 90s, So Many Malcolms. It's about a cloning machine gone wrong. It's a cloning machine gone wrong, and one of the Malcolms escapes and becomes Malcolm Gladwell. And that's, so it's like virtuosity.

He's escaped from the system, and now he's telling people things that are not quite scientific facts, and he's putting out books that act like they're science books, but really they're business management books. And my dad sends them to me and goes, you'd find this interesting. And I read them and I'm like, I don't buy into this premise at all. But anyway, that's what that movie is about. You're just describing reality. You're just describing what actually happened. Yeah.

Well, it's a very real life movie. It's very true to life. Every time he gets cloned, he loses a little bit of statistical significance when he writes his books. There's someone in a government agency, and they're like, he's going too far. It's nothing but anecdotal evidence now. We have to stop him. So this is such the, yeah, it's the maximum Malcolm drive on Maximum Fun. And we're just talking about Malcolms as much as you can.

Yeah. You know, we're doing the most natural sequel to a Musk Oxen podcast, which is a podcast about pickles. Folks, everyone assumes that, you know, they asked me on the street, you did Musk Oxen. Pickles are next, right? Yeah. And this was indirectly suggested by listener Stephen Richard. Thank you, Stephen, because he suggested fermentation, as I said on the episode about yeast, fermentation is humongous. So we did a yeast episode and now we're doing a pickles episode. And also like quick clarification

thing, this episode is about pickled cucumbers, but you know, in the US, that's usually what we mean when we say pickle. I'm told in the UK, the word pickle often refers to chopped up pickled vegetables, which can include cucumbers, like any kind of relish is usually what the UK calls that. And in any like technical book about this, the word pickles means any food that has been pickled. So like all sorts of different world cuisines and things. And there's so much stuff just about pickled cucumbers. That's what we're talking about today. I mean, in the U.S., I guess, do we enjoy other pickled things or do we mostly focus on the cucumbers?

Because I've had more pickled vegetables in Europe than I have in the U.S. Yeah, I think the answer is the influence of the whole world on what's now the United States. Like the the cucumber came over in the Columbian Exchange and and in our speaking in the U.S. The Columbian Exchange. That was that was that he's like an undercover drug cop. I hope he's taking down Christopher Columbus. That's a horrible guy. Yeah, that's what it is. He's the cop who got put on the Christopher Columbus case. He has to go undercover on the Nina to stop him. That would be a wonderful movie.

I would love that. Yeah. Yeah. I certainly, I feel like, I mean, pickled peppers have always existed in nursery always existed in nursery rhymes or not even nursery rhymes, tongue twisters. But I feel like it wasn't until I became an adult that I encountered too many other pickled vegetables. But maybe that's because I grew up with the regional cuisine of the American Northeast, specifically the tri-state area, where pickled cucumbers are very common. And I'm very excited that we're doing this topic because my family has a lot of interest in pickled cucumbers.

But I think in the South, there's a lot more pickling of other things. And, you know, it feels like different regions do different stuff with them. I should have done research, but I didn't. I was told to do no research. Yeah, because I looked stuff up. And yeah, especially in the Appalachian U.S., there's something called chow chow, which is a few different vegetables pickled. And then one of our sources this week cites Samin Nosrat, who once said that every culture has its pickles, as in pickling things. And, you know, the range of...

That sounds so philosophical, though, doesn't it? Like every culture has its pickles. Yeah. It's a vibe. There's Korean kimchi, German sauerkraut, Iranian torshi is a pickling of vegetables. We won't cover the whole world of doing pickling to vegetables, but everybody does everything. And the U.S. and Canada in particular are really big on pickling cucumbers. They love it.

I mean, it's like every culture shares a passion for music. Every culture shares a passion for pickles. It's the great unifier. If there was an Earth flag, when we join the galactic planets, it should have a music note and a pickle on it just to symbolize this. Although, what kind of pickled vegetable? That's the, I guess, you know, two devices. That would start a war guess that would start a war that was the pickle war which sounds amazing pickle war sounds another movie another movie for keanu to be in yeah that's the one if it i mean there's two ways the pickle war could go either it's a war started by an evil general named zoziah pickle who's trying to take

over the world or it's like a kid's movie and keanu reeves is the principal and he's like kids stop throwing pickles at each other you know something like that the same way that uh yeah when i was a kid i had never read the book the chocolate war so i thought it sounded hilarious and i didn't realize that it was all about like tension between students in a chocolate selling contest that gets very like heady you know and very dangerous oh yeah and and i was like well that's. I thought it was about like kids just throwing chocolate at each other. Yeah. Yeah. Like the video game Splatoon, but chocolate just splattered everywhere. Exactly. Oh, stepping in it. Yeah. There's that book. Find it. Send it back in time to 1989 so I can read it as a kid.

Elliot, you said you grew up in the Northeast around pickle culture and also emailed that your family's looking into making some pickles. For lack of a better word, I am a New Jersey Jew. And so like deli culture was something that was very, yeah, I'm excited about it. I love being a Jewish person from New Jersey. And so like, it was standard, like if you bought a sandwich,

you're gonna get a pickle with it. If we went to a lot of diners, you would just a pickle with it. We went to a lot of diners. You would just get pickles with everything. We went to delis. You get pickles with everything. There were always pickles in the house. Everyone in my family except my brother loves pickles. My brother hates pickles.

Everyone in my family hates one type of food. I hate all fruit. So that's – although as my kids like to remind me, they go, cucumbers are technically fruit. You like cucumbers. And I'm like, eh, that's not according to me. But, uh, but so, uh, fruit as any food you don't like. And there you go. That's a great idea. Thank you. That's what I'll tell the next time. They can't argue with that logic, but pickles were, it's like such a, they were such a constant growing up and that it was like, it took me a long time to think of it as its own food in

a way because i just kind of assumed it kind of always just came with food and my wife's family they had a particular love for the lower east side pickle guy the the the pickle seller called the pickle guy so we'd make a lot of trips to go and like buy huge containers of pickles and it was very exciting to just walk into their like little cavern room and have them just open up barrels full of pickles. And they, you know, with gloves on, they just grab them and stick them into containers and then fill the container with brine.

And it feels very like earthy and farm to table-y, but in an old world kind of like, in old world Jewish way. And now my kids, I have these two children and they are also Jewish as I am, uh, cause they're mine. And they, they have that same kind of like inbred love for like deli style pickles. And the youngest one wants to make pickles. He's very eager to do it, but he keeps saying, let's make pickles, but only leave them in for two days. So they don't get too sour. Cause I don't want them too sour. And I'm like, I don't know if two days is going to do it. Like pickling is a long-term process.

