Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're stuffed on turkey,
Speaker 2: wearing aprons gollotle gravy on the sides of our mouths,
Speaker 2: and it's stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: That's right. Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate Thanksgiving here.
Speaker 2: In the US, and happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian
Speaker 2: listeners who celebrate it early.
Speaker 3: That's right. And since we're talking about Thanksgiving, we wanted
Speaker 3: to mention you know, we have been working with co ED,
Speaker 3: the Cooperative for Education for many, many years since they
Speaker 3: took us down to Guatemala, and they're you know, if
Speaker 3: you haven't heard us talk about them, I'd be surprised.
Speaker 3: But their mission is to help eradicate poverty through education
Speaker 3: and largely through the children of Guatemala. It's a great
Speaker 3: organization that we've been working with for a long long time,
Speaker 3: and we're working with them again this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They see too that kids who would almost certainly
Speaker 2: otherwise not have gotten any real education at all, get
Speaker 2: a really great education for fairly cheap too. They're a really,
Speaker 2: really great effective charity, which is why we've been working
Speaker 2: with them for so long. And one of the ways
Speaker 2: we work with them every year is to raffle off
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Speaker 3: Yeah, virtually, that's how we do things. But we've done
Speaker 3: this for a few years in a row now like
Speaker 3: a zoom a co ed zoom hangout and it's always
Speaker 3: super fun. We look forward to it. And this is
Speaker 3: how you can do that. You can join the Cooper
Speaker 3: for Education for twenty bucks a month and you can
Speaker 3: collectively sponsor students in the Rise Youth Development Program And
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, more than twelve hundred students are going
Speaker 3: to start school in rural Guatemala through this program and
Speaker 3: that's their biggest class ever and they really count on
Speaker 3: us and you guys to help make that happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can also give any nation that you like.
Speaker 2: They're happy with that. But do this by December nineteenth
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Speaker 2: And also just a little fyi, giving Tuesday is December second,
Speaker 2: so that could be a good day to do it too.
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Speaker 3: That's right. Twenty bucks a month can really go a
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Speaker 3: Army sponsoring a total of one hundred and seventy two
Speaker 3: RISE students over that time.
Speaker 2: So cool. Thanks you guys for me supporting co ED.
Speaker 2: So well, that's right. Well, Chuck, I say we get
Speaker 2: cracking with our episode today because I'm excited about this one.
Speaker 2: We're talking about Julia Child, arguably one of the most
Speaker 2: well known cooks chefs of all time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I have to step out real quick because
Speaker 3: I've got the dickens out of my finger.
Speaker 2: That was pretty good. Actually I wasn't even gonna try it.
Speaker 2: But that was a dead on Julia's Child.
Speaker 3: Well, that was a dead on. Dan Ackroyd as Julia Child.
Speaker 2: I think you topped him, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, if you grew up in the seventies,
Speaker 3: in the eighties and even into the nineties, and you
Speaker 3: ever surfed around your cable TV to and cross PBS,
Speaker 3: there was a good chance that the wonderful Julia Child
Speaker 3: came into your life in some way. I remember watching
Speaker 3: her a little bit when I was a kid even
Speaker 3: and just thinking like, who is this giant, tall woman
Speaker 3: that talks funny cooking in front of my face?
Speaker 2: But you were never intimidated by her, were you?
Speaker 3: No? I mean, she was always just so friendly and gregarious.
Speaker 3: I just had an instant liking.
Speaker 2: Yes, she was a very very likable person. But even
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar with Julia Child and you live
Speaker 2: in the United States and you like decent food that's
Speaker 2: not processed, you owe an enormous det to Julia Child
Speaker 2: because you can argue that she almost single handedly introduced
Speaker 2: America to real food through French cuisine. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, these days, it's taken for granted that you know,
Speaker 3: farmed a table and ingredients that matter, and food preparation
Speaker 3: and sort of taking pride and cooking at home like
Speaker 3: that is just so commonplace. But that was not the
Speaker 3: case when Julia Child was coming into things. She really
Speaker 3: revolutionizes and sort of rocked America's culinary world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this was the time when she came around,
Speaker 2: when people were making jello molds with like ground beef
Speaker 2: in them, like that was nice. That was like showing
Speaker 2: off for a dinner party kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: So we'll talk about all the impacts she had and
Speaker 2: why she was so beloved. But to start, we'll go
Speaker 2: a little further back toward the beginning. And if you've
Speaker 2: ever heard her speak, you really did do a pretty
Speaker 2: good impression. A lot of people think that she was British,
Speaker 2: and she was not British. She was American. She was
Speaker 2: born in Pasadena. Apparently her accent was one of those
Speaker 2: mid Atlantic accents that she was taught growing up in
Speaker 2: private schools and private college, Smith College in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was Julia McWilliams. That's how she was born,
Speaker 3: and didn't have British parents either. They had some money though.
Speaker 3: Her parents were pretty well to do. Her dad was
Speaker 3: a financier and her mom was an heiress of a
Speaker 3: paper company. So she grew up with the cook in
Speaker 3: the house. But it wasn't that that did it. As
Speaker 3: you'll see, she had quite a circuitous route to becoming
Speaker 3: the most famous cook in the world and had a
Speaker 3: pretty interesting life up until that point.
Speaker 2: She really did like a surprisingly interesting one. She was
Speaker 2: apparently a disaster in the kitchen and really didn't start
Speaker 2: cooking until I think she was in her forties, maybe
Speaker 2: late thirties. I saw that the closest brush she had
Speaker 2: with being a gormand and a host was when she
Speaker 2: was the chair of the refreshment committee for the senior
Speaker 2: prom and the fall dance one year at Smith College.
Speaker 2: And that's not really much of an exaggeration. That really
Speaker 2: probably is the closest she came to being a foodie
Speaker 2: before she got into cooking later on in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was a history student. She was going to
Speaker 3: be a writer. And like I said, she was tall.
Speaker 3: She was six foot two, and she was athletic. She
Speaker 3: played basketball, she played tennis, she played golf. She graduated
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty four and moved to New York and
Speaker 3: was you know, I said, she wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 3: She was an advertising copywriter for Sloan's, which was a
Speaker 3: burn at your company. So that was her first gig.
Speaker 3: But she was always a well liked person. She was
Speaker 3: very like I said, gregarious, That wasn't just a TV
Speaker 3: persona very very sociable people really seemed to like her
Speaker 3: her whole life. She was a life of the party.
Speaker 3: But she wasn't like just you know, even though she
Speaker 3: loved her wine. She wasn't just some some souse at
Speaker 3: the party. She was apparently pretty you know, responsible human
Speaker 3: early on.
