Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what Mango? What's that?
Speaker 1: Will?
Speaker 3: So? I was thinking about Carol Burnett the other day,
Speaker 3: and actually, you know, I think about her often.
Speaker 2: I admitted before the episode.
Speaker 3: She was one of my first crushes, which might come
Speaker 3: as a surprise to many, but she was just so
Speaker 3: fun and we used to love watching her show, The
Speaker 3: Carol Burnette Show in the evenings. But anyway, one of
Speaker 3: the things I was thinking about recently was how she
Speaker 3: used to tug her ear to say hi to her
Speaker 3: grandmother on air. Now, actually, did you watch the Carol
Speaker 3: Burnette Show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's actually one of my earliest memories of TV,
Speaker 1: like watching that and also the Muppet Show because my
Speaker 1: parents loved both of those. Also, have you watched Pamroll
Speaker 1: I have not yet. No, it is so fun. It's
Speaker 1: like soaphi it but she's in a coma and somehow
Speaker 1: she's still funny. Like she's funny even when she's in
Speaker 1: a coma, like do these minor little actions and stuff,
Speaker 1: she can still get a laugh.
Speaker 2: It's like he was the best of the best.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking about this whole ear tugging story,
Speaker 3: and I decided to look into it a little bit more.
Speaker 3: And apparently the first time she was on TV in
Speaker 3: New York, her grandmother says to her, why don't you
Speaker 3: just turn to the camera and say hello to me
Speaker 3: when you're on TV? And Carol's response was, of course,
Speaker 3: I had to explain to her that we're not allowed
Speaker 3: to just say hi, nanny on television, And so they
Speaker 3: came up with this secret signal that's now famous, where
Speaker 3: she would pull her ear lobe, and according to Carol Burnett,
Speaker 3: it meant HI, I'm fine, your check is on the way.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous. I think I've heard they were close because
Speaker 1: Burnette was raised by her grandma.
Speaker 2: Right, That's exactly right, you know.
Speaker 3: And part of the story that I thought was really
Speaker 3: funny is that this writer from Life magazine actually measured
Speaker 3: her ear lobe and found that she'd stretched it from
Speaker 3: pulling it so much over the years, and that her
Speaker 3: ear lobe was noticeably longer because of all the time
Speaker 3: she turned to the camera and let her grandma know
Speaker 3: that she was thinking about her.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is both really sweet and I feel
Speaker 1: like it's real love, like giving up your symmetrical face
Speaker 1: for your grandma.
Speaker 2: That's a real, real sacrifice.
Speaker 3: But you know, in the interview, Carol Burnett did want
Speaker 3: to clarify that she only pulled her ear when she
Speaker 3: was on TV.
Speaker 2: She didn't go around pulling her ear just for the
Speaker 2: heck of it.
Speaker 3: But with Thanksgiving holiday right around the corner, we thought
Speaker 3: it might be the perfect time to do a little
Speaker 3: tribute episode to Grandma's So let's dive in. Hey, their
Speaker 3: podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson,
Speaker 3: and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh
Speaker 3: Hot Ticket and sitting there behind the big booth glass
Speaker 3: wearing a vintage Charlotte hornets Larry Johnson basketball jersey.
Speaker 2: Probably a lot of our younger listeners are saying, who
Speaker 2: the heck is Larry Johnson? Amazing basketball player. This is
Speaker 2: a real deep cut here, Dylan.
Speaker 3: I love it when he goes for the deep cuts,
Speaker 3: making a throwback joke to those Grandmama commercials.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's nodding his head back there and just.
Speaker 3: Smiling once again. That is our good friend and producer,
Speaker 3: Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: You know, I watched this interview with Larry Johnson where
Speaker 1: he was talking about why he signed with Converse and
Speaker 1: did those Grandmama commercials. Yeah, and he said it was
Speaker 1: a total bait and switch. Like he was fresh out
Speaker 1: of college. He was the number one NBA draft pick,
Speaker 1: and Converse was like, we've got the perfect ad for you.
