1
00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:10,640
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, we all know you like chocolate, but is

2
00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:13,320
Speaker 1: that a personal or a professional interest?

3
00:00:13,600 --> 00:00:15,080
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think I know where to draw

4
00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:15,960
Speaker 2: the line anymore.

5
00:00:16,239 --> 00:00:18,600
Speaker 1: I mean between your personal and professional interests.

6
00:00:20,520 --> 00:00:22,760
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's all just a big mush.

7
00:00:22,800 --> 00:00:24,720
Speaker 1: Well, you're paid to do physics, but are you paid

8
00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 1: to eat chocolate?

9
00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:26,920
Speaker 3: No?

10
00:00:27,040 --> 00:00:29,640
Speaker 2: I still have to pay for my own chocolate. It's

11
00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:32,440
Speaker 2: not yet stocked in the department office supply. I mean,

12
00:00:32,720 --> 00:00:33,320
Speaker 2: I've checked.

13
00:00:33,720 --> 00:00:37,519
Speaker 1: So chocolate is personal, Lin, It's not necessary to eat

14
00:00:37,560 --> 00:00:38,440
Speaker 1: it to do physics.

15
00:00:39,360 --> 00:00:41,440
Speaker 2: You know, this is an excellent question, and I'm going

16
00:00:41,479 --> 00:00:43,480
Speaker 2: to raise that with my department chair because I think

17
00:00:43,479 --> 00:00:44,320
Speaker 2: it is essential.

18
00:00:44,720 --> 00:00:48,920
Speaker 1: You're going to get a chocolate chair for your office.

19
00:00:49,479 --> 00:00:51,120
Speaker 2: I want my chair dipped in chocolate.

20
00:00:52,120 --> 00:00:54,480
Speaker 1: There you go, that's going to be great on your pants.

21
00:00:57,440 --> 00:00:58,960
Speaker 2: Who wears pants in their office?

22
00:00:59,360 --> 00:01:03,240
Speaker 1: Heyersonal choice man, not a professional one unless they're in

23
00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:04,080
Speaker 1: a certain profession.

24
00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:17,160
Speaker 2: See, the line can be fuzzy.

25
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:24,600
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm for him, a cartoonist and the author of

26
00:01:24,640 --> 00:01:26,160
Speaker 1: Oliver's Great Big Universe.

27
00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:29,080
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

28
00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:32,240
Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, and I definitely consume chocolate to do

29
00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:33,600
Speaker 2: physics really.

30
00:01:33,880 --> 00:01:36,479
Speaker 1: Like, before you sit down to do any math or

31
00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:39,520
Speaker 1: work out any physics scenarios or experiments, you have to

32
00:01:39,520 --> 00:01:40,480
Speaker 1: eat a bar of chocolate.

33
00:01:40,600 --> 00:01:43,240
Speaker 2: No, it's not as tightly corelated as like drinking coffee

34
00:01:43,280 --> 00:01:45,440
Speaker 2: to think hard. But you know, I consume a fair

35
00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:47,160
Speaker 2: amount of chocolate every week, and I do a fair

36
00:01:47,200 --> 00:01:49,520
Speaker 2: amount of physics every week, and so there's definitely some

37
00:01:49,800 --> 00:01:51,200
Speaker 2: in out relationship there.

38
00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:55,200
Speaker 1: I see there's a correlation, but who knows what the causation.

39
00:01:54,880 --> 00:01:57,600
Speaker 2: Is who it could be the physics leads to chocolate

40
00:01:57,640 --> 00:02:00,240
Speaker 2: instead of chocolate leads to physics, Like.

41
00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:03,360
Speaker 1: The physics is financing your chocolate addiction.

42
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:06,160
Speaker 2: That's definitely true, Yes, that in this podcast.

43
00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:09,680
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain

44
00:02:09,720 --> 00:02:12,600
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

45
00:02:12,080 --> 00:02:14,600
Speaker 2: In which we invite you along on an exploration of

46
00:02:14,639 --> 00:02:18,640
Speaker 2: everything in the universe. The black holes, the quantum particles,

47
00:02:18,639 --> 00:02:22,440
Speaker 2: the mysterious chocolate habits of physics professors. Everything out there

48
00:02:22,560 --> 00:02:26,200
Speaker 2: is up for understanding and therefore grist for explanation.

49
00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:30,240
Speaker 1: That's right, because it is a delicious, silky smooth universe

50
00:02:30,280 --> 00:02:34,239
Speaker 1: out there, full of mysteries, flavors, and nuances that are

51
00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:37,280
Speaker 1: still up for debit and still up for exploration and

52
00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:38,880
Speaker 1: asking questions.

53
00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:41,200
Speaker 2: And some of the most amazing and mysterious experiences in

54
00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:44,480
Speaker 2: our lives do come down to the microscopic science, the

55
00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:48,960
Speaker 2: physics or even gasp, the chemistry of your food determines

56
00:02:49,040 --> 00:02:51,320
Speaker 2: what it feels like and what it tastes like in

57
00:02:51,320 --> 00:02:51,800
Speaker 2: your mouth.

58
00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:54,280
Speaker 1: That's right. Science is all around us in the physics

59
00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:56,480
Speaker 1: of our presence here on the planet. There's chemistry and

60
00:02:56,520 --> 00:02:59,520
Speaker 1: the foods we eat, and there's psychology in things like

61
00:02:59,600 --> 00:03:00,440
Speaker 1: chocolate addiction.

62
00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:03,840
Speaker 2: Chocolate addiction what I could stop any time?

63
00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:07,399
Speaker 1: Sure you can, Dan, Yeah, sure, that's what they all say.

64
00:03:07,480 --> 00:03:09,120
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not going to prove it, but I

65
00:03:09,200 --> 00:03:09,840
Speaker 2: know I could.

66
00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:12,160
Speaker 1: You're not gonna like it, but you could. You're saying

67
00:03:12,840 --> 00:03:16,960
Speaker 1: like you're gonna go into withdrawl and get the shakes,

68
00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:19,239
Speaker 1: but uh, you can still do it exactly.

69
00:03:19,639 --> 00:03:22,760
Speaker 2: And regular listeners of the podcast might have picked up

70
00:03:22,760 --> 00:03:25,440
Speaker 2: on the fact that we're often making jokes about chocolate,

71
00:03:25,720 --> 00:03:29,200
Speaker 2: connecting chocolate with physics, connecting physics with chocolate. But I'm

72
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:31,360
Speaker 2: a believer that there's more than just a few jokes

73
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:33,360
Speaker 2: to be had here, that there is a deep connection

74
00:03:33,600 --> 00:03:35,240
Speaker 2: between physics and chocolate.

75
00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:38,280
Speaker 1: M isn't there a graph you can find online of

76
00:03:38,320 --> 00:03:42,480
Speaker 1: like number of Nobel prizes per country versus amount of

77
00:03:42,520 --> 00:03:43,280
Speaker 1: chocolate consumed.

78
00:03:43,480 --> 00:03:47,160
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, there is an amazing correlation between the Nobel

79
00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:50,800
Speaker 2: prizes per capita and the pounds of dark chocolate consumed

80
00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:54,240
Speaker 2: per capita. It's really pretty tight. Switzerland is definitely in

81
00:03:54,280 --> 00:03:56,360
Speaker 2: the upper edge of both of those categories.

82
00:03:57,160 --> 00:03:59,160
Speaker 1: But of course I could just be a coincidence, right,

83
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:02,520
Speaker 1: because the Swiss love their chocolate, and the Swiss are

84
00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 1: the ones that issued the mobile price.

85
00:04:06,320 --> 00:04:09,000
Speaker 2: No, those those are the Swedes. Man the Swedes, oh

86
00:04:09,040 --> 00:04:12,720
Speaker 2: the sweeze, Oh boy, whoops? But close, I guess kind of.

87
00:04:12,760 --> 00:04:13,600
Speaker 2: They're both European.

88
00:04:14,360 --> 00:04:15,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, Central Europe.

89
00:04:17,440 --> 00:04:20,000
Speaker 2: I think the Swedes are also up there. So maybe

90
00:04:20,040 --> 00:04:23,400
Speaker 2: it's a Swedish Swiss cabal that's behind all of it.

91
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:26,000
Speaker 1: Well, the question then, is is it a correlation or

92
00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:28,960
Speaker 1: a causation and in which direction is the causation?

93
00:04:29,160 --> 00:04:29,280
Speaker 3: Right?

94
00:04:29,360 --> 00:04:29,520
Speaker 4: Yeah?

95
00:04:29,640 --> 00:04:32,919
Speaker 2: Or maybe there another confounding factor that fuels them both.

96
00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:35,880
Speaker 2: Who knows? One of the deep mysteries of the universe.

97
00:04:36,839 --> 00:04:39,760
Speaker 1: Sounds like you're just throwing your hands up in the air. Daniel, Here,

98
00:04:40,680 --> 00:04:43,080
Speaker 1: I've embracing the mystery. Should need you apply for a

99
00:04:43,120 --> 00:04:44,520
Speaker 1: grant to study this or something?

100
00:04:44,640 --> 00:04:46,120
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to go have some chocolate and

101
00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:47,039
Speaker 2: think deeply about it.

102
00:04:47,160 --> 00:04:48,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, But how are you going to

103
00:04:48,520 --> 00:04:49,240
Speaker 1: pay for that chocolate?

104
00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:53,000
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm applying for a grant? Yeah, yeah, there you go.

105
00:04:53,360 --> 00:04:58,560
Speaker 1: Applied to the National Snack Foundation the NSF. But yeah,

106
00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:02,000
Speaker 1: like you said, there is a chemistry everywhere and physics

107
00:05:02,160 --> 00:05:04,920
Speaker 1: within chemistry all around us, even in the foods we eat.

108
00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:12,760
Speaker 1: So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the physics

109
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:13,640
Speaker 1: of chocolate.

110
00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:16,880
Speaker 2: There's definitely a physics of chocolate in the experience of

111
00:05:16,920 --> 00:05:21,080
Speaker 2: eating it, but chocolate also plays other outsized roles in physics.

112
00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:24,280
Speaker 2: We use chocolate for analogies all the time. Phyes this.

113
00:05:24,440 --> 00:05:27,080
Speaker 2: Definitely eat a lot of chocolate. You can actually even

114
00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:29,720
Speaker 2: use chocolate to do physics experiments.

115
00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:31,760
Speaker 1: Now, hold on, I feel like you just made a

116
00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:34,320
Speaker 1: statement there, which is that all physicists eat a lot

117
00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:36,760
Speaker 1: of chocolate. Is that just based on your experiment of

118
00:05:36,800 --> 00:05:41,200
Speaker 1: one with yourself, or is there really like a culture

119
00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:43,560
Speaker 1: of chocolate within the physics world.

120
00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:46,000
Speaker 2: You know, I anticipated you challenging me on this, and

121
00:05:46,040 --> 00:05:48,960
Speaker 2: so I did a bit of research. I was able

122
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,800
Speaker 2: to dig up how much Americans eat in terms of

123
00:05:51,839 --> 00:05:56,000
Speaker 2: chocolate per week. On average, Americans eat three chocolate bars

124
00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:59,760
Speaker 2: per week, spending one hundred and twenty billion dollars a

125
00:05:59,839 --> 00:06:02,800
Speaker 2: year year on this stuff. But I wasn't able to

126
00:06:02,839 --> 00:06:06,840
Speaker 2: find any data on how much chocolate physicists consume. I mean,

127
00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:09,680
Speaker 2: I have my own observations. I know the physicists or

128
00:06:09,680 --> 00:06:13,480
Speaker 2: lovers of coffee and coffee chocolate often connected, and people

129
00:06:13,520 --> 00:06:16,039
Speaker 2: are often having little squares of chocolate when they sit

130
00:06:16,120 --> 00:06:18,640
Speaker 2: there coffee. But yes, I will admit at this point

131
00:06:18,720 --> 00:06:19,960
Speaker 2: it's basically anecdotal.

132
00:06:20,320 --> 00:06:22,039
Speaker 1: I see. So when you said I did some research,

133
00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:23,919
Speaker 1: you mean you actually didn't do any research.

134
00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:26,320
Speaker 2: I mean I ate some chocolate and I thought about it.

135
00:06:26,360 --> 00:06:27,080
Speaker 2: That's research.

136
00:06:27,640 --> 00:06:30,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I mean. Did some research with an

137
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:32,760
Speaker 1: end of one, like one data point.

138
00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:36,000
Speaker 2: I watched people in my department eating chocolate. That's end

139
00:06:36,040 --> 00:06:36,920
Speaker 2: of like five or ten.

140
00:06:38,200 --> 00:06:40,120
Speaker 1: Well, you would have to do a controlled experiment like

141
00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:43,880
Speaker 1: good at the math department, go to the chemistry department,

142
00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:47,480
Speaker 1: go to the sociology department, and then measure the chocolate

143
00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:48,720
Speaker 1: consumption per professor.

144
00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:52,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just outlined my proposal to the National Snack Foundation.

145
00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:53,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Do I get to be a

146
00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:58,360
Speaker 1: co author and thus a recipient of the money?

147
00:06:58,560 --> 00:07:01,120
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, absolutely. If I get money from the National

148
00:07:01,160 --> 00:07:02,720
Speaker 2: Snack Foundation, we'll share it for.

