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How Tacos Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's even here, and this is
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. One of the best episode topics
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I think we've ever come up with, I agree, ironically,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: recording on a Thursday. You know where it's Taco Thursday.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But I ate tacos for lunch. Dude, I want a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: taco so bad, but I'm holding out until I see
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the next like good taco truck. Yeah, so what I did,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to shout out my favorite taco places
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: at the end. But um, tacos is most people know
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: are aren't the best delivery food because that you know,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: so you should eat right after assembly basically is your
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: best taco. That's why when you go to a taco
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: truck or a taco area, they're putting those things together
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: right in front of your face. But there's a place
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta called Bar Taco in Edmond Park, which they're
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: kind of fancy, swancy tacos. Uh, but they have a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: couple of really good ones, and they deliver a little
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: taco kit like a little Bento box. Almost you got
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: your meat, separate from your tortillas, separate from your fixin's,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: and then you put it all together there at home
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and it's Uh. I got the the pork belly that's
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: flavored with pineapple sauce. It was sort of an l
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: past store kind of flavor sounds like and then like
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: a shredded beef, and boy did it hit the spot.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: After researching this for the past day and a half,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I can imagine Deli turkey sandwich was weeping while I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: was eating it. I could not have tacos. I tried
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to think of something else, but I got my tacos.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I think that was the right thing to do. I'll
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: tell you what else was the right thing to do?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Chuck asking Dave Rouse to help us out with this one, right,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: because it turns out that Dave Ruse was apparently born
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: to write this episode. So so, just a little bit
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of backstory, Um, Dave and his wife moved to Mexico
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: looking for adventure years and years ago, and while he
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: was down there, he'd being the journalist he was uh
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and and meeting up with like really really good, authentic
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: tacos for possibly the first time in his life, he
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: decided he wanted to write a story, an article about
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: how we got from authentic, you know, real good Mexican
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: tacos like the ones you just described, to the kind
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: of tacos we had in America as kids outside of
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Texas and California, which is like that crispy hardshell, little
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: ground beef, little taco, seasoning, iceberg, lettuce, tomatoes and just
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: shut up and eat it and don't ask for anything else, which,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: by the way, I do love those. I think it
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: could be good. There's a place for them, but it's
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the same place that that grilled cheese occupies. Yeah, you know,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: or your square pizza. Yeah well, well, well said so. Um.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: The thing about Dave, though, is when he when he
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: started researching this, he he found out, like I guess,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: he reached out to a guy named Jeffrey Pilcher as
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a source. Jeffrey Pilcher's a Latin American or he's in
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a story and of Latin America. I don't think he's
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Latin American. Um, And Jeffrey Pilcher realized that he didn't
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: know actually, with the answer to that question, how we
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: got from authentic Mexican tacos to kind of blandish American tacos,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: right yeah, and it seems like he might have even
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: like Dave may have possibly been an inspiration for what
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: ended up being the Jeffrey Pilcher book Planet Taco, a
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Global History of Mexican Food, because he's even listed in
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the acknowledgments. Right yeah, he thanks Dave um directly for
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: helping come up with this idea. And I can't remember
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: exactly how you put it, so okay, So then now
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: we fast forward to one we asked Dave to help
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: was with the tacos article, and Dave goes back to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Pilcher's book that he helped inspire as a source
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: for this episode. Yeah, I mean it's pretty great. And
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Dave loved Mexico so much he uh, he ended up
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: living there several different times for a total of about
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: nine years. The country he found so nice. He lived
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: there twice thrice. I think, oh, yeah, that's right. Country
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: is so nice he lived there thrice. It still works. Yeah,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it makes I mean, I've done very little travel in Mexico.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I've done some of the border town stuff in Tijuana
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and Alcadonis, but I really want to go south, south
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: south into central and south Central Mexico. Uh, I just
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: gotta do it. It's wonderful. Uh. I worked at Mexicaly
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Girl in college in eight Mexican food literally every day
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: for three years, and it's just one of my favorite
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: cuisines and favorite cultures in the world. It's pretty good.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: One of the things that really is kind of shocking
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: um about all this, though, Chuck, is the taco, the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: thing that pretty much everybody in the world associates with
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Mexican cuisine, is possibly the latest comer of all of
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Mexican what we would identify as Mexican cuisine. It's actually
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: fairly recent invention. And that's pretty much what this episode
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: is going to be about. How the taco got invented
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and then how we got from an actual authentic Mexican
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: taco to the americanized kind of Taco bell version of it. Yeah,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and Dave makes a great point that, you know, growing
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: up in the seventies and eighties, like we did, we
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: had our our what's the brand again, old El Paso. Yeah,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the old El Paso like Taco kit style tacos. And
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: like I said, I still love him. You love them.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: There's a place for that. Uh. If you get if
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: you put that pop that taco shell in the oven
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and get it crispy, it's really a beautiful thing as
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: long as it doesn't break in half. That you can
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: get a little messy. But while there's a place for those, uh.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Dave makes the point, and I agree that, like we
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: are truly in the golden age of tacos here in
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the United States, because it used to be, like you said,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Texas in California, you could always get pretty good tacos
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: once they came on the scene in the nineteen fifties
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: or so. But now every major city has world class tacos. Yeah, yeah,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And I mean not just like taco trucks that somebody
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: pulled up and and thank God for those as well,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: but I mean like like multiple taco restaurants Takorea's like
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: authentic ones all over the place. Then they're that in
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: just about any town in the country. And I don't
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: know exactly how it happened, but it happened, and it's
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: great that it did, because it's not like people from
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: south of the border started showing up in you know,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: two thousand five, and then that was it, you know,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and they brought tacos with them and in that kind
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of cuisine. Like, there have been plenty of Mexican and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Central American immigrants that have moved up into the United
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: States for a very long time, and they did bring
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: tacos with them. But for some reason there those authentic
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: tacos just took a while to catch on. I think, Chuck,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it was America that finally came around and caught up
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to what the the Mexican cuisine actually was, rather than
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: being like, no, we don't want that, we want this
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: taco bell version. Yeah, I think I agree. And when
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: I said every major American city, I'm talking, if you want,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: you know, fifty taco places to choose from, Atlanta probably
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: has that many, I've got. I looked on the map
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: today out of curiosity. I counted like seventeen taco places
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: within literally three miles of my house. And those are
