Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: The Curious Rise of SPAM

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CLASSIC: The Curious Rise of SPAM · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians, We're gonna say it. We hope this
0:03
Speaker 1: doesn't ruffle too many feathers. We are big fans of spam, boy.
0:07
Speaker 2: Are we ever?
0:09
Speaker 3: Just I don't know, man, I don't love it to
0:11
Speaker 3: eat necessarily, but I love the concept of it. And
0:14
Speaker 3: I did recently have a spam musubi, which is like
0:17
Speaker 3: a little Hawaiian kind of spam sushi role situation.
0:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, spam musubi is crazy good. And if you've ever
0:25
Speaker 1: spent time in Hawaii, or maybe in Korea or even Japan,
0:30
Speaker 1: you know that spam is a global phenomenon.
0:34
Speaker 2: It is darn air.
0:36
Speaker 1: Ubiquitous in Hawaii, and yeah, it's tough for everyone. It
0:41
Speaker 1: is a processed meat, and learning about how that meat
0:44
Speaker 1: is processed may turn you off of the stuff. But luckily,
0:49
Speaker 1: in today's classic episode, we are joined with our legendary
0:54
Speaker 1: dear friend of our show, dear friend at our personal lives,
0:58
Speaker 1: the co host and co creator of Savor, Annie Reese.
1:02
Speaker 1: She's gonna help us understand just how ridiculous the origin
1:06
Speaker 1: of spam actually is.
1:08
Speaker 3: It is, indeed, so let's roll that beautiful spam footage.
1:15
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone, ridiculous historians,
1:44
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in. This is the show where
1:47
Speaker 1: we look at some of the strangest, weirdest, most bizarre,
1:49
Speaker 1: and yes, ridiculous people, places, things, and events throughout the
1:53
Speaker 1: span of human civilization.
1:55
Speaker 3: Animals, vegetables, minerals today. I'm not sure which category this
2:00
Speaker 3: topic falls under, but it's it's a thing, it's historically driven.
2:04
Speaker 2: And it's a fun thing.
2:05
Speaker 3: It is a fun thing. You know what just happened?
2:06
Speaker 3: I want to point out by the way, Ben.
2:08
Speaker 2: What's that?
2:09
Speaker 3: Noel, our super producer Casey Pegrin said, Okay, start talking,
2:15
Speaker 3: go right, go. He literally cracked the whip at us.
2:18
Speaker 3: I will because you you would.
2:20
Speaker 1: You had thrown both Casey and I under the bus
2:23
Speaker 1: before the before the show started. Yeah, by by saying
2:27
Speaker 1: that you are more grateful than anyone for a particularly surprising,
2:32
Speaker 1: amazing thing we have happening in this episode.
2:35
Speaker 3: That's just me over compensating. You notice about me, Ben?
2:38
Speaker 2: You know this about me?
2:39
Speaker 3: Do you want how about this? Let's let's drop the
2:42
Speaker 3: drop the goods. What do we have today? That's so right,
2:44
Speaker 3: that's correct.
2:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we have today an amazing story about an
2:49
Speaker 1: iconic food product that everyone in the US is aware of,
2:53
Speaker 1: and I assume many people throughout the world are aware
2:56
Speaker 1: of this. It is called spam. But you and I
3:00
Speaker 1: are not exploring this story alone today. Thank god we
3:04
Speaker 1: called in an expert. Folks, would like to introduce you
3:08
Speaker 1: to our friend and today's co host, Annie Reese.
3:12
Speaker 4: Hi, everybody, thanks so much for having me. Guys, did
3:15
Speaker 4: you know that you were a spam expert?
3:16
Speaker 3: Annie?
3:18
Speaker 2: Spam spurt? You know, I am so disgusting. That does
3:21
Speaker 2: sound really gross. Yeah, it didn't work out.
3:23
Speaker 3: It's like what happens when you opened the can and
3:24
Speaker 3: a little bit of the juice you.
3:26
Speaker 2: Oh, I did not need that mental image.
3:29
Speaker 3: You didn't know it, but she did.
3:31
Speaker 2: Annie.
3:31
Speaker 3: Okay, expert maybe not. I don't know. We're all kind
3:34
Speaker 3: of like armchair experts on a lot of things. We
3:37
Speaker 3: have a good time researching. I don't know how you
3:39
Speaker 3: would get the qualification of spam expert, but I'm going
3:42
Speaker 3: to refer to you as our spam spirit guide today.
3:44
Speaker 3: How about that?
3:44
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like about spam consultant.
3:48
Speaker 2: I'm going to go it sounds like an email. I
3:51
Speaker 2: come in and you're getting a lot.
3:52
Speaker 3: Of spam sorted out, like make all the filters on
3:55
Speaker 3: your emails.
3:56
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm shopping at a grocery store and
3:59
Speaker 1: I'm going, oh wait, there's so many different things, and
4:02
Speaker 1: then you appear and you explain it in a step
4:05
Speaker 1: by step basis, And I just want you to know
4:07
Speaker 1: that I am preemptively very appreciative of that.
4:12
Speaker 2: I feel like i'd be good at that. I'm not sure, but.
4:15
Speaker 3: Are very efficient.
4:17
Speaker 1: And you are a co host of our food podcast, Savor,
4:22
Speaker 1: Food Lifestyle Travel. Could you tell us a little bit
4:25
Speaker 1: about Saver.
4:26
Speaker 4: Yeah. Savor is a show where we explore the science
4:32
Speaker 4: history culture of food and drinks and why we like
4:36
Speaker 4: what we like and how you can get more of that.
4:38
Speaker 2: It used to be called food Stuff.
4:39
Speaker 4: We recently rebranded, but we did a whole episode on
4:43
Speaker 4: spam back when it was old school food stuff. And
4:47
Speaker 4: I have a confession to make that Noel and I
4:49
Speaker 4: were talking about briefly before this.
4:52
Speaker 2: Anyone who knows anything.
4:53
Speaker 4: About Apple podcast reviews, you don't read them unless you're
4:57
Speaker 4: a masochist.
4:58
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, right, which I am.
5:01
Speaker 4: Well, you were a very result in me, but once
5:04
Speaker 4: I'm a friend of mine left a review and was
5:06
Speaker 4: like you've got to go find it, you've got to
5:07
Speaker 4: read it, And I said, do you know what you're
5:09
Speaker 4: asking me to do? But eventually I got over it
5:12
Speaker 4: and delved into the nightmare.
5:14
Speaker 3: War the shark pity that is podcast reviews.
5:18
Speaker 2: I like the reviews I read it.
5:21
Speaker 4: Oh, that might say something about you, but it might
5:25
Speaker 4: say something about me as well. But one of the
5:28
Speaker 4: number one recurring negative reviews was that I have never
5:31
Speaker 4: tried any of the foods we're talking about. And when
5:34
Speaker 4: we recorded spam, I had not tried it.
5:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're very open about it on the show, though, Yeah,
5:40
Speaker 3: it seems like a very misplaced complaint. You know, you're
5:43
Speaker 3: talking to it, you're owning up to it. You honestly,
5:45
Speaker 3: maybe it's better that you haven't tasted the stuff. It
5:47
Speaker 3: makes you more objective about it.
5:49
Speaker 2: Have you still tried it? I tried it.
5:51
Speaker 4: Afterwards, I went and got spam subi and that was
5:56
Speaker 4: it was.
5:56
Speaker 2: Lovely spam what musubi?
6:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a very popular you can find it inconvenience
6:04
Speaker 4: stores in Hawaii, that's how popular it is. And it
6:06
Speaker 4: kind of to me looks like nigiri, like sushi, but
6:09
Speaker 4: it's it's spam.
6:10
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, Okay, yeah, I'm familiar with that. And what
6:14
Speaker 1: we know nowadays is that in most grocery stores that
6:17
Speaker 1: carry spam, you won't just see the iconic, regular garden
6:21
Speaker 1: variety spam. You'll see stuff like turkey spam, spam with bacon,
6:25
Speaker 1: spam light. And because this is so recognizable, we have
6:31
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves, how how did this thing which people
6:35
Speaker 1: love or hate, how did it become so ubiquitous in
6:38
Speaker 1: the world today? How how come everybody, vegetarians vegans included,
6:44
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about and you say spam.
6:47
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's good branding right to say
6:50
Speaker 3: the spa sound is one of my favorites. And then
6:53
Speaker 3: add va am and it's just a delight to say
6:56
Speaker 3: out loud, and it's it's it's meant to be an acronym,
6:59
Speaker 3: but the or of what its acronym actually might be
7:02
Speaker 3: is a little bit lost to history, or it's kind
7:04
Speaker 3: of a little murky, right.
7:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are a couple of stories about where the
7:08
Speaker 4: name came from from the people who should know where
7:11
Speaker 4: it came from. One is that it's like spiced ham,
7:16
Speaker 4: or maybe it stands for scientifically processed.
7:19
Speaker 2: Animal matter animal matter sound not so delicious not quite
7:25
Speaker 2: meat animal matter.
7:28
Speaker 3: And there's others too. There's a shoulder of pork and
7:31
Speaker 3: ham and like you said, spiced ham. And then if
7:33
Speaker 3: we want to really get into the weeds that's utterly
7:35
Speaker 3: not food related. There's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act.
7:38
Speaker 3: There's also the State Police Association of Massachusetts. Best we forget.
7:43
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that was in the running.
7:46
Speaker 3: Schools of the Pacific Atmospheric Monitoring Society for the Publication
7:50
Speaker 3: of American Music Systems Personnel Activity Meeting. That's from Yale
7:56
Speaker 3: in my personal favorite society for palm top advancement through meetings.
8:00
Speaker 2: Oh through only through media.
8:01
Speaker 3: That seems like a fascinating use of time. But okay,
8:04
Speaker 3: so spam It dates back to nineteen thirty seven in
8:08
Speaker 3: a town called Austin, Minnesota aka Spamtown, USA.
8:13
Speaker 1: And it was made by Hormel Foods. They initially pitched
8:18
Speaker 1: it as a way to help busy homemakers serve quick
8:24
Speaker 1: and easy pork dishes without having to slave away for
8:27
Speaker 1: hours in front of it of it.
8:29
Speaker 3: But in like an Edward Burnet's style stroke of genius,
8:31
Speaker 3: it also did a thing where it Hormel the guy
8:36
Speaker 3: had a slaughterhouse, and he had these byproduct parts that
8:39
Speaker 3: weren't very sellable, aka the pork shoulder. We now kind
8:44
Speaker 3: of dig pork shoulder. That's like a thing that it's
8:46
Speaker 3: like a delicacy, right or like people eat it at
8:48
Speaker 3: the Thanksgiving table or whatever.
8:49
Speaker 2: Right, people are into it now, Yeah for barbecue, I think, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
8:54
Speaker 2: exactly so.
8:54
Speaker 3: But he had this surplus of pork shoulder. It was
8:57
Speaker 3: not a popular cut, and so he wanted to figure
9:00
Speaker 3: out a way to make this, as you say, ben
9:02
Speaker 3: convenient product that could be marketed to homemakers who are
9:07
Speaker 3: all about canned food. At the time it was all
9:09
Speaker 3: the rage.
9:10
Speaker 1: And they haven't really fuxed with the ingredients too much.
9:14
Speaker 2: You know.
9:15
Speaker 1: It's strange because when you think of shelf stable, that
9:19
Speaker 1: shell stable being the term for stuff that can stay
9:22
Speaker 1: at room temperature without going bad. I guess getting worse
9:25
Speaker 1: than it originally was. When you think of that, usually
9:27
Speaker 1: think of a ton of chemicals with so many syllables
9:31
Speaker 1: in the name that it sounds like a spell from
9:33
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, right. But in the case of spam, they
9:37
Speaker 1: have what six ingredients is just port slash, ham salt water, potato, starch, sugar,
9:45
Speaker 1: and of course sodium nitrate.
9:47
Speaker 2: Of course for color. Yes, that captivating pinkishu. It's they
9:53
Speaker 2: describe it.
9:54
Speaker 1: So spam didn't immediately become this worldwide since there were
10:01
Speaker 1: other things happening across the planet that eventually would lead
10:06
Speaker 1: to spam becoming like the king of canned meat. And
10:12
Speaker 1: it goes into an angle that a lot of people
10:14
Speaker 1: might not be aware of. It goes to tensions between
10:16
Speaker 1: the US and Japan during the nineteen thirties. There's a guy,
10:20
Speaker 1: Donald M. Shug at the University of Hawaii who published
10:24
Speaker 1: a paper on this, and he says that the US
10:28
Speaker 1: military began to view Hawaii's fishing fleet as a serious
10:32
Speaker 1: threat to national security. So, you know, at this time,
10:36
Speaker 1: Hawaii is still not a US state, right, So when
10:41
Speaker 1: the Japanese government arranged for many of Hawaii's Japanese fishermen
10:44
Speaker 1: to attend fishing schools in Japan, there were concerns that
10:48
Speaker 1: these fishermen were actually being interrogated by Japanese navy officials.
10:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, but to what end? Ben to what end?
10:56
Speaker 1: So this eventually, okay, we walked through this real quick.
11:00
Speaker 1: So in nineteen forty three years after the invention of spam,
11:05
Speaker 1: suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese immigrants resulted in the
11:09
Speaker 1: implementation of a federal statute that stopped or banned fishing
11:13
Speaker 1: vessels of five tons or more from obtaining licenses unless
11:18
Speaker 1: the person who owned the vessel was a US citizen.
11:21
Speaker 1: The next year, nineteen forty one, they passed a law
11:23
Speaker 1: prohibiting quote aliens from fishing with gil purs or these
11:29
Speaker 1: different kinds of nets within one mile of shore, because
11:32
Speaker 1: they wanted to preserve the fishery resources for Native Hawaiians
11:35
Speaker 1: and US citizens. This ended careers of a lot of
11:38
Speaker 1: people in the fishing industry in Hawaii, and then that
11:42
Speaker 1: meant that without spam these other canned meats and sardines,
11:46
Speaker 1: the economy would have collapsed. They had to find something
11:49
Speaker 1: to replace this massive fishing industry.
11:52
Speaker 3: And let's not forget about Executive Order in ninety sixty
11:55
Speaker 3: six where Franklin Roosevelt basically banned Japanese Americans citizens who
12:00
Speaker 3: were occupying military zones had them put in internment camp.
12:04
Speaker 3: So this whole anti Japanese sentiment was wide rife in
12:07
Speaker 3: the country, and weirdly enough, it trickled down to this
12:11
Speaker 3: canned meat product.
12:13
Speaker 1: And of course these tensions, these discriminatory laws and economic
12:18
Speaker 1: practices were only ripples of a much larger event on
12:24
Speaker 1: the horizon, which is World War Two. And when the
12:28
Speaker 1: war begins, spam also has a part to play.
12:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does, because if you remember, spam was pretty
12:34
Speaker 4: new around the time that America was getting involved in
12:39
Speaker 4: World War Two, but it was a popular option for
12:43
Speaker 4: soldiers because getting fresh meat or fresh anything to Hawaii
12:49
Speaker 4: was difficult for American soldiers station there, so the US
12:54
Speaker 4: government was sending spam, or it might not have been
12:58
Speaker 4: exactly spam.
12:59
Speaker 3: Wasn't it kind of like leftover meat parts that they
13:02
Speaker 3: had that they shipped to Hormel and then they made
13:04
Speaker 3: them my spam like stuff.
13:06
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, so Hormel's canning them. But it probably
13:11
Speaker 4: wasn't exactly what spam is today or what we think
13:14
Speaker 4: of it today. And it was cheap, non perishable, could
13:17
Speaker 4: withstand all sorts of weather conditions. But soldiers weren't exactly
13:23
Speaker 4: happy with spam. They were sometimes eating it three times
13:26
Speaker 4: a day, so I'm sure they were tired of it.
13:30
Speaker 4: Some of them even wrote hate mail to Hormel. Which
13:33
Speaker 4: the company kept in a quote scurrilous file, and some
13:37
Speaker 4: of my favorite dishes are quote meat loaf without basic
13:41
Speaker 4: training haam, that didn't pass its physical and the real
13:45
Speaker 4: reason war was hell.
13:47
Speaker 2: That's great, it's fantastic.
13:49
Speaker 3: It's pretty harsh. Those are some sick burns. Do you
13:51
Speaker 3: think that this would have been like branded as spam?
13:54
Speaker 3: Would it have come in the tins, like with the
13:56
Speaker 3: logo on it and everything, because you kind of made
13:58
Speaker 3: a point on your episode of food Stuff back when
14:00
Speaker 3: it was called that that almost like the proper spam
14:03
Speaker 3: kind of got a bad rap because this was like
14:05
Speaker 3: almost like bootleg spam, but it was being manufactured in
14:09
Speaker 3: Hormel's canning facilities. So I'm wondering if they like branded
14:13
Speaker 3: it differently or called it like Mr. Spam or something,
14:16
Speaker 3: or I don't know, do you find anything about that
14:17
Speaker 3: in your research.
14:18
Speaker 4: I didn't find much about that at all. In fact,
14:22
Speaker 4: the fact that it wasn't spam was sort of a
14:26
Speaker 4: deep cut.
14:26
Speaker 3: It was kind of lost on people. Clearly they were
14:29
Speaker 3: writing those letters, those angry letters. Oh and this also
14:32
Speaker 3: know it reminds me of the kind of people that
14:33
Speaker 3: write mean things about podcasts.
14:35
Speaker 1: Well, it's also in the case of spam, there's an
14:38
Speaker 1: interesting linguistic thing that occurs because they're using it as
14:41
Speaker 1: one word to describe this umbrella of umbrella of processed meat.
14:46
Speaker 2: So the image it just got weird for me.
14:48
Speaker 1: But you know, it's similar to the way that instead
14:51
Speaker 1: of people saying search for something on the Internet, they
14:53
Speaker 1: say google it, or instead of make a copy xerox this.
14:56
Speaker 4: Yeah.
14:57
Speaker 1: Right, And it seems pretty certain in the history that
15:02
Speaker 1: only a few soldiers received genuine spam. But because there
15:07
Speaker 1: had already been this can be product around since the
15:10
Speaker 1: late thirties, that's just what people called it. So maybe
15:14
Speaker 1: spam got an unfair uh mark, a scurreless mark on
15:19
Speaker 1: its on its reputation.
15:21
Speaker 4: I wonder if it's possible too that because spam was
15:24
Speaker 4: new and at the time, there was such a push
15:28
Speaker 4: to be like behind the boys, and you know, all
15:32
Speaker 4: American soldiers and America is doing great in the war.
15:35
Speaker 1: Annie is Annie has throwing some great propaganda. Yeah, she's
15:39
Speaker 1: got these tiny American flags. She's gently twisting between her
15:42
Speaker 1: thumb and forefinger.
15:43
Speaker 2: Shut off a firecracker. I always come with crops, I
15:46
Speaker 2: always come with props.
15:47
Speaker 3: Very true.
15:49
Speaker 4: But I wonder if maybe they made a miscalculation and thought, oh,
15:54
Speaker 4: spam is supporting the soldiers and this will really get
15:56
Speaker 4: our name out there. And it did, but not in
16:00
Speaker 4: the way they were hoping.
16:02
Speaker 3: Oh man, this is like a like an attempt, like
16:04
Speaker 3: a ham fisted attempt at a pr kind of stun
16:08
Speaker 3: visited a test spam fisted attempt. That's even better, and
16:10
Speaker 3: he took to the next level like you do.
16:13
Speaker 4: I'm just curious if there was an element of that
16:16
Speaker 4: behind it, because I could see I could see the
16:18
Speaker 4: calculation there.
16:19
Speaker 1: Because it is free advertising when you think about it.
16:23
Speaker 1: That's a good point because these soldiers from the US
16:27
Speaker 1: are traveling around the world. They're going to Europe, they're
16:29
Speaker 1: going to the Pacific, they're going to various different islands,
16:33
Speaker 1: and they're bringing spam along with them.
16:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a government contract, so you're getting paid
16:40
Speaker 4: to do it. I bet there was something like that
16:43
Speaker 4: going on, and the backlash from the soldiers generated one
16:48
Speaker 4: of my favorite quotes about spam, because there are a
16:50
Speaker 4: lot of excellent quotes about spam. Hormale describes it as
16:53
Speaker 4: meat with a pause button, which I love.
16:55
Speaker 3: I'm gonna need you to unpack that for us A
16:57
Speaker 3: little bit meat with a pause button, meaning like it
17:00
Speaker 3: never goes bad. Or is that the implication?
17:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, like you put it in that can. It's like
17:04
Speaker 4: a time capsule. It's just going to stay the same.
17:08
Speaker 4: I got it pushing pause. Another one of my favorite
17:15
Speaker 4: quotes comes from a nineteen forty five New Yorker piece,
17:18
Speaker 4: and it was all about as a profile on Jay Hormel,
17:21
Speaker 4: and in the article, the author wrote, I got the
17:24
Speaker 4: distinct impression that being responsible for spam might be too
17:27
Speaker 4: great a burden on any one. Man.
17:29
Speaker 2: I love that idea of being cursed by the success
17:33
Speaker 2: of spam. Yeah.
17:36
Speaker 1: So is it that the soldiers genuinely didn't like the
17:39
Speaker 1: taste or is it? Do you think it's really more
17:41
Speaker 1: because as you said, they were eating it so often.
17:43
Speaker 4: I think it was a couple of things. I think
17:47
Speaker 4: it was they were eating it so often, they were
17:50
Speaker 4: eating it cold. And one of the reasons I've found
17:54
Speaker 4: when looking into this question of why spam is so
17:58
Speaker 4: popular in Hawaiian like other Asian Pacific countries, is because
18:03
Speaker 4: not only were they kind of their hand was forced
18:07
Speaker 4: because of the things you were talking about earlier, where
18:10
Speaker 4: Japanese immigrants couldn't fish. They also were incorporating spam in
18:16
Speaker 4: ways that were delicious, like they were putting them in
18:20
Speaker 4: recipes that they made. Anyway, they were adding them into
18:23
Speaker 4: spam fried rice or spam and eggs.