149
00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:04,240
Speaker 1: This study, all right, But I don't have to use

150
00:07:04,279 --> 00:07:06,640
Speaker 1: it buy chocolate to egg or what if I use

151
00:07:06,680 --> 00:07:09,159
Speaker 1: it to buy white chocolate, thus canceling out?

152
00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:13,040
Speaker 2: Oh god. You know, they have pretty strict controls on

153
00:07:13,080 --> 00:07:15,640
Speaker 2: how you spend government money. So as long as you

154
00:07:15,640 --> 00:07:18,680
Speaker 2: can stand before Congress and defend that as a valid

155
00:07:18,680 --> 00:07:21,520
Speaker 2: way to spend public funds, then hey, let's do it.

156
00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:25,160
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, well I hear the National Snack

157
00:07:25,160 --> 00:07:29,200
Speaker 1: Foundation gets into trouble all the time with that. But yeah,

158
00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:31,280
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about. You know, everything that we

159
00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:34,200
Speaker 1: eat basically has chemistry and does physics in it. Right,

160
00:07:34,280 --> 00:07:37,120
Speaker 1: there's science and then everything we do and everything we

161
00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:40,080
Speaker 1: are and everything we put down our stomachs and everything

162
00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:41,520
Speaker 1: that comes out the other head.

163
00:07:42,120 --> 00:07:44,200
Speaker 2: That's right, the chocolate that goes in in the dark,

164
00:07:44,240 --> 00:07:45,160
Speaker 2: matter that comes out.

165
00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:47,240
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned that there's some experiments you can do

166
00:07:47,280 --> 00:07:48,440
Speaker 1: with chocolate. What do you mean by that?

167
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:51,360
Speaker 2: This is sort of famous at home measurement of the

168
00:07:51,400 --> 00:07:53,920
Speaker 2: speed of light that you can do using a bar

169
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:56,080
Speaker 2: of chocolate. You take a bar of chocolate and you

170
00:07:56,080 --> 00:07:59,040
Speaker 2: put it in the microwave, and you'll notice that certain

171
00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:02,640
Speaker 2: spots on it faster than others. Those are because of

172
00:08:02,640 --> 00:08:06,760
Speaker 2: the microwaves, which are actually just invisible light waves are

173
00:08:06,800 --> 00:08:09,600
Speaker 2: heating some parts of the chocolate more than others because

174
00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:12,320
Speaker 2: of the wave like nature of light. So you can

175
00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:15,520
Speaker 2: use that to measure the wavelength of the light and

176
00:08:15,560 --> 00:08:18,640
Speaker 2: then knowing the frequency already, you can derive the speed

177
00:08:18,640 --> 00:08:21,120
Speaker 2: of light. So you can kind of measure the speed

178
00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:23,160
Speaker 2: of light using chocolate and a microwave.

179
00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:26,160
Speaker 1: Wait, what is this like a real experiment you can do.

180
00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:27,920
Speaker 2: This is a real experiment you can do. You can

181
00:08:27,960 --> 00:08:31,400
Speaker 2: google it and find instructions online. You put the microwave

182
00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:34,280
Speaker 2: in the chocolate and you'll notice some melty spots here

183
00:08:34,320 --> 00:08:36,880
Speaker 2: and there. Measure the distance between them, and you get

184
00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:41,200
Speaker 2: basically the wavelength of the microwaves. You can convert that

185
00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:42,200
Speaker 2: into the speed of light.

186
00:08:42,360 --> 00:08:44,280
Speaker 1: But do you have to disable the rotating table?

187
00:08:44,360 --> 00:08:46,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you can't let it rotate.

188
00:08:46,960 --> 00:08:48,800
Speaker 1: And thankfully you don't need a chocolate for these you

189
00:08:48,840 --> 00:08:51,320
Speaker 1: can use butter or maybe wax.

190
00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:56,959
Speaker 2: Right, No, you need to do chocolate. Oh, you're absolutely right.

191
00:08:56,960 --> 00:08:58,840
Speaker 2: You don't need chocolate. It's just kind of fun.

192
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:00,440
Speaker 1: You just can do it chocolate.

193
00:09:00,920 --> 00:09:03,000
Speaker 2: Well, at the end of the chocolate version experiment, you

194
00:09:03,040 --> 00:09:05,440
Speaker 2: have a nice, warm, melti bar of chocolate. The end

195
00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:07,520
Speaker 2: of the wax version, you don't have any snacks.

196
00:09:07,679 --> 00:09:11,040
Speaker 1: Mm, but you only have a few warm pools of chocolate.

197
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:13,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.

198
00:09:13,440 --> 00:09:16,400
Speaker 1: You have a pattern of melted chocolate. All right, Well,

199
00:09:16,440 --> 00:09:18,240
Speaker 1: what are we doing in this episode? We're talking about

200
00:09:18,280 --> 00:09:21,400
Speaker 1: the physics of chocolate, the signs behind chocolate.

201
00:09:21,600 --> 00:09:23,320
Speaker 2: We're going to do both. We are going to talk

202
00:09:23,360 --> 00:09:26,679
Speaker 2: to an ex physicist who has done a deep dive

203
00:09:26,880 --> 00:09:30,640
Speaker 2: on the process of chocolate, reading research papers and going

204
00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:34,600
Speaker 2: from dirt to bar, growing his own chocolate pods and

205
00:09:34,640 --> 00:09:38,080
Speaker 2: making his own chocolate bar in his lab, and also

206
00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:41,720
Speaker 2: talk to experts in commercial production of chocolate. What are

207
00:09:41,760 --> 00:09:44,520
Speaker 2: the tricky bits of the process, what's hard about making

208
00:09:44,559 --> 00:09:47,160
Speaker 2: an eminem taste the same all the world around? And

209
00:09:47,320 --> 00:09:50,200
Speaker 2: why does Hershey's have that particular kind of flavor?

210
00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:50,680
Speaker 3: Mmm?

211
00:09:51,160 --> 00:09:53,840
Speaker 1: Interesting? All right, Well, let's take a big dip into

212
00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:58,080
Speaker 1: this fondue of Chocolate Physics, starting with Daniel's interview with

213
00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:00,440
Speaker 1: ex physicist Seamus Likely.

214
00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:06,200
Speaker 2: Seamus grew up in New Mexico as I did, has

215
00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,280
Speaker 2: a PhD in particle physics like I do, worked at

216
00:10:09,320 --> 00:10:13,160
Speaker 2: Formulab just like I did, and there are stories diverge.

217
00:10:13,480 --> 00:10:16,360
Speaker 2: He went off into an industry where he created the Xbox,

218
00:10:16,640 --> 00:10:19,840
Speaker 2: and more recently he's been well known online for scraping

219
00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:23,800
Speaker 2: the insides of ancient Egyptian vessels to cultivate yeast and

220
00:10:23,880 --> 00:10:27,360
Speaker 2: bake ancient bread. Okay, so then it's my great pleasure

221
00:10:27,480 --> 00:10:30,720
Speaker 2: to welcome the podcast the Infamous, the one and only

222
00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:34,199
Speaker 2: Seamus Blackly. Seamus, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks

223
00:10:34,200 --> 00:10:36,320
Speaker 2: for having me man. You know, I wanted to give

224
00:10:36,360 --> 00:10:39,040
Speaker 2: an introduction to the listeners, had an idea of who

225
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:40,839
Speaker 2: we were talking to here, but it was just such

226
00:10:40,880 --> 00:10:44,960
Speaker 2: an overwhelming process to try to sketch your background. It's

227
00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:47,800
Speaker 2: really incredible. So can you give us like a brief

228
00:10:47,840 --> 00:10:50,679
Speaker 2: summary of how you got to here today to a

229
00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:54,079
Speaker 2: place where we're talking about nerding out about chocolate details.

230
00:10:55,440 --> 00:11:00,360
Speaker 5: You know, people always say that now when they're talking

231
00:11:00,400 --> 00:11:01,960
Speaker 5: to me or trying to introduce me at things and

232
00:11:02,000 --> 00:11:07,199
Speaker 5: It's confusing to me because from my standpoint, you know,

233
00:11:07,679 --> 00:11:09,640
Speaker 5: I'm bored all the time, and so none of this

234
00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:11,200
Speaker 5: seems very interesting to.

235
00:11:11,160 --> 00:11:11,680
Speaker 4: Me at all.

236
00:11:12,920 --> 00:11:17,240
Speaker 5: But perhaps that's why I have had the good luck

237
00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:21,240
Speaker 5: to do all sorts of different things, because I guess

238
00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:23,600
Speaker 5: I get bored very easily, and I'm very interested in

239
00:11:24,520 --> 00:11:27,439
Speaker 5: how everything works. But the long and short of it,

240
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:31,800
Speaker 5: and I think specifically from the standpoint of you know,

241
00:11:31,840 --> 00:11:34,960
Speaker 5: the most important thing we share in common, which is physics,

242
00:11:35,120 --> 00:11:41,880
Speaker 5: is that I grew up in New Mexico. I thought

243
00:11:42,040 --> 00:11:46,000
Speaker 5: I was going to be a musician, and at some

244
00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:51,680
Speaker 5: point I realized that all of the jazz piano guys,

245
00:11:51,679 --> 00:11:57,480
Speaker 5: which is what I was, who were really respected, who

246
00:11:57,559 --> 00:12:01,400
Speaker 5: played the best, were like still living with their mothers

247
00:12:01,800 --> 00:12:02,920
Speaker 5: when they were in their forties.

248
00:12:03,640 --> 00:12:04,559
Speaker 4: And that was cool.

249
00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:07,120
Speaker 5: I mean, there were really amazing people, and I don't

250
00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:09,920
Speaker 5: mean to cast dispersions on them, but I realized that

251
00:12:09,960 --> 00:12:12,880
Speaker 5: I couldn't do that, and so I had to figure

252
00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:16,040
Speaker 5: out something else to do. And it turned out at

253
00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:18,320
Speaker 5: that point I was an undergraduate and I had burned

254
00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:22,160
Speaker 5: through two years, and I had to find something else

255
00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:24,280
Speaker 5: that I could study that might make me some money.

256
00:12:24,440 --> 00:12:27,600
Speaker 5: And I guess the idea that physics would be a

257
00:12:27,679 --> 00:12:30,959
Speaker 5: career that would make you money. I mean, yeah, sure,

258
00:12:31,000 --> 00:12:36,320
Speaker 5: but probably more than jazz piano at the time. And well,

259
00:12:36,520 --> 00:12:38,600
Speaker 5: the only majors available you could do in two years

260
00:12:38,640 --> 00:12:40,920
Speaker 5: without some kind of maze of prerequisites that would be

261
00:12:40,960 --> 00:12:45,360
Speaker 5: impossible were basically physics and math at the time, and

262
00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:50,440
Speaker 5: the physics department at Tufts I went to school was

263
00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:54,319
Speaker 5: filled with all of these really cool guys doing experimental

264
00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:58,200
Speaker 5: hyenergy physics and phenomenologists and a couple of theorists. And

265
00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:01,120
Speaker 5: they were all like Vietnam draft who went into physics

266
00:13:01,160 --> 00:13:02,480
Speaker 5: to go to graduate school and.

267
00:13:02,360 --> 00:13:03,240
Speaker 4: Not go to Vietnam.

268
00:13:03,480 --> 00:13:06,680
Speaker 5: And they were, you know, like touching the face of

269
00:13:06,760 --> 00:13:08,839
Speaker 5: God to be frank, I mean, they were trying to

270
00:13:08,920 --> 00:13:12,600
Speaker 5: understand the fundamental nature of the universe. And in my mind,

271
00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:18,200
Speaker 5: the work felt the same as jazz, and I just

272
00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:24,160
Speaker 5: kind of stepped through that door and was suddenly, you know,

273
00:13:24,200 --> 00:13:24,720
Speaker 5: at formula.

274
00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:28,280
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to me that you grew up in northern

275
00:13:28,280 --> 00:13:31,920
Speaker 2: New Mexico near two national labs, but didn't really discover

276
00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:35,240
Speaker 2: your passion for physics until you left and went to Boston.

