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Selects: Chopsticks > Forks · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, chuck here, we are moving forward through time
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty, the year of COVID, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I think we're at sort of ground zero here, everybody,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: because the date for this episode is March seventeenth, and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I know that that was right around the time that
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: things shut down because my birthday is March fifteenth, and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: one of my very good friends birthday is March twelfth,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and every year we go out on a birthday dinner
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: with our wives and family, and I remember being out
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: might have been like the sixteenth or seventeenth of that year,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to dinner and us being.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Like should we be out?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: You guys like they're starting to say things are getting weird,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and we're all washing our hands and saying the.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: ABC's and stuff.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: But this feels like maybe the last dinner we're going
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to have for a while, And it was that was
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the last dinner out I had for a very long time.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: But this episode from March seventeen, twenty twenty, right when
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: it all shut down, is pretty great. It's all about chopsticks,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and it's called Chopsticks Greater than Forks.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Hey and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: is stuff you should know. All about the song Chopsticks.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I wondered if you're going to make a joke about that.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Jerry beat me to it when she was like, what
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: are we recording today? And I told her she's like
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: the song d D D D. No, it's d D D.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Didn't Oh is that chopsticks? Aren't there two chopsticks? No,
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I'm just teasing. That's heart and soul.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, so what I said from big that was chopsticks?
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Right? Totally? Yekay, Robert uh, Robert Losia. Yeah, man, I
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: should have continued rolling and said James Kahn.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a very James conn like roll,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: wasn't it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Totally? I think he played that role in locket in.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: Well, he's a crime boss in Bottle Rocket Way.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a good movie truly. We watched Misery
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: the other day. It still holds up.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I remember seeing that for the first time
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: in Athens when I was in college.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: M hm, so great. Kathy Bates can do no wrong.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: She did great. But if you watch James Kahn, he
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: did really well too, Like sure, his whole kind of
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: trepidacious manner toward her was really well done and not
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: overdone at all, And like he did a great job
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And he had to lay there in a bed for
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: weeks and weeks and act. Yeah, sounds like a dream.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And if he balked at it, they would attach
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: a catheter to him and make him pee in his
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: own mouth as punishment, like a little known fact about
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: that movie.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Oh so chopsticks, Right, we should point out here that
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: in researching this chopsticks and customs and etiquette, if we
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: covered all the countries and all that stuff that use chopsticks,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: we'd be here all day. Yeah, so there's kind of
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: a focus here on Japan.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Well, they seem to be a little uh, the most
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: sensitive to transgressions with chopsticks out of all of the
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Asian cultures. I think perhaps they have the most rules
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: against them at the very least.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you read them, it's they could all
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: be summed up as just don't be a dumb American.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, or don't have any fun whatsoever with your chopsticks.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Is another way to buy.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: You're like, what's wrong with making them antenna's in a
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: restaurant and going mart meat?
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Right, I'm a Walrus, now, why can't I be a Walrus?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: But we are talking chopsticks, not the song. Sorry to
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: disappoint you everybody, but I saw that that song is
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: actually called chopsticks because it was originally called the Celebrated
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: chop Waltz. Okay, written by a sixteen year old schoolgirl
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: from England. It seems about right, sure, so, but we're
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: talking about the utensils, and like, when you think chopsticks,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: obviously you think like Asia, sure, and you don't think
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: that there was ever anything but chopsticks in the history
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: of Asia. And while chopsticks are actually surprisingly old, I
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: think they go back about seven thousand years. I also
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: saw five thousand years. I'm going with seven. I think
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: they're actually about as ancient as that. They weren't like
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: the go to utensil for Asia until this millennium.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the spoon was kind of the go to. Yeah,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: who knew the word chopstick? They think maybe pigeon English
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Chinese pigeon English meaning chop chop or quickly right, But
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: you know this is one of these etymologies.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: It's sort of tough to pin down.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: It looks like, but that's the English word for it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: In all of the chopstick using cultures, they have their
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: own word, like in Japan it's hashi, it's kuwa easy,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: in China nice. I'm not sure if I said that
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: right at all. Geo garok in Korean, all.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Right, not not as nice?
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: And deui dei dua in Vietnamese. All right, I'm sorry
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: half of the world's population.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I love that you started strong in Japan though, because
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: you feel pretty confident in your Japanese pronunciations.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to go.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Yes, I have a great tutor, that's right.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: So five to seven thousand years ago they were used
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: initially for cooking, and we'll get more into the ins
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and outs of the history, but they were made from
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: twigs probably, and it was much much later, Like you
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: said that, they were table utensils, right, and it was
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: all very much like practicality based.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because initially they figured out pretty early on these,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: the Chinese from five thousand to seven thousand years ago,
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: that's a really bad idea to stick your hand into
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: a pot of boiling water to get something out of it,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: say like a bone or a piece of meat or
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: something like that. It's way better to use a twig,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: and it's even better to use two twigs, as if
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: they were kind of a pair of detached tweezers. That's
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: apparently where they initially started to come into use was
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: during cooking and food preparation, not the actual eating process.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: There was a big population boom in China at one point,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: some might say, there continues to be said, and the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: resources became a little more scarce. They started cutting their
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: food up into little tiny pieces for reasons of like it.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Helps it to cook faster. I wonder I didn't.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: See anything about this, but I wonder if that also
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: just made it.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: More shareable among a larger family.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I could see that. That's a great point too. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: isn't it fascinating though, the idea that a population boom
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: led to widespread use of the chopstick.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. And then Confucius also was a vegetarian
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: and noted knife hater. He has a quote about knives.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the slaughterhouse and the kitchen, and he allows no knives
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: on his table. And I think that was a little
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: more because a knive was equated with eating meat, right,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: less than like it's a garbage tool.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: You don't You don't need a knife to eat a plant. Basically.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, some might argue you might want to cut a
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: piece of broccoli.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Maybe, but you don't have to. I just summed up Confucius.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: That's the level of arrogance that I'm operating at now.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And I think some of the early and you know,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: it started in China, and then you know, pretty soon Korea, Vietnam, Japan,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: we're all using them. But I think that Chinese chopsticks
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: were joined at what they are now?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: What are they called now?
