Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Guess what mango was that? Well, today we're doing a
Speaker 2: show on cheese crimes. I've been excited for this one,
Speaker 2: So I've got a question for you to kick things off.
Speaker 2: So what's the first thing that comes to mind when
Speaker 2: I say cheese crime? Because there's so many things that
Speaker 2: could come to mind. What comes to mind for you?
Speaker 1: I know there's gonna be a pop quiz, Yeah, someone
Speaker 1: committing a crime with cheese, like maybe blusheoning someone with
Speaker 1: like a huge wheel of parmesan and then eating that parmesan.
Speaker 2: So there's a murder weapon. Oh, that would be like
Speaker 2: the perfect crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe just using cheese whiz in a sandwich,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a cheese crime.
Speaker 2: I feel like, out, I look the way you just
Speaker 2: quickly planned to murder around a wheel of cheese and
Speaker 2: then you dissed the giant part of Philadelphia culture. This
Speaker 2: is all in the first minute of the show. But
Speaker 2: the thing is, cheese is reportedly the most shoplift did
Speaker 2: food in the world. Plus it's the target of all
Speaker 2: sorts of craziness from stealing and grifting to tyst and
Speaker 2: even smuggling.
Speaker 1: So this whole episode is kind of just a bad
Speaker 1: setup for a nacho cheese jokes.
Speaker 2: That's the whole reason. That's why I'm excited for this.
Speaker 2: All right, let's dive in. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 2: I'm Will and as always, I'm here with my good
Speaker 2: friend Mango, and somewhere behind that big booth is our
Speaker 2: pal Dylan, who has a giant can of easy cheese
Speaker 2: and a plate full of crackers that actually Mango, I
Speaker 2: think he's preparing for us. The guy's just so generous.
Speaker 1: I love that he made us a snack. I guess
Speaker 1: he didn't want us to be angry. But speaking of
Speaker 1: cheese crimes, I know this is a little off topic,
Speaker 1: but can you retell that story about that time you
Speaker 1: stopped at a gas station and was.
Speaker 2: So I didn't think we were going to go there,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so I was in a hurry to a
Speaker 2: meeting one day, and for whatever reason, it had been
Speaker 2: an ongoing joke about grabbing a hot dog from a
Speaker 2: gas station with a group of friends. I truly was
Speaker 2: in a rush, was filling up with gas and I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to get a gas station hot dog because
Speaker 2: I was angry, and so I grabbed one. I go
Speaker 2: out to the car, finished, you know, filling up the tank.
Speaker 2: I take a bite of This is going to sound
Speaker 2: like terrible. I took a bite of the hot dog
Speaker 2: and suddenly I feel something like hot, like squirt the
Speaker 2: back of my throat, which I hate to even say
Speaker 2: those words. And I looked and the hot dog had
Speaker 2: been cheese injected. And I had heard of these before,
Speaker 2: and I know that they exist. I have no interest
Speaker 2: in them, but I also just I want to heads
Speaker 2: up when my hot dog is going to have cheese
Speaker 2: in it, and I didn't know, and so, needless to say,
Speaker 2: I did not finish the hot dog. It is the
Speaker 2: last time I've had a gas station hot dog. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the story.
Speaker 1: It's a good warning to all our listeners to check
Speaker 1: out the label on the hot you always find out
Speaker 1: whether it's cheese injected. Yeah, so let's get started. I
Speaker 1: know the reason we chose this episode is that we
Speaker 1: both heard that shoplifting fact about cheese, like that's the
Speaker 1: most shoplifted food. And I'd also heard about this parmesan mafia.
Speaker 1: So I was curious what the real story was there.
Speaker 1: But why don't we start with just a quick list
Speaker 1: of how expensive cheese can be. So here's a quick
Speaker 1: top three of expensive cheeses I found on a site
Speaker 1: called Chef's Pencil. So number one is Pool, which is
Speaker 1: a donkey cheese. Talked about this before, but just to
Speaker 1: get a sense of how expensive it is. For comparison,
Speaker 1: grocery store cheddars can go for about six dollars a pound,
Speaker 1: Mozzarella might go for like eight dollars a pound, but
Speaker 1: pool goes for six hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And the reason is it's mostly made of donkey milk. Right,
Speaker 1: It's sixty percent donkey milk forty percent goat milk. So
Speaker 1: donkeys are doing the heavy lifting there. And apparently, unlike goats,
Speaker 1: donkeys are stingy milk givers, like you have to milk
Speaker 1: them three times a day. They only give milk six
Speaker 1: months of the year, so production is really tricky. Plus
Speaker 1: there's only one farm that makes pool, and it's in
Speaker 1: the donkey reserve in Serbia, right.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, for whatever reason, I have not seen
Speaker 2: this six hundred dollars pound cheese in the Pickley Wiggly
Speaker 2: in Alabama. But my question is is it any good?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I love that you're asking me, like
Speaker 1: I have like caviar and pool breath this morning. But
Speaker 1: so if you do a quick internet search, it's supposedly
Speaker 1: nutty and earthy, and it tastes like manchigo. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like that special. But I actually read this review
Speaker 1: from this cheese blogger, Missed cheesemonger, who's a cheese connoisseur
Speaker 1: from San Francisco, and it immediately made me want to
Speaker 1: try some.