277
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:40,640
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and I had interestingly you know, in high

278
00:13:40,679 --> 00:13:45,480
Speaker 5: school has really focused on music and you know, musical

279
00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:49,720
Speaker 5: theater and all this stuff. So yeah, and I think

280
00:13:49,760 --> 00:13:52,559
Speaker 5: that the nature of New Mexico as being such an

281
00:13:52,559 --> 00:14:00,200
Speaker 5: incredibly bizarre, fascinating, beautiful, creative and technical place was hot

282
00:14:00,320 --> 00:14:02,880
Speaker 5: and all of this for me in any case, So

283
00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:06,240
Speaker 5: I go to Framer Lab and you know, I'm setting

284
00:14:06,320 --> 00:14:11,040
Speaker 5: up postdocs, and I go to graduate school and I

285
00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:16,600
Speaker 5: find something in the Magnet Accelerator Physics group for the

286
00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:20,600
Speaker 5: super Condutting SuperCollider that looks great. And then Congress cancels

287
00:14:20,640 --> 00:14:24,360
Speaker 5: the SuperCollider, and there's a big politics thing around the

288
00:14:24,400 --> 00:14:27,600
Speaker 5: top Quark, and all these things sort of combined together

289
00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:32,240
Speaker 5: to cause me to be very unhappy, and so I

290
00:14:32,360 --> 00:14:37,400
Speaker 5: bailed out and went and took a job designing airplanes

291
00:14:37,720 --> 00:14:41,880
Speaker 5: that didn't quite materialize. So I had a temporary job

292
00:14:43,240 --> 00:14:45,440
Speaker 5: doing a thing nobody had ever heard of before, which

293
00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:50,400
Speaker 5: was writing physics for video games, which was not even

294
00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:54,400
Speaker 5: a thing. And suddenly I was in the video game business,

295
00:14:54,440 --> 00:14:58,760
Speaker 5: and you know, it was so exciting and wonderful to

296
00:14:58,800 --> 00:15:03,400
Speaker 5: be around, work with the people and contributing to the

297
00:15:03,440 --> 00:15:07,240
Speaker 5: beginnings of what is now you know, video games like

298
00:15:07,240 --> 00:15:10,000
Speaker 5: three dimensional video games and three D rendering. Yeah, and

299
00:15:10,400 --> 00:15:13,920
Speaker 5: you know, like my variable names and the stuff are

300
00:15:13,920 --> 00:15:16,520
Speaker 5: still used in all those engines because I was just

301
00:15:16,600 --> 00:15:18,600
Speaker 5: around at the right time, like a guy looking for

302
00:15:18,640 --> 00:15:20,760
Speaker 5: the men's room, right who walks in the wrong room,

303
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:25,120
Speaker 5: and then that's where I was.

304
00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:27,800
Speaker 2: And well certainly right place, right time, with the right

305
00:15:27,840 --> 00:15:28,720
Speaker 2: skills as well.

306
00:15:28,960 --> 00:15:32,240
Speaker 5: I mean, it was still fairly awkward to tell people

307
00:15:32,280 --> 00:15:35,640
Speaker 5: you worked in video games, because it hadn't occurred to

308
00:15:35,760 --> 00:15:38,440
Speaker 5: most people yet that video games were made by people.

309
00:15:38,960 --> 00:15:42,040
Speaker 5: I mean, it sounds odd, but it's not like it

310
00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:44,720
Speaker 5: is now. So so I did that for a long

311
00:15:44,760 --> 00:15:50,080
Speaker 5: time and that led to me trying to make a

312
00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:53,560
Speaker 5: big magnum opus game at a new company called DreamWorks,

313
00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:56,120
Speaker 5: where I was like, you know, the eightieth employee or something,

314
00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:00,400
Speaker 5: and you know, just biting off more and I could

315
00:16:00,480 --> 00:16:03,520
Speaker 5: chew and failing at that, you know, and I worked

316
00:16:03,520 --> 00:16:06,720
Speaker 5: for Steven Spielberg and I knew all these guys, and again,

317
00:16:07,520 --> 00:16:09,400
Speaker 5: you know, the typical for me, I was just sort

318
00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:12,000
Speaker 5: of walking through this place thinking, wow, okay, of course

319
00:16:12,000 --> 00:16:14,480
Speaker 5: everybody hangs out with Steven Spielberg, and it wasn't really

320
00:16:15,680 --> 00:16:18,120
Speaker 5: you know, the work you're doing this is such a

321
00:16:18,120 --> 00:16:20,520
Speaker 5: physicist thing, like the work you're doing is so hard

322
00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:24,880
Speaker 5: that everything else kind of seems peripheral and it's not

323
00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:27,800
Speaker 5: like you're sleepwalking. But I know it's really aggravating for

324
00:16:27,880 --> 00:16:33,120
Speaker 5: people around you because they don't see the thing in

325
00:16:33,160 --> 00:16:36,880
Speaker 5: your mind that you're working on. They don't see the

326
00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:40,320
Speaker 5: kind of you know, infinite landscape of thought that you

327
00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:41,120
Speaker 5: have going on.

328
00:16:41,040 --> 00:16:41,480
Speaker 4: All the time.

329
00:16:41,480 --> 00:16:43,080
Speaker 5: So you just seem like a space kit it and

330
00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:45,440
Speaker 5: you're not paying attention. But it's quite the opposite, right,

331
00:16:45,520 --> 00:16:47,560
Speaker 5: So that's what Games was like then, because we were

332
00:16:47,560 --> 00:16:50,280
Speaker 5: figuring out, hey, what is a renderer? Like what like,

333
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:52,520
Speaker 5: how do you how would you what when you go

334
00:16:52,600 --> 00:16:55,360
Speaker 5: through a door? How do you deal with that in memory?

335
00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:58,320
Speaker 5: Because we have four megabytes and you know this kind

336
00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:03,400
Speaker 5: of stuff. And anyway, my big game there failed because

337
00:17:03,480 --> 00:17:06,120
Speaker 5: I was, you know, working with a bunch of movie

338
00:17:06,160 --> 00:17:07,720
Speaker 5: people who didn't get it, and I was, you know,

339
00:17:07,760 --> 00:17:10,840
Speaker 5: twenty seven or twenty eight or something, and I feel

340
00:17:10,880 --> 00:17:13,080
Speaker 5: like I probably wasn't even toilet trained, you know, I

341
00:17:13,119 --> 00:17:16,720
Speaker 5: was really so young. And that huge failure led to

342
00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:19,200
Speaker 5: me going to try to hide out at Microsoft because

343
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:22,080
Speaker 5: I had met Bill Gates again. Sleepwalking through all this stuff.

344
00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:24,679
Speaker 5: And he had said, based on some of the physics

345
00:17:24,720 --> 00:17:28,040
Speaker 5: demos that he saw that we were doing, and you know,

346
00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:32,040
Speaker 5: locomotion physics that we'd done with dinosaurs and humans and

347
00:17:32,080 --> 00:17:35,280
Speaker 5: all this, that I should come work at Microsoft someday.

348
00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:38,240
Speaker 5: And so I sort of sheepishly mailed him, and then

349
00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:42,040
Speaker 5: I ended up working at Microsoft. And then couldn't help

350
00:17:42,080 --> 00:17:47,320
Speaker 5: myself when I realized that Microsoft could you know, could

351
00:17:47,320 --> 00:17:51,080
Speaker 5: make a game console that could beat Sony and et cetera,

352
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:54,000
Speaker 5: et cetera. So I just keep on, you know, looking

353
00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:59,280
Speaker 5: at seeing interesting stuff to work on, and I, for

354
00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:02,879
Speaker 5: some reason, don't have the common sense that most people

355
00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:06,720
Speaker 5: have about well that's really stupid. You're gonna lose your house.

356
00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:10,880
Speaker 5: I just go ahead and do it anyway. So there

357
00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:14,600
Speaker 5: you go. And so now we end up with you know,

358
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:19,040
Speaker 5: me doing you know, another secret project that I can't

359
00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:22,240
Speaker 5: tell you about right now, and and and a lot

360
00:18:22,240 --> 00:18:23,040
Speaker 5: of hobby.

361
00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:24,080
Speaker 4: Projects that I talk about.

362
00:18:23,840 --> 00:18:28,480
Speaker 5: A lot, like the ancient Egyptian bakery, which I believe

363
00:18:28,480 --> 00:18:31,520
Speaker 5: it or not, you know, we're now I think going to.

364
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:35,359
Speaker 4: Build in Cairo, and this chocolate stuff.

365
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:37,760
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I talk a lot in the podcast

366
00:18:37,800 --> 00:18:40,800
Speaker 2: about teaching people to think like a physicist, you know,

367
00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:43,159
Speaker 2: which is not to use your common sense, but to

368
00:18:43,280 --> 00:18:45,760
Speaker 2: follow your curiosity and your intuition and try to make

369
00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:47,840
Speaker 2: sense of the world and to you know, think differently.

370
00:18:47,880 --> 00:18:50,920
Speaker 2: And I think that's something we definitely should cultivate. And

371
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:53,840
Speaker 2: so maybe you're training as a physicist is what helped

372
00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:56,040
Speaker 2: you follow your curiosity and end up in all these

373
00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:57,159
Speaker 2: exciting adventures.

374
00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:00,000
Speaker 5: This is I think probably universally true about all him

375
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:07,080
Speaker 5: and endeavor has come from someone following that curiosity and

376
00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:10,399
Speaker 5: and doing as Penduleete says, you know, an amount of

377
00:19:10,440 --> 00:19:13,400
Speaker 5: work on something that most people would consider insane, right,

378
00:19:14,920 --> 00:19:17,399
Speaker 5: you know, he says, that's what magic is, right, Magic

379
00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:20,480
Speaker 5: is somebody working on something, you know, in a way

380
00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:24,000
Speaker 5: that most people will consider to be insane. But that's

381
00:19:24,119 --> 00:19:27,320
Speaker 5: truly what like everything, all human progress, like every story

382
00:19:27,359 --> 00:19:32,720
Speaker 5: you read about anything important, beautiful, world changing, you know,

383
00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:35,399
Speaker 5: always has an element of an individual or group of

384
00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 5: individuals who are working on it despite all indications that

385
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:43,399
Speaker 5: it's insane, and following that. And I think that within

386
00:19:43,440 --> 00:19:48,880
Speaker 5: physics we need more of that because sometimes you get

387
00:19:48,880 --> 00:19:53,920
Speaker 5: to see a secret, and you're not going to see

388
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:59,359
Speaker 5: that secret unless you open yourself to being compelled to

389
00:19:59,560 --> 00:20:05,119
Speaker 5: just follow in that curiosity despite every practical concern And

390
00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:07,719
Speaker 5: it's weird because you are a physical being. You have

391
00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:09,800
Speaker 5: to have practical concerns. You have to eat, you have

392
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:13,520
Speaker 5: to have relationships. You know, you don't want to have

393
00:20:13,600 --> 00:20:18,240
Speaker 5: like Fiman's second wife's divorce papers saying all he thinks

394
00:20:18,240 --> 00:20:24,080
Speaker 5: about is calculus. But also, I mean all I think

395
00:20:24,119 --> 00:20:26,840
Speaker 5: about is calculus. I mean that's like, it's just how

396
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:30,600
Speaker 5: it is because sometimes you know, it turns up a

397
00:20:30,600 --> 00:20:35,680
Speaker 5: gold nugget, man, So that's so important. It's really, really,

398
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:38,639
Speaker 5: really important. And I mean to get back around a

399
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:43,760
Speaker 5: chocolate That's where the chocolate comes from, is the musing

400
00:20:43,880 --> 00:20:49,080
Speaker 5: of how strange is it that dirt can produce this

401
00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:51,720
Speaker 5: chocolate bar? And you know, could we do that? We

402
00:20:51,760 --> 00:20:57,040
Speaker 5: could try. Let's try. Let's see what it's like, because

403
00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:58,680
Speaker 5: it'll just be a thing we do in the background.

404
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:00,800
Speaker 5: I will take years for the tree to let's just

405
00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:02,360
Speaker 5: see if we cannot kill the tree.

406
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:05,600
Speaker 2: But why chocolate specifically, I mean, were you're trying to

407
00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:08,280
Speaker 2: develop a useful skill so you can create something valuable

408
00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:09,960
Speaker 2: in the end times or do you think that's a

409
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:13,640
Speaker 2: deep physics chocolate connection it's chocolate. What else do you need?

410
00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:15,800
Speaker 2: I mean, all right, so let's get to chocolate. Then

411
00:21:16,320 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 2: can you walk us through the process, because I know

412
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:21,120
Speaker 2: you did a deep dive into the research of how

413
00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:24,680
Speaker 2: to go from dirt to bar. Walk us through every

414
00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:26,800
Speaker 2: stage of the process of how you grow this thing,

415
00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:29,119
Speaker 2: how you ferment it, how you roasted. What are all

416
00:21:29,119 --> 00:21:33,120
Speaker 2: the secrets there that humanity has slowly discovered over thousands

417
00:21:33,119 --> 00:21:33,600
Speaker 2: of years.

418
00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:36,879
Speaker 5: It's impressive, kind of in the same vein as coffee.

419
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,480
Speaker 5: And I was thinking about coffee because I did grow

420
00:21:40,600 --> 00:21:47,040
Speaker 5: coffee also years ago, and it's just so interesting that

421
00:21:47,080 --> 00:21:50,879
Speaker 5: we would, you know, cultivate these plants because they had

422
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:52,760
Speaker 5: a stimulant in them, and everybody knew that a stimulant.