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: If they're joined and you got to split them apart?
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: Oh warabashi that's Japanese. This is the term for disposable chopsticks.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, But I thought the Chinese chopsticks were originally joined
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, No, it was Japanese. Okay. There was a single
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: piece of bamboo that was like split, kind of like
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: giant tweezers.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I'm reading this now. I had a sometimes
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I just now reading this, Well, no, I get sometimes
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: and it's the dumbest thing. But I get confused between
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: former and ladder. Oh yeah, it's not that I get confused.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I just have to go back and sort of picture
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it in my brain.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: It just takes an extra second, I think for everybody
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: that's right. It's definitely not intuitive, so I don't feel bad.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I also thought this thing about food poisoning was interesting
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: was that in dynastic times in China, they would use
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and I guess people that are a little more well
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: healed would use silver chopsticks because they thought that if
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: it came into contact with something that was poisonous, then
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the chopsticks would turn black and they would know not
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to eat it.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, it just makes sense. When you're rich and wealthy,
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: more people want to kill you, so it's better to
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: have something that shows if somebody's trying to poison you,
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: like your chopstick's turning a color if you're being poisonous
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: cyanide or something like that. The problem is that doesn't
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: actually work, and I don't know why they didn't just
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: think that through from the get go, like, oh well,
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: let's get ourselves some cyanide and stick a silver chopstick
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: in it and see what happens and see that it
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: doesn't work. But apparently it does work in the presence
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: of garlic or rotten eggs because they put out hydrogen
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: sulfide so it will turn silver a different color. So
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: I don't know how garlic ever made itself into a
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: staple of Chinese cooking, but there we have it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And the other thing I thought was interesting and
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: we should mention too. This came from a variety of places.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Teagan Jones at Gizmoto, Lisa Brahman from Smithsonian mag Q.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Edward Wang from Cambridge blog huff Po Believe it or Not,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: got in the works, yeah, and some other places. But
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I thought that Q. Edward Wang's history was really interesting
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: because he mentions that wheat is kind of the first
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: reason before rice, which really surprised me.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: It was very surprising. I think he knew all along
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: that that was a big reveal, you know. Yeah, but
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: that's what gave chopsticks a shot in the arm. So
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: first we have cutting food into smaller pieces to have
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: it cook faster, so you use less firewood because there's
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: a population boom. And then as wheat becomes kind of
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: fashionable and widespread, you start to use chopsticks because you're
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: making things like noodles and dumplings. And prior to this,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: millet was the go to grain. And millet's really small,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: it's much smaller than rice, and you certainly aren't going
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: to turn it into like a noodle or a dumpling
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: make a gruel out of it. And so for thousands
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: of years, the go to utensil that people use to
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: eat with in China was a spoon because they were
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: eating gruel or porridge or whatever by hated life. But
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: when wheat came along and they started turning into noodles
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: and dumplings, they said, oh, yeah, I remember those things
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: that we use those twigs to cook with. What if
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: we made a smaller version of those to eat with too,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: And that's where the chopstick got its first like real
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: boost in usage around Asia.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, try to eat a big spoonful of
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: noodles and just watch as they flop off and sling
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: delicious sauce all over you, all over the place.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: There is literally nothing more frustrating than trying to eat
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: noodles with a spoon in the entire world.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, sure you could chop them up
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: into tiny little pieces, so they rest in your spoon.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: With some broth. Sure, but who wants to do.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: That that cuts up their buskehetti at the table into
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: tiny bits?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Is a six year old? Yeah?
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Or just thoroughly un American? True? One of the two,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: maybe both, depending on how sophisticated the six year old is.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: The other thing I thought was interesting too from mister
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Wang's article was he talked about stew, which is gang
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and Chinese. They ate a lot of stew back then,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and chopsticks would be very useful for picking up things
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: like the more solid objects in the stew, like the vegetables.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Right, so you've got wheat coming into vogue, you've got
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: smaller pieces vegetables stew being eaten. Chopsticks are like, come on,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: we're gonna do what we gotta do this. We just
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: need one more thing to get us over the hump,
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: and people are gonna know us everywhere around the world.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: And that one thing was a particular kind of Vietnamese
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: rice that ripens early apparently, and it's a shorter grain
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: or a medium grain, which means that it's easier to
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: it clumps more easily. It also has a lot of
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: like starches to it, so it's just kind of clumpy,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: sticky rice. And here in the West, we're not really
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: used to that kind of rice, so we're like, how
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: are you going to use chopsticks to eat this stuff?