Speaker 2: Like if she put a lampshade on her head, she
Speaker 2: remembered doing it the next time.
Speaker 3: It was on purpose, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: She also had a really great work ethic, which served
Speaker 2: her well throughout the rest of her career. But really
Speaker 2: from the outset helped her because when World War two
Speaker 2: broke out, She's like, I want to become a spy.
Speaker 2: So she joined the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services,
Speaker 2: the direct predecessor of the CIA, and worked directly under
Speaker 2: no less than wild Bill Donovan, the guy who founded
Speaker 2: the OSS.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was a general and apparently that she didn't
Speaker 3: you know, have a whole lot of like direct interaction
Speaker 3: with him. But it was a a very big gig
Speaker 3: for her. It was pretty menial work. Even though it
Speaker 3: was a job of you know, responsibility that she was
Speaker 3: put in. It was kind of pre computer work, like
Speaker 3: they needed human beings to do stuff that computers would do.
Speaker 3: So she would type up profiles on note cards of
Speaker 3: OSS officers just to keep sort of in the file
Speaker 3: cabinet before they had you know, computers to do that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, along with several other women that she
Speaker 3: worked with. And like I said, she was charming. You said,
Speaker 3: she had a great work ethic, and she got promoted
Speaker 3: like several times through that job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she actually was promoted to become a member
Speaker 2: of the Emergency CEE Rescue Equipment Section, which was tasked
Speaker 2: with coming up with a shark repellent because sharks were
Speaker 2: a problem for down pilots shipwrecked sailors. I think at
Speaker 2: least twenty sailors had been attacked by sharks since the
Speaker 2: beginning of the war, and this is only a couple
Speaker 2: of years. So they needed some sort of shark repellent
Speaker 2: that would keep sharks away, but that was also highly portable.
Speaker 2: Apparently shark repellent did not exist to this point, and
Speaker 2: the shark repellent they came up with was so effective
Speaker 2: it's still the shark repellent that's used today.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They would also you know, bump into c mines
Speaker 3: that were supposed to hit German U boats and detonate
Speaker 3: those which is no good for the cause or for
Speaker 3: the shark obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you son of them?
Speaker 3: So man, what a line. So she was in the
Speaker 3: test kitchen essentially trying to come up with a shark repellent.
Speaker 3: Obviously had a lot of different tries on this. I
Speaker 3: think there were over one hundred different attempts at this recipe,
Speaker 3: and what they came up with ultimately was a mix
Speaker 3: of decayed shark meat, organic acids, and what was the
Speaker 3: copper acetate was sort of the main ingredient that capped
Speaker 3: it all off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, copper acetate. They figured out with black dye mimics
Speaker 2: the scent of a dead shark, and I guess sharks
Speaker 2: don't like to go near other dead sharks. And they
Speaker 2: figured out how to bake it, basically make this into
Speaker 2: a little cake, you know, a cake meaning like a
Speaker 2: little puck, not a cake like a birthday cake, right,
Speaker 2: And you could attach it to your life vest and
Speaker 2: it would apparently keep shark's way for six to seven hours.
Speaker 2: It's not bad, no, And she very facetiously but also charmingly,
Speaker 2: referred to that shark repell and as her first big recipe.
Speaker 3: You say it like her?
Speaker 2: I okay, my first big recipe.
Speaker 3: Oh that's perfect. That's also sounds like half of your
Speaker 3: Halloween characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really was pretty bad. Wait, hold on, let
Speaker 2: me do it andsly bar first.
Speaker 3: Per We had one person that wrote in and said
Speaker 3: they couldn't get through it.
Speaker 2: I know, I felt kind of bad for him.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right. From forty four to forty five, I
Speaker 3: think these were her last two years in the OSS.
Speaker 3: She served as chief of THESS Registry and was sent
Speaker 3: to some pretty far away places. She went to China
Speaker 3: and Ceylon which is modern day Sri Lanka, and had
Speaker 3: some really top notch security clearance. It was you know,
Speaker 3: she really worked her way up the ladder in the OSS.
Speaker 2: I saw that she had top secret, the highest level
Speaker 2: security clearance for that assignment, which is it's just nuts.
Speaker 2: One thing that we'll see later on is that she's
Speaker 2: basically always considered herself a feminist, and that's a good
Speaker 2: example that she worked her way to the top of
Speaker 2: the OSS to have the highest possible security clearance during
Speaker 2: the forties at a time when women were not really
Speaker 2: I know that women worked a lot to support the
Speaker 2: war effort, but that seems like an unusual position for
Speaker 2: a woman at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you know, due to her hard work.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest things that happened though, in the
Speaker 3: OSS was that she met her future husband, Paul Child.
Speaker 3: He was an officer and I say that not you know,
Speaker 3: and like, oh, she met her husband there, so that's
Speaker 3: what matters. But she met her life partner and love
Speaker 3: of her life who helped nurture her career and serve
Speaker 3: her and they, by all accounts, they just seem like
Speaker 3: this really really wonderful couple, like the kind that you always,
Speaker 3: you know, want to be in yourself, that kind of relationship,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw from basically every source that talked about
Speaker 2: it that they were the envy of their friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they stayed together. They were married for almost
Speaker 2: fifty years, from nineteen forty six until Paul died in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: That's right. And the takeaway here is is they landed
Speaker 3: in France at one point in nineteen forty eight as
Speaker 3: part of his assignment in the USS. And when they
Speaker 3: were in France, they and you know, it's that sliding
Speaker 3: doors thing. Had they not gotten station in France, who
Speaker 3: knows if we ever would have gotten Julia Child. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because he was a foodie and she wasn't. And he said, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take you out to a real French
Speaker 3: meal and see what you think. So he took her
Speaker 3: to this very famous restaurant. How do you pronounce that, Josh,
Speaker 3: La Couron la Choron, which is the Crown. This is
Speaker 3: in the Normandy region along the river there in northern
Speaker 3: France and it has been a restaurant since the thirteen forties,
Speaker 3: so it is legit. Some people claim it's the oldest
Speaker 3: inn in all of France.
Speaker 2: That's pretty cool, so they know what they're doing with
Speaker 2: French cuisine, which, by the way, if you don't really
Speaker 2: understand French cuisine, and I don't really claim to, I
Speaker 2: appreciate it, but it's not like that's what you mean,
Speaker 2: and I are making on Tuesday night at Rome yet
Speaker 2: because I got her cookbook recently and I'm really about it.
Speaker 2: But just to kind of like a little back of
Speaker 2: the envelope sketch of it, French cuisine French cooking was
Speaker 2: the first cuisine in the world to be recognized as
Speaker 2: a World Heritage by UNESCO. That's how distinct and important
Speaker 2: French cuisine is, and this is the moment when Julia
Speaker 2: Child was introduced to it, this lunch at La Couron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as I understand it, French cuisine, I've watched
Speaker 3: a lot of Top Chef over the years, all of it.
