Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess What Mango?
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: Will? All right? So I know we both love mister
Speaker 2: potato Head. At least I remember that you loved mister
Speaker 2: potato Head. Did you remember that I loved mister potato head?
Speaker 3: I did not remember that at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big fan, big. And you know who invented mister
Speaker 2: potato Head. It was George Lerner, created back in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: So my favorite thing about mister potato heead was that
Speaker 1: it was initially just a bag of like face parts,
Speaker 1: and kids would supply their own potatoes to jab these
Speaker 1: face parts into it.
Speaker 2: Right, that is exactly right. You could use any like
Speaker 2: use your imagination here. You could use carrots, turnips, or
Speaker 2: really any root vegetable that you wanted, But potatoes were chosen.
Speaker 2: This was interesting. Actually I didn't know exactly why. But one,
Speaker 2: they're cheap. Of course, they were affordable, and they were
Speaker 2: available year round on plus, I guess you could argue
Speaker 2: they're funnier they're mister turnip head, but I don't know that.
Speaker 2: It seems debatable. But the craze then took off when
Speaker 2: Hasbro made this big TV commercial for the product, and
Speaker 2: they sold it was something like four million dollars worth
Speaker 2: of these toy parts within a few months. Now, that
Speaker 2: was a fortune then. And the interesting thing though, is
Speaker 2: that mister potato Head actually wasn't the first potato toy
Speaker 2: on the market.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you knew this, I did not
Speaker 3: know that what was before it.
Speaker 2: Well, it was the first with three D pieces, so
Speaker 2: they added a D to what was being done out
Speaker 2: there in the world. It was competing with these these
Speaker 2: potato head toys at the time that were using two
Speaker 2: D pieces, like more like paper product type stuff, and
Speaker 2: so you would stick these just onto the vegetable. But
Speaker 2: what's interesting is that in nineteen thirty one, this was
Speaker 2: a full eighteen years earlier, So think about this, like
Speaker 2: potato toy technology was not fully evolved yet. But the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, of course they had to be first. They
Speaker 2: launched this guide for kids on how to play with potatoes.
Speaker 2: So basically it was like this. It was a pretty
Speaker 2: delightful guide on how you could use a pen knife
Speaker 2: and match sticks and you could turn a bunch of
Speaker 2: potatoes into these little playthings. And so there's this illustration
Speaker 2: on how to make two little potato kids and have
Speaker 2: them see song on this bigger potato. And then there
Speaker 2: was another one on how to turn five or six
Speaker 2: potatoes into a race car with a tiny potato driver,
Speaker 2: or this little potato man walking his potato pig on
Speaker 2: a string leash. It honestly is a pretty delightful guide.
Speaker 2: So but but you know, seeing this charming guide made
Speaker 2: me think of how much joy potatoes bring the world.
Speaker 2: Whether it's ridiculous Soviet sculptures, this is not. This is
Speaker 2: real magna potatoes. There's now more than ever we need
Speaker 2: potatoes to bring the world joy, or a bag of
Speaker 2: supersized fries, which I know you and I are both
Speaker 2: big fans of.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 2: In college when you thought you were a vegetarian and
Speaker 2: yet then you realize that the potatoes had been cooked
Speaker 2: in animal fat. But but I thought we'd make a
Speaker 2: whole show about potatoes.
Speaker 3: I am all about this. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend mangesh Hot Ticketer on the other side of that
Speaker 2: soundproof glass wearing a shirt that says in my readings,
Speaker 2: I think it says over haters. Is that what it says? Yes,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means, but I love it
Speaker 2: and I feel like I need one as well. That's
Speaker 2: our good pal, Ramsey. So so Mango, what's up this week?
Speaker 1: So I want to apologize to the listeners for this tease.
Speaker 1: We had a few I guess like a month ago
Speaker 1: or months ago, and thank them for being so patient
Speaker 1: because you and I got to make an episode right
Speaker 1: before my dad passed away, and my dad just loved
Speaker 1: it and he listened for the hospital. And you know,
Speaker 1: I had every intention of just plombing through and turning
Speaker 1: the show weekly again. But your parents are incredible and
Speaker 1: we are just so lucky, Like both our parents were
Speaker 1: so important and giving us love and support, and we
Speaker 1: got to go to this incredible college and then we
Speaker 1: chose the dumbest possible career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I still love this and I'm.