423
00:21:52,800 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 5: So it's like tea. You cultivate these plants and they

424
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:57,560
Speaker 5: make these little red berries. I don't know if you've

425
00:21:57,560 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 5: ever seen coffee berries on a tree. And then you

426
00:22:01,080 --> 00:22:03,560
Speaker 5: harvest them when they're red, and then you throw away

427
00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:05,840
Speaker 5: the fruit and you keep the seed okay, fair enough,

428
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:10,959
Speaker 5: and then you dry the seeds, and then you roast

429
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 5: the seeds, and then you grind the seeds, and then

430
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:18,639
Speaker 5: you boil the seeds, and then you also throw the

431
00:22:18,640 --> 00:22:22,040
Speaker 5: seeds away and you drink the water. That's insane. Nobody

432
00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:24,800
Speaker 5: would think of that, And so there's some kind of

433
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:29,080
Speaker 5: evolutionary process in there that's very lucky. And part of

434
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 5: what you wonder is if that is the optimal way

435
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:35,280
Speaker 5: to enjoy the coffee bean or not, or if it's

436
00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 5: merely habitual. And you know, there are many coffee traditions,

437
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 5: but they all basically follow that same extraction principle. And

438
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:46,280
Speaker 5: it is a biological extraction, right, I mean, it's a

439
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:49,480
Speaker 5: biology lab kind of a process, but the biology lab

440
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,840
Speaker 5: process probably came from people understanding that type of extraction

441
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:56,639
Speaker 5: and applying it elsewhere. So the question is how it

442
00:22:56,680 --> 00:22:58,680
Speaker 5: fits together, and that's a little bit of the motivation

443
00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 5: or chocolate. So, as I said, in my lab, we

444
00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 5: have space and temperature control and some humidity from a

445
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:12,280
Speaker 5: water jetta, a machine that cuts difficult stuff using high

446
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:14,879
Speaker 5: pressure water. It has a big water tank and so

447
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 5: there's always a kind of a humid environment around it.

448
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:22,280
Speaker 5: So we had accidentally grown some plants around it just

449
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:25,119
Speaker 5: for some cheer, or actually we had a contest to

450
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:28,480
Speaker 5: see how big a tomato plant we could grow. And

451
00:23:28,720 --> 00:23:32,639
Speaker 5: in this environment, this little tomato ceiling in six or

452
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,960
Speaker 5: seven months, you know, grew like twenty five feet to

453
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,600
Speaker 5: the ceiling and was winding out onto the ceiling. So

454
00:23:38,640 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 5: we thought, all right, well, this is a great growing environment.

455
00:23:40,880 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 5: What's the most interesting thing we could grow? And you know,

456
00:23:44,680 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 5: chocolate is probably the weirdest and most interesting thing you

457
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 5: could grow, because I don't think intuitively, at least for me,

458
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 5: I didn't think about chocolate as being a plant, you know,

459
00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:58,119
Speaker 5: what is it as a petroleum product?

460
00:23:58,160 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 4: Like what does it come from?

461
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 5: And so we you know, got some seeds and planted

462
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 5: them and they sprouted, and then we had a few

463
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,160
Speaker 5: years of you know, just happily, you know, figuring out

464
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 5: how to not kill them, and you know it had

465
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:15,719
Speaker 5: to do with soil acidity and such, and there are

466
00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 5: papers you can read. So we kind of, you know,

467
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:20,280
Speaker 5: did the classic nerd thing, which is to look to

468
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 5: the literature. And it's kind of scant for for cacaw

469
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:30,679
Speaker 5: and chocolate actually, And part of that is because the

470
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:32,800
Speaker 5: industry could be kind of kind of secretive, like a

471
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 5: lot of industries. And part of it is because in

472
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:38,840
Speaker 5: the places where cocaw grows, it's kind of weed like,

473
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:43,639
Speaker 5: and so the idea of you know, nutrition of cacao

474
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:47,679
Speaker 5: plants is you know, an absurd kind of a study,

475
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:50,359
Speaker 5: given the fact that the chocolate industry is real problem

476
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 5: is like child slavery. So and the reason there's child

477
00:24:54,400 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 5: slavery is the plants grow around anywhere, and so the

478
00:24:59,040 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 5: economics are around harvesting and moving the product around, not

479
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 5: around optimizing for growth. Anyway, we're nerd, so we're optimizing

480
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,879
Speaker 5: for growth. And we got these beautiful trees and they

481
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 5: started to flower, and we're thinking, all right, well, we

482
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,199
Speaker 5: have no idea if these things are self fertile or not,

483
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 5: you know, and these are indoors, so we're not going

484
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,360
Speaker 5: to introduce a bunch of you know, pollinators in here,

485
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:24,960
Speaker 5: so let's hope. So we waited a really long time

486
00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:27,480
Speaker 5: and yeah, they're not self fertile. And we you know,

487
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 5: we have a day job too and other projects.

488
00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:33,199
Speaker 2: So meaning that you're wondering if like one flower can

489
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 2: fertilize another flower, or if you need a whole separate

490
00:25:35,440 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 2: plant to have some basically cacao secs.

491
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:40,960
Speaker 5: We have microbiologists and other people with a background of

492
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 5: biology in our staff, so there was a time, you know,

493
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 5: there was some debate about this at lunchtime, and then

494
00:25:46,640 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 5: finally we looked up the literature and realized that not

495
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 5: only are they not self fertile, but they need to

496
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:58,880
Speaker 5: be fertilized by trees that are preferably, you know, somewhat

497
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:02,720
Speaker 5: genetically distant from themselves. And the preferred pollinator is a

498
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 5: certain kind of biting gnat that lives only in these

499
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 5: environments where the trees come from. And so that was

500
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 5: not good news. So we then started a program of

501
00:26:15,400 --> 00:26:18,919
Speaker 5: learning how to pollinate these things by hand.

502
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 2: You couldn't just go on like cacou tinder and look

503
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 2: up a matching tree, you know, put them on a

504
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 2: date and to hope it works out.

505
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,360
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, that's not not there yet. But it's a good

506
00:26:28,359 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 5: business idea for your game, So go for that.

507
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 2: That's my next side project.

508
00:26:33,359 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 5: But you know, interestingly, if you if you if you

509
00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 5: actually look up online, there's a there's not a lot

510
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:40,400
Speaker 5: of information that's particularly helpful if you actually have trees

511
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 5: and you don't know what to do with them, because

512
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 5: everybody who has trees already knows what to do with them,

513
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:47,240
Speaker 5: which is just leave them and their fruit appears. You know,

514
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 5: we feel like we're the only people in the world

515
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:53,680
Speaker 5: who like have these trees without the pollinator around. Okay,

516
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 5: so we, you know, get out microscopes and the electron

517
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:00,680
Speaker 5: microscope and we start looking at the in and the

518
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 5: different parts of the structures in the in the flowers.

519
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:08,240
Speaker 5: We have three trees now because we know we need

520
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 5: genetic diversity. The flowers are slightly different. We identify the parts.

521
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:16,640
Speaker 5: We tried different strategies and schedules for pollination, and we

522
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 5: start getting flowers that that will create fruit. We start

523
00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:24,360
Speaker 5: we get a little fruit and then the fruit falls off,

524
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 5: and we learn a little bit more about when to pollinate.

525
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 5: We learn a little bit more about about care and feeding,

526
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 5: and we get fruit that sticks. And now we have

527
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 5: a bunch of pods growing on trees, and we realize

528
00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 5: we have another problem, which is that we have no

529
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 5: idea what to do next. You know, how do you

530
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 5: know when these things are ripe?

531
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 4: What do you do?

532
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,440
Speaker 5: And so again, you know, you look to the internet

533
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:56,520
Speaker 5: and there's really you know, there's a lot of information

534
00:27:56,560 --> 00:27:59,240
Speaker 5: that plenty of people take a tour of a of

535
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,680
Speaker 5: a cacao arm and see the fermentation and the drawing

536
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 5: and all these things, and there are lots of videos

537
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:08,359
Speaker 5: like you know, like travel promo videos or like you know,

538
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,159
Speaker 5: Starbucks promotional type videos of like you know, the the

539
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:16,239
Speaker 5: cute indigenous people like you know, mixing the beans with

540
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 5: their feet in all this, but there's nothing like, here's

541
00:28:20,000 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 5: a fermentation schedule. So again we looked at the literature

542
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 5: and discover again, you know, not as much as you

543
00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:31,280
Speaker 5: would want, but there are some good studies of cacao fermentation,

544
00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 5: which seems like the most relevant next thing.

545
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 4: We need to learn.

546
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, fermentation is something that I know a great deal

547
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 5: about from all of the you know, ancient bread projects

548
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 5: and other types of wild beast collection and stuff.

549
00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 2: I mean, fermentation is basically helpful rotting, right, It's like

550
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 2: microbial processing of your gunk into other kinds of gunk.

551
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's it's nanomachinery at your command. And so

552
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:03,200
Speaker 5: it's primarily a yeast fermentation that then becomes a bacterial fermentation.

553
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 5: You can tell because of the temperature profile and timing

554
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 5: and the the off gassing that happens during cow fermentation.

555
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,040
Speaker 5: And it's really an art form more than a science.

556
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:19,240
Speaker 5: It's been studied some, but all the papers are from

557
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 5: you know, agriculture research stations, and so they're not really

558
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:25,440
Speaker 5: you know, it's not the kind of paper that you

559
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 5: would look at and think this is really good, well

560
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 5: controlled data. But it's enough of a hint that we

561
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 5: felt we could figure it out, and so we did

562
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 5: a couple of things.

563
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 2: But I think it's worth pausing there and noting like

564
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 2: a lot of this knowledge obviously wasn't developed using what

565
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:42,239
Speaker 2: we would consider to be modern scientific empirical studies. Right,

566
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 2: It's like thousands of years of people accidentally doing stuff

567
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 2: and discovering, oh look what happens. Right, this is like

568
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:51,440
Speaker 2: a random walk through through possibility space.

569
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:53,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, And look, I mean I think this is the

570
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 5: perfect example of the mind of a physicist in the

571
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 5: sense that you know, this is really a deeply kind

572
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 5: of artfull thing with a lot of feel in it,

573
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 5: and if you're going to bring a scientific process to it,

574
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,959
Speaker 5: you need to bring that scientific process to it in

575
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 5: an open way, in a way where you're paying attention

576
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 5: to what's going on. And I think that this is

577
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 5: really the difference between like physics and engineering is like,

578
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 5: you know, I have a book project that's given me

579
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 5: the opportunity or the excuse to read you know, like

580
00:30:29,080 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 5: all of Heisenberg's papers and and Rutherford and you know

581
00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 5: in his lab and you know, finding the neutron and

582
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:42,280
Speaker 5: the thought process that those guys had. It's it's the

583
00:30:42,320 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 5: perfect analogy here. It's that you know, you cannot overpower this,

584
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 5: you cannot brute force this. They didn't have the equipment

585
00:30:52,320 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 5: to do that. So they had to just pay attention.

586
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 5: They had to surf along with nature. They had to

587
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 5: see what she would give up. Very careful, very aughtful.

588
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 5: And the rigor of your process isn't about like a

589
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 5: scorched earth colonization of ideas into engineering principles to be

590
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 5: put into a book. The rigor of your approach is

591
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 5: your own discipline in listening well and really seeing what's

592
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:21,320
Speaker 5: happening right, and then that can give you a useful

593
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 5: tool and model that you can use then to understand

594
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 5: and then to predict perhaps. So that's what we tried

595
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 5: to do. You know, all of these people who talk

596
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:33,200
Speaker 5: about being to bar and all of these chocolate people

597
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 5: who you know have their artisanal chocolate and curated blah

598
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 5: blah blah, assaulted carmel thing, you know, are buying cacabeans

599
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 5: from somewhere most of the time already dried and fermented,

600
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 5: and then talking about how they've made chocolate from scratch,

601
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 5: and that's not chocolate from scratch. We were making chocolate

602
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 5: from scratch and it was pretty hard. So we did it,

603
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,040
Speaker 5: and it was a lot of work, and it was

604
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 5: really satisfying. And the best part is that, unlike when

605
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:13,760
Speaker 5: you spend weeks, you know, solving some horrible partial differential

606
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 5: equation that gives you a part of a result that

607
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:17,960
Speaker 5: you thought you needed but turns out not to be

608
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:19,720
Speaker 5: what you wanted, but you still feel a sense of

609
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,240
Speaker 5: soul and pride that you did it, and you can

610
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 5: only share it with yourself and two colleagues who can understand.

611
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 5: When you make chocolate, everybody's happy.

612
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 2: Okay, we have so much more chocolate and physics to

613
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:33,520
Speaker 2: talk about it, but first we have to take a

614
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 2: quick break. Okay, we're back, and I'm talking to Seamus Blackley,

615
00:32:50,160 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 2: ex particle physicist, X inventor of the Xbox, current grower

616
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,800
Speaker 2: of bread from ancient yeast, and CEO of a secretive

617
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 2: tech startup. And I'm talking to him because he has

618
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,840
Speaker 2: made chocolate from dirt to bar. I want to hear

619
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 2: all the details, like you grow it, you harvest it,

620
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 2: you ferment it, you dry it, you roast it. Now

621
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 2: you have the nibs. How do you go from the

622
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 2: nibs to the actual bar.

623
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 5: You buy a sea, or you find a seed, you

624
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,760
Speaker 5: plant it, it grows a tree. You raise the tree, well,

625
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 5: you pollinate it. Pods appear. Interestingly, the pods on cacao

626
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 5: trees grow off of the trunk, not off the branches,

627
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 5: so it looks a little bit alien. And the pods

628
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 5: themselves actually look a little bit invasion of the body snatchers,

629
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 5: which is cool. When they're mature, they turn these beautiful

630
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:40,160
Speaker 5: fall leaf colors, like it's the very new England of them,

631
00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:45,320
Speaker 5: Like these deep yellows and oranges and reds, very beautiful.