18:25
Speaker 2: Soldiers were just eating them cold.
18:26
Speaker 4: Out of the ten, I think I have very limited
18:30
Speaker 4: experience with spam.
18:31
Speaker 2: I don't know about the two of you, but.
18:33
Speaker 3: I limited limited. Yeah, purposely.
18:35
Speaker 1: I will make a confession that Casey and Annie probably know,
18:40
Speaker 1: you probably don't know I received in my early years
18:44
Speaker 1: working when we all started working together, I received an
18:47
Speaker 1: MVP Award.
18:49
Speaker 2: Do you remember this, Andy.
18:50
Speaker 1: It's just three cans of spam that have been wrapped
18:54
Speaker 1: together and artistically artistically designed so that parts of the
19:00
Speaker 1: spam logos say MVP or something like that, and it's
19:04
Speaker 1: It's one of the most prestigious awards I've ever received.
19:07
Speaker 1: It's also still in our office in case of an emergency.
19:12
Speaker 2: Yes, the case of a trophy emergency.
19:14
Speaker 1: The case of a trophy case, we're trapped here and
19:16
Speaker 1: we have to eat spam. Oh yeah, I think about that.
19:19
Speaker 1: But but the I might have just a little bit
19:23
Speaker 1: more familiarity with this stuff because in Boy Scouts we
19:27
Speaker 1: would camp a lot, and we would have to we
19:29
Speaker 1: would have to eat that stuff, and we tried to
19:31
Speaker 1: find different ways to make it taste interesting. It's just
19:33
Speaker 1: not the same old thing.
19:34
Speaker 3: But it's already spiced. I mean, what else does in need?
19:37
Speaker 4: It's right, the secret nitrate.
19:42
Speaker 2: I don't know what else you're missing.
19:43
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's I think it's a thing that a
19:45
Speaker 1: lot of people did, as you said, the assimilated spam.
19:49
Speaker 4: Yes, and to get back to the point, they were
19:53
Speaker 4: putting it in things that I think were probably much
19:56
Speaker 4: well definitely much more flavorful. And so they had a
20:00
Speaker 4: positive experience with spam in on Hawaii after soldiers left.
20:05
Speaker 4: A lot of soldiers when they went home, they brought
20:07
Speaker 4: with them their distaste.
20:09
Speaker 3: They were also turning spam into spam and ade, right.
20:12
Speaker 3: I mean, they were flooded and inundated with all these
20:14
Speaker 3: the spam, and because they couldn't get protein from fishing,
20:18
Speaker 3: and didn't the US kind of like send them a
20:21
Speaker 3: lot of the spam because they had like a surplus
20:24
Speaker 3: of the stuff.
20:24
Speaker 1: Right, And that wasn't just during World War Two, I
20:28
Speaker 1: continued during the Korean War as well.
20:29
Speaker 4: I believe, yes, because spam was included in a lot
20:34
Speaker 4: of foreign aid packages. And during the Korean War, people
20:39
Speaker 4: made something that I'm.
20:42
Speaker 2: Not entirely sure what's in there, and other.
20:45
Speaker 4: Folks weren't either, but they called it army stew, and
20:49
Speaker 4: spam was one of the ingredients that we do know
20:52
Speaker 4: was featured.
20:53
Speaker 2: In army stew Army sum And.
20:57
Speaker 4: To this day, Korea is spam's second largest market and
21:01
Speaker 4: it's a popular gift on Lunar New Year in that country.
21:05
Speaker 2: Oh wow, mm hmmm, Oh, that's cool.
21:08
Speaker 1: Do they have different varieties of spam in different countries,
21:12
Speaker 1: like different flavors and such? I?
21:15
Speaker 4: Yes, I couldn't speak to specifics, but I do know
21:19
Speaker 4: that there's a wide variety of spam flavors and that
21:23
Speaker 4: it does vary in different countries.
21:27
Speaker 2: But Hawaii for sure is the biggest market.
21:31
Speaker 5: Yeah.
21:31
Speaker 2: Do you have some stats for us about that? Do I? Ever?
21:36
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure.
21:36
Speaker 4: I didn't know that spam had this association with Hawaii
21:40
Speaker 4: until I did that the research for that episode, but
21:43
Speaker 4: I think it's pretty common knowledge at least here in
21:45
Speaker 4: the United States. But Hawaiians consume about five million pounds
21:50
Speaker 4: of spam every year, which is about two million a
21:55
Speaker 4: little over two million kilograms, and on average that's about
21:58
Speaker 4: three pounds per person or about one point three kilograms
22:02
Speaker 4: a year, or.
22:02
Speaker 3: I think around six cans a year for every man, uh,
22:06
Speaker 3: every man, woman, child, any type of human is consuming
22:10
Speaker 3: about six cans of spam a year.
22:13
Speaker 1: I can't we completely forgot Hey, Casey, yes, do you
22:17
Speaker 1: have do you have.
22:18
Speaker 2: Any experience for familiarity with spam?
22:20
Speaker 3: Just the other weird al song, the Rim parody?
22:24
Speaker 2: Wait?
22:25
Speaker 3: Which was that spam?
22:26
Speaker 2: And the place where you live? You know that one?
22:29
Speaker 3: I don't. Yeah, it's a deep weird Outcot's stand by Rim.
22:34
Speaker 3: But stand.
22:37
Speaker 4: Is this?
22:37
Speaker 3: Is this like a classic?
22:39
Speaker 2: Yeah?
22:39
Speaker 3: Mid eight I means whenever stand was out? So okay,
22:43
Speaker 3: Casey on the case turning Casey on the case like
22:46
Speaker 3: that has a sound effect and everything.
22:49
Speaker 2: Any oh yeah, I mean it's got to because he's
22:53
Speaker 2: on the case.
22:53
Speaker 1: We we love being able to drop the sounds so
22:56
Speaker 1: multiple Yeah, well just listen after Casey spins this in
23:01
Speaker 1: different spends the spam into gold.
23:04
Speaker 2: I'm going to be shocked.
23:06
Speaker 4: The Hawaii also has what looks to be one of
23:09
Speaker 4: the festivals I would just.
23:12
Speaker 2: Be over the moon to attend.
23:13
Speaker 4: It's called spam Jam Festival in Waikiki, and I was
23:18
Speaker 4: looking at pictures for it. There's just mascot stressed is
23:21
Speaker 4: all the different types of spam, the spam eating contest.
23:25
Speaker 4: I think somebody got married there once. It looks awesome
23:31
Speaker 4: and I would love to go. And spam is also
23:34
Speaker 4: called Hawaiian steak, which I wasn't sure if it was
23:36
Speaker 4: a joke or not when I was reading that. In
23:38
Speaker 4: the state they call it Hawaiian steak.
23:40
Speaker 1: Okay, so actual native Hawaiians call.
23:43
Speaker 2: It that, from what I understand from what the Internet
23:45
Speaker 2: tells me, is okay, okay.
23:48
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm trying to figure out if we can
23:50
Speaker 1: say that or if that's mocking it.
23:52
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I'm not here to mock.
23:55
Speaker 3: Surely they also have steak in Hawaii.
23:57
Speaker 2: Surely they do, but probably they prefer spam.
24:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure steak is certainly much more
24:04
Speaker 1: expensive than they're just here on the mainland.