Speaker 3: Just so grateful that we get to do this. So
Speaker 3: thank you for making time this.
Speaker 1: Week to talk about potatoes whatever diculous topics.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, where do you want to start?
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about how the universe might
Speaker 1: be shaped like a Pringle ship, or how the Alaskan
Speaker 1: gold Rush during it, desperate miners used to actually trade
Speaker 1: gold for potatoes because it was so nutritious, or what.
Speaker 2: Are you going to start with these? That's there's some
Speaker 2: good teases there I feel like should be considered. But
Speaker 2: I'm actually gonna start with a fact about France back
Speaker 2: in then seventeen hundreds, when the potato mango it was
Speaker 2: actually declared illegal. Okay, yep. So potatoes came to Europe
Speaker 2: by way of the Spaniards, who themselves had brought the
Speaker 2: vegetables back from the Inca Empire in South America, of course,
Speaker 2: and immediately there's this real distrust of the vegetables. Distrust Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean partially because potatoes are not mentioned in the Bible.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know this fact, and partially
Speaker 2: because they grow underground, so people are weirdly suspicious of
Speaker 2: them and at the time they're mostly fed to pigs.
Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, yeah, yes, so you've done like a
Speaker 1: word search and found that potatoes aren't aren't found in
Speaker 1: the Bible.
Speaker 2: That they are not. No, I did the full search. No,
Speaker 2: I actually just read through it. I should have done
Speaker 2: a search all, but I just kind of read through
Speaker 2: the whole thing didn't find it once. So anyway, basically
Speaker 2: nobody will touch these things, even hungry commoners. And then
Speaker 2: potatoes get blamed for things like when leprosy spreads, of
Speaker 2: course everybody blames it on the potatoes. In all this mayhem,
Speaker 2: the French Parliament decides to ban the vegetable. Now, this
Speaker 2: was around seventeen forty eight, and the potato is actually
Speaker 2: banned until seventeen seventy two, So good, twenty four years
Speaker 2: of no potatoes.
Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 1: So I'd actually read this thing in Metal Floss years
Speaker 1: ago that early farmers would plant potatoes on Easter and
Speaker 1: sprinkle them with holy water because they wanted the plant
Speaker 1: to grow safely and not be dangerous. But how do
Speaker 1: potatoes make their way into favor in culture?
Speaker 2: So there's this army officer Antoine Parmentier, and he gets
Speaker 2: captured by the Prussians in the seven year war, and
Speaker 2: so basically he's fed potatoes at this prison, and he
Speaker 2: doesn't notice any ill effects, like he's supposed to get
Speaker 2: leprosy and get all sick and all these other things.
Speaker 2: He stays healthy pretty much the whole time. But also
Speaker 2: he notices that France at the time has stopped exporting
Speaker 2: grains and the Prussian army actually uses potatoes as a
Speaker 2: replacement for it in their diet. So Parmentier looks at
Speaker 2: all of this, and as he learns more, he realizes
Speaker 2: that potatoes don't take that much effort to grow. So
Speaker 2: when he's released back to France, he starts this campaign
Speaker 2: to rehb illoitate the potato's image. He throws these dinner
Speaker 2: parties where he serves all these potato courses to celebrities,
Speaker 2: like then Franklin came to one of these things. He
Speaker 2: gives potato flowers to Marie Antoinette, and she then popularizes
Speaker 2: these things by wearing them in a hat. So people
Speaker 2: start getting curious and you know, trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what's going on with this leprosy fruit which is the potato.
Speaker 2: But then he pulls off his greatest stunt, which I
Speaker 2: haven't even mentioned yet.
Speaker 3: So what's his greatest stunt.
Speaker 2: He plants a potato patch. He puts a ring of
Speaker 2: armed guards around it, so everyone starts thinking of them
Speaker 2: as like this luxury. I mean, this really is pretty smart.
Speaker 2: I think of them as this, you know, very valuable thing.
Speaker 2: But then he quietly tells the guards to accept bribes
Speaker 2: and allow people to start stealing the potatoes. So in
Speaker 2: seventeen seventy two, all these peasants steel potatoes and treat
Speaker 2: them like this precious food. And then the Paris Faculty
Speaker 2: of Medicine finally declares the potato edible and makes them
Speaker 2: legal again. Is amazing.