632
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 5: And you cut them off and you split them open,

633
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 5: and inside are these seeds that are covered in a

634
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 5: white pulp. And it's delicious. It smells like leachy fruit.

635
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 5: It's very fresh, very fragrant, and it tastes really good.

636
00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 5: But the beans themselves are them very bitter, and it

637
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 5: tastes nothing like chocolate. There isn't a hint of chocolate

638
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 5: in any of the flavor profiles of any of this, okay.

639
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 5: The pods have a very planty smell, okay, very very fragrant,

640
00:34:15,640 --> 00:34:21,319
Speaker 5: like fresh cut grass, and the pulp has a kind

641
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 5: of a stringent but very pleasant, slightly sweet, light chy flavor.

642
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 5: And the beans are sort of these like purple bitter

643
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 5: soft seeds. And so when you hold this in your hand,

644
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 5: you think, how the hell does this become chocolate? Right,

645
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 5: So the next step is to ferment them. And to

646
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:53,240
Speaker 5: do this, the beans are put into piles for thermal

647
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 5: purposes so that the heat of fermentation can build up,

648
00:34:56,320 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 5: which accelerates fermentation. And they have to be covered with

649
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 5: something that prevents moisture from escaping, because they require a

650
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:09,399
Speaker 5: moist environment to ferment. And so we crew I have

651
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 5: plenty of fermentors that do excellent temperature control, so we

652
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 5: set up some fermentors with different piles. And in the

653
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 5: literature there are people in the industry who errate their piles,

654
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,799
Speaker 5: who mix their piles, who don't touch them. There are

655
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,640
Speaker 5: different varieties of cacao. We now know which variety we have,

656
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 5: but we didn't at the time. So the fermentation profiles

657
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:37,239
Speaker 5: are apparently different between like let's say a creole, which

658
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 5: is one variety in.

659
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 4: A front taro, which is a different variety.

660
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 5: But fundamentally what happens is a yeast regular you know, sacrimics.

661
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 5: Yeast fermentation takes place and that creates a certain temperature profile.

662
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:58,399
Speaker 5: So let's say the fermentor is running at eighty five

663
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 5: degrees and height. It will then go up to ninety

664
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,760
Speaker 5: five or ninety eight degrees fahrenheit because of the heat

665
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 5: induced by the mechanical action of fermentation itself. The biological

666
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:15,280
Speaker 5: action that will then fall off and you can smell

667
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:18,080
Speaker 5: as you you know, as one does is going to

668
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 5: measure the temperature of your cockau fermentation piles. You can

669
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 5: smell a strong yeast nut, so you get a ready

670
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:28,080
Speaker 5: note out of it, and the temperature will drop and

671
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:35,359
Speaker 5: then it will rise again as the bacteria that are

672
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:40,480
Speaker 5: symbiotic with those yeasts begin their fermentation process, and they

673
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,360
Speaker 5: are an acid producing bacteria actually similar to the bacteria

674
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:48,800
Speaker 5: that make acetic acid, and probably identical in many cases,

675
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 5: and you can smell that ascetic smell as you do

676
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:57,760
Speaker 5: your temperature checks and potentially your rotations. There's a second

677
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,960
Speaker 5: spike in temperature and then that goes down and this

678
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 5: takes anywhere from five to seven days, and you want

679
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 5: to be very careful because once that bacterial action ceases,

680
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 5: you're in danger of a mold step, which comes afterward

681
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 5: as the mold is no longer deterred in its growth

682
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:20,200
Speaker 5: because of the action of the other organisms.

683
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 4: Right.

684
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 5: So, like in a lot of fermented foods, the preservation

685
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 5: comes from biological competition, not from sterility. So you know

686
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 5: in most fermented foods, or like in your starter for

687
00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 5: your sourdough, the reason that it doesn't go bad right

688
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 5: away is because there's so much you know, bacterial action

689
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 5: from the yeast in bacteria in your starter that no

690
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:48,360
Speaker 5: other organisms can compete, and that keeps it sterile. Okay,

691
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:51,239
Speaker 5: So the same thing is happening in the cacao. You

692
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:54,240
Speaker 5: don't want to let it go too long. But during

693
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 5: the end of that bacterial fermentation phase, and this is

694
00:37:59,800 --> 00:38:04,800
Speaker 5: the craziest thing in the universe, it starts to smell

695
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 5: like brownies.

696
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:07,759
Speaker 2: Wow, that's when the chocolate comes back.

697
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:11,680
Speaker 5: So it goes from and I was not prepared for this,

698
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 5: and you can't read about this apparently, you know. I

699
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 5: have one of my son's best friends is from Trinidad,

700
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 5: and while I was doing this. He visited with my

701
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 5: son from from college and I was doing this fermentation

702
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,320
Speaker 5: and he looked over and he's like, oh, you for

703
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 5: men and chocolate. Cool, because of course he'd seen this

704
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 5: his whole life, right, But for me, I was unprepared

705
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:44,360
Speaker 5: for this transformation to take place. And it really smells

706
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 5: just like brownies. So it's gone from this very sort

707
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 5: of like grassy pod, light y, bitter thing to smelling

708
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 5: like bread to smelling like vinegar, and one day you

709
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 5: open the fermenter and it smells like brownies.

710
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:05,359
Speaker 4: It's insane.

711
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 2: Makes me wonder who the first human was to experience that,

712
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:10,439
Speaker 2: you know, thousands of years ago.

713
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 5: One experiment that I will do shortly is to just

714
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 5: leave some cocow pods around and to see if I

715
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 5: let them ferment internally. If I crack them open, at

716
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 5: some point they smell like chocolate. You can imagine that

717
00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:27,760
Speaker 5: somebody happens upon one that's sat for the right amount

718
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:32,760
Speaker 5: of time and it's delicious smelling, right, it might occur

719
00:39:32,800 --> 00:39:35,839
Speaker 5: to that person to try to recreate that somehow, right,

720
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:41,760
Speaker 5: So then you dry them. They have at this point

721
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:46,680
Speaker 5: become kind of like a very dry mac and cheese consistency,

722
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 5: So you spread the beans out on a dehydrator or

723
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 5: out in the sun. We use a dehydrator because we

724
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 5: can control it, and you get them to about three

725
00:39:55,080 --> 00:39:59,920
Speaker 5: percent moister content, and I have all the equipment to measure,

726
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 5: but you know, it just basically means pretty dry, and

727
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,799
Speaker 5: it takes a while. It takes about two days, and

728
00:40:05,880 --> 00:40:11,520
Speaker 5: if you're running the drying machines in your house, it'll

729
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 5: drive you insane because your whole house will smell like brownies,

730
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:18,800
Speaker 5: but at first, sort of acid brownies, because the vinegar

731
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 5: smell is still there, and as you dry them, it

732
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 5: goes down, but there's still notes of vinegar from the

733
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,920
Speaker 5: bacterial fermentation process in the beans, and you end up

734
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 5: with these brown cacao beans and they're a little shrunken

735
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 5: and a little sad looking. And then you're ready to roast.

736
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 5: And the roasting is again, it's pretty similar to coffee roasting,

737
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:46,759
Speaker 5: but it's much easier and shorter. And I'm really glad

738
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:48,760
Speaker 5: that I had done coffee roasting in the past because

739
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 5: it prepared me for this. But you roast them with

740
00:40:54,120 --> 00:40:59,320
Speaker 5: a decreasing thermal profile from about two hundred and fifty

741
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:03,280
Speaker 5: down to two hundred sea and you want the bean

742
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 5: temperature to get to around two hundred C at the end,

743
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 5: and you'll hear them crack. If you have three percent moisture,

744
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 5: that moisture the inside the bean will boil and and

745
00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 5: pop the shell. Actually it's it's kind of like ads, right.

746
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 5: It goes from it changes the curvature of the shell,

747
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:27,160
Speaker 5: and then you get a pop and then you know

748
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,759
Speaker 5: that you're done. And people will do two pops or

749
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 5: one pop. And there's a lot of YouTube video on

750
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:35,880
Speaker 5: this because people buy a lot of fermented dried beans

751
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 5: from South America and process the chocolate at them. That's

752
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,720
Speaker 5: one of the things that a fancy San Francisco chocolate

753
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:45,759
Speaker 5: chop will do. Okay, so we sort of after I

754
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 5: did the fermentation and the drawing, I re entered the

755
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,279
Speaker 5: realm where there's a lot of video help on how

756
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 5: to do this right. But I didn't really look at

757
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:54,520
Speaker 5: it because I was like, I'm better than all of them.

758
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 5: I did all this right, So do the roasting. And

759
00:41:57,600 --> 00:41:59,520
Speaker 5: then you have these beans that are sort of like

760
00:41:59,600 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 5: now puffy, so they're kind of you know, rugby ball shaped,

761
00:42:05,560 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 5: and then you have to shell them and they are

762
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 5: machines that do this. When you buy commercial nibs, the

763
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,800
Speaker 5: nib is actually the bean itself once it's been shelled,

764
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,720
Speaker 5: after being roasted and dried, dried and roasted, they're all

765
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 5: little bits and it's because of the machine in order

766
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:27,120
Speaker 5: to remove the shell mechanically has to sort of pulverize everything.

767
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 5: But if you do it by hand sitting in front

768
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:31,399
Speaker 5: of the television, you get the complete beans out. And

769
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,080
Speaker 5: they're a pictures of this on my Twitter. And I

770
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 5: have to say, during the roasting process, what happens is

771
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 5: the vinegar smells and all the other strange odors go

772
00:42:42,520 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 5: away and you're left with just a pure chocolate smell.

773
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 5: And it's very very remarkable. It smells like the most

774
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:53,640
Speaker 5: incredible chocolate cake brownie that you've ever baked in your

775
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:55,720
Speaker 5: oven at the end of the roasting process.

776
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:58,920
Speaker 2: I've actually roasted cacao beans myself on the stovetop and

777
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:02,720
Speaker 2: been amazed. It's like a a river of chocolate smell.

778
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 2: It's like snorting pure chocolate. It's incredible.

779
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:06,560
Speaker 4: Yeah.

780
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 5: And so then from there you go on and do

781
00:43:08,760 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 5: the normal thing to make chocolate. And it's important to

782
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 5: have a wet grinder it's important to let it go

783
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:18,280
Speaker 5: for you know, three or four days, because the cocow

784
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:23,359
Speaker 5: beans are actually just basically wood and it's extremely fibrous,

785
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:27,600
Speaker 5: but it contains you know, a lot of fat, the

786
00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:31,719
Speaker 5: cocow butter inside that fibers structure. And there's a sort

787
00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 5: of a magical thing that happens when you grind this

788
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 5: and you get a little bit of heat out of

789
00:43:37,800 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 5: the mechanical grinding action, which is that you start to

790
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:45,880
Speaker 5: get this magical paste and that's that's getting close to

791
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:51,480
Speaker 5: the thing that we think of as chocolate. And you

792
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,280
Speaker 5: have to wet grind this thing and a wet stone

793
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,800
Speaker 5: grinder for days and days to get the average particle

794
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 5: size small enough in that fiber structure that on the

795
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 5: tongue it feels like.

796
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 4: You would expect from smooth chocolate.

797
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 5: And so that takes a lot of time, and it

798
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 5: turns out some equipment and knowledge. I did a little study,

799
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 5: you know, because I have microscopes and autoclaves and all

800
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,000
Speaker 5: the stuff in my kitchen from the bread projects. So

801
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:21,400
Speaker 5: I was able to do some smears and look at

802
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 5: average particle sizes and correlate that. Because I was given

803
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,359
Speaker 5: the hint from some chocolate tears correlate that with the

804
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 5: current drawn by the malange by the wet grinder. There's

805
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:37,640
Speaker 5: a pretty linear relationship between you amount a current that

806
00:44:37,680 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 5: you're using and the particle size, and that's how they

807
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 5: determine when they get done.

808
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 2: So you can tell the size of your chocolate particles

809
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 2: by how hard your grinder has to work. Basically that's correct, yeah,

810
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 2: at a given temperature. And then there's some chemistry involved

811
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:53,040
Speaker 2: in like actually making it a bar. It's got like

812
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:55,960
Speaker 2: some complex crystal structure that you need to reach with

813
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 2: the right temperature voyage for this whole process. Right.

814
00:44:58,360 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 5: You know, I'm going to go ahead and call that

815
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:04,360
Speaker 5: physic because it's really crystallography. You know, I work with

816
00:45:04,360 --> 00:45:05,920
Speaker 5: a lot of chemists, so we can we you know,

817
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 5: we can fight over this.

818
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:10,640
Speaker 4: But yeah. The trick then after that.

