Speaker 1: I guess what, mengo, what's that? Well? All right, so
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard this thing the El Paso Zoo
Speaker 1: is doing where you can actually pay to have a
Speaker 1: cockroach named for your ex, and then they take the
Speaker 1: cockroach and they feed it to a mere cat. Have
Speaker 1: you heard about this? I have. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: all over the net this week. And it's not just them.
Speaker 1: I mean I read about these zoos that are taking
Speaker 1: off salmon. You can name the salmon after your ex,
Speaker 1: and then they feed it to bears and somebody. That
Speaker 1: feels so much crueler. Yeah, I think that's just different.
Speaker 1: That's just not right. You know. The cockroach thing is
Speaker 1: one thing, but away the El Paso Zoo was the
Speaker 1: first one I read about, and apparently the response has
Speaker 1: been incredible. In fact, because the number of names the
Speaker 1: zoo has received far out numbers the number of cockroaches
Speaker 1: that their mere cats can actually eat in a day,
Speaker 1: they've had to come up with these, you know, different solutions.
Speaker 1: So just to keep the pace and to make sure
Speaker 1: that every roach gets sacrificed. This week, the zoo has
Speaker 1: recruited these cotton top tamarins, some golden tamarins and some
Speaker 1: white headed marm SE's just to join in all this
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day fund So you know, whether you're a jilted
Speaker 1: lover looking for ideas or happily coupled up and just
Speaker 1: looking for some entertaining facts on Valentine's Day, We've got
Speaker 1: you covered on nine things. So let's dive in. Either
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, welcome the part time genius. I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend Man
Speaker 1: Guesh hot Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass in
Speaker 1: a room full of candles and just blasting Verry wide
Speaker 1: on the speakers. Actually I can hear it through what
Speaker 1: we say is the soundproof glass, but it is so loud,
Speaker 1: just kind of setting the mood for today's show. I
Speaker 1: guess that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of this back age we used to
Speaker 1: do in mental last where we used to test slogans
Speaker 1: and phrases and we'd asked things like why can't you
Speaker 1: compare apples and oranges or whatever and use signs to
Speaker 1: back it up, And we tested that classic at slogan
Speaker 1: is Virginia really for lovers. I'm sure you remember this,
Speaker 1: but we look at the flowers sent for capita, the
Speaker 1: amount of Marvin Gay on radio stations, wine consumption, and
Speaker 1: all these other romantic indicators that we came up with,
Speaker 1: and we realized that actually, Virginia isn't for lovers, it's
Speaker 1: eleventh best for lovers or something like yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: if I for sorry for all of our Ohio listeners
Speaker 1: out there, I think they may have come in dead last.
Speaker 1: And that's the topping the list which which may have
Speaker 1: shown this might have been slightly flawed was Alaska, I
Speaker 1: think because of all the bed and breakfast and the
Speaker 1: wine consumption per capital. But it was a fun study
Speaker 1: to look at. But anyway, speaking of love, what what
Speaker 1: the fact do you think you should start with for
Speaker 1: today's Valentine's Day special? So I kind of like your
Speaker 1: trend of starting with anti Valentine's Day traditions like naming
Speaker 1: that cockroach for your X or whatever. Well, actually I
Speaker 1: also saw that this guy in Shanghai bought every other
Speaker 1: movie seat at a movie theater on Valentine's Day just
Speaker 1: so that couples would show up and not be able
Speaker 1: to sit together, which feels like a ridiculous prank and
Speaker 1: almost like an evil genius thing to do. But you know,
Speaker 1: in that vein, I'm going to talk about vinegar Valentine's.
Speaker 1: So by the mid eight hundreds, Americans and the Brits
Speaker 1: had sort of fallen in love with this idea of
Speaker 1: sending Valentine's and they often made them by hand with lace,
Speaker 1: and then printers got into the act and started mass
Speaker 1: producing cards for the holidays. But if you weren't into
Speaker 1: the holiday, or you wanted to show that special someone
Speaker 1: that you really don't care, you could send out a
Speaker 1: vinegar Valentine. And sometimes you'd see these referred to as
Speaker 1: penny dreadfuls or sometimes comic Valentine's. So what was inside
Speaker 1: of vinegar Valentine? Basically it was just like a card
Speaker 1: full of horrible right, it would be crass illustrations, these
Speaker 1: short insulting poems. They're almost like an early form of
Speaker 1: trolling because you'd send them anonymously. But here's what researcher
Speaker 1: Gabe pulled from eighteen seventy five for us. It has
Speaker 1: a picture of a young woman throwing a bucket of
Speaker 1: water in a man's face, and it reads quote, here's
Speaker 1: a pretty cool reception. At least you'll say, there's no deception.
Speaker 1: It says as plain as it can say, old fellow,
Speaker 1: you'd best stop away. What weird? Anti Valentine's These cards
Speaker 1: were actually doubly insulting, because not only did the person
Speaker 1: you were sending them to have to guess who hated
Speaker 1: you enough to send you one, but they also had
Speaker 1: to pay for the postage on delivery. But the concept
Speaker 1: was such a hit that by the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: fountain sales were actually equally split between the loving kind
Speaker 1: and the vinegar kind. And and does the Smithsonian like
Speaker 1: have a bunch of these cards preserved? You know, I've
Speaker 1: actually had the same question, Like I was wondering, where
Speaker 1: can I see this gallery of these? But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the cards were super popular, but for obvious reasons, people
Speaker 1: didn't keep them around. You know, you don't want your
Speaker 1: grandson like finding a card that says everyone thinks you're
Speaker 1: an ignorant, loud or whatever. Alright, Well, in a very
Speaker 1: different direction, we all know that candy sales spike on
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day, that's no surprise, but the amount of money
Speaker 1: spent is pretty staggering. So Americans spend over one point
Speaker 1: eight billion dollars on Valentine's candy alone. What's also fun
Speaker 1: to look at is what candies vary, you know, from
Speaker 1: state to state. So I just imagine, like, isn't it
Speaker 1: just the heart shaped boxes that dominate? Like you know,
Speaker 1: I just imagined, like the traditional chocolate is really what
Speaker 1: sells well. They're actually the second most sold candies and
Speaker 1: this comes from a list that candy store dot com
Speaker 1: puts together. But conversation hearts take the top spot in
Speaker 1: twenty three states, and heart shaped boxes do particularly well
Speaker 1: in New York, Texas, Ohio, and Alaska. So I know
Speaker 1: we said they were last in love, but they know
Speaker 1: how to find those heart shaped boxes. They actually top
Speaker 1: the list in I think it's fourteen states, but you
Speaker 1: know there are some other out liars, So thirteen states
Speaker 1: either chose chocolate roses chocolate shaped like hearts, so not
Speaker 1: not the boxes, but the actual chocolate itself, and of
Speaker 1: course Eminem's. And because I feel like we should mention
Speaker 1: Delaware for your sake, Delaware's top candy choice for Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day is Hershey Kisses, which I'd never heard before, but
Speaker 1: that sounds unpretentious and sweet, just like Delaware, so that
Speaker 1: that makes sense to me. They actually share that honor
Speaker 1: with Utah, South Dakota, and Arkansas. So what about your homestate?
Speaker 1: What about Alabama? Yeah, Alabama is also an outlier. So
Speaker 1: our number one Valentine's Day treat is candy necklaces, which
Speaker 1: I know that I have ever purchased a candy necklace.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know what's wrong with me. But anyway,
Speaker 1: where do you want to go next? Well, how about
Speaker 1: the other big seller for the holiday, which is flowers
Speaker 1: and specifically roses. So, like candy, there's a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of money spent on roses. Two d fifty million roses
Speaker 1: are grown specifically for Valentine's Day every single year. But
Speaker 1: if you've ever done any sort of like last minute
Speaker 1: shopping for the whole days, you'll notice the prices actually spike.
Speaker 1: And the thing we learned this week is that it
Speaker 1: isn't just traditional price gouging, but it's more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: So to meet that sort of demand, growers need about
Speaker 1: fifty to seventy days to get the roses ready. They
Speaker 1: also have to dispatch extra trucks airplanes, to ship all
Speaker 1: these roses in in time. Plus it's a terrible time
Speaker 1: for weather, so you've got to account for like hail
Speaker 1: storms and droughts, which also sort of play with the
Speaker 1: amount you have in terms of like the supply. All
Speaker 1: of that means we're getting more roses from Latin America
Speaker 1: or even NYA to fix those weather concerns. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: trick to not getting price couch, which I learned this week,
Speaker 1: is basically to plan ahead. Someone did a study this
Speaker 1: and because most online flower shops allow you to order
Speaker 1: roses thirty days in advance, if you order no later
Speaker 1: than January, you'll actually get the best deal on them.