This is the last thing I'll say. My grandmother, so as a child, she attended the 1939 World's Fair and had a lot of adventures there and appeared on television when that was still something that very few people had done because very few televisions existed. And she would talk about the thing that stuck out to her the most was that's when they were giving out a lot of these pickle pins from Heinz. Heinz would give out pins in the shape of a pickle. They still do. But she was like everyone in her class had one, and she could not rest until she went to the World's Fair and got one of those. Because it was like a craze in her classroom when she was 10. And so I feel like pickles they've just been a constant throughout my family's history and i like eating them a lot they're

really good i don't know what to tell you well what else is there to say you know what alex the man loves pickles just leave them alone i just love pickles all right and i've i've expanded to other pickled vegetables but it is but pickled cucumbers in particular like there's something that's the ur pickle to me. Like that's the, that's where, for me, that's where it all, it's the most basic foundational one. It's the, it's the carbon of, of pickled them to sort of, yeah. Katie, let's just mix in how we feel about them as we go.

Cause that, that last story about the 39 World's Fair leads straight into one of the numbers. And on, on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called Secretly, incredibly fascinating. The stats from Alex and Katie come tumbling. And when they share stats, each one they share, we go, Aha! I'm tumbling and when they share stats, each one they share, we go, aha.

Fantastic. I need to get a, I need to get a tambourine or a cowbell or something. You know, I should have had you do the aha with me. That was foolish. I apologize. This is a learning process. It's a learning process. Podcast, you know, you've been doing this podcast for a while already, but even before joining MaxFun, but it's still a learning process.

We've been doing the Flophouse podcast for over 15 years, and I still feel like we don't know how to end episodes, and we're still figuring out how to start them. It's all about learning. And that's part of the fun. Yeah. And that name was submitted by Joe Beam in the Discord. Thank you you joe beam they have a new name for this every week please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible submit through discord or sifpod at gmail.com first number right here is more than one million because more than one million is the number of pickle-shaped novelty pins handed out by the heinz company at the 1893 world columbian exposition in chicago i didn't

really realize the pins went that far back that they went all the way back to the columbian exposition that's that when people so i wonder if what's his name uh the the serial killer who was running loose there i wonder if he was just trying to get one of those pins just checking the victims like nope nope i'm gonna have to pick up my copy of the devil in the white city and look in the index for pickle pins see if it talks about it at all now when you say pickle pins you are talking about the writing implement, correct? No, pins, P-I-M-S. I don't speak very clearly.

I'm Midwestern. Yeah. I mean, pins sound the same to me. It's the same, I don't know, sound. So it is a pin that you wear, not a pin that you write with. Yes. Not to call it back to the Flophouse again. This is a constant discussion between me and co-host Dan McCoy, who as an Illinois native says, says tin for 10 or pin for pen. And they sound the same to him. And they sound very different to me. As I said before, a real Jersey

boy. So I'm always curious about how like people from different parts of the country or the world, their ears sound different. My wife is from California. And I remember I said, how would you pronounce the words Mary, like the name Mary, Mary, like you're getting married or Mary, like you're, you're happy. And she was like, Mary, Mary, Mary. And I was like, no, they're three different sounds. What are you doing? So.

Yeah, no, I'm, I'm from California as well. It's all the same to me. So. It's all pin and pen and tennis shoes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. So pickle, a pickle, a pickle brooch, we'll say. That makes it sound so much classier.

Like an heirloom. Yeah, it jizzes it up a little bit. And I, and I pronounce it brooch. Everything's weird. But I, yeah, I'm from Chicagoland and the home of this fair and H.H. Holmes and all that and so on. And I don't know if you want to claim that to be the home of H.H. Holmes. Thank you for remembering his name. I couldn't remember his name.

Proudly from the home of H.H. Holmes. It's like, yeah, I'm a fan of all the standard Chicago stuff. The Bears, H.H. Holmes, pizza. It's like, no, no, no, hang on. You're like, I love my deep dish pizza. I love my early skyscrapers and I love my H.H. Holmes, pizza. It's like, no, no, no. Hang on. You're like, I love my deep dish pizza. I love my early skyscrapers. And I love my H.H. Holmes. Can't get enough of it.

Those people that visited the H.H. Holmes home, they were in a bit of a pickle. And they were murdered horribly. Yeah, yeah. Terribly. Horrible. The magical murder home of H.H. Holmes is not a 90s Keanu Reeves movie. That's more of a 60s Disney film. Like a Herbie Goes Bananas, like Hayley Mills is at the fair and she gets kidnapped. But it's whimsical, you know. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we need. Add some whimsy to the story of H.H. Holmes. Yeah, finally.

finally. Yeah, because he he's sort of a side character. But in in 1893, there was a massive World's Fair in Chicago. It was visited by twenty seven point five million people. And some of them were international, but there were twenty seven point five million visitors at a time when the U.S. had sixty five million people as a population. So it's amazing. Everybody came through and the Heinz company accomplished one of the biggest pre-1900 successes in advertising ever because they offered free novelty pins that you can wear that were shaped like pickles with the Heinz name stamped on them. And then they like kept doing this at fairs like in 1939 and allegedly have handed out more than 100 million pins in the run of this thing. Is this the first instance of swag? A little bit, yeah. The innovation was come to our booth and display and you get a bit of swag. But and we talked last week a lot about this 1893 Expo and about how it changed all sorts

of practices. But this was a huge early advertising and swag thing. Yeah. Of just a little visual picture of a pickled cucumber that says a company name on it. More than a million people said, I got to go get that while I'm at the World's Fair with all of this stuff going on. I mean, let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen or owned one of these pins? No, I had never heard of them, honestly, until researching. Oh, because I used to have one. I don't know what happened to it that I received in. I mean, it was a modern one. It must have been from, you know, the 80s or 90s. And they're pretty great. They're just little pickles, the St. Heinz on them. But for some reason, there's something super like attractive and whimsical about it. And I don't know if it's that they

managed, I mean, the newer ones, I don't know how the old ones looked or felt, but I don't have my grandmothers from, you know, almost 90 years ago now although i wish i did but they do such a good job of replicating what a pickle really looks like and the color of it cool but really small and it says heinz on it and there's just something very and like the block lettering where it says heinz is there something very like attractive and it's almost like um how on the front of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy it says don't panic in in big friendly letters like that's kind of what Heinz looks like. It's like a pickle with big friendly letters on it.