Speaker 2: So this is what she says.
Speaker 1: Quote. Once I took a bite, I understood what made
Speaker 1: this cheese special. There were so many layers a flavor,
Speaker 1: from demi cell butter at the foundation to the middle
Speaker 1: flavors of sweet grasses to the extremely heady floral notes
Speaker 1: that lingered in a ridiculously long finish. This was no
Speaker 1: ordinary fresh cheese. It was aromatic to the extreme. I
Speaker 1: might as well have been inhaling the scent of milk
Speaker 1: on a Serbian hillside. Texture Wise, it is not so unusual. Oh,
Speaker 1: but that lingering, longing aftertaste, it was like nothing I
Speaker 1: had ever tasted.
Speaker 2: I actually just ordered some on Amazon while you were
Speaker 2: talking about it. It sounded so appealing.
Speaker 1: So she points out there are only about one hundred
Speaker 1: jennies or female donkeys that can produce the milk for
Speaker 1: the special cheese, and the fresh cheese is often best
Speaker 1: eaten the day it's made, which I'm sure also drives
Speaker 1: up that price.
Speaker 2: And actually that's the cheese that Djokovic was supposedly trying
Speaker 2: to corner the market on, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I heard so much about that.
Speaker 1: It was basically this drummed up story that the producers
Speaker 1: at the farm and a poorly sourced Daily Mail article
Speaker 1: made up. But Djokovic apparently has no interest in a
Speaker 1: monopoly on donkey cheese.
Speaker 2: Okay, mainly tennis y okay, got it's all right? So
Speaker 2: that's number one. What's number two on your list? Moose cheese, okay.
Speaker 1: Which feels like it could use better branding than just
Speaker 1: moose cheese. But it goes for five hundred dollars a pound,
Speaker 1: and again it's.
Speaker 2: The steel compared with some donkey.
Speaker 1: Cheese, pretty laborious because you're trying to milk a twelve
Speaker 1: hundred pound moose here It's made from a place called
Speaker 1: the Elkhouse in Sweden, and according to Chef's pencil, all
Speaker 1: the moose cheese comes from three moose named Goulan, Juna,
Speaker 1: and Helga. Okay, Helga's cheese is my favorite, obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, of course, wow that is that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: I do want to try both of those. And I
Speaker 2: feel like all these cheeses are expensive because they're not
Speaker 2: goat or cow cheeses. So I'm I'm predicting number three
Speaker 2: is going to be elephant cheese.
Speaker 1: Am I right? Well, no elephant cheese on my list.
Speaker 1: But I do feel like the next few cheeses that
Speaker 1: are listed across the internet as the most expensive cheeses
Speaker 1: are kind of frauds. Like there's Stilt and Gold, which
Speaker 1: is flecked with this edible gold leaf, which I don't
Speaker 1: feel like it should count because it's almost like like saying, like,
Speaker 1: I mean you the world's most expensive burger, and I
Speaker 1: put truffles under a big matt something right, Like, it's
Speaker 1: not really expensive on its own. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: say Number three is Wyke Farm Cheddar. It's supposedly this
Speaker 1: incredibly tasty cheddar. It sells for two hundred dollars a pound,
Speaker 1: and the family that makes it has kept the recipe
Speaker 1: of secret since eighteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So at two hundred dollars a pound,
Speaker 2: if you're stealing one of these giant wheels of cheddar,
Speaker 2: you could make a lot of money off of that.
Speaker 2: But doesn't it feel like stealing one of these super
Speaker 2: expensive cheeses is almost like stealing a Picasso off the
Speaker 2: wall of a museum, like it's worth a lot more.
Speaker 2: But also someone is going to be looking for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's some cheese detectives out there who specialize
Speaker 1: in cheese thefts, which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: I love that as a job. All right, I do
Speaker 2: want to hear about that, But before we do, let's
Speaker 2: talk about cheese's origins. So just a quick primer on this.
Speaker 2: While we don't know the first instance of humans making cheese,
Speaker 2: we do know that cheesemaking is related to the domestication
Speaker 2: of milk producer animals, no surprise there, now that goes
Speaker 2: back about eight to ten thousand years ago. You can
Speaker 2: also find cheesemaking in Greek mythology, which is pretty interesting
Speaker 2: to see. And there's evidence of cheese and cheesemaking that's
Speaker 2: been found on Egyptian two murals. These date back probably
Speaker 2: four thousands incredible. Yeah, it's a long time ago. But
Speaker 2: the truth is cheese was probably discovered accidentally.