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Like, try eating some uncle bens with chopsticks.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: You can't do it. It's like trying to eat noodles
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: with a spoon.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or you would just do that move.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: And this is what I didn't understand when I was
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: growing up, because I was a little naive when I
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: saw chopsticks, I would just think about scooping up the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: rice on top of them very awkwardly. And it wasn't
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: until I was a little bit older and had good
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: clumpy Chinese rice right and Japanese rice, I was like, oh,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: it's very easy to eat with chopsticks.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And you're just like, oh, okay, I've got it
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: because it sticks together. It's like a nice little morsel
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: of food and it sticks together just about the right size,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: and it's totally different. So when you eat Chinese rice
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: or Japanese rice, or even Vietnamese rice, the stickier, then
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: you understand, Okay, you can use this as a as
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: you can use chopsticks for this, and the Chinese figured
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: this out as well, when rice became much more of
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: a staple of the Asian diet, and all of a sudden,
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: now you didn't need a spoon anymore because everybody's like
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: to heck with millet. Who wants gruel? Nobody? Yeah, So
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: they threw their spoons out the window, and then they
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: started just eating chopsticks for everything that you could use
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: it for everything. Now it's all you needed for your meal.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that all in one solution, I think was
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that happened in China and Japan and Vietnam for sure,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: and Korea I think was the one standout because I
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: believe in Korea the spoon and the chopstick still go
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: hand in hand.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And this I believe it was Key Edward Wang
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: who maybe wrote this, but he basically said it. It
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: seems to be a conscious decision right in Korea, almost
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: as if they were being contrary or something like that.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe they just wanted to their own thing.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Well, they eat a lot of very very hot stews
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: and soups. Have you ever had boot at Jigga?
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: I'm not even sure I'm saying it correctly. Have you
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: ever been to eat like an h mart or like
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: an Asian food cord or something like that. Sure, if
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: you go to a cream place, they usually have I
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: think it's called bout a jig a. It's like hot
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: dog soup basically, Oh my lord, and it's like this
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: kind of I'm not even sure. I guess it's it's
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: like a chili paste broth with lots of great processed
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: meat in it, and like ramen and like holapanos. It's
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: just so good. But that thing comes to you boiling,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: and you're supposed to like eat the chunky parts out
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: with a chopstick. But I guess it always comes with
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: a spoon too, so I think you're supposed to actually
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: eat the broth with the spoon rather than sip.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I tell you, one thing I do love is the
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: design of the and I'm calling it the Chinese spoon.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it originated in China, but you
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: know the soup spoon I'm talking.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: About, Yeah, like the one you use for miso souper man.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: They're just the best.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. They because you can get a really
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: big spoonful on there.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: You know, it's ergonomic.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: It just it's the it's the way to do it
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: unless you're just going to pick up the bowl and
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: drink it, which is great too.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, up with the miso soup spoon.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break because I'm so hungry
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: after you said hot dog stew, wh stomachs growling, And
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: we'll come back and we'll talk more about chopsticks.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: Copine shot.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Shot.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: I don't remember what episode it was, Chuck, but do
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: you remember when our stomachs growled in sync with one another?
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: That was very recently?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: It was? Yeah, you can still reminisce about recent Okay,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: I say.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: I'm nostalgic for that thing that happened last week.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Pretty much so apparently, and this I'm not sure how
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: accurate this is, but the four main kinds of chopsticks.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Apparently in China the chopsticks are a little bit longer
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and a little more blunt on the ends.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they think that might be a nod to Confucius,
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: basically saying like, don't have knives at your table, don't
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: even have vaguely sharpened chopsticks.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Even like nothing stabby nothing.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Don't you don't want to be stabbed at your table?
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I think in Japan they're a little sharper and a
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: little shorter, but you're still not supposed to be stabbing stuff.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: No, don't stab that piece of tuna.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: No, it's you can just tell if you've ever done
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: that while you're doing it, that you're violating some unnatural
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: law or something like that.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Feels wrong, doesn't it.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let me see here in Korea, apparently they're are
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: shorter as well, and they are also blunt, but they
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: can be metallic.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one thing that we'll see because we're going
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: to talk about. As with everything in existence, there's some
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: horrid environmental impact with chopsticks as well. But the Japanese
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: are like, give us cheap, disposable wooden or bamboo chopsticks
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: and basically nothing else. Yeah, they're just crazy for it,
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: where some of the other Asian cultures are like, no,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: we can use reusable ones, but the Japanese are like, no,
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: we want nothing but disposable, cheap chopsticks. That warebashi.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I assume that you and U Mei have your own
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: chopsticks at home. Oh yeah, and do you bring those
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to restaurants?