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: just places that have taco in the name, right, Yeah,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I mean these were places that I mean they weren't
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I kind of through some generic or not generic, just
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: some overall Mexican restaurants in there that have really great tacos.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: But most of those were sort of Tacorea style or
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: taco trucks. But you know, forget major American cities, like
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: small towns like you can find really good tacos everywhere
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: in this country. Now, yes, yeah, the best. The best
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: taco I ever had actually was in some little countryside
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: rural area outside of Boston. I remember we had a
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: show in Boston. Then we had another show somewhere else
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that was within driving distance, and I was driving there
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and no, okay, it was driving from Seattle of Portland.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Best taco IVE ever had. Driving Seattle of Portland in
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the middle of the like nowhere, and there was a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: taco truck and they had a beef tongue taco and
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: it was hands down the best taco I've ever had. Yeah,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not in love with the tongue. I would you know?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: When I worked at Mexicali and College in Athens, that
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: was the guys in the kitchen would they would make
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: our food, but then on special days they would make
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: their own food for themselves. And Mexicali didn't have stuff
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: like tongue. It was a bunch of frat boys and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: stuff that we're eating it, so they weren't into tripe
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and tongue, but they would make that stuff and I
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: would always try it don't love the texture of tongue.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I definitely don't love the texture of tripe um, but
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I gave it a whirl. I did not like tripe.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I would eat kabeza, which is cheek and jowl meat taco.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Those are I like those better than the tongue in tripe.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I've never had beef cheeks, but I've had no Actually,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I guess I have had beef cheeks, but it wasn't
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: in a taco. It was like prepared, like braised beef
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: cheeks and they were deish. Yeah, but give me some
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: carne asada or shredded beef or carnitas or l pass store.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I'm down with rizo, but that's probably lower on my list,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: just because I like the others more. Yeah, I'll lead
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: a fish taco. I'll lead a shrimp taco. I love
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: those seafood tacos. I like it, definitely, definitely. Yeah good.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: A good fish taco with some red cabbage slaw on
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: there is pretty tough to beat. Really, Yeah, let's just
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: do this. We'll talk about the tacos that we like
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: for the rest of this episode. Like the fried fish
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: in this Dude Fish, It's all good and so it's
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: worth restating again. I think we're living in a golden
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: age of tacos here in the United States, clearly, because
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: you can find end all these tacos. And if you're
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: not out there finding all these tacos and this sounds good,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: make a concerted effort to go find an authentic taco
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: place and see what's what, and I'll bet you never
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: really go back. That's right. One last taco that I
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: love is the Korean taco. Yes, the little fusion tacos
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: that are out now that are so delicious. Do you
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: know the first time I ever even knew that existed
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: was Uh, Chad Crowley, who produced, one of the producers
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: on that show, had that catered some Korean taco, Korean
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: barbecue taco place somewhere over on the West Side, had
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: it catered and cooked Tacorea. My friend, is that what
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: it was? Okay? And and I it was like, I
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: don't I don't ever want to leave this craft services table.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I just want to stay in here and eat these
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: tacos for the Let's just call off the shoot and
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: do this and yeah, that's still go there. Uh, there's
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a lot of houseware places over there, so whenever Emily
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and I go over there to look at those, I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: always pop into handcook for some sesame fries and beef
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: bull tacos. And the guy there, dude still recognizes me
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: from stuff you should know, the TV show That's awesome,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: that's really cool. He's like, it was no good, but
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I recognize you every time I go and he's, hey, man,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: how you doing. You're still doing the TV show, like
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: for the fiftieth time. No, no, he said, get very
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: nice guy that went delicious tacos. We gotta shout out though.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Roy CHOI apparently was the guy who came up with
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Korean barbecue tacos, so he's worth mentioning for sure, at
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: least for that. So I guess we should really talk
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: about tacos instead of just salivating and talking about our
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: favorite tacos. Agreed, because, like I said, tacos are fairly
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: recent creations as far as Mexican cuisine goes. But one
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of the things that is essential to a taco, the tortilla,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: is actually very very very old. Yes it is, and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: technically if you put something in a tortilla and eat it,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: you could describe it as a taco. But you know,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: basically since the domestication in southern Mexico of corn about
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: eight seven hundred years ago, they have been grinding that
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: stuff up, flattening it out, and cooking it near a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: fire usually you know back then, like on a hot
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: rock or you know, we saw in Guatemala they were
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: still doing this hand every morning. Some of the best
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: tortillas you're ever gonna have. Yeah, but that was it,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Like then you have a tortilla after that. And they've
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: been doing this for thousands of years. I think it
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was kicked off by the Maya who figured this out.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And then there was another really important innovation that the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: old Mec people came up with, and that was to
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: take that corn and soak it in hot water with
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: wood ash, which made an alkaline solution basically, and that
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: actually broke down the um. The I think the pair
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: of carb the whole of the corn um and change
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the corn nutritionally like it made a lot of the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: stuff inside more bioavailable. So it took something that was
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: already like okay, this is this is fine, we can
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: stay alive on this and actually turned it into like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: a really nutrient rich food. So the tortillas you're eating
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: um as long as they've undergone a process called Nick's tomalization.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Um is actually pretty pretty healthy for you. That sounds
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: like you said the word tomali in there, I did, Yes,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: would you like to spill the beans? And being KOI
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: so in the uh nahuaddle language that the language of
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: the Aztecs next teale was means ashes and then tomali
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: with an eye means unformed maze dough, which will sound
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: familiar if I've ever had a tomali with an e
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: on the end. Let me ask you this, do you
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and youumy ever do tacos yourself at home? Yeah? We
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: do more like just variations on taco salad typically, but
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, we'll get like some blue corn tacos
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: once in a while and fill them up, or else
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: we'll make We'll get like some of those like um
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: some usually we do flower though, like that this the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: ones you have to refrigerate, we'll get those, the lucy
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: goosey ones. Make some fish tacos with slaw that kind
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, we do sometimes, all right. If you
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: ever want to just kind of take it to the
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: next level, I highly recommend making your own tortillas. Get
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: a tortilla press. It's a maze or some massa maze
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and just give it a whirl. It's it's they're a
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: little tricky, but once you get the hang of it,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: it uh. It really just takes things to a stratosphere
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that I previously did not know. I can imagine I'd
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: never really even considered doing that, but I'm going to now. Yeah,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: get maybe I'll buy you a tortilla press. Would you accept?