819
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 5: Is to make it into a stable bar, and that

820
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:20,359
Speaker 5: means establishing with the cacao butter with that fat. It's

821
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 5: type two crystal, which is a stable crystalin matrix in

822
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 5: shirt sleeve room temperature conditions for human beings. That's referred

823
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 5: to in the industry as temper, but it's really a

824
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 5: crystaline structure as you know, and alluded to, and so

825
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 5: finding out how to establish that is a bit of

826
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:41,200
Speaker 5: a trick. And part of the problem that we had

827
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 5: is we know too much. So it was me and

828
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 5: biologists and chemists and another physicist, and so we knew

829
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 5: too much about crystallography. So we did all these crazy

830
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:53,760
Speaker 5: schemes that only kind of partially worked. And then finally

831
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:56,200
Speaker 5: we just did the thing that everybody else doesn't work

832
00:45:56,239 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 5: fine and made bars. And you know, when we made

833
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:09,120
Speaker 5: the first chocolate from our own beans from our trees,

834
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 5: all of us thought it was the best chocolate we'd

835
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:19,279
Speaker 5: ever had, easily, And I am still completely ruined. It's

836
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 5: been six months now, but I am ruined, and my

837
00:46:23,000 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 5: wife is ruined, and everyone is ruined. We can't we

838
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:31,960
Speaker 5: get other chocolate and it's just not as good. And

839
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:38,399
Speaker 5: recently I was very very very brave, and I gave

840
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 5: a bar of this chocolate to my friend jose Andres,

841
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:45,160
Speaker 5: the chef, and he said it was the best chocolate

842
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 5: he's ever had, and he's now told other people it's

843
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 5: the best chocolate he's ever had. And so, you know,

844
00:46:51,160 --> 00:46:55,360
Speaker 5: I think that keeping everything simple and pure, you know,

845
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 5: not adding anything, the only ingredient in ourcolate bar is

846
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:04,040
Speaker 5: sugar in some measure to give you, you know, the amount.

847
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:04,319
Speaker 4: That you like.

848
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:06,200
Speaker 5: How dark do you want your chocolate? In our case,

849
00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 5: we went to about seventy percent. How it sounds amazing,

850
00:47:12,719 --> 00:47:17,320
Speaker 5: there's nothing else in it, and it's it's really good,

851
00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 5: and you know, we're going to keep on doing it

852
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 5: because it's so good. It's it's it's very interesting and really,

853
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 5: even though it's so hard to do and has so

854
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 5: many steps, the magic in the last part of the fermentation.

855
00:47:38,239 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 4: Is worth it. It's worth it.

856
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:43,239
Speaker 5: I do it over and over again because I never

857
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 5: tire of that moment when it changes to chocolate.

858
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:46,680
Speaker 4: It's incredible.

859
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm around fermentation all the time. We

860
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 5: have the Ancient Bread project, other bread projects, other fermentation projects,

861
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:59,720
Speaker 5: and you know, the even when you're doing beer making,

862
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 5: the fermentation is a you know, nano machinery process and

863
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,160
Speaker 5: service of something else, in service of getting CO two

864
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 5: distributed evenly through you know, a piece of dough so

865
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 5: that you can freeze it in the oven and have

866
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,439
Speaker 5: bread right freeze the structure by baking. In the case

867
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 5: of the cacao, the fermentation it is the flavor, it's everything.

868
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:26,759
Speaker 5: It's remarkable.

869
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:28,799
Speaker 2: So, now that you've had this incredible dark chocolate and

870
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:30,879
Speaker 2: you understand it all the way from Dirk to bar,

871
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts on industrial chocolate, for example Hershey's.

872
00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 5: Oh, it's a valid industrial product. Sometimes you have to

873
00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 5: have these things, and you know, I'm not gonna I'm

874
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 5: not going to crap on them. It's it's an incredible story. Actually,

875
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 5: the Hershey's story is an incredible story, both from a

876
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:56,880
Speaker 5: business and a technology standpoint. But I am ruined now,

877
00:48:57,360 --> 00:49:06,920
Speaker 5: and I very seriously considering, you know, expanding this operation

878
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 5: and maybe trying to grow a bunch more trees kind

879
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,480
Speaker 5: of hydroponically in this way and seeing if you could

880
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:20,719
Speaker 5: make more of this special chocolate in that way, so

881
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:21,120
Speaker 5: we'll see.

882
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:24,759
Speaker 2: Sounds amazing and sounds delicious. Well, thanks very much for

883
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 2: taking us on a tour of your chocolate adventure. Really

884
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:31,319
Speaker 2: happy to be grabbing on your coattails and following along

885
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:31,759
Speaker 2: to learn.

886
00:49:32,600 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 5: Daniel, it's always a pleasure to talk to you man.

887
00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 5: Send me more of your best students, please.

888
00:49:38,800 --> 00:49:39,160
Speaker 4: We'll do.

889
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:41,959
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Take care all.

890
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: Right, pretty interesting conversation there, Daniel. What is your big

891
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:48,720
Speaker 1: takeaway from all of this chocolate science.

892
00:49:49,080 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 2: The takeaway for me is that once a physicist, always

893
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 2: a physicist. You're trained to think like a physicist. You're

894
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 2: going to apply that to everything else you do in

895
00:49:57,640 --> 00:50:00,800
Speaker 2: your life, whether it's baking bread and venting new video

896
00:50:00,800 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 2: game consoles or growing chocolate bars.

897
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: Now, do you think knowing all of this physics is

898
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:08,920
Speaker 1: helping him make better chocolate or is he actually leaning

899
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: on chemistry?

900
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 2: I think there's a fuzzy line here.

901
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

902
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:18,760
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it sounds like pretty straight up chemistry. He's definitely

903
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:20,840
Speaker 1: scientific thinking, no offense, no offense.

904
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine, I get it. You know, the chocolate

905
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 2: is more chemistry than physics. I'll admit it.

906
00:50:24,920 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so his physic preparation is of no help.

907
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 2: I mean he didn't get down to like the fundamental

908
00:50:30,040 --> 00:50:33,200
Speaker 2: chocolate particle or anything. So having been a particle physicist,

909
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:35,840
Speaker 2: I don't think is an issue. But definitely his scientific

910
00:50:35,880 --> 00:50:38,719
Speaker 2: background helped him, like read the papers and do this

911
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 2: carefully and methodically and you know, gather some data.

912
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:44,280
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like this is maybe like a small

913
00:50:44,320 --> 00:50:47,759
Speaker 1: badge type of chocolate production. But things get a little

914
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 1: bit more complicated and maybe more difficult when you try

915
00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:52,880
Speaker 1: to scale it up and you try to give chocolate

916
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:53,520
Speaker 1: to a lot of people.

917
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You have a lot more freedom to play

918
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:57,520
Speaker 2: when you're making up just a few bars for you

919
00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 2: and your friends. But when you're the chief chocolate officer

920
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:04,279
Speaker 2: at one of the world's biggest snacks food companies, then

921
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:05,880
Speaker 2: you have a whole different set of challenges.

922
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:10,280
Speaker 1: Well, you actually got to talk to a former research

923
00:51:10,320 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: scientist at a large corporation. How did you meet this fellow?

924
00:51:13,719 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 2: So One of our listeners, Darcio, is a chocolate researcher

925
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:19,840
Speaker 2: in Brazil, and heard us joking about chocolate on the

926
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:22,640
Speaker 2: podcast and wrote to me suggesting that we do a

927
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 2: deep dive into chocolate. He was actually the inspiration for

928
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 2: this episode and introduced me to his friend Jim Kaiser,

929
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:32,919
Speaker 2: former chief chocolate officer at Mars Inc.

930
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 1: Well wait, wait, wait, wait, we know an actual chocolate researcher, Like,

931
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:38,800
Speaker 1: what's this research?

932
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 2: It's like chemical engineering, you know, industrial processes for producing

933
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 2: chocolate at scale with consistency and purity and quality.

934
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:51,200
Speaker 1: WHOA yeah, because I guess they farm a lot of

935
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:52,439
Speaker 1: chocolate in Brazil, right.

936
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 2: They do farm a lot of chocolate all over the world,

937
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 2: and in the interview with him, we talk about the

938
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 2: challenges of getting chocolate from all different locations where the

939
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 2: processes are different.

940
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: M how there is a different taste that come from

941
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 1: different themes.

942
00:52:06,239 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 2: Right exactly, which is not what you want if you're

943
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:10,880
Speaker 2: the Mars company. You want your eminem to taste the

944
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:13,279
Speaker 2: same no matter where you are in the world and

945
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:16,319
Speaker 2: which batch of chocolate it was. We'll get into all that,

946
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:31,719
Speaker 2: but first let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back

947
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 2: and we're talking about physics and chocolate.

948
00:52:34,520 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's Daniel's interview with Professor Kaiser, former

949
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 1: chocolate research scientists at Mars Corporation.

950
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:46,120
Speaker 2: So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast. John Kaiser,

951
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 2: an expert in mass production of chocolate and a researcher

952
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 2: who has worked on the forefront of chocolate knowledge. John,

953
00:52:53,520 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast.

954
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 3: Thank you, Daniel. That's a happy day if I get

955
00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 3: to talk about chocolate. I appreciate you invited me to

956
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 3: this podcast.

957
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:03,439
Speaker 2: Thank you. Well. First, I want to know how does

958
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 2: one become a chocolate researcher. Is that something you grew

959
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:10,279
Speaker 2: up wanting to be and followed your passion or you

960
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 2: stumbled into it.

961
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:13,800
Speaker 3: I knew I wanted to work on food. My father

962
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 3: had worked on food at PNG, their brands pring, goals, folders,

963
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 3: and I love the black box. And that's what chemical

964
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:28,200
Speaker 3: engineers solve. We have raw materials, dried potatoes and everyone

965
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 3: inside the box, and you have a beautifully shaped pring

966
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:34,360
Speaker 3: go out the other end. It tastes, it looks straight.

967
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 3: So I was always fascinated by what's the black box?

968
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 3: So I knew I did enter the food industry, and

969
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 3: I started craft in Chicago, first up in glen View,

970
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:50,040
Speaker 3: working on a variety of food brands, ice cream, mayonnaise,

971
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 3: and Miracle Web. And then that led us to a

972
00:53:55,200 --> 00:54:00,399
Speaker 3: role at Mars working on cocoa and chocolate. That's where

973
00:54:00,440 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 3: I spent almost thirty years. Wow, every aspect of coca

974
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:07,640
Speaker 3: and child production globally.

975
00:54:07,960 --> 00:54:11,880
Speaker 2: So what do people not know about making chocolate? I mean,

976
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 2: it's much more than just roast the beans and blend

977
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 2: them up. What it is sort of the secret sauce

978
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,680
Speaker 2: to turning cocoa beans into chocolate that people might not understand.

979
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:26,400
Speaker 3: Well, I'd say the fascinating part of chocolate, and I

980
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:30,759
Speaker 3: always include cocoa as part of that is how difficult

981
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:37,359
Speaker 3: it is to produce a consistent, wonderful tasting product. And

982
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,960
Speaker 3: that's really what's kept me intrigued in this area for

983
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:42,920
Speaker 3: so many years, and I still work on it here

984
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 3: at iowas Fate. So the linkage I see is nearly

985
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:51,720
Speaker 3: every aspect of the unit operations a chemical engineering study,

986
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:56,400
Speaker 3: from harvest of a cocoa pod in origin, all the

987
00:54:56,440 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 3: way to a molded product in M and M or

988
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:04,760
Speaker 3: she makee chocolate bar. Nearly every aspect has a linkage

989
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 3: to flavor and texture and solving that, Understanding that and

990
00:55:10,920 --> 00:55:16,040
Speaker 3: understanding that in an operational role every day is not easy.

991
00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:19,600
Speaker 3: So that's really kept me very interesting because there is

992
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 3: issues all along that product pipeline.

993
00:55:23,080 --> 00:55:25,719
Speaker 2: Give us an example of something that's challenging in mass

994
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 2: production of delicious chocolate.

995
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 3: So back to the complexity. So cocoa is not cocoa,

996
00:55:32,680 --> 00:55:35,360
Speaker 3: first of all, So the variety of cocoa that you

997
00:55:35,440 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 3: find in the origin can have an bone on flavor.

998
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:40,399
Speaker 3: So you have to pick what you want, and what

999
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 3: you want is what the consumer ultimately wants, so you

1000
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:46,919
Speaker 3: have to really start with the consumer. But how that

1001
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:51,120
Speaker 3: product is harvested really more how it's fermented in origin

1002
00:55:52,320 --> 00:55:56,360
Speaker 3: can again have a major impact on flavor. For example,

1003
00:55:57,400 --> 00:56:02,560
Speaker 3: and practices are not standardized. Growers farmers across the globe

1004
00:56:03,000 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 3: don't have a script and say oh, this is how

1005
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,239
Speaker 3: we do it now. They don't have the script. They

1006
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:11,240
Speaker 3: do it based on history, they do it based on economics.

1007
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 3: It's not well controlled. As soon as pods are opened

1008
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 3: in the origin, they're opening with machete. I mean, that

1009
00:56:18,239 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 3: is the typical way of opening a pod. Pods have

1010
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 3: a very thick husk. You extract about fifty beans from

1011
00:56:26,040 --> 00:56:29,600
Speaker 3: a pod, and the beans are surrounded by the sticky, gooey,

1012
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:36,920
Speaker 3: high sugar, high acid, relatively speaking, pulp that actually tastes delicious.

1013
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 3: By the way, if you're in origin, taste taste the beans.

1014
00:56:40,040 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 3: Don't chew the beans because extremely a stringent it. We'll

1015
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 3: get to that point here about fermentation. But as you

1016
00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,200
Speaker 3: suck the pulp off the beans, they have a very

1017
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 3: pleasant fruity characteristic that those in Ecuador and Brazil. Darcie

1018
00:56:54,600 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 3: who can speak to this, will extract that and convert

1019
00:56:58,120 --> 00:56:59,440
Speaker 3: into a beverage.