And you're like – and there's nothing done about it to make it – to like anthropomorphize it, which is much appreciated to me. Because then you don't have that weird thing where you're like, why is this item selling to me that I should eat it? Like Mr. Peanut, which is – who, some sort of genocidal collaborator, you know, but that, that, that, you know, he's selling out his people. So they keep affording those monocles and top hats, but the, uh, there's just some, they're just really, they're just really neat pins. It's one of those things where you're like, okay, a pin in the shape of a pickle. I guess that's okay.

And then you see it and you're like, this is a really fun pin. I mean, in Mr. Peanut lore, I think technically we have established that he rises like a phoenix after death with baby nut. He is immortal and eternal and no method of destruction can truly destroy him. So I guess eating peanuts, it's implied that the peanuts just rise like phoenixes and become babies again. Nevertheless, these pickle pins sound really cool. I do wish I had one. And I guess I'll have to open my own murder house to get some. It's the only way to do it.

There you go. Yeah. I like someone at Heinz was listening to this and was about to click the send complimentary pin button on their computer. And then you mentioned the murder house and they just took their finger away from the mouse button yeah nope nope never mind by murder house i mean a house for crows oh and he just clicked the button again then he was like oh all right because i think i'd partly never heard of these pens because i i just so strongly associate heinz with ketchup. And I'm sure, speaking of British listeners, again, I'm sure they associate it with the canned beans with the sauce.

Oh, yeah. But Heinz, it turns out, started mainly as a pickler of things. And in 1869, their first product was pickled horseradish. And they also put that in clear bottles and put the ketchup in clear bottles to emphasize quality and help sell it. But part of why they made pickle pins specifically is that they were a huge pickler. Like that was their main thing at the time in the 1890s. I don't know if it's still true. I mean, the horseradish makes sense because I've never thought about it before. That Heinz is a German name.

So I assume that it was a German family that came to the United States, you know, like pickled. That stuff is real popular there. But I remember seeing a TV show about ketchup once, and I don't know if this is still accurate because the TV show is an old kind of PBS show from the early 90s where it mentioned that Heinz was the largest producer of vinegar in the world. But most of that vinegar was not sold to customers. Most of that vinegar that they made went to pickling and ketchup making and stuff like that. They're like, we make more vinegar than the vinegar companies, and you don't get to eat it. You don't get to use it. It goes for our use.

I mean they do release Heinz vinegar, but most of the – they just require such a massive amount of it because they're creating so much pickled stuff. require such a massive amount of it because they're creating so much pickled stuff. And I don't know, maybe this is me being naive, but like there's something really exciting to me about the idea that a company from the 19th century that essentially just pickles stuff is still a huge company. And I'm sure they've had to crush many competitors during that time in ways, you know, okay and not okay. But it feels like such a- I mean, you imagine what they do with those big vats of vinegar to their competitors.

I'm not saying that they pickled people, but I'm not not saying that. Yeah. I mean, you have to assume that at the very least one or two DC supervillains have been created by falling into one of those vats. Because so many supervillains started by falling into vats of things. Yeah. I really like the vinegar man run of Batman. How do you folks feel about that villain?

He's like, you'll feel the bitter taste of my vengeance, Batman. But when he teamed up with Captain Baking Soda, yeah. And the results were explosive.

Got them destroyed. And it gets an A at a science fair, too. Like, good job. Yeah, and the results were explosive. Got them destroyed. And it gets an A at a science fair, too. Like, good job. Yeah, yeah. It feels like such an old-fashioned type of company or type of thing, and I'm just glad that they're around, you know, that they still do that. That Heinz hasn't become like a cryptocurrency company or something like that. It sells like pickle coins or something. like a cryptocurrency company or something like that.

It sells like pickle coins or something. They're still like, yeah, we take things, we stick them in vinegar, we leave them for a long time, and then we sell them to you. Yeah, it's worked forever. Non-fungible gherkins. Hopefully not. The next number here, we're going way back in time. The next number is 3,000 years. 3,000 years. The oldest

pickle? No, no. Damn it. That'd be so sour. Your tongue would just implode. You just immediately shrivel so small you kind of blink out of the room

like, where'd it go? It's real good. But there's a number about cucumber cultivation. One of the sources of this episode is the book Our Fermented Lives by food historian Julia Skinner. Skinner says the cucumber is believed to have originated in what is now India. What's now the country of India. And, like, it took a lot of breeding to turn this wild plant into a crop. And she says it was about 3000 years of Indian cucumber cultivation before it became like a popular crop and also a crop that expanded to other parts of the world.

So it took a long time. Well, thank you for putting that work in all that time ago. Yeah. So that we can enjoy it today. Yeah. Good job, India. I assume that we had to kind of domesticate it to be so plump and juicy and that it probably used to be kind of shrivelly and not as good as is sort of the theme with the vegetables and fruit that we eat, where it starts out small and hard

and not good. And then we add the juiciness and scrumptiousness to it over many, many decades of selective breeding. Exactly. Yeah. I couldn't find an example of the early one, but we've talked about this on this show with potatoes and with bananas and with a lot of foods. It's taken human manipulation to make them what we're really into. And then after people in India did that, the cucumbers spread west to Greece and Rome, east to China, north to what's now Russia. Also, cucumbers were an immediate hit in the Americas. They came over in Keanu Reeves' Columbian Exchange. And then within 100 years, apparently, they were being cultivated all over the eastern half of North America as soon as they were introduced. What do you think – has there been any – I mean, I love cucumbers.

They're great, but what do you – they're super refreshing. But why do you think it is that they became – that they were such a hit so fast? Because they're not particularly flavorful, and they're not – I mean, maybe that's part of it. Because they're not particularly flavorful. I mean, maybe that's part of it, is they have such a mild flavor that even the people who would eventually colonize what would become the United States and impose the mildest flavors in the history of food on their people. Maybe that helped. But what do you think it is? Why are cucumbers such a worldwide fad?

You know, it's interesting. Apparently, part of the reason is pickling. Like, there are some places, especially in Europe, where my various sources here say that cucumbers partly started to take off not because people liked fresh cucumbers, but because they tried pickling them and said, like, oh, now this is incredible. Like, that's why you want to eat this food. And so that's, that's part of the reason. I do also like a, just a fresh cuke, but usually, you know, with some kind of flavoring, like mixed in a salad. I had a college friend buy a cucumber and just eat it like a apple. And that frightened me. Don to my house that's ever that's what we do here

like uh my kids will be like they'll be like we're hungry and i'm like do you want a cucumber and they go yeah and i just hand them raw cucumbers and they just eat them a raw fresh one just like a carrot or something yeah like and uh raw fresh and they we go through a lot of cucumbers we're constantly running out and then my wife or i have to run out and get more we buy multiple packages of cucumbers when we go to the store because the kids are just always chomping through them. Wow. And you know what? It's a healthy end-of-the-night snack.

