Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition (Reheat)

It’s Elkhart, Indiana, 2001. Two inches of Heather Coleman's turkey club disappear from her office fridge. The thief is nowhere to be found. And Heather’s life will never be the same. In this tribute to the hit podcast Serial, we investigate the shocking true story of an office fridge food theft.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  There's nothing quite like Aruba. The white sand beaches are truly unlike anything you've seen. But what really stands out is the food. Because Aruba's not like other Caribbean islands. French pastries, Spanish paella, Peruvian barbecue, papardelle that has no business being that good that far from Florence. Not to mention the local fair. Aruba's food scene pulls you in with its astonishing variety of cuisines and beyond satisfies you with its unexpected flavors. So plan your escape to culinary delight at aruba.com. Your taste buds will thank you. Start the day strong with Quaker protein products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker protein products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals.

• 0:45Dan Pashman?

  Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love, like maple and brown sugar and blueberries and cream. Quaker protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:10Dan Pashman?

  Hey, this is Dan here with another Sporkful reheat for you. And I am especially excited because this is one of my all time favorite Sporkful episodes. Top five for sure. And this one is a little different. It is a little silly. It is a little weird. It's a parody, a satire of the hit podcast Serial. Remember it was like the first viral podcast that sort of launched the true crime podcast genre? And I decided I wanted to do a parody of Serial in which we investigated a food related true crime story. And let me tell you, we found a doozy. And this was back when I did the show at WNYC, when Anne Sannie produced the show with me. You'll also hear her in this episode. And I think you're going to find it's a gripping tale.

• 1:54Dan Pashman?

  As always, if you have a certain Sporkful episode you want us to reheat, drop me a line. Tell me your first name, your location, what episode you want to hear and why. Shoot that to hello at sporkful.com. Thanks and enjoy.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  This is a Global Call Link prepaid call from...

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Heather Coleman. Why not eat the whole sandwich?

• 2:19Speaker 04

  And this was not about food whatsoever. This was about sex.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It all accommodated with me going slightly insane.

• 2:26Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

• 2:38Dan Pashman?

  For the last month, I've spent every working day trying to figure out where a third of a sandwich went, one fall day in 2001. Or, if you want to get technical about it, apparently I do, where a third of a six-inch sub at a call center in Elkhart, Indiana, went, one fall day in 2001. This search sometimes feels undignified on my part. I've had to ask about teenagers' sex lives. Where? How often? With whom? Didn't have anything to do with the sandwich. I was just curious. Before I get into why I've been doing this, I just want to point out something I never really thought about before I started working on this story. And that is, it's really hard to account for your meals. In a detailed way, I mean. What did you have for lunch last Wednesday? Soup? Salad? Sandwich? Was the bread soggy?

• 3:20Dan Pashman?

  Are you sure? The entire day, name every single thing you ate. It's hard. Here's the case I've been working on.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  I totally remember the very first time that I noticed my food was missing. And that was a Schlotzsky's personal pizza.

• 3:37Dan Pashman?

  This is Heather Coleman. Right off the bat, I want you to know that the story she's about to tell is a true story. Seriously, it's a true story. In the fall of 2001, she was working at a call center in Elkhart, Indiana. She worked long shifts, so she'd often buy a big meal for lunch, eat half, and put the rest in the office fridge for dinner.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  So my dinner shift comes up, and I'm looking forward to this pizza, of all things. I open it, and one slice is missing. Just one.

• 4:03Dan Pashman?

  Heather wrote it off. Lots of people in the office ordered from Schlotzsky's. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Turned out, it was just the beginning.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  The six-inch sub.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  That's the one that nailed it. It was pretty obvious when a six-inch sub that was definitely six inches, when you open it up and there's only four inches left. And I was just like, what the heck is going on?

• 4:28Dan Pashman?

  What kind of sandwich was it?

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Um, I believe it was a club sandwich. Yeah, the mayo, the mustard, all the good stuff.

• 4:36Dan Pashman?

  It had bacon on it?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  It wouldn't be a proper sandwich if it didn't have bacon on it.

• 4:41Dan Pashman?

  What about cheese? You a cheese-on-the-club-sandwich person or no cheese?

• 4:44Speaker 03

  I am one of those people who do believe that cheese does make everything better. That's a fact. Inarguable.

• 4:53Dan Pashman?

  Heather tried to fight back. She left threatening notes. It didn't help. She hid her food behind the salad dressing. The thief still found it. She even put a sandwich in Tupperware and wrapped the whole container in duct tape. The thief cut through the duct tape. And each time, only to take a piece of the food, not the whole thing. That's a part I can't figure out. It's one of the things about this case that kind of bobs above the water for me. Like a disturbing buoy.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  God. Uh, it's even hard to even talk about it today. It hurts that much. Sitting in my cubicle, unwrapping it, thinking, okay. You know, like, I totally outsmarted my food thief. I am so genius. So I open it, I look at it, same friggin' thing. One-third gone. And it just sat there looking at that ridiculous sandwich. And I felt like a loser.

• 5:49Dan Pashman?

  And did you eat the sandwich?