Speaker 3: French science is just on top of it.
Speaker 2: I was right and know what they're doing.
Speaker 3: So is Parmentier like famous in France for doing this?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess kind of. And he, you know,
Speaker 2: the potato helped France get through some difficult famines, and
Speaker 2: Louis the sixteenth rewarded him for his work, actually declaring
Speaker 2: how important Parmentier was keeping the masses fed. And when
Speaker 2: he died, Parmentier's casket was actually placed in a plot
Speaker 2: circled with potato plants, and in the middle there's this
Speaker 2: bronze statue of him handing a potato to a commoner
Speaker 2: who's standing below him.
Speaker 1: So just so you know, I would also like a
Speaker 1: statue of me handing out potatoes to commoners, just so
Speaker 1: I can remember it as like a man of the people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I kind of expected this. So there's already
Speaker 2: one in the works. I've started out paying in installments
Speaker 2: so that it'll be ready. It's going to be very expensive.
Speaker 2: But anyway, enough about Parmentier. What fact are you going
Speaker 2: to start with?
Speaker 1: I've got one about baseball. So you've heard of the
Speaker 1: old baseball trick where a first baseman might.
Speaker 3: Walk up to the pitcher and fake hand on.
Speaker 1: The baseball, but actually he keeps the ball on the
Speaker 1: glove and ye when he walks back to the bag
Speaker 1: and the base runner steps off the base take a lead,
Speaker 1: he sort of tags him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, And it's like this old trick that
Speaker 2: mostly gets used. I don't know, I feel like in
Speaker 2: kids movies about baseball, like you remember this Rookie of
Speaker 2: the Year, I mean, one of the greatest films of
Speaker 2: all time.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it is a very Rookie of the
Speaker 1: Year play. But this minor league catcher for the Williamsport Bills.
Speaker 1: His name is Dave Bresnahan. He was completely obsessed with
Speaker 1: this trick play and this was in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty seven, and Bresnahan was actually obsessed with
Speaker 1: a variation of that trick using a fake baseball.
Speaker 2: I love that n anybody was obsessed with this trick. But anyway,
Speaker 2: how does that work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in this case, the catcher replaces the ball
Speaker 1: in his glove with the potato because you know how
Speaker 1: people always confuse like baseballs for potato.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always happens.
Speaker 1: So the way the trick works is that the catcher
Speaker 1: accidentally throws the potato into outfield like it's an error,
Speaker 1: and then you know, when the base runner tries to
Speaker 1: steal home, the catcher shows that he actually has the
Speaker 1: baseball hidden his glove the whole time and tags them out.
Speaker 2: And do people they actually did this in baseball games.
Speaker 1: So according to the La Times, which is where I
Speaker 1: read about the story, I guess a few people got
Speaker 1: away with it in their earliest days of baseball.
Speaker 3: It was called the Tater trick.
Speaker 1: And anyway, so Bresnahan decides he's going to pull off
Speaker 1: the tater trick in a real game, and he goes
Speaker 1: all out.
Speaker 3: He pays an artist to carve a.
Speaker 1: Potato and paint seems on it like it's a real
Speaker 1: baseball even picks the perfect game. He wants to do
Speaker 1: it against the Phillies farm team in Reading because the
Speaker 1: Philly fanatic will be there and that means they'll be
Speaker 1: more of a crowd, right, and he starts trying to
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork like in games before the big one,
Speaker 1: he starts trying to pick off players at third, so
Speaker 1: he's kind of getting this reputation as a catcher who
Speaker 1: picks off players.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the big day arrives and in the sixth inning
Speaker 1: he gets into the perfect situation. There are two outs
Speaker 1: and a man on third, and Reresnahan knows this is
Speaker 1: his moment, so he comes up with this excuse. He
Speaker 1: tells the empire that the webbing on his glove is
Speaker 1: off and he needs to replace his glove, and then
Speaker 1: he walks to the dugout, grabs this ridiculous carved potato
Speaker 1: and then walks back.
Speaker 2: So does anybody notice that he's doing this.
Speaker 3: The whole team?