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no never do we should? I everybody should, but.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I usually think when I'm there, I'm like, oh, man,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I should have brought my chopsticks.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, I mean like, if you go to
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: any Asian store, they have like cute little it looks
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: almost like a pencil case, but it's you know, chopsticks inside,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: and it's meant for you to carry them around with you.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: But no one does that. You just don't. Even though
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: hopefully in ten years when we're all like, Okay, this
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: is out of control and this is really bad, everyone
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: will be doing that. You just don't do it. And yeah,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: we have some that like I could just put in
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: my jeans pocket and walk around with if I wanted to,
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: but I don't do it.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one does.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: I take my straw now and I use it because
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: I now keep it in my purse. Your merse, my merse,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: which goes everywhere with me. Yeah, so I need to
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: throw some chopsticks in there. Sure, And it's a good
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: feeling when you say no straw. I've got my own,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And I would love to be able to say no, no,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: you keep those wooden chopsticks.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, take that straw and shove it where the sun
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: don't shine.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aggressive about.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: It's so funny depending on where you are in the
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: country though, Like if they bring you a straw and
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: you say no straw please, they look at you like
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: you're just a straight up democratic socialist hippie, you know,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: like you're trying to undermine the government or something like that.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: It's kind of hilarious.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Sure, But other places now are there's a couple of
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: places in my neighborhood who have postings on the wall
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: when you walk in talking about an impact of straws,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: and that straws are upon request only.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Right, And if you've got a problem with that, you
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: can take a straw and shove it where the sun
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: notes shines.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: Right, or you take that problem to the voting booth.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: This fall right exactly. So are you prepared? Because I
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: have a feeling you do a better job than me
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: at this because you so often have great, convoluted ways
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: of describing visual things.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: I'm going to do a great job describing it to
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: you because you can watch my hands. But I think
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: for everybody listening it's going to be very problematic.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: All right, how do you use chopsticks?
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: All right, I'm gonna get you back for this one.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Chuck, So I did it intuitively, by the way, which
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is what I suggest.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I never read watch some I think reading it
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: and having to explain makes it way harder. I think
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: it's just one of those things you have to watch
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: somebody do in practice. I mean, it's just all practice.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: But essentially, there's a couple of things to remember. Is
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: that both chopsticks are laying. Do you want do you
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: want to go step by step through it?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: No? I think I want the Josh method.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, well it's the same. It's the same method.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Or the Josh description.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Okay. So in the valley between your thumb and your forefinger, yeah, okay,
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: the webbing right there, that's where the chopsticks rest, the
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: thumb taint, the thumb tait that Jode your hand showed.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, it really is.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: So the two chopsticks lay right there, Okay, one of them,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: the bottom one is basically meant to be immobile and stationary.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: It just basically stays there. And it's the top one
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: that you're you're you're moving. You're kind of holding with
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: your forefinger, your index finger and your middle finger. That's
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: that's what you're using to move this this top one
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: and so it's really the bottom one that stays basically stationary,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: and the top one is the one that's moving and
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: you're just using it to kind of pick up and
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: tweeze food or rice or whatever with it. If you
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: get really good, you can like pick your friend up
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: with it, right, or catch a fly if you're just
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: sense a level that's right with chopsticks, for sure, But
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: that's essentially it. And the the you don't want to
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: hold it too tightly. If you're if you're gripping it
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: too tightly or your muscles are too tense, yeah, you're
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: not going to be able to to to to kind
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: of make that tweezer motion very easily, or you're certainly
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: not going to have much control. It's kind of paradoxical
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: that the looser you have your in to a certain degree,
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: the more control you have over the chopsticks and the
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: tension that you're directing toward the end of the chopstick.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: So keep your hand loose but in control, and just
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: make sure you remember that the bottom one that's kind
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: of resting all the way along your thumb the free zone.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: It's basically stationary, and the top one is the one
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: you're directing with your index finger and middle finger.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I recommend halfway through your meal, switch those two
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: out because that bottom one is just along for the ride. Yeah,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and it needs to do a little work, you know
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, So just switch them out and
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: make that one the topper and give it, you know,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: make it do a little sweat sweating.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: I think that's pretty good. Chunk do a little sweat.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: I think we deserve a Peabody Award for describing how
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: to use chopsticks. No visuals.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: You did talk about the environmental impact a little bit,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: but it is a real problem. I mean you see
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: these tiny little things and you think, what's the big whoop?
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Like a tree can probably make a gazillion chopsticks, so
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: they need, like true, maybe ten trees in China to
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: make all the chopsticks they need.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Do you remember that just one thing? Do you remember
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: that cartoon It might have been a Simpsons or something
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: like that, where they chop down a tree and they
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: show them processing one single tree into just an individual toothpick. No,
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: that's pretty sure it had to be the Simpsons, you know,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: But imagine if they're like, no, we make one chopstick
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: out of just a single tree.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about toothpicks. Man, How many toothpicks can
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: you get out of a tree?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: I don't even know they're problem. They're on the horizon, right.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: But when you think about the fact that China alone
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: produces eighty billion disposable chopsticks every year, then you get
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit more of a sense of exactly how
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: many of these trees? And it says here there was
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to find out what year this is. It
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: was fairly recently, but they've had like parliamentary meetings and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: stuff about this in China and they estimated that it
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: takes about twenty million million twenty year old trees to
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: cover their annual rate of production.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. A guy named by Waxen pretty sure I said
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: his last name correct. Yeah, he's like a representative from
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: the ji Lean Forestry Industry group and he really like
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: rocked everybody at a parliamentary meeting where he basically said, hey,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: do you remember that old figure that everybody has been
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: touting for years that we actually use fifty seven billion
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: chopsticks a year produce fifty seven billion chopsticks a year.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: He said, that's way off. It's actually eighty billion, and
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: like you just said, we need twenty million twenty year
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: old trees to meet that a year. Yeah, and people said, wow,
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: that's kind of a problem. And so around the world, Like,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: so of that eighty billion, I think China, half of
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: them stays in China. Of the other half, yeah, I
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: wondered about that, seventy seven percent goes to Japan. And
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Japan was actually the one that started all this. They
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: can't I'm up with disposable chopsticks ware Bashi all the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: way back in eighteen seventy eight and have just been
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: crazy for him ever since. Yeah, Like you can go
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: to like a pretty high end restaurant in Japan and
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: they're going to have wooden chopsticks that you pull are chopsticks, yeah,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: that you would pull apart. There are also plenty of
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: restaurants in Japan that have reusable ones, and they're much
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: more elegant or whatever. But it's not like you wouldn't
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: just walk in and be like, what is this disposable chopsticks?