• 5:51Speaker 03

  No, no, that's, that, that's, I don't know what's wrong with you. You don't eat that sandwich.

• 5:56Dan Pashman?

  It was only touched by a knife. It wasn't touched by...

• 5:59Speaker 03

  But it wasn't...

• 6:00Dan Pashman?

  A mouth.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Cut perfectly. So, you know, there were hands all over it. My bread was, my bread was manipulated and molested. I couldn't eat that.

• 6:12Dan Pashman?

  Heather went to a woman named Cheryl in HR and broke down crying in front of her. Cheryl didn't seem all that concerned. She put a note up on the office fridge reminding people not to eat other people's food, but it didn't help. The thefts continued on and off for months. Eventually Heather stopped putting stuff in the fridge altogether. She only ate non-perishable food she could keep at her desk, things like canned beef stew. Yeah, I know. Brutal. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Heather was being targeted, singled out. She says she didn't know for sure whether there were others. She does say there seemed to be better food in the fridge that wasn't getting stolen, things like homemade mac and cheese. Heather casually asked other people around the office if their food had been taken, but nobody spoke up. She says she didn't want to make a big deal of it.

• 6:57Dan Pashman?

  It was her first real office job out of college. She already felt like she stuck out because she's Asian in a very white town. She didn't want to rock the boat. But more than anything, she didn't speak up because she felt ashamed.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  I couldn't even protect my own sandwich. I mean, what type of person can't protect their own sandwich? And I couldn't. No matter what I did, I could not outsmart that thief. You know, who do I go to? There is no crisis hotline for office food thievery. Food is so personal. Like, for example, if someone used up, like, all my Kleenex or all my Post-its, I would just go get another one and it would be no big deal. But the touching of my food, I really felt violated. And that's when we start eating. And so, the starvation, the violation, the anger, it all accommodated with me going slightly insane. Really, really insane.

• 7:53Dan Pashman?

  I wanted to put together a list of suspects, and for that, I thought I needed to understand this food thief a little better. I reached out to Baron Ambrosia, culinary ambassador to the Bronx and host of the Cooking Channel show, The Culinary Adventures of Baron Ambrosia. Baron himself is an admitted food thief. In one episode of his show, he ends up in a pull-up contest with rap legend Melly Mel after swiping two pies from a neighbor. I filled him in on Heather's situation and asked him for his take on the culprit.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  This is not a crime of hunger. I was caught stealing a pie once, as you well know, but I took the whole pie. And I ate the whole pie. Never once would I take a portion of something. You know, and the things that I would steal... Most of the time would be outrageously delicious. What you're telling me here, a sandwich. What's it, a tuna sandwich?

• 8:47Dan Pashman?

  A turkey club.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  A turkey club, okay. We know what a turkey club tastes like.

• 8:52Dan Pashman?

  So you don't think that it's a crime of hunger? It's not a crime of culinary curiosity? It's not like I must try this amazing food? So what do you think it is?

• 9:03Speaker 04

  No, I mean, it's none of these things. If you look at all the facts. This is mediocre food. This person was very controlled. This person was very methodical. And this was not about food whatsoever. This was about sex. This is about intimacy. This person, what they're doing is literally like two steps above sniffing someone's chair. This is not, oh, oh, I want a little sack. And I feel a sense of entitlement and I'm going to come in here and be the, you know, the sandwich bully. It's not that. It's certainly, it's fetishistic. This is absolutely fetishistic.

• 9:41Dan Pashman?

  From there, I went back to Heather to get her thoughts on potential suspects.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  So in my head, I was thinking like one or two of the guys that I knew there that were, you know, just out of college as well. And they ate like pigs and ate a lot. So I just assumed it was one of the dudes. They would have eaten the whole thing. I mean, even now, I cannot believe that somebody eats. Why not eat the whole sandwich?

• 10:09Dan Pashman?

  Right. The whole thing just feels very calculating.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 10:13Dan Pashman?

  I asked Heather, does Cheryl from HR fit the profile? Should she be on the list of suspects?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  The thing is, at the time, I totally didn't think so because Cheryl was really kind and the way her office was positioned, she'd have to come down the stairs, which would have been close to my desk. And so I would have spotted her. So.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Logic tells me it couldn't be Cheryl.

• 10:38Dan Pashman?

  Well, let's not dismiss her quite so quickly. We gotta pad this story out a little bit longer, Heather. So we have Cheryl, the HR woman.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Well, she does have opportunity.

• 10:46Dan Pashman?

  Okay, right, and she has some authority.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  Yes, and she was dismissive of my complaint of my

• 10:52Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  food violation.

• 10:53Dan Pashman?

  Which is questionable. We have the frat boys, who are hungry and probably selfish.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:00Dan Pashman?

  Next possibility is Heather has gone insane and is stealing her own food and doesn't realize it.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:06Dan Pashman?

  Then is there anyone else? And let's continue to look through suspects. Is there, let's say, let's call him a Mr. McGuffin.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Well, there is a person that could be Mr. McGuffin.

• 11:17Dan Pashman?

  Okay, who's that?

• 11:18Speaker 03

  It was my direct supervisor at the time.

• 11:21Dan Pashman?

