Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging out too, and that's making this Stuff you Should Know episode. So welcome everyone, and welcome back Chuck. Yeah, welcome back Josh, Welcome back Jerry. This is Uh, this feels weirder than ever before. I think, well, we should explain we're recording our first our first episodes of the year. M uh. And it feels even weirder to ramp back up because we had such a long, great break. I grew a beard. Now you didn't. I just saw you in person, but I almost felt not nervous, but I was like, do I remember how to do this? Of course you do. I guess are you feeling right now? A little shaky? I mean, we're doing it, so I guess this is how we do it. This is how we do it. Also, Chuck me, you're doing great. By the way. Um, we have a big announcement to make. We want to bring everybody up to speed. We hit the one million dollar mark. Uh, we being Stuff you should Know listeners, and um, we hit it a little bit after the turn of the new year, right, that's right for our our friends at co ED. They're the Cooperative for Education that does such great work helping you break the cycle of poverty in Guatemalan. And I know a sort of beat you over the head with at the end, but we really wanted to get the Stuff you should know army over a million bucks because that's a that's a big number. And we did it. Yeah, yeah, we did it. So congratulations to everyone in Stuff you should Know land in a special thanks to everybody who opened up their hearts and their wallets and contributed to all those people in Guatemala all the key to all Right, just wanted to let everybody know, and sorry for keeping you in suspense. I know this is going to come out in like late January, but yeah, themes of the breaks everybody. Yeah, and our big beautiful stash of episodes that we recorded to take that long break are almost gone. They're dwindled like a like a yule log burned down after the new year. Yeah, it's kind of what it feels like. It's just seeing that shrink is exhilarating and sad. It is I've I've missed um, you know, being kind of up to date. When people send in a listener mail, I'm not like, what what episode does because we're, you know, a couple of weeks out, we're like right there on the edge, like cal Paccino and heat. I know, but I was getting episodes. I was like, oh, yeah, I forgot we recorded that one, you know, six weeks ago. Pleasantly surprised. So yeah, we're back in full form again, I guess is the point of what we've been talking about for the last three minutes. That's right, I'm ready to go. I'm feeling totally normal now, not weird at all. So I'd like to talk about something that's not weird at all, and that would be toast. Yeah, who doesn't love toast? I genuinely don't know. I've I've never met anybody who was I hate toast. Maybe it's like I don't like toast a certain way, but I've never met anybody who just generally didn't like toast. And I'm sure they're out there. If you are, go ahead and right in, let us know why you don't like toast. But I've never met an individual who didn't like toast. Well, I think we should clarify. If you like bread, then you probably like toast. Okay, I think they're non bread eaters and likers. But if you like the bread part, surely you like it. And it's well grittled is pretty great too. But toast, I would argue, is its best form. Yeah, and I guess we are talking about a specific way of heating and crisping bread. I think people actually get that pedantic about when actually does bread become toast in the toasting process, etcetera. We're not gonna go down that road. We're gonna keep this fun and light and talk about toast. Yeah, this is my pick, and Livia helped us out with it. And uh, here's my deal is. I don't I hardly ever eat toast because it's just, especially when you're carrying a few pounds extra around your middle. It's not like you jump up and say, let's throw a few slices of bread in the oven and and butter and start our day that way. Uh. Toasts as a treat for me, a semi rare treat when I'm maybe out to breakfast or recording an episode on toast, Because after studying this morning, I was like, I gotta go eat a piece of toast. I have to You know, what's weird is I finally got to that point. I was telling you me last night. I was like, it's so weird. I've been researching toast all day and I don't have a hankering for toast. And it finally got me this morning. How I started, no, not yet. I started looking up all we have our tortillas in the house. I'm like, you can't make toast out of this. But so I started looking up the best white bread and I found a serious eats I think, no eat this, not that um basically taste test and they said that it was a type of pepperage farms. But they said it's it's pretty good. It makes better toast. But they said the overall better bread was nature's own perfect white bread. I believe it's what it's called. So I'm gonna get me some of that and make some toast. That's a pretty bold name. Uh perfect white Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. What it's called. Yeah, I had and I have a written down. I made a draft of my email folder so I didn't forget it. Let me tell you, Chuck, it is nature's own perfectly crafted white bread. Okay, okay, perfect white that has some bad insinuations. I think right perfectly crafted. Their their marketing team is like whoo woa whoa. Well, uh so here's what I did uh and I want to shout out a listener. I use the uh. We have had some oat nut wheat bread uh in the in the old pantry. So I threw that in a toaster oven, a Breville toaster oven. Uh. And we'll talk about the different kinds of toasters. We honestly just don't have counterspace. We don't have a huge kitchen, so we don't have enough room for the beautiful superior stand up toaster mhm. And then I use the butter beell. And this is from Amanda who just wrote in. Amanda plash All wrote in like last week, they said, hey, you gotta use a butterbell croc. You know what those are. Yeah, we had one in the butter kept growing mold. Are you changing your water every three days? Yeah? I'm taking it like a shot, a little buttery water shot. Alright, Well, that's weird. Mine hasn't molded yet. Uh. So I use that, which keeps the butter nice and soft and