Speaker 3: In fact, French cuisine is very humble, a very basic ingredients.
Speaker 3: It's not this fancy thing you think of, you know,
Speaker 3: French food if you don't know much about it, as
Speaker 3: being like super super fancy. But it's actually very humble,
Speaker 3: with very basic ingredients, but really quality ingredients, really perfect technique,
Speaker 3: real fats, real butters, real cream. That's French cuisine. Basically,
Speaker 3: it's like impeccable technique, you know, paired with very simple,
Speaker 3: humble but very well sourced ingredients. Well put, I hope.
Speaker 2: So made by frenchies. You forgot that part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, generally so.
Speaker 2: At this lunch in nineteen forty eight, her first French meal,
Speaker 2: she had oysters, all right, pule fume wine, which is
Speaker 2: the official savat okay, and soul Moniere Mounier means Miller's wife. So,
Speaker 2: like you were saying, humble, simple dishes, it's a soul
Speaker 2: fish that's floured and made with capers, lemon, butter, parsley,
Speaker 2: and not much more. And she said that that first
Speaker 2: true culinary experience. There's a few quotes I think we
Speaker 2: should trade off with. She said that it was an
Speaker 2: opening up of the soul and spirit for me that
Speaker 2: first meal. It changed her life quite literally.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She also said it was a kind of coming
Speaker 3: to Jesus and what else.
Speaker 2: She said, it was the most exciting meal of my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then that dish that dover soul that you
Speaker 3: know you it's fried fish, you flower some soul, fry
Speaker 3: it up in some butter, put some I think. I
Speaker 3: think the lemon and parsley and capers is part of
Speaker 3: any what is it the miniere, mouniere moniere, I think moniere.
Speaker 3: That's basically what it is. But a very simple dish,
Speaker 3: and that became one of her, you know, one of
Speaker 3: her big signature dishes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Put a little ketchup on there. You're in hog heaven.
Speaker 3: Oh man, you and my daughter.
Speaker 2: So because she was moved by she likes ketchup. Huh.
Speaker 3: Oh, God is so annoying.
Speaker 2: She's very cool, I know. But in common it gets.
Speaker 3: Her to eat some stuff she would normally eat.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: So that's good.
Speaker 2: I guess like broccoli.
Speaker 3: No, she didn't put it on brocle She don't like brocoli, but.
Speaker 2: She eats I don't like broccoli either. Does she hate peas.
Speaker 3: Too, No, she loves peas. She in fact, she eats
Speaker 3: frozen peas as a snack.
Speaker 2: Well they're really that's probably like that distinction erases all
Speaker 2: of the similarities because I hate peas so much. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I hate them so much, chuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she loves sushi now, which was a big surprise
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 3: She just kind of started eating it when I got it,
Speaker 3: and uh, because I think she likes stealing my food.
Speaker 3: M So it started as a joke and then now
Speaker 3: she's just eating it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what kind she eats? Is it like
Speaker 2: California hotels or gear Man?
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, Nacgeary and just any kind of crazy role
Speaker 3: I get, Julie.
Speaker 2: Man, that's awesome.
Speaker 3: That's great soy sauce.
Speaker 2: Though you're not supposed to eat much soy sauce if
Speaker 2: any with it.
Speaker 3: I don't care supposed to her not. I'm telling you
Speaker 3: what I like.
Speaker 2: Oh that's fine. I'm just saying like she's actually she
Speaker 2: could go to Japan, right, now and they wouldn't bat
Speaker 2: an eyelash at her for it.
Speaker 3: Hey, you think I don't remember our sushi episode. I
Speaker 3: didn't know.
Speaker 2: We did the black Hole episode twice.
Speaker 3: That's a good point, all right, So where are we?
Speaker 3: Julia Child has eaten this meal. It blew her mind
Speaker 3: because she was raised on American food, like you said,
Speaker 3: was not a foodie, and not only American food, but
Speaker 3: in recent years post war American food, which is when
Speaker 3: stuff started to get really sort of mass produced and
Speaker 3: not very good, like very processed, and this French food
Speaker 3: just blew her mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she wanted to understand how that could happen, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So she started taking cooking classes and again like she's
Speaker 2: a total novice here, and I think she's again in
Speaker 2: the late thirty So this is nineteen forty eight. She's
Speaker 2: about thirty six at this time, and her life has
Speaker 2: just changed, like she's just figured out what she wants
Speaker 2: to do in life. So she starts taking classes, ends
Speaker 2: up enrolled in the Cordon Bleue in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2: That same year, she founds her own cooking school that
Speaker 2: she runs out of her own kitchen with her who
Speaker 2: would become long longtime collaborators Simone Beck and Louise at Bertol,
Speaker 2: and they founded the school called Lecole de Toois Gormond,
Speaker 2: which means the School of the Three Gourmands.
Speaker 3: That's right. I didn't get this verified, but I did
Speaker 3: read somewhere that she was either the only woman in
Speaker 3: her class at La Cordon Blue or one of only two.
Speaker 3: Maybe m It just you know back then, and you know,
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of sexism in the in chef's
Speaker 3: kitchens and restaurants. It's come a long way, but for many,
Speaker 3: many years it was a profession of white men. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I feel like that's something we say a
Speaker 3: lot on the show, but that's the case. Within ten
Speaker 3: years of being at Locordon Blue, she had sold her
Speaker 3: best selling cookbook that you just bought. I guess, did
Speaker 3: you get the og?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's the name of.
Speaker 2: That, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Speaker 3: That's right, seven hundred plus pages. And then about fifty
Speaker 3: years after she enrolled at Licordon Blue, her actual kitchen
Speaker 3: that she cooked in would be in the Smithsonian Museum
Speaker 3: of American History as a permanent exhibit. Pretty neat, pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: I say, we take a break and we'll come back
Speaker 2: and we'll talk about that cookbook that I got, because
Speaker 2: it was groundbreaking, to say the least.
Speaker 1: All right, learn and Stuff with Joshua John stuff fishin up.
Speaker 2: So Chuck. You said, you mentioned the Mastering the Art
Speaker 2: of French Cooking, this cookbook that Julia Child maade with
Speaker 2: Simone Beck and Louisette Bertol, and it was designed specifically
Speaker 2: for America, for the United States, to introduce them to
Speaker 2: French cooking. And up to this point, cookbooks were basically like,
Speaker 2: take a little handful of flour and throw it at
Speaker 2: you know, the elf that's helping you, and put a
Speaker 2: little oil in there and fold it together and voila like.