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Are you kidding? Because they're just such a part of
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Japanese culture. So they use seventy seven percent of the
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: other half. Korea uses twenty one percent, and then two
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: percent comes to the United States. Yeah, is that all
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I have to catch that? That was twenty eleven figures,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: which is the latest I could find.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I would think China and Japan, it would just seem
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like they would like everyone would have their own and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: it would be a very like prideful thing to take
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: care of your chopsticks and to have something cool looking. Yeah,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: it just kind of surprises me that they're so down
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: with the disposable.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: It surprises a lot of people. Especially Japan is like
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: really well known for being meticulous with recycling and reducing
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: waste and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just this one thing.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: They really love their disposable chopsticks, and they just throw
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: them away. They're not being recycled or composted or anything
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: like that. They're just being thrown in the trash. So
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: some what I read is that some restaurants will offer,
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: you know, tea for free if you bring your own chopsticks,
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: or maybe like a disc tea anyway. That. But yeah, basically,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: but there's not like a lot of there's not a
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: huge amount of movement in Japan where China and this is.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: I think I read this in like a like a
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: New York Times green blog or something like that. China's
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: made some some moves like like taxing disposable adding an
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: extra tax to disposable chopsticks. I think.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: More regulation basically overall, I think.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Which is really saying something, you know. I mean, there's
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: like apparently a whole sub industry to the disposable chopsticks
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: industry that is small enough that it escapes a lot
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: of oversight, and they can be really problematically. There can
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: be a lot of chemicals in these chopsticks. They're just
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: like an all around basic nightmare and it's just such
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: low hanging through all and everybody has to do is
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: just have their own chopsticks. But just people just won't
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: do it. And I'm guilty too, like I said, I mean,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: we have reusable ones at home, but we don't take
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: them out of the house ever.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Plus the paper used to encase the said chopsticks.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: That's a lot of paper.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: Too, Yeah it is.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: And what do you do with that stuff? You just
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: rip it open and burn it at the table.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, We'll take
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: another break.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: And talk a little bit about etiquette right after this,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: because we're all doing it wrong to a certain degree.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Scott shot.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Shot Okay, miss Manners, lay it on.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: That's doctor, Missus Manners.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: That's right, PhD esquire.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: So this is mainly Japan that we're concentrating on with
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: the etiquette, and like you said, I think they take
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: it a little more seriously than some other Asian countries
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: because it turns out that chopsticks can and have had
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: an important part in burial rights yea and funeral rights.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Funeral rights, like a lot of the taboos I guess
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: you'd call them over chopsticks in Japan and in other
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: Asian countries too, are kind of based on like well,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: that's that's kind of something we do with funeral rights.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: And so that reminds us of that Japan is not
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: crazy about being reminded of death or mortality or pain.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: All that stuff is very unlucky, Like the number four
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: is unlucky because the word for four I think she
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: also sounds very much like the word for death right.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I think I remember that that. So they don't have
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: four elevator floors, is that right?
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: I don't better if they do or not, but let's
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: just go with that they don't because it sounds pretty great.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: So etiquette level one is how is how this is presented.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of levels here as far as like,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: you really shouldn't do these things, but if you really
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: want to ramp it up, you shouldn't do these things
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: as well. I felt these were kind of willy nilly,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: didn't you. Well, I mean, this is one person to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: pay right. But the things that you really shouldn't do
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: are the following. Do not if you like, get up
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom, don't stick your chopsticks sitting
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: upright in your bowl of rice. No, And that has
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to do with the household Buddhist altar, because it is
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: a bowl of rice is offered as to a dead
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: person's spirit. And this apparently is from a Budhist Buddhist
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Buddhist funeral rights as well, because there's a photograph of
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: a bowl of rice and to stick chopsticks in the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: middle of that would be for boten.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: I think it's they'll have like a photograph of the
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: deceased and they give them a bowl of uncooked rice,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: so they and they stick the chopsticks up in that oh, okay,
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: I rather, so it's reminiscent of that that okay, So
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: so it's got that death thing going on, the death angle. Yeah.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: And then the other thing I saw about that too
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: is that they it also is reminiscent of like a
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: bowl of sand with incense sticking out of it that
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: you would also put on a Buddhist shrine to the deceased.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: So they're like way too reminiscent of death for that
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: to be Okay, Okay, that makes sense. Now there's another
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: one that's very similar. Don't leave your chopsticks crossed, like
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: resting on your bowl or on your plate. Just don't
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: cross your chopsticks. It's impolite, basically for the exact same
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: reason as sticking them out of the bowl.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And I think that one is when you see, like
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: on food Instagram food posts a lot from Whitey saying,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: you know, like across the chopsticks because it looks.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Cool or whatever.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Look at how cool this looks?