Speaker 1: So I actually remember that bit because we did a
Speaker 1: show about craft singles and we talked about how cheese, penicillin,
Speaker 1: and the slinky were like the greatest accidental distoperies.
Speaker 2: Easy, easy, top three, all equally important. But there are
Speaker 2: a few different theories of how we got cheese. It
Speaker 2: could have been the practice of storing milk and containers
Speaker 2: made from stomachs of animals. We've talked about that a
Speaker 2: little bit which naturally contained this enzyme called rennet, and
Speaker 2: that would cause the milk to coagulate it separates into
Speaker 2: curds and whey. Now, another possibility is the practice of
Speaker 2: salting curdled milk for preservation, or the addition of fruit
Speaker 2: juices to milk, which would result in the curdling of
Speaker 2: the milk.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how my kids accidentally make cheese
Speaker 1: when they leave a carton of milk in the back
Speaker 1: of the fridge. Cheae long, but I can't imagine eating that.
Speaker 2: Now, It's not the type of thing Dylan I think
Speaker 2: would serve on a ritz cracker. I don't seed on
Speaker 2: the plate back there, but if you dump some salt
Speaker 2: on that glop, you basically have early cheese. The Roman
Speaker 2: Empire produced and traded hundreds of varieties of cheese, so
Speaker 2: it was certainly an industry back then, and trade with
Speaker 2: Europe could explain how the cheese got to Asia. But
Speaker 2: there could have been parallel thinking at work here too,
Speaker 2: the Tibetans, the Mongolians, They've also got this long history
Speaker 2: of producing cheeses. And of course cheese has been produced
Speaker 2: in America since the early seventeenth century, when the English
Speaker 2: Puritans brought their knowledge of dairy farming and cheesemaking from
Speaker 2: the Old World over to the colonies.
Speaker 1: Right and now Americans are so obsessed with cheese that
Speaker 1: we feel comfortable wearing like giant cheese hats on our
Speaker 1: heads to sports games.
Speaker 2: I love those cheeseheats. I've always though about getting one.
Speaker 2: I never have. But interestingly, Wisconsin didn't start out in
Speaker 2: the cheese business really. This date was actually a leading
Speaker 2: wheat supplier before the Civil War, but as crop eels
Speaker 2: started to fail, Wisconsin farmers knew they needed to pivot
Speaker 2: to something, and they pivoted to dairy. Now. At the
Speaker 2: same time, settlers from New England and Ohio and New
Speaker 2: York and other places in that region they started moving west,
Speaker 2: as did the Europeans. So all of these folks start
Speaker 2: bringing this interest in cheese and knowledge of cheese production
Speaker 2: to the area. So the result is today that Wisconsin
Speaker 2: produces more than a quarter of all domestic cheese in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cheese is of course a huge business, part of
Speaker 2: why we're talking about it here. But the US cheese
Speaker 2: retail market is growing and it's slated to reach twenty
Speaker 2: seven point eight billion dollars by twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The retail cheese sales in the UK are expected to
Speaker 2: reach five point two billion euros by twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: So obviously a huge amounts of money and it makes
Speaker 1: on That's why cheese crime is a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as far as commodities that are worth stealing,
Speaker 2: cheese is ripe. But yeah, you like what I did there,
Speaker 2: But think about it compared to the other dairy products.
Speaker 2: It's durable and it's easy to transport. It doesn't melt
Speaker 2: like ice cream or spill or leak or spoil as
Speaker 2: fast as milk, and it's ubiquitous like it's in cuisines
Speaker 2: around the world. People everywhere love cheese, which makes it
Speaker 2: easier to sell. Plus, unlike guns or drugs, cheese is
Speaker 2: mostly legal, which is a good segue into some cheese jackings.
Speaker 2: This was a big thing in Italy back in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. Apparently gangs would lie in wait at
Speaker 2: service stations on the Milan Bologna Motorway and as soon
Speaker 2: as a truck driver would stop for coffee, they'd ambush them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It kind of makes driving a cheese truck seem pretty dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in one instance, a driver was threatened by
Speaker 1: four armed men and then tied up while his van
Speaker 1: carrying three hundred wheels of cheese was driven away. The
Speaker 1: cheese wheels were then taken to this industrial estate. They
Speaker 1: were cut up and sold in stores. And this happened
Speaker 1: for quite a while with different bands of criminals. In
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, a group of criminals were arrested in Moderna
Speaker 1: for stealing roughly nine hundred thousand dollars worth of parmesan cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and according to the Italian news site Al Sol twenty four,
Speaker 1: the criminals were so savvy that they stole over twenty
Speaker 1: thirty nine wheels of parmesan reggiano cheese over the course
Speaker 1: of roughly two years.