Speaker 2: They were not very helpful, and they assumed that you
Speaker 2: already had some sort of training, maybe apprenticeship something like that.
Speaker 2: The Mastering the Art of French Cooking did the exact
Speaker 2: opposite because, having not that long ago in a total novice,
Speaker 2: Julia Child realized what people who are being exposed to
Speaker 2: this new way of cooking, new foods, new techniques, new ingredients,
Speaker 2: would need to know, and that was essentially everything. So
Speaker 2: they laid out everything that you would need to know
Speaker 2: to make these recipes in this cookbook training anyone who
Speaker 2: bought this cookbook on French cuisine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, you know, a recipe might have said, Julian
Speaker 3: these carrots and then put them in butter, and she
Speaker 3: would say, well, what if they don't know what that means,
Speaker 3: here's how you, Julianne, right, And not only that, but
Speaker 3: here's the kind of knife that's ideal for that kind
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 2: And butter too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the boy she talked a lot about butter. Yes,
Speaker 3: but like, here are the tools, here are the techniques,
Speaker 3: and here's how you do all of these for these
Speaker 3: five hundred and twenty four recipes. And it really just
Speaker 3: sort of it broke down a wall in that it demystified,
Speaker 3: you know, sort of high class cooking because she's like,
Speaker 3: this is something that you can do in your kitchen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, sheboygan exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh, sheboygan went nuts for this. Of course, all the
Speaker 2: men grew up pencil thin mustaches and war berets. The
Speaker 2: women all wore pencil pencil pants.
Speaker 3: Pencil pants, pencil skirts.
Speaker 2: Now what are the little short almost clam diggers, but
Speaker 2: they were much more salt. I thought they were pencils something.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. Maybe I know what you're talking
Speaker 3: about though.
Speaker 2: Culottes No, no, I don't think those are French. I
Speaker 2: think those those no country will claim those.
Speaker 3: Uh. The coach of the Falcons wearsos, which is probably
Speaker 3: why it sucks so bad.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: So on the book, you know, where she's demystifying the
Speaker 3: process and talking about quality ingredients and quality fresh herbs
Speaker 3: and high quality butters and good meats, you would think
Speaker 3: that'd be like a slam dunk because they would say,
Speaker 3: no one's ever done anything like this before. But it
Speaker 3: got rejected, you know, like most success stories in the
Speaker 3: book world, there's usually like, yeah, I got rejected by
Speaker 3: like eight publishers, and she got rejected quite a bit
Speaker 3: before she finally landed with an editor named jud The
Speaker 3: Jones at Alfred Knopp Publishing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Judith Jones was already a legend by this
Speaker 2: time because just a few years before she kind of
Speaker 2: discovered this obscure French book and recognized how important it
Speaker 2: was and had it translated into English and published it
Speaker 2: as the Diary of am Frank. So she was the
Speaker 2: editor who got the Diary of a Frank out to
Speaker 2: the English speaking world. So she already had a pretty
Speaker 2: great nose for this kind of thing, and she recognized
Speaker 2: that in mastering the Art of French cooking, not that
Speaker 2: it would be as important necessarily as the Diary of
Speaker 2: Am Frank, but not necessarily that it would be that
Speaker 2: far behind as far as changing the world goes, or
Speaker 2: at least the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, we should do a short stuff on Judith Jones. Okay,
Speaker 3: can you imagine, like walking into any publishing event, She's like,
Speaker 3: by the way, Diary Van Frank and the art what
Speaker 3: it meant the mastery of French cooking?
Speaker 2: What is it mastering the art of French cooking?
Speaker 3: You? Yeah? She would say it better than that, she'd
Speaker 3: say both those those are mine.
Speaker 2: Those We should also do an episode on Anne Frank sometime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm surprised we have it.
Speaker 2: Actually I am a little bit too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's let's do that.
Speaker 2: So one of the other things that made the cookbook
Speaker 2: finally successful when it did get published, and boy was
Speaker 2: it successful. I saw in one place that had spent
Speaker 2: five years on the bestseller list, but I couldn't find
Speaker 2: any other place to verify. It's still worth mentioning.
Speaker 3: But we were on there for two weeks.
Speaker 2: We sure were, Buddy, I think more than that, actually,
Speaker 2: I think it was due. Okay, let's say two and
Speaker 2: a half. We'll split the difference. But frenchiness was very
Speaker 2: chic at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a French chef in the White House kitchen.
Speaker 3: Of course, you had you mentioned Audrey Hepburn and wearing
Speaker 3: those French clothes. French designers Jackie Kennedy was as well.
Speaker 3: Pencil pants, pencil pants. That French wine was starting to
Speaker 3: be a thing at a time when you know, again,
Speaker 3: now wine is so popular, but it wasn't that hugely
Speaker 3: popular popular in the United States at the time. So
Speaker 3: French wine kind of became a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the first volume was so successful. A few
Speaker 2: years later, I think nine years later, in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: they released volume two to had another two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty seven recipes and apparently you can spend up to
Speaker 2: ten k Actually I saw more than that to buy
Speaker 2: assigned volumes one and two together.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, of the first edition, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they became bibles for cooks in America.
Speaker 2: And again, this it wasn't like people were already primed
Speaker 2: for this, This was what made people primed to consider
Speaker 2: cookbooks Bibles in their kitchen in the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know Judith Jones also the Bible, that's right,
Speaker 3: she helped write it. So everyone's probably saying like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this book's great, But what about television, because that's where
Speaker 3: I remember her from my childhood. Here's where we get
Speaker 3: to TV because she moved around Europe during the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties with her husband Paul, came back to the States
Speaker 3: in the sixties. I believe they had come back before
Speaker 3: on some if you want to say, visits, maybe some
Speaker 3: forced visits. When her husband Paul was called for the
Speaker 3: blacklisting blacklisted McCarthy hearings, so that was a thing. I
Speaker 3: don't think he got in trouble though, right.
Speaker 2: No, they were friends with a woman who was a
Speaker 2: suspected communist in the government and they wanted to know
Speaker 2: about her.
Speaker 3: Right, so they brought him in. But they ultimately landed
Speaker 3: for good in Cambridge, mass And when she was, you know,
Speaker 3: promoting her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I
Speaker 3: finally got it. She went on PBS at WGBH there
Speaker 3: in Boston for a book review show called I've been
Speaker 3: reading ellipses and she was just doing a little demonstration
Speaker 3: on how to make an omelet. She brought everything with her,
Speaker 3: you know, her a little hot plate and saw tape
Speaker 3: in her tools and her eggs, and everyone loved it.