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Not cool? Apparently we talked about spearing.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: The advice here is to treat them as if they
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: are actually connected, even though they're not.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: It's a good way to remember it, like pretend connected.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: That's right, yeah, and remember this is like that. I
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: think that goes back to like Confucius, where it's like,
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: don't don't have a knife at your table, don't use
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: your chopsticks a spear food.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: That's right. Apparently it's bad luck or not bad luck. Well,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: maybe bad luck to use two different chopsticks. Yeah, they
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: should have the same mommy and daddy. This person said
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that it's just unsightly and that it's also reminiscent funeral rights.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: That one I couldn't. I couldn't figure that one out. Yeah,
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: there's there's another funeral one too. A lot of funeral
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: rights involved chopsticks, passing food from chopstick to chopstick. Like
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: if you're like, hey, you got to try a bite
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: of this, that's just hard to hold it up. It's
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: it's but it's kind of it's a little bit showy. Yeah,
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: if you can do it, look at us. But but
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: when you you know, if somebody grabs it with their chopstick,
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: that's how they pass bones from cremations during funeral rights too,
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: And they're like, nope, that reminds us of that as well.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are some of these that are just
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: like I can't believe people do this. Do not wash
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: your chopsticks off in your beverage. Yeah, that's gross.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: If someone do that, I don't know. Apparently somebody has
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: the other thing about this is so the fact that
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: they have restrictions on this social restrictions means that people
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: have done it before. But they also go so far
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: as like most of these things all have like individual words.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: That's how like agro the Japanese are about this, this
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: kind of etiquette. Yeah, they have words for that, Like
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: washing your chopsticks off in your drink is not just
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: called washing your chopsticks off in.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Your Yeah, there's a name for it. Let me see here.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Do not treat them as toys.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And we talked earlier about putting them in your mouth
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: like their fangs or walrus tusks or antennas or drumsticks.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Just not a good look.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Here's another one that is this is a sort of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: one that I think happens a lot. Is you might
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: see women American women maybe do their hair and put
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: chopsticks in them. Those when you see that in Japan,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: those are not chopsticks, right. It might look like chopsticks,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: but they're actually called kenza.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be kind of like sticking a fork in
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: your hair. If you're walking around Japan looking like that,
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: they'd be like, why do you why do you have
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: that fork in your hair? Yeah, it looks a little off,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: but yeah, like they look just like those things, but
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: there's a separate thing, that's right. What did you call them?
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Kanzashi? Yeah?
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: Nice, that's a beautiful w mean, I didn't make that up, right,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: I know. Another one is you'll very frequently see people
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: do this, and I've done it too, and it's apparently
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: acceptable under certain circumstances. But when you break your warabashi,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: your disposable cheap chopsticks apart at the end, if there's
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: splinters or there's like a piece of wood sticking out,
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: you can rub them together. It's kind of soften the
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: wood or get the splinters off. But you're not supposed
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: to do that as just like a matter of course,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: because you're basically insulting the restaurant. You're saying, like, these
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: are so cheap, these chopsticks that you're providing your gas. Yeah,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: that like I've got to rub them together, and you
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: definitely don't want to like make eye contact with the
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: owner while you're rubbing it together. You're like, this is
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: what I think of your establishment. And people do that
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: I do it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: It's almost like habitual.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: It's habitual for me.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: And I started doing it when I first started using
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: chopsticks because I saw the person I was with did it,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I guess that's what you do.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: You get those little splinters off, right, And now it's
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a total habit and my whole thing there. I don't
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: think that one's a really big one, like, especially in America,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: it happens so much. I don't think anyone a restaurant
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: owner is like super insulted by seeing this. Sure, yeah,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: especially in America, but they are super cheap and they
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: do splinter right.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: Well. In that case, yes, like that that proprietor has
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: brought it on himself for herself for providing everybody with
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: such cheap chopsticks that they're splintering.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I will always remember this now, I'll tell you that.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is so I agree with you. I
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: think that this is probably not that big of an
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: insul especially in America. It's probably falls in line with
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: like how you're not supposed to like put your with
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: sabi put in the soy sauce or something like that. Well,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: if you want to just do it, you know, if
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: you want to be remarkably polite, then you wouldn't do
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: any of these things. Some are way worse than others,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: and I think that one probably falls into the lesser category,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: even though it's under this advancing. This is why I
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: was saying this seems willy nilly.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that we also covered some of this in
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: our sushi episode, because if I'm not mistaken, don't you
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: eat sushi.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: With your fingers? Or am I wrong?
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Don't you?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Don't you eat with your fingers? Or do you not?
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: No? I don't. I love showing off how great I
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: am at chopsticks. I use them at every turn still
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: every time I can't. Yeah, I eat millet gruel with chopsticks.
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: That's how good I am.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Or you I've seen you just flip up a shrimp
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and catch it in the other one.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: What a show off.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: It's pretty great.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Because you have chopsticks.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: You have four, you have two in each hand, yes, basically,
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: and you do a little side show there.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: It's really impressive.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: Edward scissorhands, Josh chopstick finger But no you're supposed to
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: eat sushi. It's specifically nagiri right right with your hand.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: That's how it was originally done. If I remember correctly
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: from our sushi episode, I think so. Yeah, But yeah,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: we use chopsticks these days.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Here's another no no is do not use chopstick as
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: a rake, Like, don't lift up a bowl of rice
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and just sort of rake rice into your mouth.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: So that's Japan. I saw in China that's perfectly accepted,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: really normal.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, it gets dicey with it's not the
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: samement everywhere, you know.