Speaker 1: It's Larry Bird and Magic Johnson wearing surgeons gear and
Speaker 1: they've created this perfect basketball player, right, and they're just
Speaker 1: deciding what to name him, and Larry Bird's like, let's
Speaker 1: call him Larry, and Magic is like, let's call him Johnson.
Speaker 1: And they're fighting like Larry Johnson, Larry Johnson, and as
Speaker 1: they're arguing, he just kind of rises up like Frankenstein's mom, right.
Speaker 1: And so of course Larry Johnson is young, he's all in.
Speaker 1: He's so sold by this idea. Also, I had a
Speaker 1: million dollars to give him, so he was happy to
Speaker 1: take that. And he went off and bought his mom
Speaker 1: a house with the money. Okay, and then Converce called
Speaker 1: him up and was like, Magic and Larry don't want
Speaker 1: to do the commercial, So we've got another idea.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be a grandma.
Speaker 1: I feel like a grandma, and you're gonna dominate the
Speaker 1: basketball court, and he was like, man, I wish I
Speaker 1: hadn't fought that house. Yeah, but barely. You ended up
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a it was a pretty great
Speaker 2: series there.
Speaker 3: But Menguel, you're already getting a soft track. We are
Speaker 3: doing a show that is a tribute to our grandma's
Speaker 3: And I know you knew my mamma and really loved her,
Speaker 3: and she loved you, and I think later in her
Speaker 3: life she actually thought you were one of her grandkids.
Speaker 3: And I remember meeting your grandma in college when she'd
Speaker 3: come to visit from India, and you know, it was
Speaker 3: just always the sweetest visits to see how much she
Speaker 3: meant to you, and it was it was just a
Speaker 3: lot of fun that she actually came to college knocking
Speaker 3: in your dorm room one time, and she was actually
Speaker 3: just lying there on the bed like she was one
Speaker 3: of our friends.
Speaker 1: It was she was small, she was lying on it horizon.
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to say that, but actually I think
Speaker 3: she was there one time with one of your aunts
Speaker 3: and they were both lying there as far as that's
Speaker 3: you know, these tiny women.
Speaker 2: But it was fantastic.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I know this holiday season, we're both missing
Speaker 3: our grandmothers a lot, and I thought it might be
Speaker 3: nice to do a nine things.
Speaker 2: In honor of them. So this one is for Nadine
Speaker 2: and Soushila.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, that's so wonderful. So I'm going to start
Speaker 1: with a story about a group of grandmas in Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1: And this story actually begins with a young psychiatrist. His
Speaker 1: name is Dixon Chibanda. So Zimbabwe apparently has been dealing
Speaker 1: with an incredible shortage of mental health professionals over the
Speaker 1: past few decades. And the story comes from the Boston
Speaker 1: Globe and they say that Chibanda was actually only one
Speaker 1: of fifteen psychiatrists in the country of sixteen million people.
Speaker 1: It isn't that stunning, But this starts with a really
Speaker 1: sad story. So Chibanda had a patient who was unable
Speaker 1: to visit him because she couldn't afford the fifteen dollars
Speaker 1: bus fare to travel this insanely long distance to see him,
Speaker 1: and she ends up taking her own life, and chibond
Speaker 1: is just devastated by this. He's like, we need to
Speaker 1: be giving people more care, making the access easier. So
Speaker 1: he starts exploring all these different ways to recruit and
Speaker 1: train more mental health practitioners, but it is just really,
Speaker 1: really difficult. There are a lot of hurdles to jump
Speaker 1: to make it happen. And what he realizes is that
Speaker 1: there's actually already this incredible core of whys and empathetic
Speaker 1: caregivers who have a lot of life experience and a
Speaker 1: lot of time on their hands. And so, of course
Speaker 1: we're talking about grandmothers here. So he pilots this program
Speaker 1: with fourteen grandmothers in her are and he gives them
Speaker 1: the tools to better listen, right. He helps them make
Speaker 1: people feel heard, He helps them give people a sense
Speaker 1: of belonging and confidence, and he also teaches the grandmothers
Speaker 1: to empower people to tackle their own problems. Right. It's
Speaker 1: a little tutorial he does. But instead of putting these
Speaker 1: grandmas in crowded clinics or hospitals, they come up with
Speaker 1: this totally novel approach. They set up these benches that
Speaker 1: are in the open, that feel like you're just having conversations,
Speaker 1: so there's no shame around the treatments and no negative perception. Initially,
Speaker 1: Schibanda wanted to call these benches mental health benches, but
Speaker 1: the Grandma's actually pushed back on that branding and suggested
Speaker 1: calling them friendship benches instead. Nice and so then this
Speaker 1: idea of the friendship bench was born, and honestly, the
Speaker 1: results have been incredible. The grandmas don't use psychiatric terms,
Speaker 1: so instead of talking about depression or anxiety, they use
Speaker 1: gentler Shona terms. There's actually one called Kufunga Sisa, which,
Speaker 1: as The Globe points out, translates as thinking too much. Right,
Speaker 1: You're just thinking too much. And they're just very warm.