Speaker 3: Everyone was like writing into the station saying, like, this
Speaker 3: woman that you had on cooking that omelet was funny
Speaker 3: and gregarious and we just loved her and we also
Speaker 3: learned something. And so they said, hey, we should give
Speaker 3: you your own TV show.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Within a year, the French Chef, her first cooking show,
Speaker 2: was on the air on WGBH. And this was at
Speaker 2: a time where cooking shows were not a thing. A
Speaker 2: lot of people say, the fact that cooking shows are
Speaker 2: so widespread today you can essentially thank Julia Child for
Speaker 2: that too, and thank the French Chef. It had a
Speaker 2: ten year run, and because it was a PBS joint,
Speaker 2: other PBS stations around the United States picked it up.
Speaker 2: It made its way to Europe and the UK via
Speaker 2: the BBC. It became a really big show very quickly,
Speaker 2: and Julia Child became the most widely recognized chef in
Speaker 2: the entire world, at the very least in the United States.
Speaker 2: During this period, the early sixties to the early seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had a TV show for a year.
Speaker 2: We did. We became the most widely known koochs in
Speaker 2: the world, if not at least the United States.
Speaker 3: One thing I'm learning is it to compare our career
Speaker 3: to Julia Child's humbling experience.
Speaker 2: You were a spy for that little while, or you
Speaker 2: pretended that you were at parties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. She won an Emmy and a Peabody
Speaker 3: Award for that show, and this is just a little
Speaker 3: feather in her cap. I think it was the first
Speaker 3: TV show in the United States to feature closed captioning
Speaker 3: for the death and heart appearing community.
Speaker 2: Yeah, open captioning. I saw where it was for everybody.
Speaker 2: Everyone read it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, oh is that what close captioning means?
Speaker 2: Yeah, where you have to select it to sw Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that either, so I guess it was
Speaker 2: open captioning. But yes, that didn't exist on TV until then.
Speaker 3: I'm just learning so much because of you, my friend.
Speaker 2: Hey, right back at you, buddy.
Speaker 3: So you know, the TV show was a big hit.
Speaker 3: She because she was just so lovable and she wasn't patronizing,
Speaker 3: and she you know, had her closing phrase, bon appetite,
Speaker 3: and she would just she would get in there and
Speaker 3: get dirty and make mistakes, and like she would want
Speaker 3: people to leave the you know, the editors, to leave
Speaker 3: the mistakes in therese She's like, that's part of cooking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big deal because it also not only
Speaker 2: made her approachable, it made the people watching who were
Speaker 2: trying these recipes too, realized that she wasn't infallible and
Speaker 2: therefore they didn't need to worry about not being infallible too, Like,
Speaker 2: mistakes are part of it. You just learned from them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but like that was she made it way more approachable
Speaker 2: to people by doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I also read that this is from I believe
Speaker 3: the women who made the documentary about her, Julia, which
Speaker 3: is really really good. Okay, that another reason that she
Speaker 3: left the mistakes in was especially for women, because she
Speaker 3: felt like women felt like they needed to always feel
Speaker 3: bad when they messed something up in life, period, but
Speaker 3: especially in the kitchen. And she was like, no, it's
Speaker 3: okay to mess up and and while you're in that kitchen,
Speaker 3: like you know, it was kind of an opposition in
Speaker 3: a way to like the feminist movement at the time,
Speaker 3: which is like get out of the kitchen, Juli. Your
Speaker 3: child was saying like, no, like, get in that kitchen
Speaker 3: and own it and cook for you and learn to
Speaker 3: make stuff that you want to make and not just
Speaker 3: like maybe what your husband and kids are yelling at
Speaker 3: you to make, like like take over the kitchen as
Speaker 3: something that you love doing and that's for yourself.
Speaker 2: Right. I saw a Bustle magazine describer as a vamp,
Speaker 2: which I'm not familiar with, but they based on context,
Speaker 2: it seemed like it was a good thing.
Speaker 3: What does that stand for? All right? Well, Josh just
Speaker 3: told me if air what it stood for, and I agree.
Speaker 2: My joke. So you mentioned mistakes. There's actually some famous
Speaker 2: mistakes that she made. One was she was pulling a
Speaker 2: cake from the oven and apparently it fell flat on camera.
Speaker 2: She said something like, well, that didn't work out. Can
Speaker 2: you say it?
Speaker 3: Well, that didn't work out?
Speaker 2: Very nice? And then everybody knows that she once dropped
Speaker 2: an entire raw turkey on the floor on camera. Let
Speaker 2: this in. Pick the turkey up off the floor, kind
Speaker 2: of brushed it off and put it in the oven
Speaker 2: and baked it like nothing ever happened.
Speaker 3: Apparently I would do that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we did a whole episode on the five
Speaker 2: second rule.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean for a raw thing like that.
Speaker 3: I know it sounds gross, but you can wash that
Speaker 3: thing off and bake it and it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yes, that you don't have a cooking show.
Speaker 3: No, exactly.
Speaker 2: So yes, the fact that she did this, well, I
Speaker 2: should say not the fact, because that's actually an urban legend,
Speaker 2: a rumor. It's something did happen, but it morphed into
Speaker 2: like the most spectacular version of itself. No, it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Snope stated it back to at least nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: but she wants. The closest they could find was that
Speaker 2: she was flipping a potato pancake and flipped it out
Speaker 2: of the pan onto the countertop and it crumbled. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and she said, like I think, she said, when you're
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, nobody can see you. And she pushed
Speaker 2: it back together and put it back in the pan
Speaker 2: and cooked it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that because that's how it goes when you're
Speaker 3: cooking in your house. You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never not flipped a potato pancake onto the countertop.
Speaker 3: She had, you know, a string of successful cooking shows
Speaker 3: after that first one, all the way from the seventies
Speaker 3: through the eighties into the nineties. I believe she had
Speaker 3: twelve Emmy nominations total and seven wins. And by the
Speaker 3: time she got into the nineteen nineties, they were shooting
Speaker 3: that show in her home kitchen in Cambridge. Her husband
Speaker 3: Paul designed this kitchen that was like part kitchen, part
Speaker 3: TV studio, and you know, just so they could in
Speaker 3: time at home, and he was heavily involved. Apparently at
Speaker 3: times he was on the floor with Q cards and
Speaker 3: he helped design the original patch for the three Gormands
Speaker 3: that when she worked with the other two chefs, and
Speaker 3: so they were really a sort of a power couple
Speaker 3: working together to enrich her career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, chuck us say we take our second break and
Speaker 2: come back and talk about why Julia Child is so beloved?
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back, learn and stuff with
Speaker 1: Joshua John stuff.
Speaker 4: You shine up, all right?