You know what? Instead of reaching for something bad for me. I'm frightened, but it is healthy. I can't deny the healthiness. Yeah. Yeah. It's not as frightening as if something it was like well time to eat you just picked up like a mouse and threw it into your mouth like that was

then i would expect it yeah you have to admit that owls when they're when they're hawking up those pellets they're like there must be an easier food like there must be a food that doesn't require me to cough up fully half of what I just ate when I'm all done. They're looking at a smooth, furless cucumber and thinking, maybe. Maybe if that thing was running, I could swoop down on it. Well, and the cucumber, I've had them totally fresh. There are other people eating them pickled all the time. I really only like pickles as a topping on burgers and stuff.

I don't eat them straight up. But people really vary with this. And another number here is 1699. That's the year of one written account of English people disliking cucumbers. And another source this week is the book Pickles, A Global History by food writer Jan Davison, who says that it took a long time for fresh cucumbers to catch on in Europe. One example is the British diarist John Evelyn in 1699 wrote, however dressed, cucumbers were thought fit to be thrown away, being accounted little better than poison. This is such a theme through European history is new food shows up and they immediately assume

it's poisonous. It happened with tomatoes. I think it happened with garlic. It happened with potatoes. They're just like, this isn't the same thing we've been eating for thousands of years. It must be toxic. And someone's like, all you have to do is take one bite of it and you know it's not. I don't understand how this

it's a kind of intolerance you haven't seen otherwise in European history. So I don't know why – it seems strange to me that they, you know, that they taste this. No, I'm just kidding. They're always – Every time they see a fresh vegetable, they're like, oh, this looks wrong. I'm going to go back to eating this sheep's bladder. It's like if a color is too bright,'re like oh this is a warning sign from from nature yeah like a red apple why not a gray one

well if we boil the color out of it maybe that'll make it safe to eat yeah gray is safe it's the color of safe food there's there's all these posts there's all these posters all over medieval england or i guess post you know post uh discovery of the west western hemisphere england that are like keep the keep calm and eat gray you know like gray is safe yeah gruel politics yeah uh and all this there's still numbers but all this leads into an amazing first takeaway for the episode because takeaway number one, regular cucumbers and pickled cucumbers originated in different places. And we've kind of talked this through already, but the regular fresh cucumber comes from India originally and then spread. We think that the pickling of cucumbers started in the Baltic region of Europe.

Apparently the Baltic is big on pickling in general and has been for thousands of years. Apparently it goes so deep there's a figure in Lithuanian pre-Christian folklore named Rogus rogusis and rogusis was an entire god of fermentation oh wow but it makes sense that in in a place like the baltics you need to preserve food more than in a place like india like there's like the winters in india i assume are not particularly not particularly bad not very baltic yeah yeah Yeah, not very Baltic, exactly. And that's the great thing about pickling food. I mean, I guess the reason that it was done is so you have something to eat when you're not growing things. So that makes a lot of sense that India was never like, hey, what if there's a time when we can't grow any food?

And they're like, that's crazy. We can always do that. And in the Baltics, they were like, what do we do for these months when the earth goes to sleep and the sun goes away? Yeah, because they pickle a lot of fish too. Yeah, pickled fish, totally. Because also with pickling, there's sort of twin purposes to it. There's preserving foods and also changing flavor. And so, you know, like with, we'll talk about the pickling of cucumbers. It usually involves salty brines and sometimes vinegar,

but India has a huge pickling tradition that's different. Apparently it usually involves oils, either a mustard oil or a sesame oil. And so they pickle everything from chilies to gooseberries to tamarind, papaya, jackfruit, cauliflower, olives, also fish, and then most of all, mango. Apparently, like green unripe mangoes pickled are the biggest pickled food in India and get exported all over the world. This is information that my younger son is going to be very excited to hear about. He loves mango. We did once do a home papaya pickling because he wanted to do that. And so he'll want to try pickling mango. That's something he's going to be excited about, especially if it's not ripe yet, because like all children, he has no patience. So we'll

get a mango and it's not ready yet. And he'll demand we open it up and then he'll take a bite and go, this isn't good. It's like, yeah, we told you that was going to be the case. But if we can pickle it, maybe that'll, he'll feel better about that. That's me. But with hot pizza in every bite. It's like, ouch, this is hot. Two seconds later. Ouch, this is hot. Two seconds later.

The temptation to eat the pizza is so much more overwhelming than your knowledge that things cool to a common room temperature. Your knowledge of entropy and loss of heat. It's like your brain's like, I don't have time for physics now. Pizza, put it in my mouth right now. It always burns your mouth. It really reveals sort of the primordial parts of the brain that are still there, just lurking, telling you to eat that pizza, even though you know it's going to be painful. Yeah. The ur-pizza of yore comes through.

Yeah. Now, who's yore comes through. Yeah. Now, who's the Baltic god of pizza? Oh, Dominoicus? Stupid. I withdraw that immediately. We found this figurine of a character only referred to as the Noid, but he ruins pizzas. I guess they're praying to him to not ruin their pizzas. Oh, okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. So, Elliot, praying to him to not ruin their pizzas. Oh, okay.

That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. So, Elliot, we discussed we're avoiding the Noid. I thought we talked about this before we began taping. Sorry. I apologize. That was one of the rules that was sent to me on a beautiful sampler, knitted sampler.

You sent me all the rules of the podcast, and high up there was avoid the Noid, so I apologize. There's one last set of numbers here, and the number is around 1400. Because speaking of that European progression, around 1400 is the approximate date when the word pickle entered the English language. We derived it from the Dutch word piekel, and early on that word could mean a spicy sauce served with meat meat but it soon came to mean the brine or vinegar in which food is preserved i'm gonna start calling them pickles so much better i love that does it say in your research did you find when it started being used as a word for like a tricky situation because i if that makes more sense if it's a spicy thing.

Because then it's like, oh, I'm in a pickle. Like, this is a spicy, hot situation, you know. Or you've fallen into the pickling vat during the production of pickles and it's hard to get out. Yeah. Now Batman's got to stop you. Yeah. The rest of these numbers are about pickle as metaphor, which works in a few ways. Because the next number is 1562.