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I you have to now you've just offered on the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: on the podcast. I will hold you to that. Good.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I'll send you mind and I'll get into it. Be
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: like there's like old crusty dough on this one. Actually
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I worn't in I don't know if there's anything to that,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: but if it's like cast iron, that may yeah like seasoned.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Sure cool, thanks man? Sure. So um, we've got mixed
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to moll ization, which makes the stuff in the corn
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: that was already there like iron and vitamin B three
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: way more bioavailable. Right. Yes, it actually sucks calcium into
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the corn, so it adds a lot of calcium. It
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: fortifies it with calcium. Just this process of soaking the
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: corn in wood, ash and water before you turn it
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: into massa and then it also kills off mico toxins
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: which can mess you up pretty good fungal toxins that
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: can be present on corn. And when you put all
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: this together, especially if you added together with some beans,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you have what's called the complete protein. Huh, that's right,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And that means you can indulge in those tacos and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: feel good about it. A complete protein is when you
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: have the nine essential amino acids and basically equal amounts.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And here's the little trick to tacos though, that make
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it special. You can have beans and you're not a
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: complete protein. You can have corn and not a complete protein.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But if you put those things together, you do have
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a complete protein because beans have all those essential amino
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: acids but one it's called matthionine, and corn does have that.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: So it's it's almost like it was meant to be. Yeah, corns, like,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: I'll help you out with some methionine, no problem, Yeah, man,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: brief red beans. I know there's something about food that
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: when you know that they form some sort of like
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: natural pattern just makes them even more satisfying and wholesome. Yeah,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: or when things come together to make a greater whole, Yeah, exactly,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: should we take a break. Yeah, let's take a break
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and we'll get back to the We'll get to contact
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: between the Spanish and the Mesoamericans. I want to learn
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: about how to take a perfect but on a fractals
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: gone that hun the Lizzie Border murders, that they kind
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of all runs on the plane. Everything we should know.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Word up, Jerry, Okay, So, um, we've got the invention
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of the tortilla. That doesn't mean that tacos were invented yet. Um.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons why tacos you can't say tacos
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: were invented is because um, meso Americans used tortillas for
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: just about everything. I think the Spanish said that Montezuma Um,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: the emperor of the Aztecs, who was running the show
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: when the Spaniards showed up in fifteen nineteen, um that
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: he would eat He would basically use his tortillas as
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: a as a spoon, much much the same way. Have
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: you ever eaten eat the open food? Yeah, I mean
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I do this with tortillas, but sure you know, so
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: those I can't remember the name of the bread, but
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: they use that bread for like everything. It's just it's
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: just generally a utensil as much as it is a food.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: And apparently that that the Aztecs used to do that
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: with tortillas, and I would guess Meso Americans as a whole.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So Dave points out quite rightly that you can't really
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: say what they were eating were tacos, even though they
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: might have even been putting stuff in these tortillas. And
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the way that you couldn't say that, you know, whatever
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: you were eating was a sandwich because there was a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: loaf of bread on the table or a basket of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: rolls on the table. Uh, in the exact same way
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: that that makes sense. Yeah, I remember when I went
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: when I lived in Yuma twenty five years ago and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I went to Algadonis right over the border for the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: first time, and I saw the local Mexican population with
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: these big plates like stewed meat, and they had the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: tortillas and I was like, Oh, they're going to assemble
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that to a taco, but no, no, they ripped it
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: up and they would just use it to grab the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: meat and put it in their mouth. And I thought
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: that's when the lights kind of went off. And you know,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I still love the traditional taco too, but I also
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: love to just put the stuff on my plate and
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: use it as a spoon or a grabber. Sure, it's
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like uh oh, I can't remember what it's called. But
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of sushi. It's almost like deconstructed sushi
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: where they don't bother to turn it into a roll.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It's just a bed of rice and then they put
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: all this stuff you would put in the sushi just
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: on top of the rice, so it's technically not sushi,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: even though all of the elements are there. Yeah. And
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I do the same thing with Indian food with the
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: garlic non yes, which again is another one of my
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: favorite cuisines. To like Indian food. Oh my god, I
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: just I love like all food. Human is always saying she,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: she's like it. It doesn't really matter whenever you talk
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: about how great a food is, because you think all
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: food is good. And it's true, Like I love just
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: about all food. There's really not a food that I'm like,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: I don't like that wholesale you know, I know, one
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: of my favorite obbies is eating foods seems so good.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Uh So the taco though, back then, like you said,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: they were using these tortillas spoons and such like that,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and it was about the late eighteen hundreds that sort
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: of the Mexican taco that we're familiar with finally kind
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: of comes on the scene. So the word tacos kind
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: of up for debate, isn't it. Yeah, I mean, taco
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: was a word in Spain, you know, hundreds of years ago,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: but it didn't mean the food. It was meant a
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: lot of different things. But one of the things that
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: meant that's going to come into play with the food
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: was it was like a plug or attack stuffed into
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the barrel of a musket to keep that ball settled.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: It also was like a shot of wine, or a
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: hammer or a billiard queue you could call a taco,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: But at the time, none of those words had anything
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to do with the food. No, so the word taco
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: predates the food taco. That seems to be the clear,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: the clear aspect of this, the clear upshot, as I
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: would say, Um, yes, there's also a there's also a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: rival to the Spanish word taco t a c e o,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and that's a not huaddle word taco there with an
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: L in there, basically t l a h c o,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: and it apparently means middle or half and from everything
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I've seen that is an incorrect etymology for the word
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: taco as we understand it today, that it is just
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: total coincidence. Right. But you might see some people claiming
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: that correct, yes, but they are wrong. From what I
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: can tell, that's right. So to get from the muskeet
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: plug to the food. Uh. In Pilter's books, he makes
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: a a guess that I surmised that other people have
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: also made that sounds pretty good to me. With his
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: story and Hidalgo, it was a silver mining town, uh