Speaker 1: Like, I don't think the manager new but the whole
Speaker 1: team starts laughing, and they're having a hard time like
Speaker 1: controlling themselves because they know what's up. And Presidahan himself
Speaker 1: is trying to keep it together. But when the runner
Speaker 1: on third takes a lead and the pitch lens in
Speaker 1: his glove, he snaps into action and he makes a
Speaker 1: switch and he throws this potato to third, But instead
Speaker 1: of overthrowing the potato past the third basement into the field,
Speaker 1: he accidentally underthrows it and it bounces, and the potato
Speaker 1: breaks into three pieces and it lands right in front
Speaker 1: of the third base umpire but the player doesn't notice,
Speaker 1: and you know, he charges home and Reresnahan shows him
Speaker 1: the ball and tags him out, and then he walks
Speaker 1: to the dugout.
Speaker 3: And here's the.
Speaker 1: Thing, right, Presihan assumes if his team follows him, the
Speaker 1: other team will walk off too and the game will
Speaker 1: just move on and continue.
Speaker 2: So does this work?
Speaker 3: Not at all?
Speaker 2: Oh man?
Speaker 1: The officials are super confused. His teammates stay on the field.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the third base ump goes to inspect
Speaker 1: this you know, broken up potato, and when he realized
Speaker 1: what's happened, officials just award the runner home plate and
Speaker 1: then Bresnahan gets pulled from the game for his Shenanigans
Speaker 1: and the next day he's fined fifty dollars and cut
Speaker 1: from the team.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that we have way more sad than
Speaker 2: I expected. That's a funny trick.
Speaker 1: Reresnahan actually didn't mind that much because he was not
Speaker 1: that great a player, and the fans loved it, so
Speaker 1: he became such a like fan favorite or this legend
Speaker 1: that the team ended up retiring his jersey at the
Speaker 1: sold out game. And uh, and they charge a dollar
Speaker 1: for tickets where not only could you attend, but you
Speaker 1: also got a potato with your ticket, And actually the
Speaker 1: largest chunk of that potato he threw in that Phillies
Speaker 1: game is in a jar of alcohol sitting on display
Speaker 1: in a baseball history museum in California. So like, I
Speaker 1: think President Ahead actually feels like he went out.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he came out on top. That's pretty fun.
Speaker 3: So what do you have that's next? All right?
Speaker 2: How about a quick one from the Farmer's Almanac. I
Speaker 2: know you're a fan of the Farmer's Almanacs, so I
Speaker 2: feel like that's where my favorite of the Almanacs. Oh, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 2: So if you've got a knife with some small rust spots,
Speaker 2: you can actually use a potato to fix that.
Speaker 1: So how's that work? Do you like use the potatoes
Speaker 1: to sprub away the rust or what?
Speaker 2: I mean? That would be one way, But according to
Speaker 2: the Almanac and quite a few other online sources, it's
Speaker 2: actually even easier than that. So you just insert the
Speaker 2: knife into the potato, let it sit, and the oxalic
Speaker 2: acid and the potato will work on the rust and
Speaker 2: soften it so that it then rinses away.
Speaker 1: How great would it be if that was like the
Speaker 1: best way to clean all your utensils, Like you just
Speaker 1: stab them into potatoes and leave them overnight to clean them.
Speaker 2: Be the best feelings. Just keep stabbing potatoes.
Speaker 3: I'd have so many potatoes around.
Speaker 1: Speaking of a lot of potatoes, here's a trend I
Speaker 1: kind of want to bring back from twenty twelve in Japan,
Speaker 1: and it's the McDonald's potato party.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've established you do love McDonald's French fries.
Speaker 1: I know with sweden sower sauce. It's it's like one
Speaker 1: of the many food quirks and loves I have. But
Speaker 1: about a decade ago, the McDonald's and Japan started running
Speaker 1: a sale kind of like the dollar Menu, where large
Speaker 1: fries were suddenly steeply discounted, And so some teens ordered
Speaker 1: twenty three large fries and made a mountain of them
Speaker 1: on a bunch of trays and posted to social media
Speaker 1: and people just went crazy, I guess, And this is
Speaker 1: according to giz Moto, the McDonald's and Japan use a
Speaker 1: more polite form of Japanese, so even though it's not fancy,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to act with like a little bit more um,
Speaker 1: I guess. And the photo gets retweeted thousands of times,
Speaker 1: and people are angry that kids are acting silly and
Speaker 1: being a bother to the McDonald's, and some people are
Speaker 1: just stunned to see that many fries in one place.