Speaker 3: Why was Julia Child so beloved? I feel like we've
Speaker 3: already made a case, but let's talk about it some more,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 2: I Mean we've covered some of it, but not at all.
Speaker 2: A big one is that she introduced fresh ingredients to America.
Speaker 2: This is really kind of we hit on this, but
Speaker 2: it's worth saying. This is a time when people were
Speaker 2: using canned soup as an ingredient, not just the can soup, right,
Speaker 2: So everything was very processed, and she insisted on fresh ingredients,
Speaker 2: like there was no way around it. You had to
Speaker 2: use these or else these things were going to turn
Speaker 2: out very well. But at the same time, she also said, like,
Speaker 2: you need to let the food stand on its own, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: you want herbs, but you want the herbs to compliment it.
Speaker 2: You don't want the ribs to cover up. You don't
Speaker 2: want to use a bunch of a one on your
Speaker 2: soul muniere. Like you let the thing stand on its own.
Speaker 2: You let the fish taste like fish. Like that was
Speaker 2: kind of like a like a sub I guess of
Speaker 2: introducing fresh ingredients, teaching people to enjoy the thing that
Speaker 2: they were cooking rather than the thing that they were cooking.
Speaker 2: Plus again a one.
Speaker 3: Sauce, Yeah, exactly, and that technique. You know, if you
Speaker 3: cook a piece of fish perfectly, you don't need anything
Speaker 3: more than a little salt and pepper and butter and
Speaker 3: maybe a squirt of lemon. Even telapia yeah. But despite
Speaker 3: all this, she was not a food snob. She was
Speaker 3: very approachable. She loved in and out Burger. She used
Speaker 3: Helman's mayo and her tuna salad. Apparently she like Costco
Speaker 3: hot dogs even.
Speaker 2: I don't blame her.
Speaker 3: I never had one.
Speaker 2: What's Oh, they're great. They're like a.
Speaker 3: What's different though, isn't it just a hot dog?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's just a hot dog. But do you know
Speaker 2: how every once in a while, your school lunch would
Speaker 2: give you something that you're like, this is amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's like, they're hot dogs. They have their own taste,
Speaker 2: and it's an amazing taste. But they are on par
Speaker 2: with like a school lunch type hot dog.
Speaker 3: In the best way I got you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people go to Costco just to eat the hot dogs.
Speaker 2: And the pizza's not bad too, but it's worth going
Speaker 2: to just for the hot dogs, which technically, in a
Speaker 2: weird way, gives it one Michelin star.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, buddy, our friend Joe Garden, a friend
Speaker 3: of the show, a former writer of The Onion. Joe
Speaker 3: lives there in Woodstock and he posts pictures on his
Speaker 3: Instagram eating those Costco hot dogs.
Speaker 2: See, he knows what's going on.
Speaker 3: Joe always knows what's up.
Speaker 2: He's got his finger on the pulse of Julia Child.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So she also reintroduced America to wine. At the time America,
Speaker 2: Americans were drinking the stuff that's now on the bottom
Speaker 2: shelf of grocery stores.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the jug wine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So not only did she reintroduce America to wine,
Speaker 2: she normalized She normalized it by doing the same thing
Speaker 2: she did with mistakes. She drank wine on camera as
Speaker 2: part of her show on some episodes. Apparently she was
Speaker 2: started to get a little tipsy. She never got drunk
Speaker 2: or sloppy or anything like that. But the fact that
Speaker 2: she was drinking this wine, and by the way, pretty
Speaker 2: good wine, made Americans realize what they were drinking was
Speaker 2: just bottom of the barrel stuff and let's see what
Speaker 2: else we've got. And as a result, California wine became
Speaker 2: super dominant, essentially in part from her normalizing it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that happened in the seventies when California started
Speaker 3: making good wine on par with the French according to
Speaker 3: everyone but the French. She also liked beer, and this
Speaker 3: sounds very gross to me, but she enjoyed something called
Speaker 3: an upside down Martini, which is you swap themouth parts
Speaker 3: in the gin, so it's much more of amooth than gin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's also lower ABV, so you don't kick yuh're
Speaker 2: trashed as quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but man, that's kind of one of the good
Speaker 3: parts about a Martini.
Speaker 2: Right for sure. She also had a really great sense
Speaker 2: of humor, apparently, another long standing rumor that sometimes fans
Speaker 2: would confront with. They were like, I remember that time
Speaker 2: you drank some wine directly out of the bottle on
Speaker 2: one of your episodes, and that apparently never happened either. Again,
Speaker 2: it was just the extreme version of what she was
Speaker 2: actually doing, which is kicking wine out of her glass.
Speaker 2: But she said I would never do that on television.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. And you know I opened with the dan
Speaker 3: Ackroid bit if you didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: It was a very famous SNL skitch from back in
Speaker 3: the day in seventy eight where dan Akroid portrayed Julia
Speaker 3: Child where he cut the dickens on up his finger
Speaker 3: and you know, blood's just going everywhere. Of course, they
Speaker 3: have the blood pack just squirting blood all over everything.
Speaker 3: And he was a big fan apparently, and that was
Speaker 3: a real incident. I think about a month before that
Speaker 3: sketch where she was working with Jacques Papin on Tom
Speaker 3: Snyder's Tomorrow Show, where she had cut herself pretty bad,
Speaker 3: and I guess that was the inspiration for that.
Speaker 2: She also apparently was very proud of that sketch and
Speaker 2: thought it was hilarious. So the videotape of and would
Speaker 2: show people sometimes and then at a really particularly fun
Speaker 2: enthusiastic dinner party, she might act it out like words
Speaker 2: for her by heart.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine?
Speaker 2: Oh, I would have loved to have seen that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 2: She was also super charming and funny on TV appearances,
Speaker 2: but particularly Letterman. You can watch compilations of her on Letterman.
Speaker 2: She could hold her own against Letterman, no problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah you sent me that one clip. I actually think
Speaker 3: I remember seeing that in high school. But Letterman was,
Speaker 3: you know, I love Letterman, he was. I felt like
Speaker 3: he was not being too kind about the food.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he's cranky.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I felt a little bad for her and
Speaker 3: that she was serving him. Kind of a version in
Speaker 3: this one of a tartar what do you called, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a of a steak tartar. But it was with ground
Speaker 3: beef and melted cheese, and he just sort of kept
Speaker 3: making fun of it and then he spit it out.