Speaker 1: M I'm guessing most people do not get their orders
Speaker 1: in by that. But alright, well, this may seem like
Speaker 1: a weird connection, but I want to share a fact
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting about Leap Day, which is
Speaker 1: obviously the one extra day every four years falls at
Speaker 1: the very end of February, But for years and years,
Speaker 1: leap Day was long considered the one acceptable time when
Speaker 1: a woman could actually propose to a man instead of
Speaker 1: the other way around, and according to Gabe, the tradition
Speaker 1: likely started in Ireland and England back in the I
Speaker 1: think the late seventeen hundreds, and so by the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century is Valentine's Day cards became more popular. If a
Speaker 1: woman sent a Valentine during a leap year, it was
Speaker 1: actually to be taken as an official marriage proposal. And
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. And I'm guessing you mean a traditional Valentine,
Speaker 1: not a vinegar one in that case. One well, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's also interesting to me is how long this leap
Speaker 1: date tradition continued. So it actually went on until the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. In fact, in February of nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: the New York Times finally declared the tradition dead, or
Speaker 1: at least they declared it a ne ccerian. So here's
Speaker 1: what they wrote in these liberated Times. Every day is
Speaker 1: leap day, every day is leep day, and lived by
Speaker 1: those words. So, you know, on that similar note, one
Speaker 1: thing that's interesting to me is that Valentine's Day in
Speaker 1: Japan has kind of this quasi feminist slant. And this
Speaker 1: goes back to seven when the Mary Chocolate Company introduced
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day of the country, but in kind of a
Speaker 1: translation gap, and and you know, I love translation errors.
Speaker 1: Like James Bond. That film Doctor No in Japan was
Speaker 1: actually called we Don't Need a Doctor there. Um I
Speaker 1: love that. But so this was another error and it
Speaker 1: said the tradition called for women to send chocolate candies
Speaker 1: to men, and it just got reinforced and it's actually
Speaker 1: had this interesting impact on the country. It's considered one
Speaker 1: of the only days that girls can openly express their
Speaker 1: feelings and their anthropologists who have actually studied this. But
Speaker 1: the rules around chocolate giving are actually pretty defined. If
Speaker 1: you want to give it to someone you fee romantic about,
Speaker 1: you give me choco, which, because of the implications, is
Speaker 1: usually super high quality and often homemade. And then there's
Speaker 1: a gary choco, which has no romantic strings whatsoever. It's
Speaker 1: sort of cheap and store bought, and this is what
Speaker 1: you give to your co workers are close friends. It's
Speaker 1: also kind of this platonic chocolate. The name is actually,
Speaker 1: when you translated to English, means obligation chocolate. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing is my favorite. It's called choke gary choco.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the sad subset of gary choco, and
Speaker 1: it's basically ultra obligation chocolate. So it's given to men
Speaker 1: that aren't important to a woman, but she feels really
Speaker 1: sorry for So it's basically pity chocolate, and it's really sad.
Speaker 1: You know, from a distance, it's funny, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: as a sixth grader through college grad I would have
Speaker 1: stuffed my face full of pitty chocolates. I feel these guys,
Speaker 1: Oh man, that is pretty bad. Well, chocolate obviously plays
Speaker 1: a big role in Valentine's Day, but you know, I
Speaker 1: was curious how it got so linked to the holiday,
Speaker 1: And apparently it really started with Cadburry. And I guess
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be a huge surprise to us. So chocolate
Speaker 1: had been around in Europe and the fifteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds and and and pretty popular. But in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century, Richard Cadbury invented a way to
Speaker 1: extract pure cocoa butter from drinking chocolate. And this was
Speaker 1: done as a way to make it taste better. But
Speaker 1: the only problem was now he had all this pure
Speaker 1: cocoa butter and nothing to do with it. So his
Speaker 1: solution was to use butter and to make a brand
Speaker 1: new product. And these were these eating chocolates, and so
Speaker 1: we made this ornate box for them, and you know,
Speaker 1: they did pretty well. But in eighteen sixty one he
Speaker 1: hit upon this idea of marketing his chocolate specifically for
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day. So this time he put them in heart
Speaker 1: shaped boxes, had some cupids and rosebuds put on the cover,
Speaker 1: and Cadburry was also kind of a marketing genius because
Speaker 1: he figured out you could also advertise the worth of
Speaker 1: the box, so he took out these ads showing that
Speaker 1: they were great way to you know, to store love
Speaker 1: letters or things like that and locks of hair and
Speaker 1: other romantic mementos once the candy had been eaten. And
Speaker 1: you know, while he might have missed an opportunity by
Speaker 1: not trying to patent those boxes, he did kick off
Speaker 1: this tradition that the world now indulges in. That's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing that he invented the heart shaped box. That's pretty stunning.
Speaker 1: So we've gone from ultra pity chocolate to heart shaped
Speaker 1: boxes and I really like where this is going. But
Speaker 1: we've got two more facts to go. We need to
Speaker 1: take a quick break. First, welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: We we're talking about Valentine's Day, so well, I know
Speaker 1: you kicked off the show with an anti Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: bent and uh with the whole naming of your ex
Speaker 1: after a cockroach and then eating that cockroach to a mercat.