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Rial del Monte specifically, and what the guys and the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: mind would do is they would work in the uh
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: they're sometimes daughters and wives wuld bring them their lunch,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: which was something a lot like a taco, like beans
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: or that stewed meat or maybe some avocado and wrapped
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: in a tortilla. They would put it in a towel
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: line basket where they get all nice and steamy and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: bring it down there for lunch. So, while they're working
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: in the mine, they're blasting holes in the rock, which
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: they do by carving out a hole and then stuffing
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: in an explosive, which they call the taco. So it
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: might seem like a tinuous connection, but in Mexico City
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in the early twenty century, there was a taco called
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: tacos steam and arrow, a minor's taco, and some other
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: variations a taco state canasta, Tacos from a basket, or
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: tacos sudatos, sweaty, or steam tacos, and that kind of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: draws the line, I think pretty clearly. Yeah, And all
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: three of those were basically different names for the same
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: preparation where when you fry them and then you stacked
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: them all together, you would cover them with like a
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: little um, a little like napkin or something like that,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: um in the basket to allow them to to steam
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: themselves to finish, right. And to me, that's where the
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: word taco comes from, not from the food wrapped in
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the tortilla, but from that kind of food wrapped up
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: in that cloth napkin in the same way that they
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: were wrapping explosive in cloth and stuffing it in there.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: That to me is the is the correlation rather than
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: the food, the fact that was in a basket wrapped
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: up in fabric, Yeah, and food wrapped up in the tortilla. Sure,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, I get it. It's it's they're both possible.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I'm just putting my own hypoch is out there. Now, Okay, everybody,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You're like, it's not the tortilla, it's the napkin. That's honestly,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: it makes sense to me when we're talking about explosive
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: plugs wrapped in fabric. You know what I mean about
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: an explosive delicious food. Well, that's the thing. And I
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: totally understand that they could have been, like, there's a
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: comb in one hand and a food bomb in the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: other hand, So I get it. I'm like, uh, taco
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and print talking about a taco as food, I believe
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: for the first time was in a novel called Los
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Bandidos the Rio Frio The Bandits of Cold River, And
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: there's a line in that book where they're talking about
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a celebration in Mexico City and they say cheeto, which
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is fried goat with tortillas, and the children skipping with
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: tacos of tortillas and avocado in their hand. Sounds great.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: What an idyllic little bucolic seeing that is. I wish
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: I was there. Yeah, anywhere there's fried go being served,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I wish I was there. I'm not done with the goat,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: but sure I'm with it. Um So Um, so it
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: seems to be okay, we've got taco as a food.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: It's appearing in print by at the at the latest,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: which means that if you're if you write something down,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: this is basically true across history. It is we've seen
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: an episode after episode. If you write something down and
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: you don't explain it, that means to people coming a
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: hundred or so years later looking back at this, that
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that that means that this has been around and everybody
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: already knows what this is. I'm just refer into something
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: that everybody's familiar with. It's not a new invention. So
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: somewhere between the time that people were creating these taco
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: plugs in the silver mines in the middle of the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century, maybe late nineteenth century, in eighteen tacos became
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a thing. They were invented somewhere in there. Yeah, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I mean it was in an actual Mexican dictionary defined
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: as taco as the food in Mexico City as its birthplace. Yeah,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: it seems like Mexico City was ground zero for this place,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and that they believed that. By the turn of the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: twentieth century, Um, Mexico City was starting to become a
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: bustling metropolis again, do tell So apparently by nineteen ten,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Mexico City had become like a huge, huge town of
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: a people, of a population about half a million people,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: which is pretty significant, right. This is nine hundred and
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: ten when this happens. If you went back to fifteen,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred, say, about four hundred years earlier, but
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: right before contact with the Europeans, um the same city,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Tenochtit Lawn, which Mexico City was built on, but the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Aztecs city that was there before had about four hundred
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: thousand people, just under half a million, and that nuts. Yeah,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I mean you would think that by they would have
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: over a million, right, But they wouldn't. And one reason
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: why is because the population took a nose dive both
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: between conquest of the Spanish and the violence that broke
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: out from that, but also even worse from the smallpox
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that the Spanish brought with them, which wiped out forty
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of the population of ten act Lawn in one year
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the year after contact of the city died from smallpox.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: So it took it took that long to rebound by
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: all the way up to it it got. It finally
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: surpassed its pre contact population. So nineteen ten, things are
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: cooking literally in Mexico City and a lot of people
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: from you know, more rural Mexico had moved there to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: get work, to work in the factories, and they were
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: living in uh, you know, small tenements basically, and they
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: didn't have these big, full kitchens usually to work with.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So this is where the street taco or the tacareas
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: really started to pop up, where you would go outside
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: for dinner and you would go down to the street
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and find these delicious mouth watering tacarias. Uh. And they were,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you know, they were bringing in influences from every corner
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: of Mexico, because you know, Mexico is a huge country,
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: just like you know the United States has in every
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: country has like regional food specialties, same as true in Mexico.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: And all of these different flavors were coming into central
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Mexico City and exploding onto the food scene there. Yes,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: I mean the very in various cuisines that are brought
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: by different people's Is not this not the least reason
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: why multiculturalism is a great thing. You know, agreed, in
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Mexico City is a melting pot at the beginning of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the twentieth century. I mean, all these people were bringing it,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and not just from Mexico or every part of Mexico. Um,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: but there was some influences like outside of Mexico to
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: like tacos l pasteur, right, the one you mentioned earlier
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: that you've got kind of a deconstructed version of today. Yeah,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: with that pineapple flavor, and that one I think has
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: a pretty interesting story which I never knew it was. Uh.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: It originated in Lebanon in uh and specifically in the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Mexican state of Pueblo. We had these uh or they
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I say, we feel like I'm living in Mexico right now.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: After those tacos you had, I can imagine why. I