spreadable. And then I on a whim. Took a little and I go for a sort of a medium dark I like it. I don't like it, yeah, not a really light toast, but not dark dark either. But I really love that sound when you're spreading it, you know. And then I put some cloister cinnamon honey, like the spun spreadable honey on there, and it was so but butter and honey. But it could have been just butter or just I mean, there's a lot of things that can put on toast and enjoy it. I like butter and jam for toast. If I do honey, I need to do peanut butter. I'm not crazy about the butter and honey combination, although I do love a good honey butter, but that's not the same thing because butter and honey and I just don't I don't know why. They sound like they'd be spectacular together, but they just don't hit me quite right. Kind of like bourbon and grapefruit juice sounds like it'd be great, it's actually kind of awful. Yeah, I don't think that sounds great though. Okay, all right, should we talk about butter or toast? Is that what we're talking about today? We should do one on butter though. That's a good idea. Sure, that's a great idea. So um, we should probably start with the history because we don't exactly know who started making toast, but um, most people chalk it up to the ancient Egyptians. They think the Greeks are the Romans stole it from the Egyptians and um kind of made a big deal out of it. Actually named the stuff we called toast toast because um in uh I guess ancient Roman Latin Latin, it's the new year toast um is uh is Latin for scorched, So that's kind of where we get other word toast from. So that's where toast kind of first appears. But they're basically saying, like Olivia helped us out with this, that Um, as long as people have been making bread, they probably very quickly after that started making toast. Yeah, and that's toast um as in t O s t u M. It's not t o a st apostrophe might because that's probably some highly manufactured food product probably yeah uh yeah, So yeah, exactly, there was fire, there was sort of stalish bread probably and they said, hey, we can uh the air fryers not around yet that we can revive this sort of stale thing by putting a little brown on it, meaning toasting it. Sure, okay, oh are you going dirty? Yeah? It was okay, so really, um, I guess the in medieval times they were kind of like, okay, we'll see what we can do with this toast and um. That's where cinnamon toast comes from. The fifteenth century, there was something called golden SOPs, which is kind of a predecessor of French toast um, and that came around in the century. I think it was associated with the alchemists because it was supposed to be associated with gold, which was attributed to immortal life. That sounds really alchemist e to me. And I think that's just like dip in toast and egg yolk, right, yes, not like you fry it up or cook it in some way. Oh. I thought you would just eat the toast and dip it in that yolk and eat it. I don't think so. I think you dip the bread in the yolk and then cook it. Okay, Well, there's like French toast, but none of that matters. It does not matter. From the time of ancient Egypt through to the fifteenth century because nothing important happened until I believe, Um, the people, the great people of Naples, Italy, invented cinnamon toast. Yeah, and this is straight up cinnamon toast. Uh. They toasted the bread over fire, and we'll get to the implements they used to do that. Uh. And they would put butter on it, they would put cinnamon and sugar on it. But this sounds so key and delicious. Uh. It says here that they would add a creamy cheese and then cook it some more. Yeah, I can't. I mean, does that mean cream cheese because it can be kind of good. It sounds delicious to me. It does sound pretty good. Um. But regardless, I think cinnamon toast is one of the pinnacles of human cookery. Have you ever had Have you ever had Welsh rare bit? No? Uh? And I want to try it now, but and I know I've looked it up before and realize it's not what I thought. But I always thought it was a rabbit e meati ish and just always avoided it. No. Well, the legend goes that the poor Welsh peasants called it Welsh rabbit because they used the cheese instead of meat, because cheese was cheaper and easier to get than rabbit meat was. They also heard that that was kind of a derogatory or scornful thing, like to the Welsh, this is what rabbit is. You know, this cheese substitute. But it's a cheesy, really delicious, cheesy sauce teeth that includes beer and worst just shut and then you put that over toast. And I can't remember there might be some other component to it. Yeah, I had it at this restaurant in d C. And I can't remember the name of it, but it's where um JFK proposed to Jackie. Oh, so I'm sure there's some d C people who know. But they had Welsh by bit and I was like, I gotta try this, and it was really good. I'm gonna try it, and it's again, it's nothing to be scared of. And I didn't feel as dumb knowing that it originally like it may have had rabbit and they used cheese instead. Yeah, because it felt like a dummy comes because it doesn't even say rabbit right well, I mean, yeah, it's a it's a bastardization of it. It's like um instead of rabbit. It's like R A B B apostrophe. I t h. Things really cooked up though in a big way, no pun intended. In the Victorian era in Britain when they went wild for toast. Uh, all kinds of great recipes. We're gonna highlight a few of them here that Livia dug up, including bone marrow toast. I have kind of turned on bone marrow. I was enjoying it for a little while, but the last time I had it, I didn't really like it, and it kind of gross me out. Oh yeah, I can see that if you stop and think about it, it can gross you up pretty easy. Yeah. So I think I'm off of it now, or maybe just a tiny bit goes a long way for me. I think, yeah, not too much marrow. So the marrow toast was from a book in eighteen sixty seven from Charles elm uh friend Catelly, I guess, and he was in Queen Victoria's kitchen and said the Queen ate this basically every night for dinner. Uh. And that was kind of a fun line. And it's fun reading these old recipes always. One of them says that, uh, you should get the butcher to break the bones