Speaker 1: But how are you planning to close out this fact? Well?
Speaker 1: I was thinking about doing something grim, like talking about
Speaker 1: the Museum of Broken Relationships, which you can find in Croatia.
Speaker 1: You know, they're all these teddy bears and love letters
Speaker 1: from failed relationships apparently. And the funniest thing to me
Speaker 1: is this rabbit with a note on it that says
Speaker 1: the bunny was supposed to travel the world but never
Speaker 1: got further than Iran. Oh man, that is bleak. But
Speaker 1: you are not talking about that. It sounds like, so
Speaker 1: what are you going to talk about? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: how about a fact on St. Valentine. So, the historical
Speaker 1: Saint Valentine is believed to have been sainted because he
Speaker 1: performed secret ceremonies to marry these Catholic couples, and this
Speaker 1: was in defiance of Roman law, so he became the
Speaker 1: patron saint of love and of couples. His role as
Speaker 1: the patron saint of beekeepers is probably unrelated to all this,
Speaker 1: but also a cool side I like that you kind
Speaker 1: of double majored in St. Hoodiar. It's it's it's really impressive.
Speaker 1: But I mean, what's we heard about the story is
Speaker 1: that historians really can't figure out who Valentine even was.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at Alice obscura like we always loved
Speaker 1: to such a great side. But here's how they explain it.
Speaker 1: Little is really known of the real man or men
Speaker 1: behind the myth. What is known, more or less is
Speaker 1: that at least two men by the name of Valentine
Speaker 1: were known in Italy and died in the late third century,
Speaker 1: and a third Valentine was located in North Africa around
Speaker 1: that same time as a saint. The stories of the
Speaker 1: different men seemed to have merged into one over time,
Speaker 1: with most of the mythology about Valentine being a patron
Speaker 1: saint of lovers only dating to the fourteenth century and
Speaker 1: the writings of Jeffrey Chaucer. So that's what they say.
Speaker 1: But what's particularly weird about this fact is that if
Speaker 1: you want to make a pilgrimage to visit St. Valentine's relics,
Speaker 1: it makes it a little harder because there were more
Speaker 1: than one, and so you know his supposed skull is
Speaker 1: on display at a basilica in Rome. One of his
Speaker 1: shoulder blades was found in a church basement and progue,
Speaker 1: which so strange. His entire body is said to be
Speaker 1: housed that churches in both Glasgow and Dublin, and perhaps
Speaker 1: strangest of all, some unspecified body parts are said to
Speaker 1: be kept inside a wax replica of the saint at
Speaker 1: a church in Missouri. So if you truly want to
Speaker 1: pay homage, there's quite an itinerary in front of you.
Speaker 1: That is nuts, but I like it. Well. If you
Speaker 1: don't want to celebrate St. Valentine's Day, there are other
Speaker 1: options for you, and one of them is Ferris Wheel Day.
Speaker 1: So apparently February fourteenth is also George Washington Gale Ferris
Speaker 1: Jr's birthday. He is the dude who built the first
Speaker 1: Ferris wheel. But as we're looking this up, Cabe also
Speaker 1: pointed out that Austrians are particularly fond of Ferris wheels,
Speaker 1: and they don't even use the birthday as the reason
Speaker 1: for Ferris Wheel Day. Like some enthusiasts, actually claimed that
Speaker 1: the day was chosen not to mark the inventor's birthday,
Speaker 1: but because February fourteenth is one of the fairest weather
Speaker 1: days of the year there, which is perfect for ferris
Speaker 1: wheel rides, I guess. But if amusement rides aren't your thing,
Speaker 1: you can also celebrate in general Heart Defect Awareness Day
Speaker 1: or Bulgarian Wine Day a k a. The Day of
Speaker 1: the vine Grower, which feels like a good reason to drink,
Speaker 1: and if you're really in the mood, you can celebrate
Speaker 1: all three at the same time. Ah, this is just
Speaker 1: some pretty great facts, you know. I was, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think about who should win this one, and
Speaker 1: when I saw Tristan literally fall out of his chair earlier,
Speaker 1: when you said that's nuts, and I didn't get the pun,
Speaker 1: I think this one should probably go to him. But
Speaker 1: I also feel like we need to dedicate this show
Speaker 1: to our platonic Valentine Gabe, who we could never do
Speaker 1: this show without, and of course Tristan, who makes the
Speaker 1: show sound great and makes us sound somewhat coherent, And
Speaker 1: of course to our fans who are so kind to
Speaker 1: send us notes and write up reviews for us, and
Speaker 1: you know we appreciate all of you. But from Mango, Gabe,
Speaker 1: Tristan and me, Happy Valentine's Day, and thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening a STI