1020
00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:01,080
Speaker 2: Like a chocolate fruit beverage.

1021
00:57:01,239 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 3: It really doesn't taste like chocolate at all. It just

1022
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:05,920
Speaker 3: has a fruity, pleasant flavor.

1023
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:07,920
Speaker 2: I wonder how many people have ever tasted that. I

1024
00:57:07,960 --> 00:57:10,799
Speaker 2: don't think I know anybody else who's ever tasted the

1025
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:11,839
Speaker 2: actual chocolate fruit.

1026
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:14,600
Speaker 3: It's definitely rare. You know, you have to pasteurize it

1027
00:57:14,719 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 3: in origin if you want to ship it somewhere. Because

1028
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:22,120
Speaker 3: here's the point. It's the microfloor in environment automatically goes

1029
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 3: after those sugars as soon as you open it, so

1030
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 3: fermentation starts the instant you open the pot. Those beans

1031
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:33,080
Speaker 3: are manually scooped out. And this may seem a bit

1032
00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:36,560
Speaker 3: our kid because it is because it has not really

1033
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:40,320
Speaker 3: changed over the course of you know, at least one

1034
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 3: hundred years. Where those beans are then piled on banana LEAs,

1035
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 3: typically on the ground in origin heat and the fermentation begins.

1036
00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 2: And to be clear, fermentation means like microbial processing. Right,

1037
00:57:54,000 --> 00:57:57,280
Speaker 2: basically we're talking about desirable rotting, right.

1038
00:57:57,600 --> 00:58:01,600
Speaker 3: That's it. That's exactly correct, okay, but has a huge influence.

1039
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,720
Speaker 3: So if you and some growers do this around the

1040
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:08,360
Speaker 3: globe where they'll skip the fermentation, they'll go straight to

1041
00:58:08,440 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 3: dry it. And if you do that, the beans are

1042
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:17,280
Speaker 3: very very stringent, very bitter, and there are some recipes

1043
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,720
Speaker 3: that may be an attribute you want and it's another

1044
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:23,760
Speaker 3: i say, processed driver that you can use to influence

1045
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:28,479
Speaker 3: your flavor. But typically say the fermentation is between five

1046
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 3: and seven days, five.

1047
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 2: And seven days sitting there rotting on a banana leaf.

1048
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:38,080
Speaker 3: Yes, Now the larger drowers will have i'll call box fermentation.

1049
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:41,720
Speaker 3: They'll place these beans in a much larger, larger wooden

1050
00:58:41,760 --> 00:58:47,080
Speaker 3: box and then they'll actually use a hand agitator really

1051
00:58:47,120 --> 00:58:50,560
Speaker 3: just hand scoop and move those beans around, because you

1052
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:54,400
Speaker 3: imagine the thermal heat of the fermentation will be greatest

1053
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:56,240
Speaker 3: in the center, so you want to spread that out

1054
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 3: across the whole box. So yeah, for sure, beings that

1055
00:59:01,040 --> 00:59:05,240
Speaker 3: are not fermented and those that are fully fermented will

1056
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 3: taste dramatically different. And those practices are very different, y'all say,

1057
00:59:11,200 --> 00:59:15,640
Speaker 3: the more the standardized fermentation process that we've witnessed or

1058
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:19,960
Speaker 3: those that you see in West Africa Ivory Coast, Godam

1059
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 3: where they're typically fully fermented. Now keep in mind, you

1060
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 3: can go, you can be over fermented, and that will

1061
00:59:26,720 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 3: also cause a flavor impact. And then anything in between

1062
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 3: zero and say five to seven days. So this is

1063
00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:36,320
Speaker 3: where the complexity just begins Dandiel. So you can have

1064
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:39,960
Speaker 3: a whole range of flavor influences and I won't call

1065
00:59:39,960 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 3: it a flavor defect because flavor is subjective. You may

1066
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:47,440
Speaker 3: love it, hey, I love an over fermented being in

1067
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 3: its flavor or totally underfremented. So it actually ends up

1068
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:54,960
Speaker 3: being a consumer driven experience. What do they want?

1069
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,040
Speaker 2: But if you want to produce the same eminem every day,

1070
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:00,720
Speaker 2: every year for thirty years, how do you you handle

1071
01:00:00,760 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 2: that when you get a batch of over fermented and

1072
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 2: a batch of under fermented. Do you have to adjust

1073
01:00:05,320 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 2: the process or do you have some way to mask

1074
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:08,120
Speaker 2: it or how does that work?

1075
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 3: That's one of the distinctions you're hitting right now is

1076
01:00:10,920 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 3: the small versus large. I'm a little biased because I

1077
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 3: spent my career at Marsin and we're working on all

1078
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 3: these challenges across thirty years, and it is difficult to

1079
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,280
Speaker 3: make an eminent taste the same around the globe. It

1080
01:00:25,400 --> 01:00:30,000
Speaker 3: is very difficult because you have so many influences, including

1081
01:00:30,400 --> 01:00:33,680
Speaker 3: the practices they're observed. So the way you mitigate that

1082
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:37,320
Speaker 3: is a lot of coke we purchased off the market,

1083
01:00:38,080 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 3: but per our spec, per our flavor and chemical spec.

1084
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:44,080
Speaker 3: So you want to make sure that it is fermented

1085
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:48,480
Speaker 3: properly and you're buying best specification. So that's how Marge

1086
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 3: will do it all the way to mitigate am I

1087
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,480
Speaker 3: giving anything? Wait here, this is pretty typical for a

1088
01:00:53,560 --> 01:00:56,280
Speaker 3: Hurshy and Mars and I'm on delays.

1089
01:00:57,320 --> 01:00:58,760
Speaker 4: Is there's a.

1090
01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 3: Cocoa recipe, You would not bank the farm on a

1091
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:07,600
Speaker 3: single origin. You want a percentage of different origins and

1092
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 3: that gives you the flavor profile that is consistent, and

1093
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:15,120
Speaker 3: it also helps mitigate that risk because civil wars do

1094
01:01:15,240 --> 01:01:16,920
Speaker 3: occur in ivory coasts.

1095
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have.

1096
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:23,480
Speaker 3: Weather impact, sustainability concerns. Lots of these things will occur

1097
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 3: over the course of a year, and you have to

1098
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 3: be prepared to move around and ensure that the product

1099
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 3: still meets the products back.

1100
01:01:32,800 --> 01:01:37,080
Speaker 2: So what's the major difference between like very fancy, artisanal

1101
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:40,720
Speaker 2: small batch bar chocolate you might pay like eight dollars

1102
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:44,320
Speaker 2: for and something like a Hershey bar. Is it the

1103
01:01:44,400 --> 01:01:47,480
Speaker 2: quality of the chocolate? Is it preservatives? Is something different

1104
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 2: in the process? What is basically the difference between the

1105
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:53,440
Speaker 2: spectrum of quality for chocolate?

1106
01:01:53,720 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 3: The large manufacturer has a lot more at risk. So

1107
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 3: if you have a recall a product because of some

1108
01:02:02,040 --> 01:02:07,959
Speaker 3: microbial contamination or adulteration due to incidental form matter that's

1109
01:02:07,960 --> 01:02:11,480
Speaker 3: in the product you're recalling. It could could really sacrifice

1110
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:15,400
Speaker 3: your brand. So the large manufacturers tend to be very conservative,

1111
01:02:15,800 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 3: but they're very consistent, I'd say very consistent. The smaller

1112
01:02:20,040 --> 01:02:24,200
Speaker 3: players have more leeway, they have less at risk, and

1113
01:02:24,280 --> 01:02:28,200
Speaker 3: they're faster, they're more flexible, you know. I think the

1114
01:02:28,240 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 3: thing that I think is interesting is the large manufacturers

1115
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:34,880
Speaker 3: have a business. Eminem's the biggest global brand for chocolate.

1116
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:37,760
Speaker 3: They want to be as flexible as small guys, but

1117
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:43,400
Speaker 3: they can't. The small guys want to have more market share,

1118
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 3: but that's a challenge for them also, so the small manufacturers,

1119
01:02:48,240 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 3: as you said costs before this call, it just took

1120
01:02:51,520 --> 01:02:55,640
Speaker 3: a look at a cost program. Two cents per gram

1121
01:02:55,800 --> 01:03:00,600
Speaker 3: for a Dove or Hershey no chocolate roughly sense a

1122
01:03:00,600 --> 01:03:04,960
Speaker 3: gram for she had Dandili, which is a very specialty

1123
01:03:05,280 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 3: niche product. Really, you know, that's the difference in order,

1124
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:11,919
Speaker 3: mattitude in difference. So what are consumers willing to pay

1125
01:03:11,960 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 3: for what they get?

1126
01:03:13,120 --> 01:03:15,840
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the Hershey bar also because it's iconic.

1127
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:19,280
Speaker 2: On the podcast, recently, I commented that I was not

1128
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:21,880
Speaker 2: a particular fan of the Hershey bar because it has

1129
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:26,080
Speaker 2: this sour flavor to it. Where does that sourness come from?

1130
01:03:26,360 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 2: Is it some property of milk chocolate? Is it some

1131
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 2: secret process that Hershey has? Why are Hershey bar so sour?

1132
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:36,000
Speaker 3: Yes? I love the history of chocolate, so let's talk hershy.

1133
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:40,880
Speaker 3: Hershey started making caramel in Lancaster, PA. That's where my

1134
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 3: family and I spent thirty years just north of there

1135
01:03:43,880 --> 01:03:47,800
Speaker 3: in Mannheim. Started that business, Uh, grew it pretty well

1136
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:51,760
Speaker 3: downtown Lancaster, went to the expo in Chicago, to this

1137
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:59,240
Speaker 3: famous expo where this iconic Columbian Expo in Chicago, where

1138
01:03:59,800 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 3: he came across Layman, which is a German may Fast

1139
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:08,600
Speaker 3: of chocolate, really liquored melliing equipment came across that thought

1140
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:12,840
Speaker 3: at that time that the future is chocolate, not carmel.

1141
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 3: So moved to child production, bought that equipment in Chicago,

1142
01:04:18,280 --> 01:04:22,480
Speaker 3: brought it back and started Hershey pid making chocolate small scale.

1143
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:24,800
Speaker 3: Didn't know how to do it yet, didn't know how.

1144
01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:30,640
Speaker 3: He hired a German scientist by named of Klein Klein

1145
01:04:31,680 --> 01:04:37,880
Speaker 3: and with him began to learn about child production. And

1146
01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 3: if you ever talked to a European I go into

1147
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 3: this fair Hersey. I just want to give you kind

1148
01:04:44,040 --> 01:04:46,280
Speaker 3: of what my skew is. I might spin on it is,

1149
01:04:46,680 --> 01:04:49,840
Speaker 3: and you've already mentioned this. The Europeans are not accustomed

1150
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:52,880
Speaker 3: to sour milk in their chocolate. They're just not accustomed

1151
01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,720
Speaker 3: to it. And that's the history of chocolate and whether

1152
01:04:56,720 --> 01:04:59,320
Speaker 3: a child taste very different from those in the US.

1153
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 3: So the story is, and I'm sure a Hershey representative

1154
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:09,240
Speaker 3: may dispute my spin on this, is we talked to

1155
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:11,520
Speaker 3: Europeans and say, you know, they got the process of

1156
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:17,160
Speaker 3: drying liquid milk wrong in that it became the lipid

1157
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 3: catalysis that creates organic acids that gives you the sour

1158
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 3: character that you get from baby puke.

1159
01:05:26,600 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, did you just say baby puke?

1160
01:05:28,680 --> 01:05:29,000
Speaker 3: I did?

1161
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 4: I did.

1162
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,880
Speaker 3: And I've heard those terms from other Hershey people, so

1163
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:35,480
Speaker 3: I'm not taking these terms out of context.

1164
01:05:35,560 --> 01:05:37,880
Speaker 2: So we have it on the record from an expert

1165
01:05:37,920 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 2: in chocolate that Hershey's tastes like baby puke.

1166
01:05:41,280 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 3: Yeah. Introbution on this one. And as I said, flavor

1167
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:49,200
Speaker 3: is subjective. My father loves Hershey chocolate that's what he

1168
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,760
Speaker 3: was offered. That's what he ate. He still loves it,

1169
01:05:52,560 --> 01:05:54,760
Speaker 3: and it has a unique i'll call it a unique

1170
01:05:55,000 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 3: acid character. It's organic acid, but tyic acid flavor in

1171
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:04,560
Speaker 3: that chocolate. It gives it that unique flavor. So the

1172
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 3: story is, and it could be a myth that in

1173
01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:10,640
Speaker 3: the process because it was not known how to dry

1174
01:06:10,720 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 3: liquid milk and do it in an efficient way that

1175
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 3: did not harm the quality, not in the US. Nestley

1176
01:06:18,600 --> 01:06:22,640
Speaker 3: was figuring that out in Europe. Okay, so they were

1177
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 3: figuring it out Hers. She was trying to do it

1178
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:28,880
Speaker 3: his way and came up with a way to do it.