as this is a rather awkward affair for ladies, right, I guess to to break those bones not very late. I mean it's it's an awkward affair for anybody really. And what's the other funny line in that recipe? Um that it should have just a mere suspicion of shalott. I love that. Yeah, it's a it's a strange way to put it, but I like that. Guys, well you say a hint of something, so that makes sense, right, A mere suspicions. I've never heard anything like it in either So. There was another cookbook in Victorian England called The Book of Household Management by Isabella Beaten. I think everyone referred to her as Mrs Beaton, and she um came up with a couple of good ones, A good A couple of good contributions. One is the toast sandwich, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Yeah, it's like the Blues Brothers wish sandwich. Do you remember that no, huh? Where you had two slices of bread and you wish you had some meat. That's basically it is. It was a meat substitute if you take two pieces of bread and your meat was a piece of toast. Yeah, like the bread would be buttered and everybody calmed down, but it was just dry toast in the middle. That was the substance of the sandwich. People would eat them. It's kind of yeah, I guess a little bit, but without the meat, without the dressing, without the sesame seed bun, without the lettuce, without any of that. I'm surprised you didn't say it like the old commercial. I can't remember. I've got the bak jingle in my head and it's not it's not gibing. I think it was too all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onion on a sesame seed bun. Yeah, there you go. I've got um have it your your way, have it your way in my head all the time, not just right now. By the way, What did that mean? Was Burger King known for like saying you can get a special type of hamburger, and not yeah, get you know, spit on. It was hold the pickles, hold the lattice, special orders. Don't upset us. All we want is that you let us have it your way. I don't remember going to McDonald's though, and then being upset when I said no pickles or whatever. Oh man, they were well known for their people just going into a rage if you asked them to hold anything like you knew better in the eighties than to open your mouth and McDonald's, aside from ordering directly off the man, hold this, buddy, right, Uh, this recipe is pretty fine. Toast water. I think if you gave people a test and said, guess three guesses on what toast water would be, they probably wouldn't guess what toast water is, even though it's exactly what it sounds like, which I think the mind repels it thinking of it. You know, it's just making toasts, pouring boiling water over the toast. Uh. And that's not the meal. It's not like milk toast, which we'll get to in a second. You just let it get cold and then you strain out that toast and have toast flavored water, like kind of as Olivia puts a toast based iced tea. I kind of want to try this. I don't. I don't want to try it at all. I think it's really awful, But let me know how it is. I'm totally gonna try this. Okay, seriously, dude, let let me know how it is so you mentioned milk toast, we can't not mention milk toast, not to be confused with milk steak. This is milk toast. And although it was a rage in like the nineteenth century, they think it was actually invented in New England. And it was basically toast with warm milk and then something like cinnamon, sugar, maple syrup something like that. Uh. It could be eaten as a breakfast. It was frequently given to people on their sick beds Um. It was just comfort food, early comfort food. UM. And it actually gave us UM a comic strip character's name, Casper Milk Toast, And I looked up Casper milk Toast. I've I've heard of him plenty of times, but I never actually saw Casper Milk Toast comic strip. And it was like looking into a mirror. I actually didn't look it up. I'm doing so right now. This guy. Life is just so hard for this guy because no, no, no, his his like the things that the way he sees the world just like looking into a mirror. Everything is so hard and difficult, and everybody just wants to beat him up. And it's just I was like, wow, I got more than a little strain of Casper milk toast. To me, it's worth looking up for sure, like a tear in your eye. Uh So, milk toast is um. I had kind of had a vision for it as like toast floating and like a thin plate of milk, And it turns out there's kind of all kinds of ways. I've seen it recipes where it's toast with like a milky cream that you kind of drizzle over it. But then I've seen it also like as if you just chop up toast and eat it like a bowl of cereal. Yeah. I don't think there's any specific rules on eating milk toast. I'm going to try that too. I would try that for sure. It sounds pretty good. Um. One thing I came across chuck that it just kept popping up is apparently toast back in this time was was way thinner. I saw it cut. It should be cut to about a quarter inch, which is really thin toast, almost appallingly thing. Yeah, it is very much Melbourne, like I think, maybe twice as wide as as your standard Melbourne toast, but I mean it's still pretty thin. It would be brittle really fast. If you asked me should we take a break, we should? Did you forget that part? All right, we'll be right back everybody. So this is going so so far, so far, so so so far. Yeah, it's harder to say than it sounds. You got to practice in your head right before you said, I did not by the way, I really love I didn't want it to go unmentioned that I really dug your milksteak ref so you slid it in there so quickly that I didn't want to get because sometimes we'll do that and we'll get letters or like could blue choked left when he said milk steak boiled over hard? Uh? Okay, there's one other thing we got to talk about, and that is means of creating toast from bread. Yeah, these are the implements that I that I mentioned, which it's funny a lot of these implements look basically are just like modern camping implements. There are all kinds of little camping toasty things, including telescoping, which was invented it looks like in the Victorian era. Um, they're not as fancy as they used to be, but all kinds of things that are basically kind