1562 is one of the earliest recorded uses of pickle as a metaphor. But it's not to mean a difficult situation. And journalist Sam Dean covered this for Bon Appetit magazine. difficult situation. And journalist Sam Dean covered this for Bon Appetit magazine. They say that English poet John Haywood is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the first use of pickle as a metaphor. But it's in a poem where Haywood describes frailties pickling. He says frailties pickle. And we think that means preservation. Like he was using it in the metaphorical sense of frailties in your life becoming pickled and preserved and sticking around. Oh, interesting. When you said it was a metaphor, I just assumed, knowing what I know of Elizabethan poetry, that it was just for penis.

That it was just like every other poem from that time is like a hey girl type poem. other poem from that time is like a hey girl type poem. Or like, may the king's pickle sustain the realm and the house of such and such. Come on.

Come up and see the king saying come up to my palace and see my pickles. Yeah. And they go, multiple? He's the king. All right. And then another metaphor comes from a guy who wrote about penises a lot. Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is believed to be one of the first people to use pickled as in being drunk as a metaphor. Oh, okay. In 1611, they first put on the play The Tempest, and the character of King Alonso asks his jester, Trinculo, quote, how camest thou in this pickle?

But in that scene, Trinculo is drunk, so it could mean a problem. The Tempest is full of problems, but it probably means drunkenness. Boy, is it ever. The Tempest is full of problems. One star, full of problems. Because I'm trying to get the connection between pickles and drunkenness. And is it because like wine is sort of acidic?

Could one pickle something in wine? You could, yeah. Even like, yeah, vinegar is sort of related to it. I think that's where that metaphor is kind of coming from. That makes sense. There's something, it's one of those terms that you don't hear a lot nowadays but when i hear it i've never questioned it but you raise a good point katie that why i do get more bumpy and sour when i've had a few so you know i see it now

katie's turning a bright green. Oh, boy. As opposed to as opposed to like green with envy where it's like that doesn't really make any sense. There's no it's not like green animals are more envious, like frogs and lizards are more envious than other things or something like that. So I don't know. And then and then this this other other metaphorical meaning of being in trouble. That's another kind of takeaway baked in here. Takeaway number two.

The metaphor of being in a pickle is based on the British sense of the word pickle. Hmm. And I mentioned establishing this episode. British people often call like a chopped up vegetable relish a pickle. And Sam Dean says that that UK meaning is probably where we got it. Like because relish is a very messy food item. Like it's a big pile that's all over the place. And so that's probably over time, all sorts of writers just sort of coalesced around this idea that like if you're in a pickle, you're in a mess in that like British sense. So I've always been confused by that metaphor too. It doesn't sound

like a whole American dill pickle that is pretty put together. Like it's not, it's not all over the place. There's not a lot of room to get into one of those. Like it's not a, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. At the state fair, we had a pickle ride where you could get into a fiberglass pickle and kind of go around. I think it was sort of a like a little merry-go-round like thing. So in that sense, I was able to go into a pickle. I love the idea of an amusement park ride based on a common phrase, like literalizing a common phrase. Yeah. What a fantastic thing. Like, what a great inspiration for an amusement park ride.

Yeah, Del Mar Fair. I don't know if they still have that or have had that since, but that was fun. I also ate a pickle there, so there you go. It was a pickle-themed, I'm just going to say

a pickle-themed fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How do I go? Don't hold that on us. I don't know. And that's two takeaways and all the numbers.

We're going to take a quick break, and then we're going to come back with two more takeaways about ways of making pickles and the amazing Jewish history of pickling. 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 we're back with more takeaways and we're going straight into takeaway number three. Only some pickles are fermented. This topic does fit in with the fermentation subject, and maybe people who make a lot of pickles and pickle things know this already, but it turns out there's two ways to pickle a cucumber, and only one of them involves fermentation. So wait, so how does that explain? How does that work? How does, how does one does and one does not? Right. I guess, cause like, what is the definition of fermentation? Yeah. So we touched on this in the yeast episode. Fermentation is the transformative action of

microorganisms. So for something to ferment... Oh, those little guys. I'm getting up to stuff. I love them. Those rascals. Truly the littlest rascals. Am I right? Hey. That's the show. That's the show. Oh, what a great... Wow. Pitch that now. Go out and pitch that immediately. Yeah, I'm cutting all this.

It's a golden idea. So like if people have heard the yeast episode, it turns out yeast is a single-celled fungus. And when yeast acts on something, that's yeast eating sugars and then pooping out gases and alcohols. So it's an organism that's transforming a food. And then it turns out that pickling and fermentation are separate. Like not all pickling is fermentation, not all out that pickling and fermentation are separate. Like not all pickling is fermentation. Not all fermentation is pickling. And something can be both fermented and pickled.

It's a very technical difference, but that is out there. And it's part of why fermentation is too big for one episode. It reminds me of how my kids were very curious about what technically is a berry and what's not technically a berry. And the scientific definition of a berry doesn't fit all the things we call berry. And at a certain point, I'm like, I don't know, science, maybe you should just conform to how we've been talking. Because we've been calling these things berries longer than you've been defining berry that way. So it just gets very, everything gets so messy when you try to define things.

Yeah, science, knock it off. Quit it, eggheads geeks so so basically some pickles do not use the microbes to kind of transform it is just the action of the vinegar or whatever brining process on the cucumber. And some pickles are transformed by the microbes is what you're saying. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like both processes, you're making the cucumber more acidic, but there's a way to do it with microbes and there's a way to do it with vinegar.

Oh, I apologize. Science. That was pretty clear. Once Katie explained it, I was like, okay, I get it now. That makes sense. I apologize, science. That was pretty clear. Once Katie explained it, I was like, okay, I get it now. That makes sense. I apologize, science. Science is like, it's okay. We get that a lot.

And then they do press send on sending us a pin. Like, okay, it says science on it. It's great. We'll send you that science pin. It's got a little microscope on it. Yeah, because speaking of microscopes so there's the the microorganism approach that is fermentation uh it involves bacteria and the scientific name of it is lacto fermentation which is a little confusing this is not a dairy thing the name

comes from bacteria generating lactic acid science is back back on, back out, back on the skids. Forget it. Okay. Science. Yeah. I was with you. And then, and I know it's like, well, if you knew the, the, it's the kind of thing that, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a politically liberal person, but the thing liberals do

all the time where they're like, well, if you understood what the terms meant technically and not just what people think they mean, then you'd get that this program. And I'm like, ah, just talk to people the way that they talk. Like, come on, that's science. Talk to people the way they talk. Come on. don't expect us to know these things yeah yeah and then like the super specific science here is to ferment cucumbers you start by making a brine and brine is a combination of salt and water i didn't really know that before i thought it was more nautical or something. Now you're saying Brian and not Brian, like the person. This is exactly what I was like, I hope that Katie asks about this and that Alex specifies

because there are people out there who think he's saying Brian when he's saying Brian, like Brian Shrimp. And not Brian Shrimp, who I assume is a character Keanu Reeves played in a Pixar movie or a Disney movie about fish. Finding Brian. Yeah, he's great. Are we talking about the very salty substance or are we talking about brine? Ooh, got him. Got Brian's.