Speaker 3: And at the end I think she said something that
Speaker 3: kind of made me feel bad. She was like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe next time I can serve something you like or
Speaker 3: something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, she used in a seedling tour to melt the cheese,
Speaker 2: which is pretty hilarious. I had the impression that they
Speaker 2: didn't have the equipment she needed to make a burger,
Speaker 2: so she made the most out of it.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, Well, using a torch is very commonplace in
Speaker 3: kitchens now, but Dave made it. I guess back then
Speaker 3: it was unusual because Dave was like, thought it was
Speaker 3: the weirdest thing you'd ever seen.
Speaker 2: Sure. One other thing we mentioned too that we have
Speaker 2: to touch on is she was known for her love
Speaker 2: of butter. She taught America to cook all through the
Speaker 2: decades where America started to become health conscious and fat
Speaker 2: free and all that stuff, and so she would become
Speaker 2: criticized for pushing things like real butter on people, and
Speaker 2: she would say things like, well, if you're afraid of butter,
Speaker 2: use cream instead, which is at least as butter. And
Speaker 2: her whole thing was like, yes, she shouldn't just be
Speaker 2: gorging yourself on butter all the time. But if you're
Speaker 2: going to make a meal, use the real butter and
Speaker 2: enjoy every bite of it. Like, that's the point is
Speaker 2: enjoying every single bite of this stuff, not enjoying every
Speaker 2: single bite until you start eating mindlessly because you eat
Speaker 2: this ten times a day. Right, Yeah, And she had
Speaker 2: she quote she quoted Oscar Wilde, which I thought was great,
Speaker 2: but she said everything in moderation, including moderation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great quote. I got a little kitchen
Speaker 3: tip if you're health conscious and you're thinking, like I
Speaker 3: don't want to use a lot of butter, I use
Speaker 3: olive oil or whatever.
Speaker 4: Use that olive oil.
Speaker 3: But you can also throw in like one pad of
Speaker 3: butter in with that olive oil. You can mix those
Speaker 3: two things and it's great. Sure, and it adds just
Speaker 3: a little unctuousness that olive oil won't give you.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, and don't forget the A one.
Speaker 3: My friend Clay still loves that stuff so well.
Speaker 2: It's it's classy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a very specific taste. I love
Speaker 3: that tart, tangy A one. I just don't use it, so.
Speaker 2: Chuck, we talked about volumes one and two of Mastering
Speaker 2: the Art of French Cooking. We should say, in addition
Speaker 2: to the string of successful TV shows, she had a
Speaker 2: bunch of cook but bo but these were her two classics,
Speaker 2: and put together is seven hundred and eighty one recipes
Speaker 2: between the two of them. But if you go on
Speaker 2: to food sites and you look up something like Julia
Speaker 2: Child's best recipes, some of them kind of percolate to
Speaker 2: the top where you're like, you see them on just
Speaker 2: about every list, And I think that we should go
Speaker 2: over a few of those starting now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. If you've ever seen the movie Julia
Speaker 3: and Julia, did you see that?
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 3: I heard it was great. It's really good. That is
Speaker 3: the story of a woman named Julie Powell who I
Speaker 3: think was sort of felt lost in life and wanted
Speaker 3: to dive into this project of cooking every recipe. I
Speaker 3: think she had a blog or something. Maybe. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was a really good movie though. Amy Adams played Julie Powell,
Speaker 3: who very sadly passed away a few years ago at
Speaker 3: the young age of forty nine, and Meryl Streep, I
Speaker 3: don't know if she won the Academy Award. I know
Speaker 3: she was nominated for playing Julia Child. So it sort
Speaker 3: of tells those two stories together. And it's a wonderful
Speaker 3: movie from Nora Ephron. But in that movie, she's cooking
Speaker 3: all the recipes. And one, the big, big one from
Speaker 3: the book that she was most well known for that
Speaker 3: she really wanted to master out of the gate was.
Speaker 2: The buff Bogagnon, which is essentially a beef stew with
Speaker 2: red wine. But again, take some deceptively simple ingredients and
Speaker 2: put them together in the right way, it's going to
Speaker 2: produce a smash hit dish. And that's what Beeborgangnon is.
Speaker 2: What else keish lorraine, which everybody knows you can get
Speaker 2: keish lorraine at the grocery store by the slice. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because Julia Child introduced it to the United States with
Speaker 2: her cookbook.
Speaker 3: That's right, very again, very simple clean recipe. Bacon, onions,
Speaker 3: egg cream, a few cheeses, some spices of course, eggs.
Speaker 2: Well, I just real quick about bacon. Remember I said
Speaker 2: that she didn't want to cover up the taste. She
Speaker 2: wanted to let things to stand on their own.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things she talks about mastering the art
Speaker 2: of French cooking was that with American bacon, you have
Speaker 2: to blanchet first to remove the smoky flavor. So you
Speaker 2: actually lightly boil it for a little bit until you
Speaker 2: get the smoky flavor off, and then you start to
Speaker 2: use bacon, which I think is actually a huge tip
Speaker 2: for a lot of people out there.
Speaker 3: Believe me, if they don't like smoky flavors, I guess.
Speaker 2: Or But the problem is is the bacon smoke smokin
Speaker 2: This is going to take over like that's all you're
Speaker 2: gonna taste, whereas you're not. If you can get rid
Speaker 2: of that smoky flavor, then you're you're in hog heaven.
Speaker 2: As she always said.
Speaker 3: I don't mind. I like that apple with and I
Speaker 3: also cook it in the oven. I think that is
Speaker 3: the best way to cook bacon, agreed. And they on
Speaker 3: a baking feet.
Speaker 2: With the little elf laying on it to keep it flat.
Speaker 3: Uh what about a cassoulet. That's a very classic French dish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pork and beans, poultry sausage. There's a dark
Speaker 2: brown crust on the top of the whole thing. She
Speaker 2: had a great quote about that.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, cassoulet that best of bean feast is everyday
Speaker 3: fair for a peasant, but ambrosia for a gastronome. Though
Speaker 3: it's ideal consumer is at three hundred pound blocking back,
Speaker 3: who's been splitting firewood NonStop for the last twelve hours
Speaker 3: on a sub zero day in Manitoba.
Speaker 2: And like, if you look at pictures of the caselet,
Speaker 2: it's like, I want one so bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks really good.
Speaker 2: And what about chocolate Moose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another one that apparently she made a mistake
Speaker 3: on air. It didn't set correctly, and you know that
Speaker 3: moose has to set. But good chocolate moose is out
Speaker 3: of this world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I couldn't find the episode, but apparently a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two WAPO article mentioned it. But supposedly it is
Speaker 2: surprisingly easy to make and the outcome is just amazing.
Speaker 2: I saw light airy, silky smooth. It says, the endless meal,
Speaker 2: and it's just a few ingredients including rum, chocolate coffee.