of like camping toasters. Yeah, because that's basically what everyone was doing in the nineteenth century was camping indoors, so they had those. They had toasting forks, and they had toasting forks for hundreds of years. There was not a lot of innovation on that, although they tinkered with you know how many times it had or just kind of trying to improve the toast fork, but that that was how you made toast for a really long time. And then they came up with stoves and somebody very quickly said we can attach like a little thing onto the front of the stove and direct some of that heat onto a little toast rack and make toast that way. That was a pretty big innovation, I guess, but it wasn't until electric power came along that toast really started to come into its own if you ask me, H for sure. But I also want to shout out the toast track because that is the thing I didn't know as a thing until I saw it, and I was like, I love this, It's brilliant. Why don't they still have these? And they do? They do. I saw somebody and on like some toast form or whatever, thing like do not eat toast? Without a toast track. And if you don't have a toast track, like lean your toast up against like a glass or something like that. Like that's how you store toast until you eat it, and you should be eating it pretty quickly after you make it. Yeah, and to be clear, this is not a means of cooking. But if you're serving like a brunch or a breakfast at your house, uh, you you toast all the toast, and it's sort of like a little miniature bike rack with a caddie handle. I think of it more like a little remember those little forty five record stands? Sure, oh yeah that too, kind of like that. Yeah, but it keeps you know. I think the ideal way to like you said, to um, store toast until it goes in your mouth is not laying down on the plate where it can collect that condensation and moisture because heat gets the heat, my god, the heat. Like you pick up a piece of toast, if you see um water on your plate, you're doing it wrong, right, And the toast track gets around that. So, yes, hats off to the toast track. And yes, if you were a toast afficionado and you're not using a toast track. You've got a whole world that's about to open up to your buddy, that's right. But we were talking about electricity and specifically the innovation that came along, which was uh nichrome. And you think, what is nichrome? And I'll say, well, it's a nickel and chromium composite invented by an engineer named Albert Martia nine five. And he said, well, what is that. It's just a heating coil, right, It's this this really neat alloy that has a high electrical resistance, which means that if you run an electrical current through it, it doesn't like that. And um, it responds by getting really really hot, putting out infrared radiation and turning bright red. And if you say, well, that sounds a lot like a toaster's heat the element. That's why. Because apparently nichrome is still in use today. I think Court says as well, but I think in your average fifteen dollar toaster that your bank gives you for opening an account, I don't know if they still do that or not, it's gonna have nichrome heating elements in it. Yeah, And it's I assume it's the same thing in like a space heater, right or is that different the most dangerous ones? Yeah? Man, I don't like a space heater unless it glows. You know what I'm saying. Oh really, yeah, I love those I do too. It's kind of nice. It's fire like because it almost is fire. It's it's it's almost fire. That's how they should market it, right, That actually would be good marketing. Uh. Can we talk about the D twelve because I'm in love with this thing? Hm. That was a GE product and they basically say this is the first mass marketed commercial toaster. When you're in a safe space, you're not driving your car something, you can look this thing up. Just look up on an image search g E D twelve toaster admitted by Frank Shayler. And this thing is beautiful and its simplicity. I would love to be able to find one and have an electrician like rig it to work in my modern kitchen because it just looks super cool because I love those coils. That thing would catch on fire so fast, it would I mean, you just plug it in and it just immediately catch fire. I think for the first time. Can you describe the shape it's It's like if you took the guts out of a toaster, one side of the gutside of a toaster, and kept the cord and plugged it in and did not have any kind of guard or anything around it, and you just laid the toast on it. That it looks to me kind of like um uh, like it's the toaster version of a wicker wheelchair. I find it deeply uncomfortable like that. You know your long standing fear. I don't think it's ever going away. I don't see my fear of what their wheelchairs ever. Man, I'm gonna upon retirement, you're gonna find one of those on your front porch with a big bow on it. Oh man, I wouldn't come out of the house for so long. That's a great Casper milk toast comic strip. Uh so the D twelve. But the toast leans like you said, it's at a bit of an angle, so it's like a little pup tent with heating coils. The problem with the D twelve was that you had to obviously flip it over. And I don't say it's a problem. I think that's a fun, interactive way to make toast. But you have to flip it over to toast both sides, um, And I think the first pop up toaster was the first one where they said, hey, why don't we see if we can toast both sides of this thing. Yeah, the guy named Charles straight from Minnesota invented the first pop up toaster in it went on to be manufactured and marketed as the Toastmaster. I think that brand might still be around. It sounds familiar. Um. So the thing is is Charles strike like invented this thing pretty much perfectly right out of the gate. Where again, if you go to a bank and you ask for the toaster that that they give you when you open your account, they probably are giving you a Charles strit version of a toaster. He just created it correctly right out of the gate, that's right. And the plus here again is you don't have to flip it and had a very key component which was a timer, so you don't have to sit there and watch it, and it would just pop it up, spring