Got Brian's everywhere. Yeah, this brine, not the guy, it naturally attracts a bacteria called lactobacilli. Alternatively, you can add them on purpose with a starter culture. But either way, you make a brine that attracts bacteria and then you put cucumbers in it. So then if you leave that at room temperature, fermentation happens. The bacteria specifically consumes starches from the cucumbers, and then that food and energy lets them produce lactic acid. And then the acid makes the brine on the cucumbers acidic and turns them into tasty and probiotic pickles. So that's fermentation. It's just saltwater and bacteria.

Seems pretty simple. saltwater, and bacteria. Seems pretty simple. So I can just kind of put a cucumber in saltwater and leave it open, and nothing bad certainly would happen to me if I ate that. I will also link food safety tips. Folks, be careful. Make it slow at home. But it is preservative.

The lactobacilli do well in salt, and many other bacteria that are bad for us do not. And then also it turns out just basically putting stuff in brine that keeps oxygen away, because it's submerged in brine. And there's a lot of microbes such as molds that need oxygen to live. So you're also keeping that away. That explains why. I've never really I've always, I've never really known why preserves stay preserved.

And I imagine it's some combination of that, the keeping the oxygen away from it. And, and if it's a pickled thing like that, there's salt in it. All I knew about salt was basically that it drew moisture out of things. And that was the extent of it. I didn't, I didn't know any more about salt. So science, I apologize. You know more about salt than I do, clearly, even studying this stuff. It's okay, Elliot. That was science.

Yeah, thank you. Science and I have had a rocky road, but we're going to make it. Okay. We're going to get there. I just put in a little happy healing ambient music. I just put in little happy healing ambient music. And then the non-fermentation version relies on vinegar. So you don't need to wait for microbes to do anything. Usually you still make a brine of water and salt, but then you add vinegar too and often heat that to make it combine better. And then just pour that onto cucumbers. There's a fast version that people call quick pickles,

where you just pour it on and it does a pickling process. We should just call them quickles. I was going to say the same thing. I was going to be like, why didn't they do quickle? Yeah, who's asleep at the switch on this one? Right. And then the tech startup shortens it even more. It's just called quih or something.

It's like cool and you can't understand it. Maybe that's, is that what Quibi was? I think that might have been what Quibi was. Getting quickles through your phone? Maybe, maybe that's it. Sounds pretty good. Yeah, and then there's also a long version involving canning where you can store vinegar-based pickles for a long time. But yeah, either way, you can have vinegar do the acid or have microorganisms do the acid.

And that's how you get pickles, whether they're in the refrigerator at the store or out on a shelf. So is there a taste difference between these pickles? Great question. Yeah, apparently. use pickles? Great question. Yeah, apparently. I don't eat them straight up, but I read that there is a difference. And also the fermented kind is probiotic in a way that the vinegar kind is not. Probiotic means there's healthy bacteria that participate well with your gut. And then apparently there's also a gray area third way, where if you use unpasteurized apple cider vinegar, that is a vinegar, but it also has some microorganisms. And so some people claim that they're getting the best of both worlds,

but that's debated. Interesting. It's a whole pickle world, and I celebrate anyone who's way into it, but I don't like them except in very small pieces on a burger. There's one last takeaway for the main show. And takeaway number four. Jewish New Yorkers popularized the fermented pickle. And ancient Jewish people popularized fermented turnips. Huh.

That's something I didn't know at all. So I should have been eating turnips all this time if I wanted to be really in touch with my heritage. I think there's a—I've always wondered about that because there's certain things that—I grew up in a very Jewish area. And there are certain things that I kind of take for granted. Like when you turn 13, every weekend you're just going to a bar or bat mitzvah that like are not universal human experiences, but I took them for granted growing up. And so that's something I wondered about, like, if cucumber pickles are a thing that non-Jews eat as much of. Because certainly, like I was saying, in my family, we eat a lot of them.

We eat a lot of cucumbers. We eat a lot of pickles. And we talk a lot about it. We talk a lot about what kind of pickles we like. And we talk about – it's just a subject – it's a constant subject of conversation. And I don't know if it's as on other people's minds the same way. Well, as a half Jewish person, I eat a moderate amount of pickles. Okay, that makes sense.

You mostly eat half sours. That's right. That's right. A half pickle. And as a non-Jewish person who is not here to explain Judaism to anyone but I I definitely I mean it's kind of it's kind of you're the one who did the research so like I'll give you permission to do that to explain that part I bet you probably know more than we do but go on but I feel like the being based in New York especially before the late 1800s but especially the late

1800s is when this gets going. And then it just spread to the whole US and then through globalism everywhere else. Like this, there were all kinds of jarred pickles and pickles with foods around when I was a kid. We just didn't, I just never associated it with Jewish stuff or Jewish delis. I like found out that's a thing when I moved to New York. It's interesting. It's like the, it makes sense it was the late 1800s because that's when the vast majority of the Jews in America came here. You know, that like there were Jews in America from the, from the very beginning, but the,

but it's, it was, we had, we had an extra assist from, from Eastern Europeans who did not want us around anymore in the United States. And that's when most of my family came here. It was the 1880s, 1890s. And so it makes sense. And I remember I went not too long ago to this traveling exhibit about the history of delis. And they talked about how I'd always thought of deli food, which the pickle is like, you know, the pickle is just like the constant companion. The – as traditionally Jewish and those types of foods didn't really get served together until Jewish New York deli culture.