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: had these Lebanon or Lebanese immigrants settling there in the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: early twentieth century, and they started selling their eros and
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: they had those lambs on the vertical spit uh like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: they still have the day, and they were cutting off
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: strips of it, putting it on a pede uh uh
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes a flower tortilla. And in Pueblo there were and
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: still are known as tacos uh arabis, which is Arab
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: like Arab tacos, and the Mexicans there said, hey, they're
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: really onto something here with this vertical spit, but let's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: throw a dobo pork butt up there instead, and then
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: throw a little grilled pineapple on there as well, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: they you have what we recognize as tacos l pastor,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: which means shepherd's tacos, which is a reference to the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Bedouin roots of the Lebanese immigrants who came over. Great story,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It is a great story. And actually, Chuck, that reminds
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: me of another story I was talking about. I was
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: boasting about how I love all food. There's actually, um,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: one of the few things I've ever sent back in
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: my life was that a Lebanese restaurant in Toledo called
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the Bay Root may still be there and um, a
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: little on the nose, but sure. And my family was
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: was feeling pretty adventurous and ordered a bunch of stuff
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: off the menu. And one of the things we ordered,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: it didn't really sink in what we were ordering, but
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: they brought out a bunt, a full size bunt cakes
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: bunt pants worth of raw ground meat covered in raw egg.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, and it was just on this big
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: plate and it was like dig in and we were
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: just like we can't where we can't. We can't and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: I still to the steak feel bad about wasting that meat.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Do you know what it was like? What that dishes?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. Someone to let us know.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I sure, and yeah, I think it was. I don't
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: think it was like an invention of of that restaurant's
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: owners or the cook, the chef. I should say, um,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: but I haven't seen it very frequently since then, but
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: it was. We just were like, no, we're not gonna
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: do that one. Well, I mean, hats off to your
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: family in the nineteen eighties and Toledo for going to
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a Lebanese restaurant. We didn't. We didn't. We had Chinese
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: food and that was about as crazy as we got. Oh,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: we got fancy. Not only did we go to the
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Bay Route once in a while, we also sometimes went
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: to in Japanese steakhouse, which is Abachi Stay Cows, so
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: we got real ethnics sometimes. Yeah, that stuff was we
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford that. I'm not like you were rich or anything,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: but uh, we had a lot at home, so we
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: didn't even go out that much. So when we did,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: it was pretty conservative, but it wasn't until my twenties,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: till I left home and got into college that I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: really started exploring foods of the world. Yeah, well, good
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: for you for doing that. Some people never do, you know,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: especially if they were raised without being exposed to it.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So it's good that you did well. So great about multiculturalism, food,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: beautiful babies. Yeah, beautiful babies for sure. Plenty of stuff
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: different points of view, but really food. Sure. So you
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: want to take another break and then get back to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: tacos continuing on because we finally reached the point where
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: we're like, Okay, tacos now exists, but they're pretty much
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: being slung out of food carts in Mexico City right
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: now at the beginning of the twenties century. Yeah, we're
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: going to take a trip to Los Angeles, Los Angeles
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: right after this. I want to learn about a terrosortic collegel,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: how to take a prograt move with all about fractal
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: get kiscon that's a hun, the Lizzie Border murders, and
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: they kind of all runs on the plane every day.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: That's so we should know. No word up, Jerry, all right,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: smoggy kind of already overcrowded, gross Los Angeles in the
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen forties and fifties. Uh was a very segregated place. Uh.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: There were plenty of Mexican residents. There were plenty of
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: uh Black Americans, there were plenty of Asian residents. There
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: were plenty of people. It was a melting pot. But
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: they tended to um. There was a white flight that happened,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: and they tended to live apart. By the nineteen forties.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: It's sort of the suburbs in the valley Orange County
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: maybe is where a lot of white people fled to.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: And not entirely, but uh, if you wanted to live
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: inside Los Angeles, like maybe East Los Angeles, you may
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: have been for Mexico originally. Yeah, like cheech Marin Yeah,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: born in East l A. Yeah, that's right, man. What
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a great song that was so um in in its
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Pilcher, Senior Pilcher, Um he thought to look around
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: at the UM. I think he got his hands on
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: some phone books from Los Angeles in the forties and
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: fifties and started looking up taco joints. Because remember, at
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: the behest of one day, Ruse who would become a
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: stuff you should know legendary writer Um Jeffrey Pilchers on
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: this quest now to figure out how we got to
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the Americanized version of tacos. So he's tracing it from
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Mexico City up to California, as one would do, and
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: he did that by by looking at them at the
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: phone book. And what he found is that outside of
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: East l A, you could find plenty of restaurants that
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: were taco joints. But in East l A there were
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: only two restaurants in the phone book that had the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: name taco in them, which would suggest Chuck that that
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: that they didn't eat tacos in like in authentic Mexican
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Mexican American neighborhoods, But that's not necessarily the case. Yeah,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I think what has been surmised, and I fully agree,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: is that there were plenty of places in East l
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: A serving tacos, they just didn't feel the need to
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: advertise it as a taco place to make it. Uh
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: it was. It was sort of if you were a
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: white American or a black American in the nineteen forties
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and fifties in l A. Uh, Mexican food might have
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: seen exotic and maybe a little dangerous to try, like
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: dangerous for your stomach. That is right, right, So Tacos
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: was a safe cell essentially, is what has been speculated,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Like to put taco on a sign, people are like, oh, well,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I've heard of tacos. I can try this place out right,
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: And so um Peltry came up with some some pretty
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: great names that he found in the in the predominantly white,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: predominantly black um neighborhoods in l A that had taco
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: in the name. Um. Apparently, the first one in Los
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Angeles that catered to non Mexican um UH customers was
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: called Taco House, and that opened up in the early forties.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty legit name, especially if you're saying, hey,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: American people, UM, particularly white people and black people, Taco House.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: That seems approachable, right, you're not afraid of that, come
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: meet here. That makes sense. They didn't even say Taco cosa. No,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that would be well now, that would have blown the
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: mines back in the early forties. I like any restaurant
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: with town at the end. So Ernie's Taco Town kind