loaded. And here's well we'll get to in a second. But the startling revelation of this episode to me is I thought that's how all modern pop up toasters worked today. Was he set a little brownness variation which was just essentially a timer and put a pin in that because that's not how modern toasters work. And I was blown away to learn that. Well, I say, we talked about that right now, because I'm raring at the bit. Yeah right, Um, So I guess somebody came along and said, how can we make this harder or more complex? And they did. They took the timer element out of it and instead they now have the the current that's created, I guess the circuit is closed, right, which means that the electricity can flow through it, which heats up the heating element. That happens when you press down the lever the handle to sink the toast into the toaster, but it also triggers something that connects an electro magnet that holds that basket that the toaster and down. But eventually enough electricity flows through that. A capacitor that I guess is set to some certain voltage, reaches its limit, turns off the energy to the electromagnet, which now releases the basket, which pops the toaster up, so the handle comes up with it, which means that the circuit is now open. If there's no longer electricity, that can flow through it and the other way. And this is the one that really blew me away, because to me, nothing is more simple than just a timer. But it can be controlled by a switch that is made of two metals. It's bimetallic, and these two metals expand at different rates, so one of them is getting hot at a rate that the other one is get not getting hot at and once they reach a whatever certain point, they will push apart and break that circuit. So I always just figured it was a timer, and it's one of these two things, which, like you said, just seems infinitely more complicated. But uh, there's gotta be a reason, right, I guess it's probably because it's cheaper to make, and that's what I would guess. Yeah, I can think about it. The timer has that you gotta do. You have to have a clock, you gotta have some spring, You have to have a mouse attached to the string that sets off that ball. Yeah, the little pole with the Buddha attached that knocks over the water that ends the timer. I forgot about all that stuff. Yeah, that's expensive. I also do want to shout out my favorite toaster, which I um, I guess people might have these in their homes. There's probably a home version, but the one you get at the Hampton End Lobby Breakfast or in the Delta sky Club. The beautiful conveyor belt toaster, the quiz Nos toaster. Oh I love. I've never been to quiz Nos, but I love those conveyor toasters. Oh you're missing out. Quiz Noses one of the best. Yeah, because they toast everything. They don't ask you if they you want your sub toasted, they do it. And it was on this cool little conveyor belt toaster and it comes out delicious every time. Man, they needed. Why aren't they sponsoring us? I don't know. They've really greatly diminished in size. I thought maybe they've gone out of business, but they just closed a lot of their stores. But they're still around apparently. But I guess that's probably why. Well, I mean, we're given him pre advertising. I called out Jared from Subway years before his great cha like, we're doing everything for Quitness we can do. That's that's true, man, zero dollars. Anyway, I love the conveyor toaster. It's I think they're awesome. Uh, I wish I had one in my house. Maybe I'll do that one day. Yeah, just go to stay at a Hampton Inn and walk out with their toaster. Yeah. Oh and those little waffle irons. Yes, they need to triple the number of waffle irons that they have in my experience that don't and don't let children uh operate them because they screw everything up. Um, did you see the Balmuda toaster Balmuda toaster I sent you. Yeah, that is very appealing it but boys, it expensive. It is. It's three but it does other things rather than just toasts. So if you hear somebody says the three toaster, just be like, actually it does a lot more than just toast, butter it is first of all. Yeah, so I mean three toaster oven is. I mean that's an expensive toaster of them, but it's not astronomical compared to other toaster ovens, I think, compared to like the fifteen dollar Bank toaster. Yes, sure, no, no, no, give it you mean it was It wasn't a thousand bucks, but it's it's a luxury item. I think the trick here is at least they say what I want to do is try one out because you pour a little bit of water in it, right, and that's supposedly the steam helps the toast taste better. Yeah. They you toast your bread with steam, which apparently heats up faster than air, which makes sense because steam can burn your face off faster than air can um. And that's what they do to the toast. They burn the face off of the bread using hot steam, and it crisps the outside, turns it pretty brown if you want it to be, and then the inside stays like chewy and soft. It's kind of like searing the juices inside a steak. Hold on a second, it is only steam. Yeah, it's hot hot steam air. That's what that's my understanding of it. I thought it was a coil and with some steam addition. So it's the same thing. If you're you're not actually cooking the bread it on your heating element and a toaster, the air is cooking the toast, right Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is just a variation on that. They're using steam rather than just air, so they're using water and air heated up rather than just heated air. Okay, I didn't know it was only steam. That is. That is pretty wild. Yeah, weird wild stuff in that company. I've never heard of that company, and I looked into a little bit. It's a Japanese company that, um, I think they have like four things they make a tea kettle, a toaster, a Bluetooth speaker, and what else, oh, a lantern? Right for very disparate things, even weirder than the parent company of quiz Nos. They should be doing pretty well then with those three dollar products. That's right. Can you take a break? Oh boy? Yes, sure? All right? Or should we wait? I don't know, man, it's all bets are off. How about this. Let's uh, let's tell this awesome angent story that Olivia dug