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, here's the thing. I don't know if we said
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: this before. So in Thailand they don't use chopsticks almost
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: as a rule. In Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and China, they're
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: they're totally ubiquitous, almost the only thing you're gonna find
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: that you eat with. And so that means that like
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: even a bowl of soup like miso soup, you're supposed
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: to use your chopsticks for that. Like the little chunks
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: of tofu. Yeah, it took me a second. You use
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: your your chopsticks to eat those out of the bowl
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: and then you slurp the rest or sip the rest depending,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: but with bryce you would hold the bowl up kind
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: of close to your face, but not like up in
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: your face, just under your chin and out a little bit.
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: And then you, you know, eat the rice with your
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: chopsticks from there, lifting the rice up to your mouth,
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: not shoveling it into your mouth from the bowl.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Right, And I saw with soups and things. Also is
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: if you really want to ramp up the etiquette, you
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: should try and drip into the bowl.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: Oh right, when you like, when you are picking up
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: the tofu, you want to kind of shake the tofu
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: off so it doesn't drip on you are on the table. Yes,
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: if you really want to excel etiquette, you would just
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: not eat anything. You just sit there quietly with your
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: chopsticks side by side, still in their wrapper, just smiling
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: politely at everyone like it didn't.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Break any rules. And I'm really hungry.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: There's a couple more here. Don't point with your chopsticks.
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: It's tough not to do, do you point. I don't
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: point at people you know or anything like that. Can
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: you pass me that thing right there? Yeah?
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: And you just sort of give a little nod like hey,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: that that pot sticker over there.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're fun to hold and point with and
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: like do stuff with. I just I don't know, maybe
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I'm still it's still novel enough to me that I
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: have to remind myself not to point, or you me
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: has to remind me not to point with the chopsticks.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Or when you're talking and you're expressing things with your
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: hands and you're using your chopsticks, or if you want
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: to just do a little Maestro routine, right, you know.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: Let's look down upon or if you're using your hands
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: for something else, you don't stick your chopsticks in your
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: mouth and just hold them in there while you're like
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: moving plates around or something like that. You set them down.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: And here's the other thing too. If you go to
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: a very nice restaurant in Japan or in the States
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: and it just happens to be a Japanese restaurant, about
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: that really prolonged this thought. They're going to give you
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: a chopstick rest Oh, short your chopsticks on, so they're
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: kind of lifted off of the table the end that
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: you put in your mouth. If you don't have that,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: you can take that paper wrapper and roll it up
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: and make your own chopstick rest, that's.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Right, because you're setting your chopsticks down on a table
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: that could be you know, have germs.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: Right, and speaking of germs, also, chuck. You never ever
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: use the chopsticks that you're eating with to serve yourself
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: from a communal plate or bowl, that's for sure. They
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: should give you like a spoon or something like that
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: to spoon it onto your plate, and then you use
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: your chopsticks because that's just germy and diseasy. And apparently
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: there's a a like a supplement to that where if
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: they don't give you a serving spoon, people flip their
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: chopsticks over and use the thicker end to shovel the
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: food onto the plate, which is not necessary anymore hygienic
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: because that's where your hands have been rather than your mouth.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: But that's the more socially acceptable thing to do than
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: just using the business end of your chopsticks.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: I don't know why that's so funny to me.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: But the ends though, I mean, if you're using them right,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: you're choked up a little bit, so they're not really
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: being touched by your hands, you know, true, Like you
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: don't stick the ends in your palm, that's right, it's
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: true you choke up on it like a baseball bat.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They say in Korea apparently that the further down
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: though you hold the chopsticks, the longer it's going to
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: be before you get married.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean we could talk about some of
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: these kind of fun fun facts.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Fine, let me see here.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: One is, if you are given an uneven pair, you
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: will miss a boat or a plane.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: And this is came from Malaysia. I'm not sure if
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: that's ubiquitous all over Asia.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: I think it's Chinese.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, I think what else here? This is kind of fun.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: If you use chopsticks, it involves over fifty muscles in
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: the fingers and thirty joints in the well overall in
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the fingers, arms, shoulders, and wrists.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty cool it is. I mean, how many you
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: use for a fork? Like two? Maybe give me a break.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: I saw a couple of things. One is that there
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: was a study that found that eating popcorn with chopsticks
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: makes eating popcorn much more enjoyable than eating it without
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: chopsticks with your fingers instead. And they even controlled for
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: the amount of extra time it takes to eat popcorn
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: with chopsticks. It's not just that you're eating slower so
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: you're relishing it more. Because they had a control group
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: using their fingers eat at a very slow pace too,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: And apparently they think it's just the fact that you're
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: doing something differently makes you appreciate the thing that you're
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: doing or that you're eating that much more. Like if
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: you pour water out of like a separate, you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: water bottle, like at a restaurant, how they have like
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: the little chilled water bottles they'll bring over. Look at
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: taste with taste better than water that you just pour
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: it out of the tap, even if it was the
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: exact same water, because it's being conveyed differently.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's also how you would get popcorn to
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: last through the opening previews of a movie. That's right,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: because you're not just shoveling it in your mouth like
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I do. It's so bizarre, man, I do the same thing.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I've tried to do, the like couple of kernels at
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: a time, and you know, I do that for the
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: first few and then before you know it, I've just
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: got handfuls that I'm pushing into my.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Mouth, right right, That's how you have to do it.