Speaker 1: But the biggest chorus around these photos is this argument
Speaker 1: that if you order that many fries, you have to
Speaker 1: eat them or is disrespectful.
Speaker 2: And I would agree with that. But did this become
Speaker 2: a trend?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like potato parties started popping up all over the place,
Speaker 1: and some kids saw the twenty three fry order as
Speaker 1: a challenge. Obviously, so in Okinawa, some kids ordered forty
Speaker 1: large fries. At the McDonald's near Okayama Station, a small
Speaker 1: group of kids ordered sixty large fries, and that photo
Speaker 1: got retweeted tens of thousands of times apparently, and so, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the kids are supposed to finish these fries,
Speaker 1: and they actually do, like like I think, it takes
Speaker 1: them about three hours, but.
Speaker 3: The employees get super upset.
Speaker 1: Apparently the fries took up a whole large table on
Speaker 1: their own, and then all the people watching these kids
Speaker 1: house these fries take up another large table. So you know,
Speaker 1: it felt like they were losing business. And one employee
Speaker 1: from the restaurant took to Twitter and just asked for
Speaker 1: it to quote please stop, please stop. That said, if
Speaker 1: you are heading trays and trays of fries over to kid,
Speaker 1: you've got to expect there's gonna be a little chaos.
Speaker 2: When you said the three hours, though, the only thing
Speaker 2: I could think of is like, while the fries are delicious,
Speaker 2: after about thirty minutes, if they're sitting there, they go
Speaker 2: from really good to pretty gross pretty fast. I wonder
Speaker 2: they must have just kept ordering them rather than ordering
Speaker 2: a bunch at one time, because I don't know I'd
Speaker 2: have to see how that works. But how did the
Speaker 2: trend finally die down?
Speaker 1: So McDonald's just up the price on the fries to
Speaker 1: their regular price and it kind of stopped really soon
Speaker 1: after that, which is a pretty simple fix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right. So here's a weird When I
Speaker 2: was watching this documentary about potato chips and ed her
Speaker 2: from Hers Potato Chips, and he said that if they
Speaker 2: still made potato chips the way they used to, this
Speaker 2: was about fifty years ago when the company started, they
Speaker 2: would have to charge twenty five dollars a bag.
Speaker 3: Twenty five dollars the back. Why is that?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just how much the industry has automated
Speaker 2: since then. It's actually kind of amazing to watch how
Speaker 2: it all works. So when a truck full of potatoes
Speaker 2: goes to the Hers factory, the trailers pulled onto a
Speaker 2: scale where the potatoes are then weighed, and then it
Speaker 2: lifts the potatoes and dumps the potatoes onto a conveyor
Speaker 2: belt and the whole process starts kind of without humans.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is starting there. And instead of watching
Speaker 2: to see which potatoes are colored green and which ones
Speaker 2: are good, this computer sorts all of this out and
Speaker 2: the imperfect potatoes and chips are all weeded out along
Speaker 2: the way. Ed Hear actually says that when his mom
Speaker 2: was involved in the business and used to supervise the
Speaker 2: bagging of these chips, they would bag five to ten
Speaker 2: pounds of chips every hour, and now with fewer people,
Speaker 2: more computers on the line, they bag five to six
Speaker 2: tons of potato chips every hour, which is insane.
Speaker 3: That is amazing, you know.
Speaker 1: Speaking of potato chip bags, here's a quick interesting one.
Speaker 1: So people absolutely hate that potato chip bags are over
Speaker 1: fifty percent air. In fact, Korean college students in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen protested this fact by taking one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: potato chip bags, binding them together with plastic and tape,
Speaker 1: and using them to build a raft to float across
Speaker 1: the river. And apparently two hundred plus people watch that feet.
Speaker 1: But the question remains, why do potato chips have so
Speaker 1: much air in them?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, And do you have an answer to this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is intentional. It is called slackvill and that's
Speaker 1: the industry term. Basically, those bags are pumped full of
Speaker 1: a little extra nitrogen to both keep the chips preserved
Speaker 1: but also because if the bags are packed with air,
Speaker 1: they won't get mishandled, and you won't end up with
Speaker 1: a bag full of crumbs. A way to protect you
Speaker 1: from getting a half bag of like fully round chips.