24:06
Speaker 2: That is true.
24:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, we kind of take for granted the fact
24:09
Speaker 3: that they are sort of isolated and require all of
24:12
Speaker 3: their goods to be shipped in literally, you know, by
24:15
Speaker 3: plane or by sea.
24:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes things expensive.
24:19
Speaker 1: So the legacy of spam established during World War Two
24:25
Speaker 1: and the Korean War takes this canned food product, this
24:29
Speaker 1: animal matter from Minnesota to its new home in You said,
24:34
Speaker 1: Hawaii is by far the largest market. Korea is second.
24:38
Speaker 1: That that would that should surprise a lot of people, right,
24:41
Speaker 1: because spam feels like such an American food because of
24:44
Speaker 1: the way it's spread across the planet.
24:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, it surprised me.
24:48
Speaker 4: I do find it really fascinating that it's so localized,
24:52
Speaker 4: it's so specific where people love it. And then I
24:55
Speaker 4: feel like the rest of the world and the rest
24:58
Speaker 4: of the US were kind of like, that's that weird
25:01
Speaker 4: food thing.
25:03
Speaker 2: What is that exactly?
25:05
Speaker 4: But I would like to mention that there is an
25:07
Speaker 4: amazing I've never been, but listeners have sent like some
25:12
Speaker 4: some stuff they've gotten from this museum in Austin, Minnesota,
25:17
Speaker 4: which is, like you said, spamtam USA. And if anyone
25:21
Speaker 4: has the opportunity, I highly recommend it.
25:24
Speaker 2: It's hands on it touch the spam hams on right. Nice.
25:31
Speaker 4: You get to race to see how many cans of
25:35
Speaker 4: fake it's fake spam that you can make in a minute.
25:38
Speaker 2: It's practice spam.
25:39
Speaker 4: Yeah, like you're trying to shove it into the can
25:43
Speaker 4: and you're competing against like a robot.
25:46
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like the world of Coca Cola
25:48
Speaker 3: in Atlanta. But yeah, with spam, yes, I would hope
25:51
Speaker 3: that you would have the opportunity to sample different titles Spam,
25:54
Speaker 3: the Spams.
25:55
Speaker 2: Of the World, Allah, World of Code.
25:57
Speaker 3: That would be super cool. We we didn't really talk
25:59
Speaker 3: about this, and I think it's fine to say it.
26:02
Speaker 3: For the end, Spam is cooked in the can. Yeah,
26:06
Speaker 3: the way it's made, isn't that weird? That that struck
26:09
Speaker 3: me as super odd? And there's a reason for that,
26:11
Speaker 3: right an.
26:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it has to do with that whole shelf
26:15
Speaker 4: stable thing, because you wanna you want to mix the
26:18
Speaker 4: meat in a vacuum and vacuum seal it and then
26:21
Speaker 4: cook the whole can.
26:22
Speaker 2: That's part of the whole meat with a pause button thing.
26:25
Speaker 4: It's so nothing gets in there that you don't want,
26:28
Speaker 4: unless maybe you don't want the spam, but that's a
26:30
Speaker 4: whole different argument.
26:32
Speaker 2: And when you.
26:33
Speaker 4: Cook it, the the meat breaks down and you're laughed
26:37
Speaker 4: with a little a little loaf of spam and some juices.
26:41
Speaker 2: We're not making it sound very appetite.
26:43
Speaker 3: Semi gelatinous almost hm, not as gelatinous as it could
26:47
Speaker 3: be if it didn't have that additive, right, because it
26:49
Speaker 3: was one of those additives that keeps it from forming
26:51
Speaker 3: like a gross congealed layer of goo on the top,
26:54
Speaker 3: to make something that's already not super appetizing practically inedible.
26:59
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you, guys, I will I make a
27:01
Speaker 1: mean spam fried rice if you ever want to come over.
27:03
Speaker 3: I'd be cool that if you cut it in the
27:05
Speaker 3: little cubes like that, right, it's like you hide it.
27:07
Speaker 3: It's like the way I feed my kid vegetables. You know,
27:10
Speaker 3: I shopped the carrot stuff so small you can't even
27:12
Speaker 3: see them. I mean, spam, for all intensive purposes probably
27:14
Speaker 3: tastes fine, But the texture of it and the look
27:17
Speaker 3: of it, and the idea of it just give me
27:19
Speaker 3: the grossouts.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's the fact that it comes out can shaped. I
27:23
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people. You see the rills
27:25
Speaker 1: in the can. Yeah, yeah, but not everybody. Not everybody
27:31
Speaker 1: hated it, right, we said, Hawaiian's welcomed it with open arms.
27:35
Speaker 1: People in parts of the Pacific Rim also really enjoyed it,
27:39
Speaker 1: and the Russians liked it. They called it Roosevelt sausage.
27:44
Speaker 3: To be fair, Russian Russian food's pretty gross.
27:47
Speaker 1: I feel like in terms of cuisine, Russians already very
27:50
Speaker 1: familiar with a lot of canned meat products, you know, yeah,
27:53
Speaker 1: like anchovies, different potted meats. So maybe it was just
27:58
Speaker 1: something that already seemed familiar to them.
28:00
Speaker 3: Okay, And first of all, for any Russian listeners out there,
28:03
Speaker 3: I want to apologize for insulting the entire cuisine of Russia,
28:07
Speaker 3: but I just never really run across Russian food that
28:11
Speaker 3: was particularly appetite to me. It seems like a lot
28:13
Speaker 3: of cabbage, a lot of like lard based things and
28:17
Speaker 3: borshed and you know, very rustic kind of stuff.
28:22
Speaker 1: There's a great Russian restaurant up north of Atlanta where
28:26
Speaker 1: we are based, and I would highly.
28:28
Speaker 2: Recommend checking it out.
28:29
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, in defense of Russian food, this
28:32
Speaker 1: is totally nonspare, but in defense of Russian food, make
28:37
Speaker 1: friends with someone who cooks Russian food themselves.
28:40
Speaker 2: And it will be amazing. Yeah, there's always like thirty
28:43
Speaker 2: dishes of things.
28:44
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would imagine that there's probably a lot of
28:49
Speaker 4: food that is historically Russian that we just have lost. Yeah,
28:55
Speaker 4: we've forgotten that it is, or we've made it our
28:58
Speaker 4: own thing. I'm sure thinking of any right now, but
29:01
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's good Russian fear, and.
29:03
Speaker 3: We do like a chicken Kiev.
29:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could do a Russian food update too. Sure
29:08
Speaker 1: we're going to get some emails about this one. Another
29:11
Speaker 1: one of, perhaps one of the most famous Russian fans
29:13
Speaker 1: of spam was Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev. Oh yeah, he
29:18
Speaker 1: wrote about spam in his memoirs called Krushev remembers not
29:23
Speaker 1: the most amazingly innovati threat though never Yeah, he probably
29:30
Speaker 1: had some threats in there. He probably took some shots.
29:32
Speaker 1: But in the memoir he specifically shouts out spam by saying, quote,
29:37
Speaker 1: there were many jokes going around in the army, some
29:40
Speaker 1: of them off color of American spam.
29:43
Speaker 2: It tastes good.
29:43
Speaker 1: Nonetheless, without spam, we will not feed our army. We
29:47
Speaker 1: would have lost our most fertile land, most fertile land. Dah,
29:51
Speaker 1: got it, got it?
29:52
Speaker 2: Who was that Russian guy?