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of speaks to me. Yeah, how about Alice and Bird's places,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Bert's Taco Junction, Yeah, that's good. I wonder if it
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: was an old drink a boose. Yeah, Alice's Taco Terrorists,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: which is fine. Frank's Taco In. That's a good one.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I've never gotten why you would call a restaurant and in,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: because typically you sleep at and in, you know. Yeah,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: I've never gotten that because we had village in Pizza
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and I don't. I never got. I tried to sleep
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: there and it never worked. I'm so full. Uh. And
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: then in Watts, which is a predominantly historically at least
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: black neighborhood, you had Taco Kid and Taco the Town. Yeah,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: that's a great one for sure. Taco the Town is
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: not around anymore. Oh, that's sad. But apparently there is
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: a Taco the Town in Maine, I believe. Oh man,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Maine tacos. I bet you even Maine has some good
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: tacos here and there. That would be the least likely state,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: I would say, like Maine in Alaska. Right, So, um,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: we've got we've gotten to the point where now there's
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: tacos in Los Angeles, right, they've crept up. People are
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: starting to create them and uh cater to non Mexican
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: and non Central American palettes. Um. And a lot of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: people say Okay, Well it was actually Glenn Bell, the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: guy who founded Taco Bell. Which did you know that
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: there was a person with the last name of Bell
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that founded Taco Bell. I didn't either. It's insane. Like my,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: my whole world view has changed, Like Jimmy Hut's pizza chain. Right,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I've got one for you, Chuck. Did you know that
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the very first Pizza Hut was in Wichita, Kansas? Really? Yeah?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: And the very first KFC guess what city that was in? Oh,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: please tell me it's Kentucky somewhere. No, Salt Lake City, Utah. What. Yeah,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: it's true. The colonel really was from Kentucky. But the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant was open in Salt Lake.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where it's like,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: if you open a thing based on a regional cuisine,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the one place that's not going to do well is
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in the actual region that that cuisine comes from. Well,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: they don't have Taco Bells in Mexico. No, we'll talk
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: about that later. We'll talk of we'll talk of that later.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Al Right, So again, Senior Pilcher, I gotta read this book.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: It sounds fantastic. Um. He talks about the fact that
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: if you were a Mexican immigrant and you were building
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: a restaurant scene in the United States and you wanted
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: to appeal to the Americans there, then you might wanna
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: like source ingredients that they You're probably not throwing tripe
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: their way right out of the barrel, you know, like
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: you might want to look at the the ingredients that
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: are readily available um that people like and like ground
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: beef is one of them. So that ground beef as
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: a central ingredient to those American tacos was really early on. Dude.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how how late it was in life.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Before I even had a chicken taco. For Pete's sake. Yeah,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I know, I'm with you, it was all ground beef.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: It was like, that's all there was, you know. Even
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: if you went to a Mexican staurant that was not
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: really a Mexican restaurant like we used to go to
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Cheat cheese, ground beef, ground beef and everything, it was
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: just ground beef. And actually that reminds me Chuck. I
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: turned up. There's this um Onion article that I remember
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: from made that much of an impression on me. Taco
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: bells five ingredients used in completely new way. The article
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: talks about how you've never had anything like this this one.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: The beef is on top of the beans, which is
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: on top of the cheese. Is funny how they do that? Still, Yeah,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: you know, just make these crazy combinations of the same thing, right.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: But the opshot of all this is that, um, a
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: lot of people lay or um credit Glenn Bell with
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: inventing the americanized taco, and that's not necessarily the case.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: It was some of these Mexican American immigrants who were
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: creating these tacos to cater to American taste, but then
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: also based, like you were saying, on stuff that was
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: easily obtained cheap. Because everybody knows restaurant margins are so thin,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: it's incomprehensible why anyone opens a restaurant, and if you're
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: just trying to make money. Um, And when you put
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: all that together, people were making what you and I
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: at age ten would have recognized as a taco before
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Glenn Bell came along and started making tacos himself. Yeah,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people say, well, Glenn Bell at
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: the very least invented the the technology where you could
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: fry up these tortilla, these corn tortillas into these perfectly
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: little shaped taco shells, and he kind of did it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Seems like it was one of the cases where a
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: few different people all sort of had the same idea
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: within a few years of one another, without even stealing
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: from each other. Because there was a man in nineteen
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: forty nine in Arizona name Joseph Pampa who filed an
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: application for a deep friar basket that made these perfect
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: little taco shells. But a couple of years before them,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: there was another restaurant to our name, uh Drovincio Maldonado,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: great name, and he actually won the patent out of
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: New York City in ninety seven. But Glenn Bell also
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: created his own version, it seems like independently. Yeah. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the reason why everybody was having this kind of same
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: idea at the same time is because part of like
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: the zeitgeist at the time as far as food went,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was the idea that fast food was awesome and creating
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: food quickly and efficiently was thrilling um. Because prior to this,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: if you made tacos, you made the tacos as you know,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: as order to order, and you took these uncooked flour
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: tortillas and then you fried them up and made tacos
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: that way. And this was like, no, no, I just
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: imagine if you had the shells already ready, it would
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: save so much time and knock these Bobby Soccers socks
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: off right. And if you happen to break the shells,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it's a nacho exactly. That's that's what my teacher says. Uh. So,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Glenn Bell has opened a hot dog in Hamburger stand
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: in San Bernardino and San Burdue, California, across from the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: original McDonald's. If you remember that episode, which is pretty fine,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: which started out as a barbecue restaurant, and he was
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: doing okay, he wasn't doing that great, but he noticed
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: across the street there was a rex a Mexican restaurant
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: called I guess it's the Meat La Cafe m I
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: t l A that had been open since nineteen thirty
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: seven by the Rodriguez family, and it was it was
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: not a taco stand. It was like a full, sit down,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: full service restaurant, open breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: killing it. And he was like, I gotta get me
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: some of that. Yes, and we've reached the point where um,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I want to point out that Dave rus is a
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: born food writer, because the reason both of us wanted
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: tacos so bad in large part because of Dave's really
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: great descriptive writing. But he talked about how like the
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Meat Like Cafe, it wasn't a taco joint, but they