  Heather says Mr. McGuffin was a middle-aged guy who was kind of bitter about his job. Meanwhile, she's this kid right out of college who keeps getting promoted. She's about to leapfrog him on the corporate ladder. She says there was tension between them as a result. That sounds to me like a motive. And she says there were other clues.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  The fact that his lunch was always after mine? I was looking at people's lunch schedules for a while. Being in a call center, every minute of your time is logged.

• 11:49Dan Pashman?

  That's right, there were call logs. Mr. McGuffin made calls at 3:21 to Jen, 3:32 to Nisha, 3:42 to a dude named Phil, and 3:59 to Patrick. There are three calls on the call log around this time that all ping towers near Kathy's apartment: 6:07, 6:09, and 6:24. The first two calls are for a little less than a minute. The third call is the longest, 4 minutes 15 seconds. Are you following all of this? Then there are some stray things about Mr. McGuffin that, eh, I don't know what they mean. Or if they mean much of anything. But I'm gonna tell you about them in case. Worst comes to worst, we fill another 20 seconds of the show. Here goes. Number one, when he was 12, Mr. McGuffin may or may not have lied to one of his teachers.

• 12:32Dan Pashman?

  Number two, Mr. McGuffin sometimes goes streaking in the woods. And number three, Mr. McGuffin's favorite food is red herring.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  Coming up on The Sporkful.

• 12:50Speaker 06

  I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  I lost it. I had no way of holding back this, like, burrito anger I had running through my veins.

• 13:19Speaker 01

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• 13:30Dan Pashman?

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• 14:55Dan Pashman?

  and beyond satisfies you with its unexpected flavors. So plan your escape to culinary delight at aruba.com. Your taste buds will thank you. Start the day strong with Quaker Protein Products. Quaker makes it easy and delicious to get a good source of protein. No matter what the day has in store, Quaker Protein Products give you a variety of ways to reach your protein goals. Oatmeal, granola, bars, and rice snacks in flavors you already love like maple and brown sugar and blueberries and cream. Quaker Protein helps fuel you to start whatever's next. Get your protein with Quaker, available at a store near you.

• 15:31Dan Pashman?

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• 16:16Dan Pashman?

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• 16:42Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. You ever like go to our show page in your podcasting app and you're scrolling back and you're like, oh, that, that seems like a good episode. Why, how did I miss that? Well, you, you missed it because you're probably not following our show in your podcasting app. And it's really important that you do. So please do this right now. Go to our show page in your podcasting app of choice. If it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you click follow. Other apps, maybe it's a plus sign or a heart or a favorite or the word subscribe, whatever it is in your app. It's really important that you click it. That way you won't miss great episodes. Super quick and easy. You can do it right now. Thank you so much. Now, back to this week's reheat.

• 17:21Dan Pashman?

  Okay, returning to True Crime Podcaster Voice, let's get back into it.

• 17:28Dan Pashman?

  Earlier in the show, we raised the possibility that Heather had gone insane and was actually stealing food from herself. Well, to be precise, she raised the possibility when she said, quote, "It all culminated with me going slightly insane." This topic comes up a lot when you talk to Heather. So I talked to her friend Kelly. Kelly says Heather is really nice, funny, sweet, a great person. They didn't know each other back when all the food stealing was happening. I asked Kelly if she had ever seen signs that Heather might be out of touch with reality.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Well, we both have dogs, and I'm always feeding my dog treats, and she's always putting her dog on a diet and telling me that her dog's chubby and my dog is cute. And my dog is a little bit chubby, but hers is not as chubby. So I just wonder where her little perspective of reality is sometimes.

• 18:25Dan Pashman?

  So there's that. For just a minute, let's put aside the question of whether it's psychologically possible Heather was stealing food from herself. Let's look at whether it was physically possible. Like, could she have pulled it off? Heather says it took two minutes to get from her desk to the lunchroom. Then she'd have to remove a sandwich, slice a piece off, put the rest back, and get back to her desk. That's not much time.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  I don't think I could even do it. If I go there and, like, see aside it, like, sat at a desk, did a quick run-through, did it, I don't think I could have completed the act in that timeframe.

• 18:57Dan Pashman?

  Gauntlet's so thrown, producer Anne Sannion and I gave it a shot.

• 19:03Dan Pashman?

  All right, we're in a corner of the WNYC newsroom, the farthest possible point from the lunchroom.

• 19:09Speaker 06

  Right.

• 19:10Dan Pashman?

  And that's where Heather said she sat, the farthest possible spot.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  Right, right.

• 19:13Dan Pashman?

  And she said she worked with about 75 people. There's about 75 people who work on this floor.

• 19:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's a fair estimate.

• 19:19Dan Pashman?

  So this is basically exactly the same.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  Right.

• 19:21Dan Pashman?

  You got the stopwatch?

• 19:22Speaker 06

  I have the stopwatch.

• 19:24Dan Pashman?

  Hit it. All right, we're walking to the lunchroom. Now, we gotta walk briskly, like we're in a rush, but not-

• 19:30Speaker 06

  But not too rushed.

• 19:31Dan Pashman?

  Right, we don't want to attract attention. Hey, