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Pasta Pranks · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: These days, we all know that we shouldn't believe everything
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  Speaker 1: we see on the Internet. Deep fakes and doctorate images
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  Speaker 1: can look very real, which is why it's so important
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  Speaker 1: to know which news sources are trustworthy and which should
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  Speaker 1: be taken with a grain of salt. Back in the
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  Speaker 1: mid twentieth century, though, things were a lot different. People
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  Speaker 1: didn't always view the news with such skepticism, but maybe
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  Speaker 1: they should have. You see on ape of nineteen fifty seven,
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  Speaker 1: a BBC news program called Panorama featured a story that
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  Speaker 1: left its British viewers perplexed. The black and white broadcasts
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  Speaker 1: began with a series of images from the Swiss countryside,
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  Speaker 1: trees covered in blooming flowers, bees pollinating the buds, and
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  Speaker 1: women admiring their gardens. As these idyllic frames flashed on screen,
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  Speaker 1: a British journalist named Richard Dimbleby narrated. Richard was a
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  Speaker 1: respected reporter known for his in depth coverage of World
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  Speaker 1: War Two. His voice was serious as he discussed the
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  Speaker 1: recent weather conditions in Switzerland. He said, and I quote
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  Speaker 1: the past winter, one of the mildest in living memory,
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  Speaker 1: has had its effect in other ways as well. Most
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  Speaker 1: important of all, it's resulted in an exceptionally heavy spaghetti crop.
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  Speaker 1: As soon as he said those words, the broadcast cut
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  Speaker 1: to video of a large flowery tree with hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: spaghetti noodles hanging off its branches. Women in traditional Swiss
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  Speaker 1: dresses harvested pasta from the trees. Meanwhile, Richard discussed the
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  Speaker 1: differences between Italian and Swiss spaghetti production. According to him,
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  Speaker 1: Italian spaghetti farms were much larger, while Swiss pasta cultivation
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  Speaker 1: was a smaller, family affair. Of course, Richard explained the
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  Speaker 1: temperate weather was helping the spaghetti trees thrive, but so
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  Speaker 1: is something else. He said, quote Another reason why this
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  Speaker 1: may be a bumper year lies in the virtual disappearance
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  Speaker 1: of the spaghetti weavil, a tiny creature whose depredations have
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  Speaker 1: caused much concern in the past. Now I don't think
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  Speaker 1: I have to tell you that spaghetti weavils do not
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  Speaker 1: exist and pasta does not grow on trees. But here's
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  Speaker 1: the thing. Back in nineteen fifty seven, not all British
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  Speaker 1: people knew that. At the time, spaghetti wasn't a common
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  Speaker 1: dish in the UK. If people ate it at all,
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  Speaker 1: they probably got it out of a can and they
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  Speaker 1: didn't necessarily know how it was made. In the wake
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  Speaker 1: of this bizarre broadcast, the British public was split into
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  Speaker 1: two camps. Most people thought that they had just learned
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  Speaker 1: something new and interest about spaghetti. Some gardeners even called
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  Speaker 1: in asking where they might be able to get their
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  Speaker 1: own spaghetti trees. However, a small minority those who knew
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  Speaker 1: how pasta was actually made, were furious. The BBC received
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  Speaker 1: a flood of calls from people demanding an explanation. Panorama
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  Speaker 1: was supposed to be a serious factual program. Why on
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  Speaker 1: Earth with someone like Richard Dimbleby purposely spread misinformation? It
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  Speaker 1: turns out it was all one guy's idea, and that
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  Speaker 1: guy was not Richard. It was a freelance cameraman named
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  Speaker 1: Charles Dijeger. Charles wanted to create a prank segment for
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  Speaker 1: April fool's Day. He pitched the idea to David Wheeler,
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  Speaker 1: the producer of Panorama, and David thought that it sounded funny,
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  Speaker 1: so he agreed to give the cameraman a meager production
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  Speaker 1: budget of one hundred pounds. Charles found a good location
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  Speaker 1: in the Swiss countryside, cooked a whole bunch of spaghetti
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  Speaker 1: and hung the noodles off the tree's limbs. He even
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  Speaker 1: hired actors to quote unquote harvest the crop. The whole
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  Speaker 1: thing was staged as a joke. Unfortunately, the punchline didn't
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  Speaker 1: really land for British audiences. Nevertheless, in a two thousand
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  Speaker 1: and four interview, producer David Wheeler said that he didn't
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  Speaker 1: regret pulling the prank on the public. He said, quote,
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  Speaker 1: I think it was a good idea for people to
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  Speaker 1: be aware they couldn't believe everything they saw on television,
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  Speaker 1: and that they ought to adopt a slightly critical attitude
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  Speaker 1: towards it. In this way, David was ahead of his time,
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  Speaker 1: and his advice is even more important today. Whenever you
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  Speaker 1: watch TV, read the news, or scroll through social media,
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  Speaker 1: make sure to use your noodle, whether it's baked onto
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  Speaker 1: a pizza, poured over a plate of nachos or sprinkled
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  Speaker 1: on top of a salad. The culinary world just wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: be the same without cheese. The practice of fermenting dairy
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  Speaker 1: goes back thousands of years. It all probably began when
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  Speaker 1: a herdsman noticed some milky'd been carrying had separated into
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  Speaker 1: kurds and whey, And in the many years since, cheesemaking
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  Speaker 1: has become a skill that humanity has refined, giving us
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  Speaker 1: grocery store aisles full of every variety you can imagine. However,
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  Speaker 1: in the early nineteen forties, the United States military found
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  Speaker 1: itself in a bit of a predicament. America had just
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  Speaker 1: entered World War Two, and feeding the nation's troops proved
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  Speaker 1: to be a challenge. The biggest problem was that fresh
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  Speaker 1: food was expensive to ship and it went bad quickly. Ideally,
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  Speaker 1: rations would be relatively cheap and would remain safe to
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  Speaker 1: eat for years. Now. When it came to calorie dense,
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  Speaker 1: shelf stable foods, one item stood out, processed cheese product.