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: had killer tacos and they had um something called tacos dorados,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: which is a fried taco. And he said that at night,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: young people would show up at the Meat Like Cafe
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: craving a quick bite, and the best seller was a
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: freshly fried bag of tacos Dorado's, golden fried tacos. That
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: is good food writing. It makes me hungry, imagine that.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: And these are essentially Taketo's, right. Yeah. They would take
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: a corn tortilla, put ground beef in it, roll it up,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: put a toothpick in it to hold it together, and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: then fry that. And then they would put the cheese
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: and the lettuce and the tomatoes on the outside. And
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say would because Meat Like Cafe is still
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: there and they still serve um tacos dorados. Yeah, it's taketo.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: So I love it. Sometimes I'll get taketos. Sure, yeah,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: just stop by the racetrack or something or the quick trip.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Have you have ever seen those? Like they look like
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: a taketo and a hot dog, like made love or something.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not even sure what it is that sounds hot. Uh. No,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: I like taketos in a in a place or flout
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: this is another name. Uh. I'm a big fan of
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the chimmy chonga, which is different. That's like a deep
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: read burrito, but that's an American invention. Yeah, put anything
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: in a fryer basket and I'm all over it. Dude,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I'm with you. But also that sauce that's peculiar to
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: the chimmy chonga is so good man. And plus it's
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: just fun to say when you order it. Yeah, I
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: haven't found a great one here in Atlanta near me
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: because all the places near me are a little more
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: authentic and they don't have them. Oh yeah, I was
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: gonna say, like you, um, yeah, there places near me,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: but I just don't go there, right but there. But yeah,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: if it's authentic, they're probably not gonna have a chimmy chonga.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: That's an American American Mexican food or it's an a
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Mexican place that's catering to Americans, right exactly. So the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: reason that we're bringing up the Meat Like Cafe is
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: because this is where Glenn Bell learned to fry up
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: tacos to make tacos. And it's not entirely fair to
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: say that he stole the idea from the Rodriguez family
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: who were running the Meat Like Cafe and came up
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: with the tacos dorados because he Glen Bell, became a
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: regular customer there, but he was there not just to
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: enjoy the food, but to kind of like spy on
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: them and watch the process and figure out how to
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: do it. And there is a guy named Gustavo Aorlano Ariano.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: He wrote Taco Usa Colon How Mexican Food Conquered America,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: and he's the guy who seems to be the one
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: who really turned up the story about how the Meat
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Like Cafe was the was the basis of Taco Bell
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: originally um and that with the when the Rodriguez family
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: figured out that that um that that Glenn Bell wanted
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: to learn how to make tacos dorados and was kind
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: of surreptitiously learning by spying. They invited him into the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: kitchen to teach him how to do it. They just
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: showed him how to do it so exactly. So um,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Glenn Bell went off and he um. Basically he started.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: He went from making hamburgers and hot dogs to making
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: tacos based on the taco dorado's thing. But he was
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: also combining it with inspiration from the McDonald's brothers across
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the street who had gotten into really efficient fast food.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: So he was trying to forget how to make tacos
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: dorados as fast as possible. Yeah, I mean this is
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: where he comes up with his uh nineteen one frying contraption. Uh.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: And we should point out when it was a very
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: sort of Americanized version of the of the takedo. He
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: actually topped his with chili dog sauce from his hot
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: dog days. I'm not gonna hate on that. I bet
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: it's delicious, That's all I'm gonna say. Yeah, But he
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: was looking to open up his first taco restaurant in
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: fifty one, and he did so, and a consultant was
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: helping out with the naming, and they said, what about Latapatia,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: which is a nickname for a woman from Guadalajara, and
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: he said, yeah, Latapatia is great, but how just how
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: about just taco tia. They said, that makes taco ant
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: That makes no sense. You know, that's fine. Sure, well's
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: an Anne who loves tacos. It makes sense to me. Yeah,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: an aunt rather not a not an insect aunt to
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: be to be clear. So he had Taco tia um
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: and then he went on, He's like, I really like
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: this taco thing. I'm going to start another chain with
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a couple of Rams football players. They created El Taco
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: and that went well for four years and he sold
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: out his portion of that, and then he finally created
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the first Taco Bell in nineteen sixty two and Downey, California.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Right nineteen sixty two, diarrhea is born for Taco Bell.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I love Taco Bell. Like we've talked about it before.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I'd never ever have it, but I had it once
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: about four or five months ago, for the first time
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: in a couple of years, and it was so good,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: and I had diarrhea. Oh yeah, well that's why you
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: associate that with that, huh. It was worth it, though.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: So the first one, they call it Taco Bell Numero,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: you know, the one in Downey, California that he opened
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. It is one of the most
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: adorable buildings you'll ever see in your life. The sign
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and is awesome, the front, the the the overhang is awesome.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: It's in a mission revival style. Um. And actually Glenn
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Bell envisioned it as kind of like a community center,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: so like he had fire pits, there was like mariachi
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: music and dancing. It was way more than it should
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: have been as just a taco joint. A fast food
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: taco joined and it took off really quickly. Within five
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: years he had a hundred stores open. Yeah. And then
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: you know, they still even in the eighties and seventies
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: used the similar signage. Like when I saw Taco Bell
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: numero uno uh and that's what they call it. By
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the way, we're not just trying to be cute. UM,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I recognize never I recognized that sign immediately. I was like,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I remember that from when I was a kid,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: and they did have sort of and they still sort
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: of had that mission you know, that sort of stuck
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: out to the restaurant until the nineties. I ran across
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: an architectural digest blog and said we would hit one
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: our apartments to look like nineties Taco bells because there's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of like weird Memphis style mixed in. But um,
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: it was. I remember when it transitioned from the old No,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: not really, it's way more slick. Okay, I haven't really noticed.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: There was a there was a big transition. There's actually
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: been a couple since that one where they went from
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: the ones where we were kids to the nineties versions.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: And it was a sad day. I remember being like,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: something's been lost here. I don't like this new stuff.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: It looks like Zach Morris took over and redesigned the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: whole thing. Uh, well, that's just because the big mural
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: of screech on the side, alright, screeching a sombrero. Yeah.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he died, didn't he He did very sad
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: lung cancer and even though he didn't smoke cheese, that's terrible.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I remember Del Taco to that was the other big one,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: uh growing up, and that went out of business eventually,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: but Del Taco and Taco Bell were the two biggies.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Taco Bell or Del Taco still around? Is it? Oh? Yeah,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: they'll sit down. I had another's de'll talk. Oh, by
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: my house, Um, not very far away from it, and
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: it's it's I had not had it until ever, until
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: maybe two thousand ninety. I think they slim, though I
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: don't see those much anymore. It seemed to be like
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: a legit rival the Taco Bell, but Taco Bell squashed
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: them with the Tortilla Press. Yeah, because just in the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: US alone, there's seven thousand Taco Bell locations. That is
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: a lot, and they're all over the world except Mexico. Yeah,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: they tried in and two thousand seven to open up
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Taco Bells in Mexico City, and they did and they
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: just did not go very far, but they there. Um
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: and thinking two thousand fifteen, there was a campaign to
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: save Taco Bell Numero Uno because they were going to
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: demolish it. There was actually a KFC slash Taco Bell
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: across the street from it, and um that that lot
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: where Taco Bell Numero Uno was was being redeveloped and
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: there was a campaign to to save it, and they
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: moved it in two thousand fifteen. They moved it I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: think forty five miles from Downey to Irvine, where Taco
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Bell's headquarters is. And yeah, there's uh there's a lot
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: of stories on this online, but I would recommend you
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: go to pee Wee Herman's website peewee dot com. Uh,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: there's a really really I found the best article was
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: there because as all kinds of pictures of the restaurant
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: now wrapped up in the parking lot of the headquarters,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: and then there's a video. There's pictures of it going
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: down the freeway on a truck with uh you know,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: the extra wide load with a police escort, and like
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: there were twenty or thirty cars of like people that
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: like took the two hour journey, hawking their horns and stuff.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: So it's really kind of a fun story. Uh. They
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: sadly haven't found a place where it's still because I
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: saw follow up last year. Um, they're still looking for
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: a permanent home for it though. Yeah, apparently it's still
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: just like you said, wrapped up in the parking lot,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: um in a tarp on the trailers still just kind
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: off in a corner of the parking lot, which is
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: a hopefully not the end of the place, I guess.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: And big shout out to the conservation group we are
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the next because there who headed up that whole plan
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: to say the building that a lot of people would
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: say is not historically significant. Sure you should have send
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: me that pee wee Herman link. I would have liked
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: to have seen that. I love that. Okay, Oh you
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: didn't see it. No, I mean I had all the
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: same stuff. It just had a couple of cool pictures. Gotcha. Um,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay. Well,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about tacos, go eat
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: some tacos, find some authentic ones to see what you think. Uh.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: And since I said see what you think, it's time
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: for a listener mail. Well before listener mail, I did
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: promise to shout out my favorite taco places. So can
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: we do that? Yeah, let's man, and you feel free
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: as well? Uh? In San Francisco Taco Bar right there
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: in sort of Lower Hate, I'm sorry, not lower Hate.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: Lower Pacific Heights. Uh, Los Angeles, Yuccas and Los Felis
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: was one of my favorites. Senior fishing, Eagle Rock. And
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: then there was one called Seven Mayors uh in Silver
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Lake that I think closed down but has now opened
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: up as Plaita, And it was very seafood focused. Mayors
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: like mayors of a town or Mayor's like horses, like horses.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I think it was El Mades was how you would
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: really say, it's very pretty. Seven years you wouldn't know
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: that if if it weren't for multiculturalism, they had really
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: good uh Sivica, really good seafood. Uh. And then here
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Altasar on Kirkwood, Mescalito's and oak Hurst, any
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: place on Buford Highway, you're gonna get good authentic Mexican
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: food in tacos. So those are my shoutouts. Yes, do
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: you have any No, I don't. I need to get
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: out to more taco places. Apparently, shout out to the
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: the food truck whose name I did not get in
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: between Seattle and Portland at one time. Yes, later, Kenny
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Tacos is what it's called. All right? Sorry, listener mail,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: listener mail, I'm just gonna call this nice email from
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: a nice human. Okay, Hey, guys, wanted to share without
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: your show is helpful and enjoyable to me and how
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: I used my experience to help a friend. My friends
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: started new medication and message me expressing insomnia troubles that
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: came on as a result. I empathize and explain how
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: I actually use stuff you should know to help me
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: fall asleep when my mind is running a hundred miles
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: an hour, put on an older episode with a sleep
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: timer and let my brain focus on the topic of discussion.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: I also find your voices really calming, probably because I'm
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: so familiar with hearing them almost every day for the
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: past few years. Of course, I suggested speaking to a
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: doctor too, but I encourage encouraged her to look into
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: your podcast, even just for the general curiosity and enjoyment.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Since my husband and I moved overseas for his military obligations,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: to find your show even more important in my life
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: because I feel connected h to the routines and the
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: life I was used to living before we moved. Thanks
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: for all the hard work you put into each episode.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: Your content and enthusiasm truly bring a joy and brightness
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: to this world. I'm extremely grateful if you have a
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: wonderful new year of two, and I look forward to
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: continuing listening for as long as your w like to
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: make episodes. That is from Katie very nice. Thanks a lot, Katie.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: I remember I've probably said this before a million times.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: I used to take not a fence, but I used
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to be like what exactly does that mean when people
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: said that they use this to fall asleep, and then
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, this is that is a high
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: honor that you can put people to sleep, you know. Yeah,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: you're in bed with somebody and you're soothing them. Yeah,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: especially if they have trouble sleeping, like to a clinical
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: degree and you can help them. That is I mean,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have that put on my on my tombstone.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Should see. And now he's sleeping the big sleep. It's
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: a little Bertie workshop. Um, all right, Well, if you
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: want to be like Kate Katie, oh sorry Katie. If
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you want to be like Katie and send us a
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: great email like Katie did, you can send it to
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: us at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
• 56:02
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• 56:07
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