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting. I guess we always assume that it's
Speaker 2: just too to be cheap or cheat us out of
Speaker 2: a certain number of chips or something. But that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: All right, We've got a couple more facts to go,
Speaker 2: but let's pause for just a quick break. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to part time Genius, where we're talking about a really
Speaker 2: important summer topic, potatoes, of course. So Mango, we've each
Speaker 2: got one fact to go. What do you want to
Speaker 2: close with?
Speaker 1: Well, I know you're probably a little late to celebrate this,
Speaker 1: but I want to point out to you that in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the UN declared it the International
Speaker 1: Year of the Potato.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, we're just what fourteen years behind celebrating this
Speaker 2: historic event. That's never too late, It's okay.
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of interesting why the UN decided to
Speaker 1: do this. As they put it, they wanted to shed
Speaker 1: new light on a hidden treasure, and part of the
Speaker 1: reason is that growing potatoes is surprisingly efficient in combating
Speaker 1: hunger because potatoes aren't really traded across borders. Because they're
Speaker 1: so easy to grow across climates from low to high altitudes,
Speaker 1: and because they're not really globally traded like most cereal crops,
Speaker 1: they offer a lot of food security and farmers don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about the prices fluctuating because of global markets.
Speaker 1: Apparently that year, places like Peru encouraged locals to use
Speaker 1: potato flour to reduce the reliance on wheat imports, and
Speaker 1: both the Chinese and Indian governments leaned into potato production
Speaker 1: to feed their growing populations. And I kind of like that,
Speaker 1: after all that time, the UN finally gave the potato
Speaker 1: it's due in this giant report.
Speaker 2: I agree. I kind of like that too.
Speaker 3: So how are you gonna close this up?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Well, I was torn. There were a couple facts I
Speaker 2: was looking at, but I'm gonna save one of them
Speaker 2: for this. I think we need to do a follow
Speaker 2: up with nine more great facts about potatoes because they're
Speaker 2: just so much. But how about a fact about couch potatoes?
Speaker 2: So unlike most etymology, which can be pretty frustrating because
Speaker 2: the origins are always you know, pretty murky. We've dealt
Speaker 2: with that on several topics before. There is an exact
Speaker 2: start date for the word couch potato. He first appeared
Speaker 2: in print back in nineteen seventy nine, the year both
Speaker 2: you and I were born. This was in the La
Speaker 2: Times while referencing a float on a parade route. According
Speaker 2: to the article quote, the couch potatoes will be lying
Speaker 2: on couches watching television as they are towed toward the
Speaker 2: parade route. According to the excellent site Today, I learned
Speaker 2: a man named Tom Locino was the first to coin
Speaker 2: the phrase. He had this good buddy named Bob Armstrong,
Speaker 2: and they'd already started this little group called the boob Tubers,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of this ridiculous protest against the
Speaker 2: California health craze at the time, and the boob tubers
Speaker 2: were basically committed to sitting in front of the TV
Speaker 2: and snacking instead of jazzer siding or whatever the the
Speaker 2: fad was at the time. So after recruiting their friends,
Speaker 2: they launched this float in the Duda Parade.
Speaker 3: None of this sounds real, this.
Speaker 2: Joke parade to parody the Tournament of Roses Parade. But
Speaker 2: one day in nineteen seventy six, Lsino called up Armstrong
Speaker 2: and when his girlfriend answered the phone, he asked, Hey,
Speaker 2: is the couch Potato there? And apparently she looked over
Speaker 2: saw her boyfriend just planted on the couch and started laughing.
Speaker 2: And after that they rebranded as the couch Potatoes and
Speaker 2: tried to trademark the word, but it actually became too
Speaker 2: popular in pop culture for them to protect the mark.
Speaker 2: I had actually never heard this story before, you know,
Speaker 2: doing the prep for this episode.
Speaker 1: So that is so funny that there's actually a person
Speaker 1: who invented that phrase, Tom Lasino. I think you deserve
Speaker 1: this week's trophy for best Fact, But since I don't
Speaker 1: actually know you, I think will you should accept this
Speaker 1: award in his honor.
Speaker 2: All right, I guess I'll do that. Thanks so much, Tom,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, buddy. That's it for this week's Part
Speaker 2: Time Genius. Will be back with more very important facts soon.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for listening.
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