Speaker 2: It feels so weird that there's basically this like Ocean's
Speaker 2: eleven of cheese. I don't know, there's something fascinating about it,
Speaker 2: but in general, it must be so hard to catch
Speaker 2: a cheese thief because it's not like you can track
Speaker 2: these like using GPS or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So producers and the Italian farmers union, which is
Speaker 1: called Colderetti, are experimenting with microchips and they're hidden in
Speaker 1: the crusts of the cheese, which means they are actually
Speaker 1: more identifiable. They also have marketings burnt on the crust
Speaker 1: so that you can help police track the stolen cheese.
Speaker 1: But it's still a huge problem. A survey by Coldoretti
Speaker 1: found that parmesan is the most shoplifted item in Italy.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it's a little different than here where it's
Speaker 2: mostly like I would guess, batteries and deodorant or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, we might need that deodorant because
Speaker 1: we're also hard at work stealing cheese. It's not just Italy.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, seventy thousand pounds of cheese were stolen
Speaker 1: from a cheese store in Germantown, Wisconsin and later recovered
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee. Apparently the thieves i'mdoing was trying to sell
Speaker 1: the cheese on the cheap, like they tried to hawk
Speaker 1: their contraband cheese for just a dollar a pound. And
Speaker 1: as you well know, no self respecting Wisconsin retailer would
Speaker 1: expect to pay so total, and nor would they buy
Speaker 1: the cheese without knowing its prominence. But you know, these
Speaker 1: thefts they make the Wisconsin cheese community really really upset.
Speaker 1: There's this guy, Tyson Wormheister, the co owner of Mars
Speaker 1: Cheese Castle, and he said, a cheese like that not
Speaker 1: available for use. It saddens me.
Speaker 2: I feel like I need to know what Mars Cheese
Speaker 2: Castle is.
Speaker 1: It's a castle shaped restaurant specializing in cheese.
Speaker 2: Okay, that sounds a bite right. Well, I know we
Speaker 2: want to talk more about cheese crimes and of course
Speaker 2: those cheese detectives that you teased earlier, but let's take
Speaker 2: a quick break first. Welcome back to part time genius
Speaker 2: where we're talking cheese crimes. So there are obviously lots
Speaker 2: of these cheese stuff stories. There's this one from twenty
Speaker 2: thirteen where a guy showed up to a manufacturer in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: forged a bunch of paperwork, then drove away with two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars worth of monster. There's a story from
Speaker 2: France in twenty fifteen where thieves broke into a dairy
Speaker 2: and stole one hundred wheels of specialty Conte cheese. They
Speaker 2: boosted four tons four tons of cheese. And there's another
Speaker 2: of these high stories from a seller in France where
Speaker 2: seven hundred blocks of delicious Saint Nectar cheese were stolen.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, I mean, just how much cheese these bandits
Speaker 2: are taking off with. It's not a little bit of cheese. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's insane, which brings us to cheese detectives. This is
Speaker 2: great piece on the Today Show site about this officer.
Speaker 2: His name is Inspector Georgia Cappovanni, which sounds right for
Speaker 2: a cheese detective.
Speaker 1: And this is from two thousand and eight, so it's
Speaker 1: a little dated, but the agency actually still exists. But
Speaker 1: this is what the article says about him. Quote in
Speaker 1: the Wild West of gastronomical ripoffs, men like Cappovanni are
Speaker 1: a kind of sheriff. They're sworn judicial officers who can
Speaker 1: demand admission to premises, examine documentation, and confiscate products at wholesalers,
Speaker 1: warehouses or supermarket aisles. And according to the article, they
Speaker 1: can even tote weapons if they want. It talks about
Speaker 1: how Cappavanni and his men race around Europe protecting Italy's
Speaker 1: very special products like matrella from Buffala is one, hams
Speaker 1: from Parma or whatever. They'll go into what the article
Speaker 1: describes as cathedrals of ham, the shops where the meat
Speaker 1: is just air drying, and warehouses, and they'll poke the
Speaker 1: hem with this special needle made from the shin bone
Speaker 1: of a horse and that apparently releases these extraordinary aromas.
Speaker 1: Then the inspector, who I guess is also a gormand
Speaker 1: will sniff the needle to make sure it has that
Speaker 1: special Parma proscudo scent. A friendly they see something like
Speaker 1: a thousand Parma ham knockoffs in one of these raids.
Speaker 2: And then how do they catch these folks?
Speaker 1: Apparently one of these ham counterfeiters had like twenty aliases
Speaker 1: and the Spanish police have been chasing them around for decades.
Speaker 1: But Capavani and his team have this whole network of
Speaker 1: salespeople who double as informants, and so they tip off
Speaker 1: the investigators whenever they scent something fishy.