Speaker 1: They're really colloquial and today there have been over one
Speaker 1: hundred peer reviewed studies about these benches. According to one study,
Speaker 1: after six months, participants who interacted with these friendship benches
Speaker 1: were better off in terms of all types of indicators,
Speaker 1: including their fear head lessen, their anger head lessen, and
Speaker 1: they actually had improved sleep patterns. And in fact, the
Speaker 1: grandmas have helped over sixty thousand people in Zimbabwe to date.
Speaker 1: But the best part is that it's also great for
Speaker 1: the grandma's self esteem, like they feel like they're being
Speaker 1: useful again and they're contributing to the health of this country,
Speaker 1: which is just kind of amazing.
Speaker 2: I was thinking the same thing.
Speaker 3: This is definitely one of those perfect scenarios where I
Speaker 3: think everybody walks away from it feeling a little bit better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is amazing.
Speaker 3: I would totally go to something like that too, if
Speaker 3: there was just a grandma, you know, it would be
Speaker 3: sitting on a bench and you could go sit next
Speaker 3: to or chat for a bit. But you know, I
Speaker 3: was thinking about the image that we have of, you know,
Speaker 3: the stereotypical grandmother. When you think of grandma's hanging out,
Speaker 3: you're probably picturing them I don't know, playing bridge or majog.
Speaker 1: Or something, tea party or something like that.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, But you're probably not picturing them with
Speaker 3: cans of spray paint, right, Like tagging a wall with graffiti.
Speaker 2: Is that something that.
Speaker 3: Comes to mind for you. But that's exactly what's happening
Speaker 3: in Lisbon, Portugal, where the world's most lovable graffiti gang.
Speaker 2: Has come together. I love this so much.
Speaker 3: The group is called Lata sixty five and Lota refers
Speaker 3: to an aerosol can and sixty five because it's open
Speaker 3: to anyone who's sixty five or older. So, according to
Speaker 3: one of the group's co founders, Lara Rodriguez. She was
Speaker 3: watching Lisbon come alive through this incredible graffiti movement, and
Speaker 3: as she puts it, quote decaying cement walls were transformed
Speaker 3: into a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Abandoned factories breathe
Speaker 3: new life, and water cooler conversations moved to walls that
Speaker 3: told stories. But while she was seeing this thriving art
Speaker 3: scene all around her, she was noticing something else. She
Speaker 3: was having conversations with older people in her community, and
Speaker 3: she picked up on this sense that they felt like
Speaker 3: a burden. There was this one seventy one year old
Speaker 3: grandmother who told her art is for the care free,
Speaker 3: the creative, and the sensitive. I'm just a grandmother. And
Speaker 3: so Laura got this sense that these incredible women saw
Speaker 3: themselves as simply caretakers, or even worse than that, like
Speaker 3: nonexist from time to time. So she put this call
Speaker 3: out to anyone who wanted to give graffiti a try,
Speaker 3: and as she tells it, the youth were numb and
Speaker 3: bored to my outreach, but elders actually wanted to jump
Speaker 3: in and participate. The response was actually overwhelming from this
Speaker 3: and ever since, the Grandma Graffiti Gang has totally taken off.