29:54
Speaker 3: It was? It was Krushchev was.
29:58
Speaker 2: Terrible.
29:59
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we've got I've got a practice on
30:01
Speaker 1: the accents, folks. But he raises an interesting point. You
30:04
Speaker 1: know that similar to what was happening with war survivors
30:09
Speaker 1: in the countries on the Pacific Rim. There were people
30:13
Speaker 1: who would have starved without access to this easily transportable,
30:17
Speaker 1: infinitely durable food.
30:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of along the same lines. Margaret Thatcher called
30:22
Speaker 4: it a wartime delicacy. She called spam a wartime delicacy.
30:26
Speaker 4: And it's interesting, I think, because there is an odd
30:30
Speaker 4: sense of nostalgia for spam that a lot of people have,
30:34
Speaker 4: and I feel that it needed time to get away
30:38
Speaker 4: from the war the direct aftermath, but then after that
30:43
Speaker 4: people had this association with spam.
30:46
Speaker 2: It was there for me when I needed it.
30:49
Speaker 4: Yeah.
30:50
Speaker 3: It's also one of those things where it's like it
30:52
Speaker 3: hasn't changed much. The branding is the same. It's you know,
30:56
Speaker 3: people have fond memories of that and they like the
30:58
Speaker 3: idea of, you know, everything in this in this fast paced,
31:00
Speaker 3: mixed up world of ours, everything's always changing a mile
31:03
Speaker 3: a minute, but we can rely on spam.
31:05
Speaker 2: Yes, the spam never changes.
31:08
Speaker 3: Like our true North.
31:09
Speaker 2: There we go, true North of canned animal matter.
31:13
Speaker 1: I do have a question, this is something that I
31:16
Speaker 1: was wondering if we could explore together, how did spam
31:21
Speaker 1: also become a term for deluges of bizarre emails.
31:26
Speaker 2: Well then it has to do with Monty Python.
31:31
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that's sketch.
31:33
Speaker 2: Right, yes, huh can you describe the sketch?
31:35
Speaker 3: We should just play a clip of it.
31:37
Speaker 5: Oh you go, then all this egg and bikon eggs,
31:41
Speaker 5: sausage and bithon egg and spam, egg, bacon and spam, bcon,
31:47
Speaker 5: sausage and SPA, spam, bacon, sausage and SPA, spam, eggs, spat, spat,
31:52
Speaker 5: bacon and spat, spams, fam, spat, egg and spat, spamspam,
31:57
Speaker 5: span spam, spam, spat by clean spam, spam, spat spam
32:04
Speaker 5: prevents the mode I saw Scottish.
32:09
Speaker 4: Spam.
32:10
Speaker 2: I didn't want anything without.
32:11
Speaker 5: Spam in it. Well, span, eg, sausage and spam. It's
32:15
Speaker 5: not much spam in it.
32:18
Speaker 4: The end credits for that episode, by the way, include
32:20
Speaker 4: Spam with every company member, Spam, Terry Jones, Terry spam, sausage, spam,
32:25
Speaker 4: egg spam.
32:28
Speaker 3: And the idea of just like inundating you with something.
32:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, like annoying you always kind of just blaring in
32:34
Speaker 4: the back of your mind. It has no appreciable content.
32:40
Speaker 4: It's omnipresent. But as you can imagine, Hormel doesn't exactly
32:45
Speaker 4: love that association.
32:47
Speaker 2: No way.
32:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think they've even tried to. I think there
32:53
Speaker 4: was some very quickly defeated legal way they tried to.
32:58
Speaker 3: Well, it's not like anybody branded spam. It's just in
33:00
Speaker 3: the zeitgeys. People just toss it around, you know, yeah,
33:03
Speaker 3: owns it.
33:04
Speaker 2: I'm not sure everyone exactly. I'm not sure what they thought.
33:09
Speaker 4: They could just send out a message to everyone, a
33:11
Speaker 4: spam message and say.
33:13
Speaker 2: Please use a different term for this, but this thing
33:17
Speaker 2: is that we're sending.
33:18
Speaker 1: And usually when people or institutions or companies attempt to
33:22
Speaker 1: do something like that, they just make the problem much
33:26
Speaker 1: much worse, such as when a celebrity politely asked the
33:29
Speaker 1: Internet to take down a photo of them.
33:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I mean.
33:33
Speaker 1: So they've probably done the math and they thought, if
33:36
Speaker 1: we ask people to not do this, it's not going
33:39
Speaker 1: to work.
33:39
Speaker 2: I know there's some.
33:41
Speaker 1: There's a bit of a renaissance sometimes for spam, every
33:45
Speaker 1: so often in more high end restaurants, right.
33:48
Speaker 4: Yes, I saw this a lot when I was in
33:53
Speaker 4: San Francisco a couple year or so ago.
33:56
Speaker 2: And there's one restaurant.
33:57
Speaker 4: I think it's called Le Yacht Club something like that,
34:01
Speaker 4: and they have a lot.
34:03
Speaker 2: Of spam options on their menu. And it's a very
34:05
Speaker 2: nice restaurant.
34:07
Speaker 3: Is it Hawaiian like tamed? It is just like, what's
34:09
Speaker 3: this loco mocho? I keep hearing about? Mocho?
34:12
Speaker 2: Loco loco is good.
34:14
Speaker 3: It's like spam with gravy or something. Yes, rice maybe
34:17
Speaker 3: mm hmm.
34:18
Speaker 4: It's rice, spam, gravy and a fried egg. You can
34:22
Speaker 4: also get it with ground b for other.
34:25
Speaker 3: Meats or a hamburger patty either.
34:26
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's what I had. I didn't have spam.
34:30
Speaker 3: Loco mocho oh okay, okay.
34:31
Speaker 2: I did have the other one.
34:33
Speaker 3: And it was very interesting that there's like high end
34:35
Speaker 3: Hawaiian restaurants that still use this, uh, pretty cheap, not
34:41
Speaker 3: very nutritional canned meat. Speaking of nutrition, you want to
34:45
Speaker 3: point out real quick that one of these cans of
34:47
Speaker 3: spams twelve ounces and it apparently contains about six servings,
34:53
Speaker 3: which contain so the six servings that they can, which yeah,
34:56
Speaker 3: come on really very and it can contains twenty five
35:01
Speaker 3: percent of the daily recommended fat intake for the US
35:07
Speaker 3: and thirty three percent of the sodium.
35:09
Speaker 2: So it's not a health food. No.
35:12
Speaker 1: But there's another stet Americans z't approximately three point eight
35:16
Speaker 1: cans per second. I have a problem with that step
35:19
Speaker 1: because I think Hawaii is throwing off the average.
35:21
Speaker 2: I yes, I would agree.
35:24
Speaker 4: I can't really recall spam ever coming up in my
35:28
Speaker 4: childhood as an option.
35:29
Speaker 2: I don't.
35:30
Speaker 3: Well, you clearly didn't have elderly parents like I did.
35:32
Speaker 2: Oh really, they you.
35:33
Speaker 3: Know, remembered it fondly from the wartime where they spam.
35:36
Speaker 2: Fit.
35:37
Speaker 3: No, my parents weren't alive in World War Two, but
35:39
Speaker 3: their parents were, and so it was something you know,
35:41
Speaker 3: a lot of people went through the depression, they like
35:44
Speaker 3: they learned how to hoard properly, and they learned how
35:46
Speaker 3: to like be frugal and like use canned meats and things.