Speaker 2: There are people out there doing much more interesting stuff
Speaker 2: then we are legal and illegal. But are they now
Speaker 2: doing this for cheese as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And more than stopping the heist, this team is
Speaker 1: basically set up to chase ripoffs, right, Like the producers
Speaker 1: know that if people start thinking parmeham is a less
Speaker 1: quality ham and it's less sweet, then they'll start thinking like,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between that and some of those sort
Speaker 1: of like grocery knockoffs or whatever. Right, And it's the
Speaker 1: same for cheese. So there's this scene of Cappavanni running
Speaker 1: his hand across the rind and pointing out why this
Speaker 1: branding on a food is clearly counterfeit. Apparently there's a
Speaker 1: whole system of branding machines that the authenticated manufacturers use
Speaker 1: that makes slightly imperfect marks to thwart counterfeiters, and the
Speaker 1: machines are really closely monitored. They're switched out every three months,
Speaker 1: which you know feels insane, but Cappavanni takes pride and
Speaker 1: sniffing out the fakes, and in fact, he claims to
Speaker 1: have a museum of hundreds of fraudulent parmesans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, there's this whole world of fakes out there.
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that kept coming up
Speaker 2: as we were preparing for this episode. And you know,
Speaker 2: the old saying I think is something like if your
Speaker 2: cheese is fishy, it might be sawdust. I don't think,
Speaker 2: I don't think. I know that's not familiar with that one.
Speaker 2: I think mamma had it cross stitched on a pillow point.
Speaker 2: But back in twenty sixteen, Time revealed a jaw dropping
Speaker 2: report on manufacturers like Castle Cheese, not to be confused
Speaker 2: with the Mars cheese Castle that you talked about before,
Speaker 2: which produced quote parmesan that contains significant amounts of woodpulp
Speaker 2: as a filler.
Speaker 1: It's like a cheese made for termites.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's gross. And some experts believe about a fifth
Speaker 2: of the parmesan cheese bought at grocery stores is actually mislabeled.
Speaker 2: And representatives for the Emman Taylor Cheesemakers, which we usually
Speaker 2: referred to as Swiss cheese. Say that around ten percent
Speaker 2: of the Swiss cheese of the market is fake. It's
Speaker 2: true for all kinds of cheese and chego Camembert, but
Speaker 2: parmesan is hit particularly hard. Sales of parmegano regiano cheese
Speaker 2: are about two point four to four billion, according to
Speaker 2: Food and Wine, but fake parmesan takes an almost equal
Speaker 2: wedge of the wheel, with about two point oh eight
Speaker 2: billion dollars every single year.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize the size of the market.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, weirdly, cheese has been stuffed with more sinister
Speaker 2: substances than just sawdust. And twenty twenty three customs officials
Speaker 2: encountered a pickup truck transporting four large wheels of cheese
Speaker 2: from Mexico into Texas, and they had hunch that something
Speaker 2: was off.
Speaker 1: Here, which doesn't sound strange at all. I always load
Speaker 1: up my truck with the giant cheese wheels.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, Well, actually an X ray scan of
Speaker 2: these cheese revealed quote anomalies there, which upon further inspection,
Speaker 2: turned out to be seventeen point eight pounds of cocaine.
Speaker 2: So that steals like that's an anomaly, you know, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: now this is fair. I have never I don't think
Speaker 2: I've eaten cheese with a bunch of cocaine. But it's
Speaker 2: a good idea hiding stuff in cheese. Like if you
Speaker 2: wanted to propose, and you put a diamond ring and
Speaker 2: you know, deep in a wheel of cheese, there your
Speaker 2: you know your potential fiance would never go digging around
Speaker 2: in there. It's a great place to hide stuff.
Speaker 1: Speaking of soft cheeses, do you know that Switzerland used
Speaker 1: to have a cartel that was responsible for the popular
Speaker 1: already a fun.
Speaker 2: Due Wait did you say a cartel? I mean it
Speaker 2: was more of a union, all right, So why did
Speaker 2: you say cartel? Though? I'm curious.
Speaker 1: I'm a Brooklyn dad. I need some excitement, and I
Speaker 1: guess more than a few articles online referred to it
Speaker 1: as a cartel because of the way they fixed prices
Speaker 1: and manipulated the market. Anyway, it was called the Association
Speaker 1: of Swiss Cheese Export Firms, better known as the Schweizer
Speaker 1: kas Union okay or Swiss Cheese Union. This was an
Speaker 1: organized monopoly designed to use cheese export revenue to offset
Speaker 1: and milk production costs. Because of World War One and
Speaker 1: the SCU fixed prices and production limits, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: they restricted what types of cheese could be made in
Speaker 1: the country. So actually Switzerland used to make over one
Speaker 1: thousand different varietals and they reduced it to just seven
Speaker 1: or eight, and they favored Swiss cheese, you know, or
Speaker 1: what we know as Swiss cheese. It was super effective.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty nine, Wisconsin newspaper reported that consumption of
Speaker 1: Swiss cheese had increased in the US because of a
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars ad campaign run by the Swiss
Speaker 1: Cheese Union, which it also copyrighted the cheese in the US,
Speaker 1: calling it Switzerland Cheese.
Speaker 2: And so that's why when we say Swiss cheese, we
Speaker 2: mean Emma Taylor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was just the beginning. In the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, the SEU ramped up their promotions and they
Speaker 1: sent a young woman named Elizabeth Koenigstor to the US
Speaker 1: as the ambassad Dress of Switzerland Cheese.
Speaker 2: It's a great title.
Speaker 1: She was beautiful, multilingual, and expert skier, just kind of
Speaker 1: like the perfect cliche of like a Swiss woman. And
Speaker 1: she would travel the US giving these cooking lessons for
Speaker 1: dishes like Kisch Lorraine and fondue, and also teaching Americans
Speaker 1: things like you're not supposed to freeze your cheese, which
Speaker 1: was apparently a thing we used to do regularly. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the SEU went really hard on fondue in the seventies,
Speaker 1: mainly because it's easy to make and it requires a
Speaker 1: lot of cheese. So they really sort of like flooded
Speaker 1: the interesting and making fond and they ran these global
Speaker 1: ad campaigns featuring these beautiful Swiss people in ski sweaters,
Speaker 1: making it seem kind of healthy, healthy.
Speaker 2: It does sound like they're marketing and almost like a
Speaker 2: sports drink in a way. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like everyone should sub out your Gatorade
Speaker 1: for a thermos of Swisses.
Speaker 2: Really appetizing manga.
Speaker 1: But the SEU was everywhere. From nineteen ninety two to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, they were the main sponsor of the
Speaker 1: Swiss national ski team. So the team's actually wore these
Speaker 1: yellow suits with cheesehole motifs. I mean, I just want
Speaker 1: to show you this.
Speaker 2: Picture that is amazing.
Speaker 1: They look like the cheese, I know, and they actually
Speaker 1: had holes in their suit which caused drag, which is
Speaker 1: kind of annoying to a skier.
Speaker 2: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like you're representing your country in
Speaker 2: this huge athletic excellence performance and you've trained your whole
Speaker 2: life to wear the uniform and the cheese suit. It
Speaker 2: feels a little bit demeaning to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too. Anyway, By the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: the Swiss Center meant towards the SEU had changed. It
Speaker 1: was seen less as a protector of this like national industry,
Speaker 1: and more's a system of power abuse. Corruption scandals didn't
Speaker 1: help either. In nineteen ninety six, a former SEU executive
Speaker 1: was arrested for skimming at least three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand Swiss francs and a cheese export price scam, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine the SEU was dissolved the Swiss
Speaker 1: Museum rights quote. During the eighties and nineties, the Cheese
Speaker 1: Union came to be regarded principally as a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: of abuse of power in fondue.
Speaker 2: The abuse of fondue. That's great, all right, but I
Speaker 2: feel like we should get back to your boring Brooklyn
Speaker 2: dad thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think I said boring.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, when you were talking about cartels, and
Speaker 2: there have been these links between the cheese industry and
Speaker 2: the mafia. There's this story about al Capone, who owned
Speaker 2: this string of dairy farms near Fondu Lac, Wisconsin, forcing
Speaker 2: New York pizzerias to use this very like rubbery mob cheese.
Speaker 2: And as the story goes, the only places permitted to
Speaker 2: use good mozzarella where the old fashioned pizza parlers, you know,
Speaker 2: places like Lombardes, Patsy's, John's, which could continue doing so
Speaker 2: only if they promised to never serve slices. So, according
Speaker 2: to the author Jonathan Quitney in his book Vicious Circles
Speaker 2: the Mafia in the Marketplace, this is why John's Pizzeria
Speaker 2: on Bleeker Street still has the warning no slices on
Speaker 2: its awning today. Apparently neighborhood pizzerias that serve slices and
Speaker 2: refuse to use Copone's cheese would be firebombed. But according
Speaker 2: to historian Scott Wiener that we both know from Scott's
Speaker 2: Pizza tours, the story is probably not true. It doesn't
Speaker 2: really make any sense. He says, the reason that most
Speaker 2: of these places don't sell slices is that they use
Speaker 2: these coal fired ovens, which would just burn any slice
Speaker 2: that you were trying to reheat.
Speaker 1: I love Scott so much. I remember the first time
Speaker 1: I met him and I heard he was pizza obsessed.