Speaker 3: So today these artsy grannies wander into the city's most
Speaker 3: neglected neighborhoods and they brighten them up with these vibrant
Speaker 3: and rebellious works. Actually, just talking about it doesn't do
Speaker 3: it any justice. I want to share a few photos
Speaker 3: with you right here, so you know it's like the
Speaker 3: sweetest vandalism you'll ever see. Like their smiles are so big.
Speaker 3: They're painting the town red and you know, lots of
Speaker 3: other colors too.
Speaker 2: But look at these pictures.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love them so much. I kind of want
Speaker 1: my mom to join a graffiti Grannis group. It looks
Speaker 1: so fun. So here's kind of a quirky one. One
Speaker 1: of the first things I looked up when we decided
Speaker 1: to do this episode on Grandma's was if there was
Speaker 1: any scientific research on grandmothers, and there's actually lots of it.
Speaker 1: There's stuff fun how a grandmother's brain lights up when
Speaker 1: they see a photo of their grandchildren. There's also research
Speaker 1: on how grandmothers have actually helped us evolutionarily, and how
Speaker 1: menopause may be linked to caring for younger kids because
Speaker 1: it actually gives women more energy for that, which is interesting.
Speaker 1: But the most fun paper that I encountered was one
Speaker 1: about the dead grandmother exam syndrome, and this was recapped
Speaker 1: in a special education issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen ninety nine, a professor named Mike Adams
Speaker 1: of Eastern Connecticut State University noticed an interesting phenomena happening
Speaker 1: in his classes. So he wrote the Definitive Analysis on
Speaker 1: what he calls the grandmother exam syndrome, in which he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: the basic problem can be stated very simply. A student's
Speaker 1: grandmother is far more likely to die suddenly just before
Speaker 1: the student takes an exam than any other time. Of
Speaker 1: what I guess, people were constantly giving this as an
Speaker 1: excuse in his class, ye, And so he decided to
Speaker 1: make a point by writing a paper.
Speaker 2: That is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, here's a strange one about this awesome
Speaker 3: grandma who refused to be scammed. So there's this seventy
Speaker 3: three year old grandmother, Jean Ebert, and she's living in
Speaker 3: Long Island, and she gets this phone call where a
Speaker 3: scammer is posing as her grandson who claims he's been
Speaker 3: in an accident. And actually, I remember my grandmother getting
Speaker 3: a similar kind of call, like it's a common scam
Speaker 3: of types of people calling and claiming to be their
Speaker 3: grandson or somebody also those lines, and I know this
Speaker 3: shouldn't be funny, but she would say, like you talking
Speaker 3: about will are you talking about and started naming her grandson.
Speaker 2: She's like, yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: So anyway, he says he's been charged with a dui
Speaker 3: and he needs money urgently to get him out of bail.
Speaker 3: But Jean's grandkids are in elementary school and they're not
Speaker 3: driving and they're definitely not drinking, so she knows that
Speaker 3: this is a scam. Also, she's a retired nine to
Speaker 3: one one dispatcher, so she knows how to work a phone,
Speaker 3: and she decides to play along. So the fake grandson
Speaker 3: says he needs eight thousand dollars and he needs it
Speaker 3: soon because he doesn't want to be stuck in jail and
Speaker 3: he's really laying it on thick in this story, but
Speaker 3: she keeps stringing him along. She offers to venmo him
Speaker 3: the amount, but he says he really needs it in cash,
Speaker 3: so she asked him to call back, and she obviously
Speaker 3: needs the time to get the money, and in the meantime,
Speaker 3: she calls the police.
Speaker 2: They come over.
Speaker 3: They actually listen in on the follow up calls, and
Speaker 3: eventually the scammer says he's sending a bail bondsman over
Speaker 3: to her front door in ten minutes.
Speaker 2: So when this guy arrives, she opens the door.