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: You have to use the palm of your hand to
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: really shove the entire fistful in there. You can't just
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: use your little fingertips. It doesn't work. You'll choke on them.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's an sort of a
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: subliminal desire for mean not to be distracted during the movie,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: But the ideal, in the ideal world, I would just
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: sit there and bunch a couple of pieces at a
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: time for two hours.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: Like just chew them a million times.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, just.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Eat a couple of kernels at a time and just
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: really elongate the whole experience.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Take put those chopsticks in your merse and take those
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: to the theater.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: People would be like, look at that guy.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Hey, though you have to be careful though, yes, they yes,
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: they would. You have to be careful though who you
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: brandish those chopsticks around, because so you put this together.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: Kudos for that. One of the facts you came up
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: with is that there's something called consecutive layophobia consecutive lay
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: a phobia, I think I said, which is literally a
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: fear of chopsticks.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a fear for everything.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: But but yes, but I was reading a blog post
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: on it and some maybe psych net i think, and
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: they were saying, like, there's basically two categories of phobias,
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: ones that are semi rational. They use the example of
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: a fear of sharks. Well, if you did run into
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: a shark, there's a chance you could be killed by
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: that shark. So it's not just totally bonkers to be
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: afraid of sharks, but the a phobia of sharks is
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: an irrational fear, Like maybe if you live in Kansas,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: you got no reason to have a fear of sharks.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: This one, they said, this basically qualifies in the bonkers category,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Like there's virtually nothing that chopsticks can do to hurt you,
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: So to be irrationally afraid of chopsticks where you feel
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: like heart pounding anxiety is a genuine died in the
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: whole phobia. But some people do apparently experience this, although
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: it's super rare. Yeah, that's interesting, But you'll like avoid
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: entire types of restaurants because you can't be around chopsticks
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: and you'll get anxious just thinking about being around chopsticks.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's so sad because Asian food makes up a
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: large portion of my diet.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: Well, luckily for you, you don't have consecutiaophobia. No.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I mean when I think about sushi, I think about
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: fa right, I think about ramen. I think about good
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: old fashioned Sechuan Chinese food. Oh yeah, think about Korean.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: eat that. I could eat that all the time.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: Dude, you've got to get some boot at jig. I'll
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: take you to go get some. All right, you're gonna
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: you're gonna love it so good.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: I can't wait.
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: You got anything else?
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Forty five minutes on chopsticks, baby, not bad. If you
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: want to know more about chopsticks, go get yourself some
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: that you can reuse and eat conscientiously with them. And
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: don't forget all of the manners. But just go eat
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: some Asian food because no matter where it's farm or
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: what it is, it's probably pretty good.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: Since I said that it's time for listener mayl.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this two for two. Hey, guys, I
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: read a few years ago about Alan. Thought i'd share
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: a Sammy Davis junior story. Oh wow, And this is
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: from Andrew Limberg in Pittsburgh, and he got his Alan
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: aldowin red and when I told him this was coming on,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: he wrote back, two for two baby, nice.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's people out there who are like, oh for ten.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: I know. I'm so sorry.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: I assume it's not like we're keeping track of people
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I have a screadsheet. Oh you do, Yeah,
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: that's me, he says.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: So in the eighties, Sammy would had been cleaned out
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: by his ex wife and was selling barbecue sauce. He
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: was in Pittsburgh to promote it, and my friend Larry,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: who had a local TV show at the time, got
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: a chance to interview him. When they arrived at the hotel,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: they were told they would get twenty minutes with Sammy,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: but when they talked to Sammy's manager, he said only
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: ten minutes. So, instead of having time to set up
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: a two shot interview, and for people that don't know
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the lingo, that means both people are in the same
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: camera frame. Okay, they kept the camera on Sammy and
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Larry would then go back in at his footage later
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: so he would, I guess, re ask the questions with
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: a ghost Sammy just to edit it together. At the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: end of the interview, they needed one, just one two
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: shot of the two of them together so they could
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: edits it realistically, and Sammy's manager said nope, and Larry
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: looked at Sammy almost begging because they needed the two shot.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Sammy took a long drag of a cigarette and said,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: get your two shot, babe. The manager then said, oh, well,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm the a hole, to which Sammy said,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, Babe, you are an a hole.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: So this is how the story goes, apparently.
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: And Then Andrew says he's been listening since eight and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: went to that live show on Pittsburgh.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: Please come back, Yeah.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: And he says he is a podcast now called the
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Oddcast.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: Nice and he said, we.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Average about fifteen hundred listens an episode, which is pretty
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: darn good.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: Andrew, Yeah, it is nice work.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: And for a self styled show, that's not bad at all.
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: Especially a local one too. Pittsburgh podcast.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Pittsburgh ins.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: If you're from the Burgh, yeah, check out the Pittsburgh Podcast,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: and Andrew.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Or even if you're interested in it, sure, Pittsburgh.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: You might live in Philadelphia and just be a burghead exactly.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: Well, that was a pretty great one, Thank you very
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: much too. For two, that's pretty impressive, Andrew. And if
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: you want to get Chuck to do any Sammy Davis
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Junior impressions, write in with your own Sammy Davis Junior
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: story and see how it goes. And you can put
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: that in an email, wrap it up, spank it on
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: You Know, Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.