up, which I think is kind of one of the coolest parts of this episode, and then we'll take a break. Okay, fair enough, alright, hit hit me with it. Who was Alan McMasters, the inventor of the toaster dummy? He invented it back in don't you know. Yeah, he was from Edinburgh and he was electric electrical engineer and he worked for the British electric company Crompton and Go and came up with the first toaster ine And we know because it was on Wikipedia and there was even the picture of this old timey picture of this guy. Yeah, so it had to be true, but it turned out it wasn't true at all. And there's a fifteen year old British boy who said that picture does not look like it's from the nineteenth century. And if you look at the picture, it doesn't look like it's from the nineteenth century at all. I mean, just running a slight CPO filter on it does not a nineteenth century picture make right. Uh huh. But it was enough to fool everybody for a very long time. So in two thousand and twelve, there was a college student I did not see where he went, but his name was al Alex, and he had a friend whose name was Alan McMasters. And just as a joke, Alex edited the Wikipedia entry I believe for toasts or toasters to say that that Allen McMasters was the inventor of the toaster joke. It is a good joke. But then it got picked up by the press, starting with the Daily Mirror. Yeah, and not the hoax picked up, but just the story. And there are articles in libbyas innocent link. There's one from twelve that is still not corrected online. Uh. I think it was from the Daily Mirror, right, Yeah. The Mirror said they did a list of things that were invented, invented in Great Britain, and they they chalked it up to Allen McMasters, but he didn't. He didn't exist at all, Like there wasn't Alec Allen McMasters. But again, he was a college student in the two thousand tens. He wasn't an eighteen nineties Scottish inventor. And yet once that Daily mirror Um article went up, it's kicked off other citations. And then the beauty part of all of it, chuck, is that those citations are those articles that sprung from the fake Wikipedia entry um became citations in the Wikipedia entry so it was a self sustaining support system for itself. It was amazing that there was a BBC show called Great British Menu that uh created from scratch a dessert named after McMasters. Uh. There was apparently a school in Scotland that had a Alan McMaster's Day in his honor. And really, and it's a harmless prank. That's why I think it's so great, Like I'm normally not a big fan of pranks, but I don't think this really hurt anybody that I can think about. Yeah, can you imagine it hurting someone or my being. I I don't know. Well, I wonder if they ever told the school kids that there there was no Allen McMasters after they celebrated Allen McMaster's day. Okay, so maybe a small life to school children, But otherwise I think it's hysterical because it really I mean, I'm sure these guys were like, I can't believe this works so well, but they were eventually found out and uh McMasters was revealed. But I think that's one of the great pranks. Uh yeah, I agree, and you misunderstand me. I think the fact that these school kids were lied to accidentally makes it even funnier, not like that's a problem, okay. And this is also why we've never used Wikipedia as a source, which we really haven't. It's um, I kind of had to just tune out people that in our reviews over the years say these two numb skulls just read Wikipedia pages when we've literally never and it's a point of pride. And we told when we started getting freelance writers, were like, can't use Wikipedia as a source, and and now I can say, and this is a great reason why excellently put Chuck all right break time. It is finally break time. Everybody all right, So now we get to talk a little bit about the mall Yard. I always said Mallyard, But is it Mallard? Uh, because the eye is not after the yell like I thought it was. So his name was Louis Camille Mayyard. Okay, I'm I don't think it matters at this point. That's the reaction. If you've ever heard fancy chef types or people at a dinner party trying to impress someone else talk about the Mayod reaction, that is this. You know, there's a chemical reaction that takes place when you heat foods, and this specific one is like when you make toast or toasted tortilla, or make popcorn or like sea steak. I think that's the same thing to write, yeah, the chicken skin browning. Yeah, that's this reaction named after this French chemist. And uh, that's kind of the magic of where this taste comes from. It's how these chemicals are reacting to one another. Yes, specifically amino acids and sugars that form all sorts of new smells and new tastes. Um one of the new compounds that they create as a setal tetrahydropyridine um, which is the the the smell, the taste, the aroma that gives toasts. It smell, gives popcorn, it smell corn tortillas, baking, it smell um. It's just one of many compounds that are made by the mayard reaction. But in the case of toast, that's where it comes from. And um. Apparently depending on the kind of bread you use, you'll get different kinds or or different color toast, like darker toast or lighter toast. And the more alkaline a toast is um, the browner it will it, which is why it's very difficult to toast sour dough to a deep brown color, because it's actually very acidic as far as breakes go. Yeah, and if you've heard in the news over recent years that um like toast can be bad for you, or or anything sort of seared might be bad for you, it's because the jury is kind of out whether or not. Well. I think the the American Cancer Society said that there's definitely potentially carcinogenic compounds definitely, maybe definitely maybe that can be created through this toasting and searing. Uh. And that's like grilled meats. We talked about that before. Um, but they don't know if, like, if you're eating enough of that stuff to really be dangerous to you. Yeah. They just basically said, like, just just be careful, don't eat don't eat dark toast. No one likes burned toast anyway, So don't be a jerk and say you like it. Yeah, you gotta keep your eye on it because caramelization can happen, which is great if