1179
01:06:28,880 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 3: Developed this acidic flavor which became the profile, which is

1180
01:06:34,400 --> 01:06:38,919
Speaker 3: now their signature flavor, and it is well welllife. It's

1181
01:06:38,960 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 3: the biggest brand in the US, so they've got something

1182
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:45,600
Speaker 3: going on there. So, you know, no disparaging Hershey, they've

1183
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:51,439
Speaker 3: got a well, well liked product that consumers here really love.

1184
01:06:51,640 --> 01:06:53,800
Speaker 2: I mean, if you can make a billion dollar business

1185
01:06:53,880 --> 01:06:57,880
Speaker 2: out of a baby puke candy, then hats off to you, right,

1186
01:06:57,960 --> 01:07:00,840
Speaker 2: Like wow, very impressive. I could never pcomplished that. I

1187
01:07:00,880 --> 01:07:04,160
Speaker 2: don't think I'd invest in that startup, but I'd be wrong. Apparently.

1188
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:07,760
Speaker 2: So then you know, if we are still innovating on

1189
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:11,400
Speaker 2: chocolate and still using chemical engineering and creative ideas to

1190
01:07:11,440 --> 01:07:14,720
Speaker 2: develop new chocolates, what's happening right now, what's like at

1191
01:07:14,760 --> 01:07:19,000
Speaker 2: the forefront of chocolate research, the most brilliant minds in chocolate.

1192
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:21,200
Speaker 2: What problems are they trying to crack right now?

1193
01:07:21,560 --> 01:07:26,560
Speaker 3: So if you look at the headlines today, sustainability, carbon dioxide,

1194
01:07:27,280 --> 01:07:33,240
Speaker 3: so things are around. Replacing dairy powders with plant based

1195
01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:36,000
Speaker 3: proteins are hot. They were hot five years ago. I

1196
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:39,440
Speaker 3: know there's interest in it and they are still very

1197
01:07:39,480 --> 01:07:43,960
Speaker 3: important to consider to reduce greenhouse gases to manage I

1198
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 3: know Mars for sure has a sustainability plan, and all

1199
01:07:47,920 --> 01:07:51,760
Speaker 3: the large manufacturers certainly have a public disclosed approach that

1200
01:07:51,800 --> 01:07:57,800
Speaker 3: they're taking for that. So anything around the way that

1201
01:07:58,640 --> 01:08:03,040
Speaker 3: is processed is being examined to reduce energy consumption. That's

1202
01:08:03,320 --> 01:08:07,040
Speaker 3: I say a blanket statement because each of these components

1203
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:10,760
Speaker 3: where it's roasting, conching which is an intensive mixing step,

1204
01:08:11,640 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 3: or size reduction, are very energy intensive. There's a lot

1205
01:08:14,880 --> 01:08:18,080
Speaker 3: of energy that's required to get to the state that's

1206
01:08:18,120 --> 01:08:22,599
Speaker 3: appealing to consumers. So any place now it's more innovation

1207
01:08:22,720 --> 01:08:25,800
Speaker 3: on the process side. Okay, it's innovation with the process side,

1208
01:08:26,040 --> 01:08:30,719
Speaker 3: but it's really important, important for the manufacturer, and also

1209
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:35,040
Speaker 3: the consumer is also looking at businesses to see what

1210
01:08:35,080 --> 01:08:37,559
Speaker 3: they're doing that's good for the planet. So for sure,

1211
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:40,680
Speaker 3: that's where a lot of the innovation is occurring. And then,

1212
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,280
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, on the ingredient side, is more plant

1213
01:08:43,280 --> 01:08:47,040
Speaker 3: based raw materials that can be used and still deliver

1214
01:08:47,240 --> 01:08:48,839
Speaker 3: that superior taste.

1215
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:52,879
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Now, you mentioned you started your career being intrigued

1216
01:08:52,920 --> 01:08:55,880
Speaker 2: in things like pringles. You've taken the potatoes one side

1217
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:59,240
Speaker 2: and outcome these perfect crisps. And I've noticed this bizarre

1218
01:08:59,240 --> 01:09:04,559
Speaker 2: innovation in desserts recently, this chocolate covered pringles. And since

1219
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,160
Speaker 2: you began your career in pringles and you ended up

1220
01:09:07,160 --> 01:09:09,800
Speaker 2: in chocolate, I wondered, is this something you came up with?

1221
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:13,559
Speaker 2: Is this your unholy unification of the snack universe?

1222
01:09:13,760 --> 01:09:17,640
Speaker 3: I can't take credit for that, I could, but do

1223
01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:18,320
Speaker 3: you enjoy them?

1224
01:09:18,640 --> 01:09:19,040
Speaker 2: Do you think?

1225
01:09:19,640 --> 01:09:23,560
Speaker 3: For sure? Yeah? I think that said the savory sweet combination,

1226
01:09:24,320 --> 01:09:28,400
Speaker 3: I think it is very good, really appealing, and coming

1227
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:33,360
Speaker 3: from the chocolate capital of the US, which is southeastern Pennsylvania,

1228
01:09:33,439 --> 01:09:38,880
Speaker 3: that's Hershey, Bars's large operation there. You have Blomber, which

1229
01:09:38,920 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 3: is a large industrial producer there, get divers based out

1230
01:09:42,280 --> 01:09:43,840
Speaker 3: of it. You have a lot of candy, a lot

1231
01:09:43,880 --> 01:09:47,400
Speaker 3: of candy, your peppermint patties, your Pennsylvania so you have

1232
01:09:47,439 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 3: a lot of candy production that curve there. It's also

1233
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:55,880
Speaker 3: the savory snack capital. Oh I see, so hey they're

1234
01:09:55,880 --> 01:09:57,040
Speaker 3: both there. Why not?

1235
01:09:57,240 --> 01:09:59,200
Speaker 2: So nobody knows snacking like Pennsylvania.

1236
01:10:01,080 --> 01:10:05,200
Speaker 3: Pressols a lot of pressol production the Dutch. You know,

1237
01:10:05,200 --> 01:10:07,679
Speaker 3: if you ever go to live as Pennsylvania, it's deemed

1238
01:10:07,720 --> 01:10:10,679
Speaker 3: the place for prezols in the US for first created.

1239
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:14,240
Speaker 3: And that's not far from Lancaster. So yeah, pretzels and

1240
01:10:14,400 --> 01:10:17,839
Speaker 3: savory snacks are really big in that part of the country.

1241
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:19,599
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we have Pennsylvania to thank us for

1242
01:10:19,640 --> 01:10:23,639
Speaker 2: pushing us forward on the forefront of human snacking. That's amazing,

1243
01:10:24,000 --> 01:10:26,760
Speaker 2: And thanks very much John Kayser for telling us all

1244
01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:30,760
Speaker 2: about chocolate production and the challenges in producing huge quantities

1245
01:10:30,800 --> 01:10:34,040
Speaker 2: of consistent chocolate that everybody enjoys around the world. Really

1246
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:34,920
Speaker 2: appreciate your time.

1247
01:10:35,040 --> 01:10:37,439
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for the invitation. This has been a blast

1248
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:38,519
Speaker 3: for me. Appreciate it.

1249
01:10:39,640 --> 01:10:43,880
Speaker 1: All right, interesting. What did you think about how they

1250
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:46,519
Speaker 1: approach chocolate making in large scales.

1251
01:10:46,640 --> 01:10:49,760
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating how the small batch people are

1252
01:10:49,800 --> 01:10:53,240
Speaker 2: really trying to make a unique flavor and the large

1253
01:10:53,280 --> 01:10:55,960
Speaker 2: batch people are really not. They're really struggling with the

1254
01:10:56,000 --> 01:10:58,800
Speaker 2: same question, but they're on different sides of the issue.

1255
01:10:59,080 --> 01:11:01,599
Speaker 2: Jim talks about how the difference in the fermentation process

1256
01:11:01,680 --> 01:11:04,439
Speaker 2: leads to different kinds of flavor, and that sounds awesome

1257
01:11:04,800 --> 01:11:08,280
Speaker 2: if you're artisanal, but that's a nightmare if you're industrial.

1258
01:11:08,960 --> 01:11:10,479
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like it's not like they're not trying

1259
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:13,240
Speaker 1: to come up with anique, unique flavor. It's like they're

1260
01:11:13,240 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 1: trying to keep the flavor consistent.

1261
01:11:15,520 --> 01:11:16,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

1262
01:11:17,040 --> 01:11:19,840
Speaker 1: They might be aiming for, like the flavor of the

1263
01:11:19,880 --> 01:11:22,160
Speaker 1: most amount of people like and to make that consistent.

1264
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:24,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is exactly what they're going for.

1265
01:11:25,000 --> 01:11:27,800
Speaker 2: And also I didn't realize what a deep rivalry there

1266
01:11:27,920 --> 01:11:31,559
Speaker 2: is between Hershey and Mars. There's a long history there

1267
01:11:31,760 --> 01:11:35,120
Speaker 2: involving like espionage and theft and like really deep anger

1268
01:11:35,200 --> 01:11:37,919
Speaker 2: between these two companies. And you all know that Hershey's

1269
01:11:37,960 --> 01:11:40,840
Speaker 2: isn't my favorite, but no disrespect to those who love it.

1270
01:11:41,080 --> 01:11:43,639
Speaker 2: Because it's not about costs. There's lots of cheap chocolate

1271
01:11:43,720 --> 01:11:46,599
Speaker 2: out there I love, and expensive ones I don't. It's

1272
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:49,520
Speaker 2: just personal preference. So probably if I want an unbiased

1273
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:52,519
Speaker 2: opinion about the flavor of Hershey's chocolate, I shouldn't have

1274
01:11:52,560 --> 01:11:54,360
Speaker 2: been talking to somebody from Mars.

1275
01:11:55,280 --> 01:11:57,200
Speaker 1: Well, I didn't even know there are two separate companies,

1276
01:11:58,920 --> 01:12:01,839
Speaker 1: Like there's just those two, Like those are the big chocolate.

1277
01:12:02,000 --> 01:12:07,000
Speaker 2: Those two Pennsylvania snack companies really do dominate the chocolate market.

1278
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:09,120
Speaker 1: And they're both based in Pennsylvania, m.

1279
01:12:09,400 --> 01:12:12,240
Speaker 2: Exactly the snack capital of the world. According to Jim Geyser.

1280
01:12:12,280 --> 01:12:14,480
Speaker 1: Wow, why Pennsylvania.

1281
01:12:14,960 --> 01:12:17,240
Speaker 2: Somebody from Pennsylvania has to answer that for us?

1282
01:12:17,400 --> 01:12:19,080
Speaker 1: Well, we might have to buy him at Bar Chocolate.

1283
01:12:19,520 --> 01:12:20,639
Speaker 1: We live to tell us.

1284
01:12:21,120 --> 01:12:23,599
Speaker 2: Once that grant comes in, we'll be ready to do that.

1285
01:12:23,520 --> 01:12:27,799
Speaker 1: All right. Well, another interesting dive into daniels as snack habits.

1286
01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:31,080
Speaker 1: Hasn't your doctor at this age told you, like, hey,

1287
01:12:31,120 --> 01:12:34,360
Speaker 1: maybe you should dial down on the saturated fats.

1288
01:12:34,120 --> 01:12:36,400
Speaker 2: There, No chocolate is healthy. Man has all sorts of

1289
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:38,200
Speaker 2: good stuff in it in moderation.

1290
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:43,280
Speaker 1: Again, we're doctors, but we're not that kind of doctor.

1291
01:12:43,439 --> 01:12:46,320
Speaker 2: Fermented foods. Man, My wife tells me fermented foods are

1292
01:12:46,360 --> 01:12:47,040
Speaker 2: good for your gut.

1293
01:12:47,200 --> 01:12:50,880
Speaker 1: These statements of not being approved by the Federal Drug Administration.

1294
01:12:51,160 --> 01:12:53,920
Speaker 2: Do not take health advice from me. Please, do not

1295
01:12:54,080 --> 01:12:57,680
Speaker 2: take healthy peace. Don't even take writing advice from me

1296
01:12:58,400 --> 01:12:59,559
Speaker 2: or anything that's right.

1297
01:12:59,560 --> 01:13:00,840
Speaker 1: Don't they advice.

1298
01:13:01,840 --> 01:13:04,759
Speaker 2: Career advice, life advice, any of that stuff. Just listen

1299
01:13:04,800 --> 01:13:06,560
Speaker 2: for the jokes and the knowledge.

1300
01:13:06,960 --> 01:13:08,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, how about physics.

1301
01:13:08,160 --> 01:13:10,120
Speaker 2: Advice and doing my best to give us an honest

1302
01:13:10,200 --> 01:13:12,519
Speaker 2: understanding of the physics of the universe for sure.

1303
01:13:12,600 --> 01:13:14,760
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for

1304
01:13:14,840 --> 01:13:17,040
Speaker 1: joining us. See you next time.

1305
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:24,439
Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social

1306
01:13:24,479 --> 01:13:29,400
Speaker 2: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, disc, Org, Insta,

1307
01:13:29,520 --> 01:13:33,200
Speaker 2: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1308
01:13:33,240 --> 01:13:36,720
Speaker 2: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1309
01:13:36,960 --> 01:13:42,120
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1310
01:13:42,240 --> 01:13:44,599
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.