Speaker 3: Hands him an envelope stuffed with paper towels so it'll
Speaker 3: look like it's this fat wad of cash. And then
Speaker 3: as he pockets the money, the officers yell surprise, jump
Speaker 3: out and arrest the guy.
Speaker 2: I love him.
Speaker 1: They actually yelled the prim Now they.
Speaker 3: Totally were like, surprise, you're going to jail. But the
Speaker 3: whole incident was captured on Jean's ring cam and it
Speaker 3: wasn't long before the conman were thrown in jail. And
Speaker 3: as for Jeans, she's now Internet famous as the granny
Speaker 3: who scammed the scammers.
Speaker 1: Oh, I like that. I also love that a lifetime
Speaker 1: of nine one one calls makes her super calm in
Speaker 1: like any phone call situation. Yeah, you have so much practice,
Speaker 1: so I know that I couldn't do an episode on
Speaker 1: Grandma's without talking about my favorite group of old women,
Speaker 1: the divers in South Korea known as.
Speaker 2: Henyo, which I did not look into because I knew
Speaker 2: you would be doing something here, so.
Speaker 1: You might remember this from when I commission a photo
Speaker 1: essay for mental phloss about those years ago. But the
Speaker 1: hen you are famous because they dive off the coast
Speaker 1: of the Jaju Island to harvest mollis, abalony, octopus, seaweed
Speaker 1: and other tasty sea life. Right. But the society is
Speaker 1: particularly special because, unlike the rest of South Korea, it's
Speaker 1: a matriarchal community, and people don't exactly know how it
Speaker 1: came to be this way and how the women took
Speaker 1: over the diving, but it's been this way for centuries now,
Speaker 1: and the work is really dangerous. They dive between thirty
Speaker 1: to sixty feet. They free dive actually into icy waters.
Speaker 1: They brave sharks and hypothermia, among other things. And you know,
Speaker 1: it might be that this diving culture started because men
Speaker 1: went off to war and the women took over. It's
Speaker 1: also thought that the women have more body fat, so
Speaker 1: they're better at dealing with the.
Speaker 2: Very cold water.
Speaker 1: But whatever the reason, it's led to the society that
Speaker 1: really values women and considers women more powerful than the men. Apparently,
Speaker 1: husbands stay home to watch the kids and they do
Speaker 1: the domestic chores. And unlike other parts of Asia, where
Speaker 1: you know, having a son is really valued, having a
Speaker 1: daughter here is really celebrated in the community because women
Speaker 1: bring in money. And what's really interesting is that a
Speaker 1: young woman often begins practicing these diving skills between the
Speaker 1: age of eight to ten. We're often trained by your mother,
Speaker 1: but they're not considered experts until they reach their forties.
Speaker 1: And then women will keep diving well into their eighties,
Speaker 1: which is why you see these beautiful, mermad grandmothers still
Speaker 1: keeping this traditional live.
Speaker 3: It's amazing, like it's just wild that they're willing to
Speaker 3: do that for me. If it's below seventy degrees and
Speaker 3: further than like five or six feet, I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to do it like.
Speaker 2: It's it's too much.
Speaker 3: But I love these stories about these Korean grandmas, and
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, at a feeling you were going to
Speaker 3: do a fact on them. So I also looked up
Speaker 3: a group of Austin diving grandmas, and I found a
Speaker 3: group from a slightly different part of the world. It's
Speaker 3: an island called New Caledonia, which is in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 3: So if you're trying to get your bearings here. New
Speaker 3: Caledonia is east of Australia and north of New Zealand.
Speaker 3: So the story starts with these two researchers who are
Speaker 3: in New Caledonia and they're studying sea snakes. Now, in particular,
Speaker 3: they're looking at this harmless, small turtle headed snake that
Speaker 3: primarily exists there. But while they're researching, they end up
Speaker 3: seeing these much larger sea snakes that are super venomous.