you're an onion. Uh and maybe a tiny bit if you're some toast, but you don't want to You don't want to make that toast black, that bitter black, and no amount of knife scraping mom will make that taste any better. I totally agree with you, man. You want to talk about toasts around the world. Yeah, this is all this does is make me hungry. These all sounds so good. So there's one called Kaya toast from Singapore and Malaysia. So you charcoal grill the toast. You would love that, right, and then you um make a sandwich out of the toast with butter and a jam that's made from coconut and eggs called Kaya. The name Kaya toast. I would try that any day of the week, all right, what about our friends from Italy? Of course they're gonna serve you something with garlic, uh and olive oil. And that's exactly what they do. It's called hunt. We call that garlic toast in the Midwest. Yeah, garlic, maybe a little salt, little olive oil. Bing bang boom done. I've got one I want to try as soon as possible. It's from Sweden, where I'd like to go, by the way, I have a real hankering to go visit Sweden. Sometime. They have a toast called toast coggin and you um, it's basically a shrimp toast mixed together crim fresh butter shrimp. You put a little dill on it, some capers. You put it all on a toast, maybe with a slight a little bit of lemon juice or or a lemon slice on it as a garnish, and then you eat it and say, man, I feel like I'm in Stockholm. Are friends down under? What's going on down there? I love you. We get so much support from Australia. But and you've got your vegamine of course, which is divisive, of course, but we're not here to talk about vegamine. We're here to talk about making toast, buttering it and then covering it with like ice cream sprinkles. Yeah, also called um yes sprinkles, non perils. That's what we call them here down there, and I think in in the UK they call them hundreds and thousands. But there's those multicolored, tiny little round sprinkles. I know we're gonna get email saying like, just try it, mate, trust me. Yeah, they call it fairy bread. Which if you put that together with a good you know, Instagram photo of of that stuff, it's like, wow, I would try that sometime. Which other ones should we highlight here? I think, um, the pan kuan tomate, because I would like to try that one too, all right, that's Spanish, right, mm hmm. Then what do you do? How do you make it? Well, you just grill some bread again little olive oil. So you think, well, I'm making futuna. We already talked about that wrong, because you add some grated on a box grade or a big old beef steak tomato, so that you just have the enters of the tomato and not the skin, and you mix that with some stuff like some basil or some other spices and you, um, put it on some toast and eat it almost immediately. Maybe put it single anchovy on there, Maybe put a little ioli dap on there too. I saw what's your buddy's name, Kenji all lopezez Ultore. Yes, Uh, they put a They had a pretty good, um little entry and and recipe for pancone tomate that I would like to try to. That sounds really good. Uh. It almost started out sounding like, what's the nice Italian appetizer which just the tomatoes and olive oil on the toast points brush. Yeah, brusquetta. I love a good bruschetta. I used to make that all the time. I don't make it much anymore. Yeah, it's good. The simpler the better with that I've found. Yeah, I do want to shout out toad in a hole or toad in the hole, which I've only had a few times, but whenever I see it on a menu, I'll order that. And that's when I think they are like casserole variations. But the kind of scene is just toast with the center cut out and then you uh fry an egg in the middle of it, and then you top it with a live toad where it's cool. I would try that. I mean, it's just I love toast with Fridays. So I don't know about losing any of the toast by cutting a hole out of it. What do you do with the whole toast? I don't know, make a big mac. Sure, Uh, there's one other thing we got to talk about, Chuck, Well, maybe two. But if you'll remember back not too long ago, less than a decade ago, there's a pretty big toast craze going on in the United States. It was hipsterrific. It's where we got avocado toast. So I'm very glad that it happened. I love avocado toast, but that's where it all came from. There was a toast movement for a little while, and it just was a huge flash in the pan. It came and went faster than you can say, lickety split. But it's it was still kind of interesting because again, it gave us some some good toast. It introduced people to toast. But at the same time people were like, well, this is millennial's problem. This is why you can't buy a house because you're spending five bucks on a piece of toast. Yeah, no, no, man, I've seen, uh, you know, I watch a lot of Top Chef and there was a couple of seasons there where there was a lot of like little toasts added. But to me, it's just sort of like beautiful, simplistic cooking, like toast with some you know, some nut butter and banana or you know, any little like nice thing you can throw on top. Is it nice? I think it just it's one of those things that got like Instagram too much, probably cost a little too much, and there was a bit of a revolution against it. But at its core, I love the idea of taking toasts and putting delicious things on them. Yeah. Um, just to kind of button that up, that artisanal toast fad was traced back by Pacific Standard to a woman named Julietta Correlli who owns Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club, and they said, this is this is ground zero for where people started getting the idea to make toast. She there was just offered in San Francisco, of course, and she just offered like a really good cinnamon toast that would knock your socks off. And then other people were like, yeah, toast, that's a great idea, and it just kind of spread from there. Yeah, that's kind of a become a thing in more recent years, which I like, uh in in the chef world, which is like back to simplicity, uh and just like a few simple ingredients and you don't have to you know, because for a while they're like molecular gastronomy was the thing and making needs foams and you know, beads that