Like those – it was just like Russian Jews and Hungarian Jews and Polish Jews and Ukrainian Jews just opening restaurants and being like, well, what are they serving at that restaurant? That's a thing from Hungary. We'll do that too. What are they serving over there? That's a thing from Poland. We'll do that too what are they serving over there that's a thing from poland we'll do that also and i hadn't realized that that was in it i would call it a melting pot thing except there's so few melted there's not a lot of like cheese in that world uh and there's and uh the there's not a lot of melting it's mostly cold

foods they're all they're almost all cold cuts or like hot pastra, hot meats. I mean there's a tuna melt maybe. Yeah, there's a tuna melt I guess. That's – I guess that's part of it. But the – but it makes sense that that would be kind of the – that it would be around the late 19th century because that's when Jews – Eastern European Jews at least were having their biggest new impact on the New York scene, you know, and as goes New York, so goes the rest of the country, except for California, because usually New York gets its stuff from California. California is where trends start. And then it hops to New York, and then it moves westward throughout the rest of the country. So I think like, Arizona and New Mexico are probably like the last places to get

trends, if my theory holds. So I don't know. Like people in Phoenix saw this podcast episode pop up. They're like, what's a pickle? Never heard of it. Not clear to me. I don't know. Not familiar. So I'm curious because, you know, like Elliot mentioned, you know, you had a lot of Eastern European Jews coming to America at that time. And as with a lot of immigrants, they would find themselves in niches in terms of the kind of work that was available to them. Do you know, like, were pickles like one of those things, like one of those things where it was like a niche thing that was work that was available to Jewish people?

I think so. I think, well, Alex, it sounds like you have some information, actually. Or I was just going off of anecdotal stuff like a regular Malcolm Gladwell. What were you going to say? No, the answer is kind of yes and no, because it is a pickling practice that they brought from Eastern Europe, especially Ashkenazi Jewish people. And then also elements of it came from their situation, because they really became known for the salt-brined pickle flavored with garlic and with dill. They either used dill herb or dill seeds. That's something that—I was well into life before I realized that dill was not an essential part of pickling things because that's what I grew up on was dill pickles.

Yeah, just a flavor. And now my kids will eat dill. They'll just eat. We'll get it from the CSA that we get our produce from, and they'll be like, dill, great. And they'll just take handfuls of dill and eat it. They should visit Sweden because dill is used so much in the cuisine here. Really? Yeah, right.

We got to go. I had no idea. We'll have to go. But it makes sense because the – I mean like as throughout history, Jews were shut out of various industries. various industries, but also like in the, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, like a lot of people were crammed into a little bit of space. And that's why there were a lot of like, you know, clothing, sweatshops and things. And Jews were a big part of the garment industry as a result. But also like the, you don't need a lot of room to make pickles.

Like you just need kind of like basically like a cool basement that can fit some barrels and they just throw pickles in there and then throw cucumbers in there and then wait as opposed to like um what's something that takes what's a food that takes a lot of space to make like uh yeah like corn exactly a cornfield yeah yeah it's hard it's hard to plant a cornfield when you're in a when you're in a tenement on the lower east side it was like well we have two rooms there's 10 of us. There's 10 of us for these two rooms. We also take in boarders who sleep on the kitchen table. And then there's the cornfield. That takes up space, too.

Yeah. Aaron, you're going to have to sleep between the ears. Sorry. Well, yeah, that's exactly right. Like, there was not a lot of space, but you could do it. right. Like there was not a lot of space, but you could do it. And then also the style came out of a lack of money, partly because as we just said, there's two ways of making it. You can ferment it and wait for some time or you can use vinegar. And apparently back then vinegar was a relative luxury. It was not the incredibly cheap bottle from the grocery store we have now. And so

these Jewish people who were new immigrants to the U.S. often fled where they were coming from. They couldn't afford vinegar. And so they were going with the simple salt and water brining to make what became known as a kosher pickle, even though that doesn't really have a lot to do with like specific dietary law. It just it really just means Jewish people made it in practice. Yeah, it's the, it's not the scientific use of the term kosher. Sorry, science. It's the casual use of the term kosher. Sorry, Jewish, sorry, Albert Einstein and other Jewish scientists. It's not, it's not, not the, not the, the strict use. And then the, the last, last thing with Jewish history of pickling is, for one thing, New York City has had a larger Jewish population than the rest of the U.S. for a while.

Mainly because, you know, it's the traditional land of the Lenape people and Canarsie people and others. But as colonization happened, it was Dutch people building New Amsterdam and the Dutch were more tolerant of Jewish people than the English colonies around them. Thanks, Dutch people. So then, like, apparently Dutch colonizers started cultivating cucumbers in the area that is now Brooklyn in 1659. To attract Jews. They were like, yeah, we've got cucumbers. He's got, like, a big box with a stick under it.

And then a rabbi goes, oh, a cucumber, and crawls under it. And then, yeah, they pull the stick out and trap him. And they relocate him to the colonies to populate, yeah, to create a new remote population. Paint a wall with a tunnel with pickles at the end. I mean, if that did that, then the Jew would run through the painting into the he would, it would become real when he ran into it. And then the Dutch, and then Peter Stuyvesant

trying to follow him would run smack into the wall and it wouldn't work for him. That's how it works. But yeah, and then like the old colony of the city of New Amsterdam had pickle stalls on Canal Street and on Washington Street and like the oldest colony of city of New Amsterdam had pickle stalls on Canal Street and on Washington Street and like the oldest streets of what became New York City. But I'm then going far,

far back in history. There's thousands of years of Jewish people pickling things. But like a lot of world cultures, like we said, they weren't necessarily pickling cucumbers yet. And Jan Davison's book says that of all the foods that there are instructions in the Mishnah, the ancient Jewish text, the Mishnah, there are a bunch of instructions for pickling various foods. And the number one thing to pickle is turnips. And apparently, pickled turnips were so popular, they changed the Hebrew language. How so? Hebrew language. How so? The Hebrew word for turnip, which I believe is pronounced lefet,

that led to a new, more general word, lefthan, which means both pickled vegetables in general and turnips specifically. So even in like the word origin, they were like pickling, you know, like the main pickled thing, turnips. And so if you go all the way back in the ancient near east it was mainly pickling turnips that makes sense it's funny how because it's like i think the stuff i think of as like jewish culture which is ashkenazi jewish culture like that comes later that's relatively late and i always have to remind myself that like jews didn't at the first there were thousands of years of jews that didn't put chicken fat all over everything and you know and like and eat pickle cucumbers and stuff like that, that like latkes are not an ancient Jewish thing or something like that. But it's like there's so much of – I assume this is the way with every religion. But with Judaism, there are these moments that – things that I've seen where it's like, oh, this is so clearly about where they were living at the time, like when this rule

or this thing was written, like how in the Torah, they're going through the what's kosher and what's not kosher, and hyraxes are specifically name-checked as not kosher. And it's like, there's not a lot of places in the world that hyraxes live. Like, it's just the kind of like Middle Eastern desert area they were in at the time, I guess. So that's amazing. And so it's like it makes sense that like they're eating a lot of turnips now. So we're going to make this thing about turnips like because the whenever I've gone to a European country, it's always astonished me when I would this specifically this experience I had in Edinburgh. I was on a tour of Edinburgh Castle years ago and Edinburgh Castle is is like 1,000 years old, like the oldest parts of it.