Speaker 1: His opening line was, so, what do you like about pizza?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like the CRSs the cheese, and then
Speaker 1: you just like went on to you know, give me
Speaker 1: this fascinating history of pizza. But I just assume tho's
Speaker 1: no slices places were trying to sell you more pizza.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they are. But the no slices might
Speaker 2: be a little bit of mafia lore, but the mob
Speaker 2: shaking down people over mozzarella is on the record. So
Speaker 2: Joseph Banano, a mafia godfather, partially owned Grande this cheese
Speaker 2: company based in Fondula, Wisconsin. That's where components handful of
Speaker 2: dairy farms were two. So this March nineteen eighty report
Speaker 2: from the Pennsylvania Crime Commission states that Banano quote initiated
Speaker 2: a conspiracy to control the specialty cheese business in the
Speaker 2: United States in the early nineteen forties, and that he
Speaker 2: and his associates controlled the activities of the largest and
Speaker 2: most prosperous specialty cheese companies I love.
Speaker 1: That they came out with that report in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, said I wanted to go ahead and take
Speaker 2: care of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we've got the mobs like this potential to make
Speaker 1: a lot of money and they're putting a toll hold
Speaker 1: in the industry, which is, you know, pretty standard for
Speaker 1: the mob. But I also kind of love the idea
Speaker 1: of al Capone having his own dairy farm and just
Speaker 1: like sweet right, I know, just like nuzzling every cow's
Speaker 1: nose before he puts them in the barn at night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a weird image. But since we're on the mob,
Speaker 2: the Italian mafia, or more specifically, the Camora, is also
Speaker 2: pretty mixed up with buffalo mozzarella, which is made in Campania. Now,
Speaker 2: in the early aughts, the Camora controlled Italy's biggest buffalo
Speaker 2: mozzarella maker, the Magara Group. Now, obviously, mozzarella is hugely
Speaker 2: popular as a cheese, which meant buffalo milk was basically
Speaker 2: liquid gold for the most part, and that's what attracted
Speaker 2: the interest of the Camara. So the Kamora started charging
Speaker 2: this protection money sure, and in early two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: during one weekend, two well known cheese houses just went
Speaker 2: up in Flames, La Perla and Barlodi, which helped them
Speaker 2: make their case to the man manufacturers. Of course, taking
Speaker 2: care of barns full of buffalo comes with its own problems,
Speaker 2: like apparently buffalo are very susceptible to infectious bacterial outbreaks
Speaker 2: like bruce iliosis, and controlling these farms suspected of bruceiliosis
Speaker 2: isn't easy and it requires you know, herd depopulation from
Speaker 2: time to time, and obviously that's not great for mozzarella production.
Speaker 2: So often state veterinarians would show up to inspect the
Speaker 2: farm and instead of getting to do their work, they'd
Speaker 2: be met by the members of the Kamora at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: Like sometimes the mobsters would within the herd by hiding
Speaker 2: a bunch of buffalo.
Speaker 1: So state officials are there, they're inspecting the farm. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it's like one guy's job to hide a bunch of
Speaker 1: sick buffalo.
Speaker 2: I guess, I mean buffalo are huge, though, it's like
Speaker 2: trying to hide a pack of land rovers. You know,
Speaker 2: just starting to imagine this. But if that didn't work,
Speaker 2: they would just force sanitary officials to sign the certificate
Speaker 2: of good health despite the fact that the herd is
Speaker 2: clearly infected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seems like an easier plan be Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Kumora's involvement in Buffalo mozzarella has actually
Speaker 2: threatened the ecosystem of the entire region. They got involved
Speaker 2: with waste management back in the nineteen eighties, and according
Speaker 2: to a mafia treasurer who testified about this in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven, the Kumora had been illegally dumping and burning
Speaker 2: millions of tons of toxic waste in Campania, leading to
Speaker 2: reports of cancer clusters and other health issues.
Speaker 1: That's awful. So obviously a cheese can be involved in crime,
Speaker 1: but there's no such thing as illegal cheese, right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, Danish feta is actually illegal. According to
Speaker 2: the EU, feta was awarded the appellation of being a
Speaker 2: designated Greek product, but Denmark was producing it and exporting
Speaker 2: it to non EU territories, and so in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: the European Commission took Denmark to the European Court of Justice.
Speaker 2: And of course there are really gross cheeses, like you know,
Speaker 2: Kasu marzu, so that's illegal too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Sardinian cheese with maggots that jump out at you,
Speaker 1: which is pretty disgusting.
Speaker 2: I'd say that that counts as disgusting. And there's a
Speaker 2: hairy cheese fermented in the stomach of a baby goat
Speaker 2: and left out in the open air. It's this delicacy,
Speaker 2: also from Sardinia called Soukalu, and people are apparently selling
Speaker 2: it from their cars. I guess that's what I read.
Speaker 2: It's according to this piece and the outline. But it's interesting.
Speaker 2: The outline rights that these illegal cheeses aren't just a
Speaker 2: matter of unusual taste. There are also low stakes political
Speaker 2: statements of people telling the EU or whoever they can,
Speaker 2: that they can't dictate values on them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I don't want any of that
Speaker 1: maggot cheese in my mouth. But I also support Sardinia's
Speaker 1: right to protect their culture.