35:50
Speaker 3: I remember growing up in my Grandpapa would make brains
35:53
Speaker 3: and eggs, which is lightly brain. It's literally I didn't
35:56
Speaker 3: even realize this until many years later. It's like cow
35:58
Speaker 3: brains and eggs. But it was like a cheap part
36:01
Speaker 3: that you could just you know, added a little texture
36:03
Speaker 3: and a little flavor to your eggs. Same with spam
36:05
Speaker 3: or something called liver pudding. Or scrapple is what it's
36:08
Speaker 3: known as in the Wearing, not the Midwest, like up in.
36:12
Speaker 2: The ChIL Yeah, Pennsylvania are yeah exactly.
36:15
Speaker 3: I liked all of those things and didn't think anything
36:18
Speaker 3: of it. But they're both kind of these congealed meat
36:22
Speaker 3: cubes that you then slice up and fry like spam.
36:24
Speaker 3: So there's there's there's other analogs.
36:26
Speaker 2: To spam, for sure.
36:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely these are foods that come about out of necessity,
36:35
Speaker 1: you know, And I think necessity and nostalgia are inextricably
36:39
Speaker 1: intertwined here. So I guess I guess the next question
36:42
Speaker 1: will be what is the what is the future of spam?
36:46
Speaker 1: Are they slowing up? Are they speeding up?
36:48
Speaker 4: I think they they They're in a good place. I
36:51
Speaker 4: definitely don't think that they need to be worried. I
36:55
Speaker 4: Hawaiians love it. They're gonna keep the market going. Like
37:01
Speaker 4: we said, these fancier restaurants, and this is a trend.
37:04
Speaker 4: We see a lot where the combination of high end
37:08
Speaker 4: and low end. I've seen around Atlanta government cheese at
37:13
Speaker 4: really nice restaurants. It's pretty frequently. So I don't think
37:17
Speaker 4: they have to be worried. What they should be worried about.
37:20
Speaker 2: Is theft? That's right? Okay, can you tell us a
37:23
Speaker 2: little bit about this?
37:24
Speaker 1: Yes, we love well. I can't speak for you, but
37:28
Speaker 1: I love it. I love a good high story. Do
37:30
Speaker 1: you love a good high story?
37:31
Speaker 3: No, you are wrong. You shouldn't have spoken about that. Yeah,
37:33
Speaker 3: of course I love a good high story, especially when
37:36
Speaker 3: it involves an absurd potted meat.
37:38
Speaker 4: A spam high story. Is it's up there, that's a
37:41
Speaker 4: good one. Lately there have been a spate of spam
37:45
Speaker 4: thefts in Hawaii.
37:47
Speaker 2: Nice.
37:48
Speaker 4: In one account, three women filled a cart with eighteen
37:51
Speaker 4: cans of spam at a drug store and made a
37:53
Speaker 4: dash for the exit. But this customer, he just planted
37:56
Speaker 4: himself in front of the doors and said, what are
37:59
Speaker 4: you doing with that spam? You didn't say that but
38:02
Speaker 4: along those lines, And they made a run for it,
38:05
Speaker 4: and they did not succeed in their heist, but enough
38:07
Speaker 4: people have that now some stores have started storing their
38:11
Speaker 4: cans of spam locked in those plastic cases that are
38:14
Speaker 4: typically a use for expensive items electronics razors. Yeah, now
38:21
Speaker 4: spam is back there. You have to go ask for
38:24
Speaker 4: key for your spam.
38:26
Speaker 3: The reason for this is super interesting. It has to
38:28
Speaker 3: do with a change in the law in Hawaii, where
38:32
Speaker 3: I think in the past theft up to three hundred
38:36
Speaker 3: dollars was considered a felony, and then they raised it
38:39
Speaker 3: to seven hundred, so you could steal up to seven
38:43
Speaker 3: hundred dollars worth of spam and it would be just
38:46
Speaker 3: a misdemeanor if they caught you. But also it's like,
38:49
Speaker 3: how are you going to you know, track down the
38:51
Speaker 3: purp if you don't catch them doing it. And the
38:54
Speaker 3: fact that this famous spam shelf stability means that you
38:58
Speaker 3: don't have to fence it right away, right you can
39:01
Speaker 3: sit on your stash for a while. And this great
39:03
Speaker 3: article from grub Street that you turned us onto any
39:06
Speaker 3: Hawaiian grocery stores reportedly overrun with spam bandits spammed its
39:11
Speaker 3: spammed it that it's it's like an epidemic, and it's
39:15
Speaker 3: a lot. Largely the article conjectures folks are stealing the
39:20
Speaker 3: stuff so that they can flip it and buy drugs.
39:24
Speaker 3: But it's so flippable because the market for spam and
39:27
Speaker 3: Hawaii is like through the roof.
39:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:30
Speaker 4: Tina Yamaki, the President of Retail Merchants of Hawaii, calls
39:34
Speaker 4: it organized retail crime. And she's spoken a lot about
39:39
Speaker 4: the spam black market and how you can buy spam
39:43
Speaker 4: out of somebody's car, out of their trunk.
39:45
Speaker 1: Wow, it's you know, usually if I see somebody with
39:49
Speaker 1: a ton of canned meat in their trunk standing by
39:53
Speaker 1: the side of the road, my first instinct isn't to
39:55
Speaker 1: ask them how much what the going price is?
39:59
Speaker 2: You clearly not a spam fan, Ben, I'm not.
40:02
Speaker 1: You know what I'm I can say safely, I'm a fan,
40:05
Speaker 1: but I don't think I'm built to be a spam tycoon.
40:07
Speaker 1: I hope they're out there somewhere in Hawaii. I hope
40:10
Speaker 1: there's a black market spam tycoon. And I hope that
40:12
Speaker 1: you are listening to this show.
40:15
Speaker 2: We want to.
40:16
Speaker 3: Make God have mercy on your soul.
40:18
Speaker 1: May God have mercy on your spam?
40:20
Speaker 2: Right?
40:21
Speaker 1: I think we all want to hear spam recipes from
40:24
Speaker 1: listeners if you're a fan of spam.
40:26
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of spam recipes, we remember we talked about
40:28
Speaker 3: like how the Hormel company is doing and moving forward
40:30
Speaker 3: or whatever. Well, they've really embraced a lot of this
40:33
Speaker 3: kitch surrounding spam, and like the masubi's and all that,
40:36
Speaker 3: and they have like recipes on their site for this
40:38
Speaker 3: is fantastic national geographic article by April Fulton shows some
40:42
Speaker 3: images of some of the stuff that I'm talking about.
40:44
Speaker 3: One of them is a Hello Kitty Spam musubi that
40:47
Speaker 3: they show you how to make. They also have a tour,
40:50
Speaker 3: a national tour called the Tiny House of Sizzle Tour,
40:53
Speaker 3: where they are shopping around the whole US of a
40:57
Speaker 3: a spicy Spam breakfast burrito recipe made by their chef
41:01
Speaker 3: Jordan and Dino, And it's like a traveling Spam food truck,
41:05
Speaker 3: sort of the way you see the Oscar Mayer Wiener
41:07
Speaker 3: uh Mobile or whatever. So you know, Spam's not slowing down.
41:11
Speaker 3: They're they're they're rising to the occasion. They're adapting to
41:14
Speaker 3: the times. Yeah, they're adapting times.
41:16
Speaker 2: They always have.