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  Speaker 1: Think about Valveda, invented in nineteen eighteen. It's not cheese
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  Speaker 1: so much as it is cheese adjacent, but it was
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  Speaker 1: inexpensive and it stored well, and that's what the military
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  Speaker 1: neededment N officials contacted Kraft, the company that owned Velveta.
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  Speaker 1: They purchased twenty five million cans of cheese like product,
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  Speaker 1: along with five hundred thousand pounds of cheese flavored spread.
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  Speaker 1: These foods became staples of US military rations. But still
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  Speaker 1: the government wasn't completely satisfied. These products were long lasting
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  Speaker 1: and cheap tobai for sure, but they were also heavy,
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  Speaker 1: and that meant that they still cost quite a bit
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  Speaker 1: to ship to troops around the world, and they were
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  Speaker 1: cumbersome for soldiers to carry around. Now, the obvious answer
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  Speaker 1: was to dehydrate the cheese. Removing the water from foods
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  Speaker 1: makes them exponentially lighter. However, at the time, the only
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  Speaker 1: way to dehydrate food was to expose it to prolonged
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  Speaker 1: high temperatures. This worked for cheese, but it also melted
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  Speaker 1: out all the fat, reducing the calorie dense food to
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  Speaker 1: a pile of dust with very few nutrients. The military
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  Speaker 1: needed a way to take the water out of cheese
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  Speaker 1: while still keeping the fat. In nineteen forty three, they
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  Speaker 1: found the perfect man for the job. His name was
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  Speaker 1: Georgie Saunders, and he worked as a dairy scientist for
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  Speaker 1: the United States Department of Agriculture. George set to work
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  Speaker 1: testing out new methods of dairy dehydration. After lots of
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  Speaker 1: trial and error, he found something that worked, splitting the
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  Speaker 1: drying process into two distinct steps. Instead of just blasting
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  Speaker 1: the cheese with high heat right off the bat, he
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  Speaker 1: started with low temperatures, which trapped in the fat and proteins.
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  Speaker 1: After that, the cheese was broken up into smaller pieces
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  Speaker 1: and dehydrated at a high heat. This resulted in a
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  Speaker 1: cheese powder that was ultra light but still nutrient dense.
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  Speaker 1: George packed these into round disks that were perfect for
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  Speaker 1: storage and shipping, and he called these cheesecakes, not to
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  Speaker 1: be confused with the dessert. Now. I know this might
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  Speaker 1: not sound particularly exciting, but the military wanted to get
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  Speaker 1: people pumped up about cheese powder. In nineteen forty three,
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  Speaker 1: they released a war bond advertisement in which a shirtless
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  Speaker 1: soldier fed his comrade a puck of dehydrated cheese. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: dairy dust was all the ray. Fast forward two years
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  Speaker 1: to nineteen forty five, when World War II came to
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  Speaker 1: an end. After all this work to create the perfect rations,
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  Speaker 1: the US military faced another weird problem. They had mountains
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  Speaker 1: upon mountains of dehydrated cheese powder and no soldiers to
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  Speaker 1: feed it to. Once again, the government officials contacted Craft.
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  Speaker 1: This time, instead of buying cheese, they offered to sell
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  Speaker 1: theirs at an extremely discounted price. Basically, they were willing
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  Speaker 1: to take a huge loss just to get all of
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  Speaker 1: this dairy powder off of their hands, and for Kraft
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  Speaker 1: it was a no brainer. They took the military's leftovers
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  Speaker 1: and used them to create a brand new snack. The
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  Speaker 1: first bags hit grocery store shelves in nineteen forty eight,
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  Speaker 1: and they were an instant hit, bringing in millions of
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  Speaker 1: dollars of revenue each year. Today, they're the second most
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  Speaker 1: popular salty snack in America. So what did Craft create
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  Speaker 1: with that government cheese powder? The iconic snack that leaves
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  Speaker 1: your fingers coated in orange colored dust Cheetos. I hope
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  Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: stuff works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.