Speaker 3: And these things are scary, like they're five feet long
Speaker 3: and lethal, but you know, it turns out they're also
Speaker 3: really shy. So the scientists who are in this area
Speaker 3: studying for about three years, only end up seeing a
Speaker 3: couple dozen of these snakes and they can't get a
Speaker 3: handle on their behavior. Ayway, there isn't much research on
Speaker 3: these venomous snakes. But then in twenty seventeen, a group
Speaker 3: of grandmas who by the way, call themselves the Fantastic Grandmothers,
Speaker 3: hear about this, and they're in their sixties and seventies
Speaker 3: and they decide they want to help out because it
Speaker 3: turns out this area where the sea snakes have been
Speaker 3: spotted happens to be the snorkeling turf of these grandmothers.
Speaker 3: This is just where they've been swimming for a good time,
Speaker 3: and they didn't know there was any danger lurking there.
Speaker 3: So they asked the researchers, or rather tell the researchers
Speaker 3: that they're going to lend a hand and photograph any
Speaker 3: sea snakes when they see that they're out and about. Anyways,
Speaker 3: one of the researchers told Mental Flaws quote, as soon
Speaker 3: as the grandmothers set to work, we realized that we
Speaker 3: had massively underestimated the abundance of greater sea snakes in
Speaker 3: the bay. So apparently the work was this huge boon
Speaker 3: to the researchers because over a short period, these grandmothers
Speaker 3: identified over two hundred and forty nine of the venomous
Speaker 3: sea snakes while managing.
Speaker 2: Not to get didn't.
Speaker 3: Also, they shed light on their breeding habits and offspring.
Speaker 3: So today the Fantastic Grandmother's project is regularly cited as
Speaker 3: a way that communities and scientists can work together to
Speaker 3: advance the understanding of animal life.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. So I know we've got two more
Speaker 1: facts to go, but before we do, why don't we
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: where we're talking all about grandma's So will what do
Speaker 1: you want to do for your last fact?
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I know we kicked this off with
Speaker 3: a Carol Burnett story, but I want to talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about another luminary who was raised and influenced
Speaker 3: by his grandmam, and that's Willie Nelson. And I guess
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how hard his life has been. But
Speaker 3: they rarely had money to buy food off and lived
Speaker 3: off of soup bones. And well, his grandmam had a
Speaker 3: job in a school lunch. She had a lot of
Speaker 3: odd jobs to just feed the family, and she often
Speaker 3: took him with her. And so, as he writes, quote,
Speaker 3: I started picking cotton alongside my grandmother when I was
Speaker 3: maybe five or six years old. Wow. I had a
Speaker 3: little bit of cotton sacks she made for me, and
Speaker 3: some knee pads so I could crawl along beside her.
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about what hard work farming is.
Speaker 3: So this is probably why he's devoted so much of
Speaker 3: his effort to farm mate, if you think about it.
Speaker 3: And apparently those days in the field really shaped him musically.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of black farm workers, he says,
Speaker 3: Mexican farm workers, a lot of guys like me, little
Speaker 3: white guys going to school, trying to make a living.
Speaker 3: We all came together out there working. You hear blues
Speaker 3: coming from over here, You hear Mexican music coming from
Speaker 3: over there, Bob Will's coming from over here. It was
Speaker 3: like living in an opera. And so his grandmother is
Speaker 3: also the one who taught him music. One of his
Speaker 3: fondest memories that he had told Rolling Stone about was
Speaker 3: that if he got a lesson right quote that day,
Speaker 3: she'd take a gold star, a little star the size
Speaker 3: of your finger, and glue on one side, and she'd
Speaker 3: stick it on a sheet of music to let him
Speaker 3: know that he'd done a great job.
Speaker 2: And he kind of lived for those moments. You can
Speaker 2: imagine it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing how much she shaped him. So I
Speaker 1: think I've got the perfect fact to end on and
Speaker 1: espartially because I miss my grandma or my almama's cooking.