And there were all these people on the tour who were clearly Scottish. This was like a field trip for them. They were not tourists. And it was like, oh, it must feel weird to be like, oh, yeah, my family has been in this area for forever, like far back. And like this castle that's 1,000 years old, like my ancestors were living in this area at the time because for the most part, the story of Jews is like having to go somewhere, settling in for a little bit, and then the authorities coming by and pointing at their watch and being like, time to go, sirs, and then having to pack up and run away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I don't – so my Jewish side of the family comes from Ukraine, and I don't know where they came from before then. And I don't think I'll be able to find out.

And then they went to Canada, and then they went to Los Angeles. So, you know. Oh, through Canada. Wow. Yeah. A lot of immigrants came through Canada back then. Cool. Yeah, Winnipeg.

But it's true. We have the same thing. My wife and I are real, for a while, we were really into genealogy and we haven't done the research in a long time. But part of the reason was because we would hit a wall. We'd go back to a certain point in the 19th century in Eastern Europe, and there was just no way of knowing beyond that. So it's like, well, I know, in theory, we were in Egypt here, and then there was about 3,000 years. And then we were in Poland and Russia and Ukraine. And then I don't know in between. And we'll just never know. And the only proof that

those people existed at all is that we exist. And they had, you know, there can't be an unbroken chain. It's not like they somebody they stopped having children at a certain point. And then thousands of years later, they were like, let's later they were like, okay, we're still around. Let's start having children again. They were preserving themselves in pickle vats. Oh, that's what they did. They were like, things are bad right now. Let's preserve ourselves until they get better.

And they got out of the pickle vats and the Jews that hadn't pickled were like, get back in the vats. Things are still pretty bad. back in the vats things are still pretty bad and and the one and one came out and was a batman villain and that's why there's that stereotype of jewish batman villains for sure yeah because damn it you fall into you fall into a vat you become a batman villain you're probably jewish the fact that i've never thought i've never realized this before the fact that batman's arch nemesis is a stand-up comedian really uh in the like that he's like the ultra wasp you know and they never thought about that before i i also started imagining a villain called the pickler and it's almost exactly the riddler like a green suit uh you know like like a pickles on instead of question marks

it was pickle me this batman heinz pickle pins yeah oh you guys covered in heinz pickle pins that's and so people love him they can't get enough of him they're like he's great and batman's like he's committing crimes all over the pickle related crime the pick the pickle emerald an enormous emerald shaped like a pickle is on display at the gotham museum we know the pickler is going to try to steal it and people are like just let him he's so cool he's got those pins and he's just walking through the late the security lasers, handing out pins to people being like, and they're like, we love you. You're great.

More pins, please. I do like this recasting of Batman as sort of the wasp, sort of regressive villain. And then all the, you know, the pickler and the riddler. And, you know, they're just trying to bring some fun and spice to Gotham city. Yeah. They're just, they're trying to make it, they're trying to make it a little more interesting, a little more diverse. And he's like, not in my city. I mean, it's, I'm going to say that this is just all subtext. And I mean, Batman was created entirely by Jewish people. It was all, you know, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson. And I assumed Bill Finger was Jewish. Maybe I'm

wrong about that. But like the, since all those superheroes were created by Jewish people, I have to assume that there was a part – that it was a combination of envy and also spite, you know. Superman too, right? Yeah, Superman. Yes. Siegel and Schuster created Superman were Jewish. Stanley and Jack Kirby who created almost all the Marvel heroes were Jewish. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America were Jewish. Ironically, Spider-Man, perhaps the most Jewish character. Right. Because of the name, too. Co-created by

Steve Ditko, not Jewish. Wow. So very strange. I always assumed Spider-Man being an anxious nerd was a Jewish character, you know, whereas strangely enough, the Thing, who's a big bruiser, is canonically Jewish. So I don't know riddle me that pickle me that one batman i don't know we found his catchphrase we found his catchphrase that robin we have to pickle each of these vegetables or in it before in the next 35 minutes or the gotham Picklery will explode, whatever the opposite of a pickle is. Whatever makes the opposite of pickles, that's what the pickler is trying to destroy.

Something very sweet, I guess. One of these buttons leads to a pickle that, with your love, the other leads to a pickle that's full of regular pickles. Choose wisely, Batman. Which will you save, Batman? Choose wisely. You know, we're two sides of the Choose wisely, Batman. Which will you save, Batman? Choose wisely. You know, we're two sides of the same coin, Batman.

Almost as if you had been left in a vat of brine. Hey, folks. That's the main episode for this week, for this first week of the Maximum Fun Drive. Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, regular cucumbers and pickled cucumbers originated in different places. Takeaway number two, the metaphor of being in a pickle is not based on US-style pickles, it's based on UK-style relish. Takeaway number three, there are two ways to pickle a cucumber, and only one of the ways ferments the cucumber. And takeaway number four, Jewish New Yorkers popularized the fermented pickle, and ancient Jewish people primarily

fermented turnips. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org, members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is one change to pickle brine salt that is saving lives and improving the environment. Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 11 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, a recent special entire episode

about the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie with special guest David Christopher Bell joining me and joining Katie Golden, and there's a catalog of all sorts of Maximum Fun bonus shows. I know that's a long list, but it is so much special audio and it is just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun thing, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the book Our Fermented Lives by Julia Skinner,

the book Pickles, A Global History by Jan Davison, and the book Pickling Everything by food writer Lita Meredith. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Elliot recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Elliot recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Elliot's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and you can join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources

about Native people and life. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, how would you like a tip on another episode? Each week I use a random number generator to give you something randomly incredibly fascinating. This week's episode number is 17. SIF episode 17 is about ham. One of my favorites, the show about ham. It turns out the U.S. Senate is obsessed with eating a ham and bean soup to the point that they once made contingency plans to keep eating it in the apocalypse. So I recommend that episode. It's really good. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast,

Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. I recommend all sorts of Elliot Kalin podcasting, in particular, The Flophouse right here on Maximum Fun, and also Elliot's new show with John Hodgman called Bee Podding You, where they recap the TV series The Prisoner. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will

be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. maximumfun.org comedy and culture artist owned audience supported