Speaker 2: And she teaches you these techniques of how to make,
Speaker 2: how to fold it, how to win the egg whites,
Speaker 2: and just get it just right. And yeah, yeah, every
Speaker 2: time I hear chocolate moose, I think of chocolate moose
Speaker 2: from top secret.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he's great. This is good movie. Rip Val Kilmer.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: And then, of course French onion soup. I know that
Speaker 3: you and I both talked on the air about our
Speaker 3: love for French onion soup. If it's on a menu.
Speaker 3: There's two things in my life. If it's on a menu,
Speaker 3: I will get it. One is French onion soup and
Speaker 3: the other is a French dip sandwich.
Speaker 2: You love the French, two of.
Speaker 3: My favorite things, and it's not on you know, the
Speaker 3: most menu. So when I see it, I order it.
Speaker 3: And that French onion soup a crusty on top and
Speaker 3: that delicious oniony broth in the bread. It's just one
Speaker 3: of life's treats.
Speaker 2: Have you ever made it?
Speaker 3: I've never made it myself. I should try that.
Speaker 2: It's really good. All it takes is patience. It's not hard,
Speaker 2: but it takes a while for everything to come together.
Speaker 2: It takes a while to like genuinely caramelize the onions.
Speaker 2: But man, it is so it's really good.
Speaker 3: Don't you just get one of those Lipton packets?
Speaker 2: Yeah, out of the cayn that's how I do it.
Speaker 3: Well, you take one those Lipton packets and you put
Speaker 3: it in a turkey burger. That's what you do.
Speaker 2: Uh. Yeah, that's supposed to be pretty good. I've not
Speaker 2: had that. I found a recipe for a roast that
Speaker 2: has a packet of ojou, you know, the dry oju packet,
Speaker 2: a packet of ranch dry ranch mix, pepperccini, and like
Speaker 2: maybe one other thing and a roast and you put
Speaker 2: in a slow cooker and it's supposed to be a
Speaker 2: knockout dish. And I can't wait to try it.
Speaker 3: Man, we got you got to watch Julia and Julie
Speaker 3: and Julia and then start cooking that stuff and let
Speaker 3: me know how it goes.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I definitely plan to make some stuff, so
Speaker 2: I'll let you know for sure, all right.
Speaker 3: Uh. Sadly we're at the end of this episode.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And Julia Child met the end of her life at
Speaker 3: the almost age of ninety two. I think she was
Speaker 3: just a couple of days short of her ninety second
Speaker 3: birthday when she passed away at her home at the
Speaker 3: time in Monticito, California, in August two thousand and four
Speaker 3: of liver failure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, l Ain Ducasso, I think is the only three
Speaker 2: star Michelin, Chef in the World, said today the entire
Speaker 2: community of cooks is sad and feels like orphans.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I know.
Speaker 2: And that's sad, that's brutal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So she's actually buried in one of the more interesting
Speaker 2: places I've ever heard of. Had you heard of the
Speaker 2: Neptune Memorial Reef before?
Speaker 3: No? That sounds kind of cool though.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they took her cremated remains mixed together with
Speaker 2: some concrete and formed a headstone out of it, put
Speaker 2: it underwater. I can't remember how deep it is, but
Speaker 2: this is an acre long underwater cemetery off a Key
Speaker 2: Key Biscayne in Florida. And on the headstone, again made
Speaker 2: from her cremated remains, there's a plaque with a knife
Speaker 2: and a fork inscribed on it and a quote from
Speaker 2: her fat gives things flavor.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: That's pretty fun for a scuba diver to see, I
Speaker 3: bet for sure.
Speaker 2: So rip Julia Child, and thanks for everything.
Speaker 3: That's right. Our berets are off to you.
Speaker 2: Let's see, we talked about Julia Child. You took off
Speaker 2: your brain. Yeah, that means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: All right. So this is from Nathan Weinger and Carmel Indiana,
Speaker 3: and Nathan went through the trouble of calculating how many
Speaker 3: Olympic pools deep and how many big macs we are
Speaker 3: Okay as a show, he loves it. He says, I
Speaker 3: love nerd math. So I did some calculations using my
Speaker 3: trustee search engine. I found out there are over twenty
Speaker 3: six hundred episodes of stuff you should know. We're just
Speaker 3: going to use twenty six hundred to make it simply.
Speaker 3: So okay, all told, the average length is forty five minutes,
Speaker 3: which that makes me feel good because that's what we'rehooting for. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he said, I'm going to He said that seems low though,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to adjust it up to fifty five.
Speaker 3: I think these days is forty five. They used to
Speaker 3: be longer, so that's probably what he's witnessing. At average
Speaker 3: conversational speed, humans speak about one hundred and thirty words
Speaker 3: a minute. So you guys do a great podcast, and
Speaker 3: as pros, have honed your conversational skills to not be
Speaker 3: fast nor slow. So I'm going to stick with that
Speaker 3: median figure.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 3: The average number of letters per English word is five,
Speaker 3: but since you often talk about subjects that require words
Speaker 3: like spectacular and hint or kaifex. I'm going to up
Speaker 3: your average to six. And finally, we're going to convert
Speaker 3: your speech into inches based on the size of a
Speaker 3: standard size twelve font, which is point one sixty seven inches.
Speaker 3: I'd love this stuff. So based on all that, we
Speaker 3: can get inches per word, one inches per minute a speech,
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty inches per episode, seventy one to
Speaker 3: fifty total episode inches, eighteen million, five hundred ninety thousand
Speaker 3: in total episode feet, which is one point five four
Speaker 3: nine one sixty seven feet. That equates so one episode
Speaker 3: of stuff you should know equates to the depth of
Speaker 3: two hundred and thirty eight thousand, three hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: three Olympic swimming pools, a bit short of Josh's estimate
Speaker 3: of ten to fifteen million, and for the sake of
Speaker 3: transparency and Chuck's liking, that is seven point seven four
Speaker 3: five and change million, big max at an average of
Speaker 3: two point five interest per Burger.
Speaker 2: Wo Man, who is this?
Speaker 3: This is Nathan Wenger or Winger? Okay, I'd say Winger.
Speaker 2: I think it's Winger in the tradition of Kip Winger.
Speaker 3: Well, it's w E though, so that's Nathan. He's in Carmel, Indiana.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of work to go through names.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nathan, I could tell you're a true fan with
Speaker 2: that little trusty search engine aside, I caught that.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing that. I always wanted to know
Speaker 2: how many big Max we are and Olympic pools. So
Speaker 2: thanks a lot, Nathan, and happy Thanksgiving to you, and
Speaker 2: happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there, including our
Speaker 2: Canada friends. And if you want to send us an
Speaker 2: email like Nathan did, send it off to Stuff Podcasts
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.