Speaker 2: It's good for you to take a stand. Mag I
Speaker 2: usually it'll make political statements, but that's a pretty big one.
Speaker 2: And here's the mystery cheese you can definitely support. It's
Speaker 2: amazing how much cheese comes up in crime novels, right, seriously, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many crime novels with cheese puns
Speaker 2: in the title. There's just a few examples here up
Speaker 2: to no gouda to bree or not to bree final
Speaker 2: fondue that sounds dramatic, clabbered by camon Bear. I told
Speaker 2: you there's so many of these shudder off Dale, No, No,
Speaker 2: these are I swear, I am not making these up.
Speaker 2: These are all real titles of books that you can
Speaker 2: probably buy at the airport, I would guess.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, I know you've got a flight to catch,
Speaker 1: But how about we do a quick fact off before
Speaker 1: you fly out?
Speaker 2: Let's do it all right, here's a quick one. Did
Speaker 2: you know cheese can get you high?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've definitely shotgun to Pizzar before, so I
Speaker 1: think it tracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fair. Well. According to a twenty fifteen study
Speaker 2: at Mount Sinai, there's a chemical in cheese called casin,
Speaker 2: and when you digest it, it can trigger your brain's opioid receptors,
Speaker 2: which may be why we loved going out for late
Speaker 2: night cheese dip in college so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah we did. Do you know that eatam cheese never
Speaker 1: goes back? It just hardens, which is why it was
Speaker 1: often taken to sea. And I hadn't realized that. It
Speaker 1: actually explains one of my favorite facts that eatam cheese
Speaker 1: was used by a navy ship in Uruguay when it
Speaker 1: ran out of cannonballs, and it actually want to battle
Speaker 1: that way, which makes more sense why they had so
Speaker 1: much old cheese on board.
Speaker 2: Now, okay, all right, well here's a fun one from Kotkey.
Speaker 2: Did you know that in French pie charts are actually
Speaker 2: called les Camembert after the cheese or sometimes and I'm
Speaker 2: going to need Jess who's helping today, pronounce this one.
Speaker 2: But is un diagram in fromage that is so far
Speaker 2: away from what it works. Okay, we're going to go
Speaker 2: with it, which is her way of saying it was
Speaker 2: so off that we're just going to have to ignore it.
Speaker 2: A cheese diagram. So meanwhile, in Brazil, pie charts are
Speaker 2: known as pizza charts.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense. Brazil is supposedly one of the places
Speaker 1: that has the best pizza in the world. Speaking of pizza,
Speaker 1: you remember stuff crust pizza from Pizza Hut do I yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll ask.
Speaker 2: For it sometimes and these commercials where they encouraged you
Speaker 2: to eat the pizza the wrong way, crust first.
Speaker 1: And weirdly, Donald Trump was the spokesperson. Okay, but Pizza
Speaker 1: had developed that in nineteen ninety five and sales of
Speaker 1: it were insane, apparently over three hundred million dollars of
Speaker 1: sales in the first year. And this is from an
Speaker 1: article in mash dot com. But the crazier thing is
Speaker 1: that foods that are stuffed with cheese, like the stuff
Speaker 1: pressed pizza or Taco Bell's caesalupa, are guided by an
Speaker 1: organization called Dairy Management INK, and Bloomberg actually refers to
Speaker 1: them as the Illuminati of Cheese.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is from a Bloomberg article. For the
Speaker 1: past eight years, the group has been the hidden hand
Speaker 1: guiding most of fast foods dairy hits, including and especially
Speaker 1: the caesalalupa. In twenty twelve, it embedded food scientists Lisam
Speaker 1: and Clintalk with the Taco Bell product development team to
Speaker 1: develop a cheese filling that would stretch like taffy when heated.
Speaker 1: Then they figured out how to mass produce it and
Speaker 1: helped invent some proprietary machinery along the way. So apparently
Speaker 1: the group has a two hundred million dollar budget from
Speaker 1: cheese manufacturers to create cheese centric products to slip more
Speaker 1: cheese into our food isn't that incredible?
Speaker 2: That is wild you You really saved the best for
Speaker 2: last and this whole thing. I don't think I can
Speaker 2: top an illuminati of cheese, especially in a cheese crime episode.
Speaker 2: So with that, I'm going to give you today's fact
Speaker 2: Off Trophy.
Speaker 1: Fun and I'm going to dedicate this to my colleague
Speaker 1: Kate's dog, who I am certain is listening, always listens
Speaker 1: to our show. His name is Cheesy or Cheese for short.
Speaker 2: I like that. I'm sure he'll appreciate that. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: that's it for this week's Part Time Genius. Thanks everybody
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaytiguler
Speaker 1: and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with
Speaker 1: support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for
Speaker 1: iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media
Speaker 1: support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.