Speaker 1: But if you're like me and you're missing your granny's
Speaker 1: comfort food, a good place to visit might be the
Speaker 1: restaurant where Nona's ruled the kitchen, and that's Enoteca Maria
Speaker 1: in Staten Island. Now I've heard the buzz about this
Speaker 1: restaurant for years, and I've been meaning to make a visit,
Speaker 1: but I actually thought it was just a gimmick, like
Speaker 1: the old Ninja cafe where they're just Ninja's jumping out
Speaker 1: with your food or whatever. But the story behind the
Speaker 1: restaurant is really sweet. So the restaurant was founded by
Speaker 1: Jod Scaravella in two thousand and seven after he lost
Speaker 1: his own grandmother, and as he put it, quote, I
Speaker 1: think subconsciously, I was just trying to patch those holes
Speaker 1: in my life, and seeing an Italian grandmother in the
Speaker 1: kitchen cooking was my idea of comfort. It was his
Speaker 1: way of dealing with the grief because his Nonah had
Speaker 1: played a really big role in his childhood. Both his
Speaker 1: parents had worked day jobs, and his Nonah kept the
Speaker 1: house running in Brooklyn where he grew up, and as
Speaker 1: he tells it, she was this really big personality, Like
Speaker 1: one of the most fun things he did as a
Speaker 1: kid was accompanying her to the market where she would
Speaker 1: just sample all the wares before buying them. So like
Speaker 1: if she'd bit into a peach and liked it, she'd
Speaker 1: buy a dozen, But if she took a bite out
Speaker 1: of a vegetable and was unimpressed. She just like angrily
Speaker 1: spit on the floor. That's rough, but if friendly. Everyone
Speaker 1: loved her and liked her, so he didn't really mind,
Speaker 1: and her cooking was divine. And while Jodie's initial idea
Speaker 1: was to serve Italian comfort food with nonahs from different
Speaker 1: parts of Italy, before long he was bringing in nonahs
Speaker 1: from around the world. So every day there's like one
Speaker 1: Italian nona and one from various locations. So you might
Speaker 1: have like a Jamaican nona serving doubles, or a Bangladeshi
Speaker 1: won serving curries, or big bowls of oudon from the
Speaker 1: Japanese nona. And just like your own grandmother or my
Speaker 1: own grandmother, they are very particular about the recipes. So,
Speaker 1: like one Greek nona was unimpressed with a feta that
Speaker 1: he had on hand, so she bought her own from Greece,
Speaker 1: Sri Lankan nona didn't think much of the curry powder,
Speaker 1: so she made him drive her to New Jersey so
Speaker 1: that she could buy all the spices to assemble a
Speaker 1: proper spice mix it. But what's interesting is that while
Speaker 1: the restaurant serves up comfort food, what's funny is that
Speaker 1: Jody doesn't really think of it as a restaurant. He
Speaker 1: sees it as more of a community project, and as
Speaker 1: he told Travel and Leisure, what he loves most is
Speaker 1: the power of food to bring people together. As he
Speaker 1: put it quote, coming off a very divisive period in history,
Speaker 1: it really helps to bring down those barriers in the
Speaker 1: same way music and art does. It helps you engage
Speaker 1: with another culture without even realizing it. And the fact
Speaker 1: that the food is served with extra dollars of love
Speaker 1: from a grandma who might remind you of your own
Speaker 1: makes experience that much sweeter.
Speaker 2: Aw, that's a perfect story. I love that.
Speaker 3: Although I know we pre decided that we weren't going
Speaker 3: to do a trophy, this episode took some of.
Speaker 1: The pressure off and the spirit to Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right.
Speaker 3: So instead, let's just end with a reminder to call
Speaker 3: your grandmothers and basking their love this holiday season, and
Speaker 3: if you have a second, share your best grandmam stories
Speaker 3: with us on our end stuff we're at part time genius.
Speaker 3: We sincerely want to hear about the wonderful grannies and
Speaker 3: grandma figures in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's it for this week's episode from Gabe, Mary, Dylan,
Speaker 1: Will and myself have a Wonderful Thanksgiving. Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is
Speaker 1: hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongschatikler and research by
Speaker 1: our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered
Speaker 1: and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by
Speaker 1: Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
Speaker 1: Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.