41:17
Speaker 1: I want to show you guys one of my favorite
41:19
Speaker 1: pictures so any on this show, we love vintage averagells too,
41:23
Speaker 1: so Spam Dandy is one of my one of my favorites.
41:27
Speaker 1: That they have these collections of all their ads that
41:31
Speaker 1: have the exact nostalgia tone For anybody who enjoyed our
41:35
Speaker 1: previous episode on.
41:37
Speaker 2: What was it nola, was it meat jell? Oh? Yeah?
41:41
Speaker 3: Aspects yeah, and also just like various savory gelatine dishes
41:46
Speaker 3: that were very popular as like centerpieces and made you
41:49
Speaker 3: seem like you really had your homemaking skills in order.
41:53
Speaker 3: And spam. I'm sure it's all part of this, like
41:55
Speaker 3: the food of the Future movement, the idea, oh well,
41:58
Speaker 3: just eat out of tens and that's super progressive and
42:01
Speaker 3: like shows that we have money or something. Even though
42:03
Speaker 3: it was cheap and gelatin was cheap, it was a
42:06
Speaker 3: very odd dichotomy and that really interesting to look back on.
42:09
Speaker 2: Insane gelatine.
42:10
Speaker 1: Just when you see pictures of those things at the
42:13
Speaker 1: center of a dining table, it strikes me as lovecrafting.
42:16
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna be honest, it's something from like the
42:18
Speaker 1: Darkness beyond the stars.
42:19
Speaker 4: Oh I love looking at a good aspect or meat jelly.
42:24
Speaker 4: They're hilarious and they are that interesting intersection of At
42:29
Speaker 4: the time, if you didn't have a lot of money,
42:33
Speaker 4: you wanted to put a lot of work and artistry
42:35
Speaker 4: into a thing to show that you were successful and
42:39
Speaker 4: that you could afford to do this.
42:42
Speaker 2: But it was a cheap food thing.
42:44
Speaker 4: Everyone was participating in kind of this masquerade, this facade,
42:49
Speaker 4: and spam is a similar food in that it does
42:54
Speaker 4: have that futuristic it'll last forever vibe, but it's very
42:58
Speaker 4: cheap and during the recent recession in two thousand and
43:02
Speaker 4: eight because of this, spam saw an increase of sales
43:06
Speaker 4: of ten percent, because yeah, it is a food that
43:10
Speaker 4: people can't afford. And there aren't strict numbers, but according
43:15
Speaker 4: to the Hormel website, they estimate twelve point eight cans
43:19
Speaker 4: of spam are consumed every second across the planet.
43:23
Speaker 3: Mostly and that's not even to speak of the ones
43:26
Speaker 3: that are just hoarded in a bombshell's right.
43:30
Speaker 1: Or in the trunk of a Cadillac driving owhere near you.
43:35
Speaker 2: I love it well.
43:36
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, guys, but I'm filled with
43:37
Speaker 3: gratitude at the end of this episode for you, Annie.
43:40
Speaker 3: My heart is just bursting out of my chest with gratitude,
43:43
Speaker 3: clearly more gratitude than either Ben or Casey are capable
43:46
Speaker 3: of mustering.
43:47
Speaker 2: So I win. Annie.
43:49
Speaker 1: I wasn't really listening when Noel was talking about I
43:51
Speaker 1: do want to say thank you so much for coming
43:54
Speaker 1: on in the episode. I'm kidding Noel I think we're
43:56
Speaker 1: both really happy that you took the time here and
44:00
Speaker 1: taught us so much about spam. I'm wondering if I'm
44:02
Speaker 1: going to cook some this weekend. We've talked so much
44:03
Speaker 1: about it. I feel like we've almost, in a way
44:06
Speaker 1: consumed it ourselves just by exploring this concept.
44:10
Speaker 3: I think we should do a potted meat like, uh, potluck,
44:14
Speaker 3: let's do it, let's get it. Would be a potluck,
44:16
Speaker 3: a potted potted potted meat.
44:18
Speaker 4: Look, this is the office to host such an event.
44:22
Speaker 4: There would be very creative concoctions.
44:25
Speaker 1: Behind the curtain, folks. We recently hung out after work
44:29
Speaker 1: and had a game night where we learned well I
44:34
Speaker 1: think you already knew all the games, Annie, but we
44:37
Speaker 1: both learned some really cool stuff.
44:39
Speaker 3: So yeah, shout out to Dixit right, Dixon, fun to say,
44:43
Speaker 3: fun to play. That should be their tagline, that to.
44:46
Speaker 2: Have it, you're gonna give it to them for free.
44:47
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. They can send me some some swag,
44:51
Speaker 3: some mugs or something. You guys can have it was
44:53
Speaker 3: so fun. It was It was really really a joy,
44:55
Speaker 3: and it was a successful Game nine and I look
44:57
Speaker 3: forward to doing it again. But I also look forward
44:59
Speaker 3: to having you Annie on the show again.
45:01
Speaker 2: Yes please, yes, please, And this was so this was
45:04
Speaker 2: so much fun. Yes, we're so glad. I enjoyed it.
45:07
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of food history, as you know
45:09
Speaker 1: from some of our works outside of this show. But
45:13
Speaker 1: in the meantime, before you make another return appearance, where
45:17
Speaker 1: can our listeners hear more of your work with how
45:21
Speaker 1: Stuff works?
45:22
Speaker 4: You can find me over at Savor podcast at your
45:27
Speaker 4: internet humans. I'm sure you can find it, but it
45:29
Speaker 4: is I will say it's Savor without the you. So
45:32
Speaker 4: for the non American listeners among you, and I also
45:36
Speaker 4: am a co host of a show called Stuff Mom've
45:39
Speaker 4: Never Told You, which you can google Google right.
45:41
Speaker 2: Away and you'll find it.
45:42
Speaker 1: Fantastic shows. Do check them out, the shows that I
45:46
Speaker 1: personally listened to in my free time. So okay, yeah,
45:49
Speaker 1: I don't want to fanboy out too much, but maybe
45:52
Speaker 1: I'll ask you an autograph.
45:53
Speaker 2: After the show.
45:54
Speaker 3: I definitely listened to the Spam episode today and crypped
45:56
Speaker 3: most of my notes with this episode from that episode.
45:58
Speaker 3: So this is where that this is like a yeah.
46:02
Speaker 1: The stake that consumes its tale and we have more
46:06
Speaker 1: tales to tell we had earlier said that we would
46:10
Speaker 1: be exploring some more spooky stories as we lead up
46:13
Speaker 1: to Halloween, So tune in next time when we delve
46:18
Speaker 1: into this strange story of well mummies.
46:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mexican mummies to be precise. And in the meantime,
46:24
Speaker 3: I like to thank Casey, our super producer, Alex Williams,
46:27
Speaker 3: who composed our theme, research associates Christopher Hasiotis and Eve's
46:31
Speaker 3: Jeffcoat and Ben as usual, I'd like to throw a
46:34
Speaker 3: little thanks your way, my friend.
46:37
Speaker 1: I would like to treat that thanks like a boomerang,
46:40
Speaker 1: add some extra thanks to it, and make sure it
46:42
Speaker 1: gets right back to you.
46:43
Speaker 3: Why do you aways have to want up be on
46:44
Speaker 3: the thanks?
46:44
Speaker 4: Why not?
46:45
Speaker 2: Man, I just like hanging out.
46:47
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
46:58
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple p Podcasts, or wherever you
47:01
Speaker 3: listen to your favorite shows.