popped and smoke would come out. And there's there's room for all of it. I love cooking, and I love cheap dining and I love fine dining. I love it all, so I think there's a place for all of it. And just I don't know. I hate when something delicious happens and people are like hipsters like it, so I hate it. Right. Yeah, you shouldn't do that, I mean, just make your own mind up. Don't identify with something or against something because someone else you don't like likes it. And why don't you like those people in the first place? Have you really stopped and invested any time or thought it into yourself. Maybe you don't like what you see in them that reminds you of yourself. Maybe that's what you don't like about people like hipsters from the mouth of Casper milk toast himself. That's right, all right, we're gonna finish up a little bit with Olivia just knocked this one out of the park with a fun little thing that I wouldn't even even thought to research. Probably is the word toast as a uh it's like a lot of things, but like as a verb, like, uh, the we're making a toast. That started apparently, um, because they would drop spice toasted bread into a drink to help flavor it up a little bit and then pull it out let the dog eat it maybe, and then that was a toast. Yeah, and that that just became um the word that was used anytime you held up a glass and said something nice about somebody else. Makes sense, Sure, I like that. There's an actual origin story to it, right. And then apparently from that all sorts of other usages of toast kind of spread, like the toast of the town, something that's really great. Um. That's that dates back to the eighteenth century. Apparently, um toast was used in the early seventies to mean like awesome today, that's toast, Okay, she put in here eight four there was a phrase something was bad as toast. I've never heard that before in my life. I've never heard that before in my life either. But speaking of the way that you and I used toast all the time, like they're toasts, they're done for, they're finished. That actually traces back to Bill Murray and Ghostbusters? Can this be true? George Will said in And George Will knew what he was talking about. He was a language columnist, and in he traced it back to Bill Murray. Uh. Instead of saying, Um, I'm gonna turn this guy into toast, which the script called for, Bill Murray said this chicken toast instead, and it just kind of took off from there. If that's true, I love that because what a great sort of tie into a movie that we used to talk about a lot. Yeah. Remember we used to mark time by how many years before? After Ghostbusters? It was? Yeah, And I think I mentioned on the show that I thoroughly enjoyed that brand new version even though it got widely panned. Yeah. And speaking of pan, that's another name for bread or toast. Look at that. What was I nervous about? I don't know, Like I said, this one went pretty so, so okay, I'll take it Okay, yeah, same here, especially for the first one back. Since Chuck said I'll take it. That means, of course, everybody, it's time for listener mail. That's right. I guess the first thing we should mention is a quick correction. Uh. In the Edmund Fitzgerald episode, we got the location, well a couple of things on that. We got the location of Zoog Island. Incorrect in that right. Yeah, we said it was in Lake Michigan. Wrong. It's in the Detroit River which flows into Lake Erie. It was never in Lake Michigan. Uh. And boy, I made a lot of Canadians angry because I did not like that song. And Gordon Lightfoot is apparently the Pride of Canada. Did not mean to knock anyone. I do not like that song. But I gotta say this though, Um, I got accused of young yucking, and I think that phrase has been taken a bit too far. Now that's when used you Well, let's all stop using that. No. The way it was written in was basically people were saying, like, you're not allowed to express an opinion about something anymore because that's young yucking And that's not true. You can have opinion, you say, I don't like this thing. I think young yucking is when you're like, I don't know. It's a step further, which is like, how can you like this awful thing or something? Well? I think some Canadians feel like you hit that line across the yeah, and I can people would like it if they If you like that song, fine, if you like that garbage song, that's your basis. All is right with the universe again? Boy? All right, So onto the mail. This is a very sweet one from Anna and Carter and the great city of Cleveland. Hey, guys, been listening for many years. I'm an army sergeant and about every two years ago, we were in a month long field exercise. One week. Every night, helicopters practice night landings in the same field we were sleeping in um. After a few nights constantly being up to what felt like a mechanical tornado, I decided I'd be up anyway, so I might as well put the podcast in my earbuds, and I fell straight to sleep and slept all night. Am I doing it? Ever since? Flash forward to present day, my son and I have made the podcast part of our nightly routine. We played on the phone under a shared pillow to snuggle and cover mostly bugs and animals. It makes for great discussions with a four year old. Last night he wanted Godzilla's or butterflies. Uh and Tracy and Holly have covered Godzilla, so that my son requested you guys with butterflies. Uh. So my son, Carter, and myself say thank you for the info. Work peaceful sleep for an exhausted mom and soldier, have a good night. And that is Anna and Carter in Cleveland, Ohio. Thanks a lot, Anna and Carter. It's a great email. And uh Ani made reference to Holly and Tracy. She was saying that stuff you missed in history class apparently did an episode on Godzilla, which I didn't know which I want to go listen to immediately. Colleagues that we don't get to see anymore, but we go way back and they're the best. We presumably still exist. I got an email from Holly and that they're alive and well, okay, it's confirmed. So thank you from us and from Tracy and Holly to Anna and Carter. And if you want to be like Anna and Carter, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. 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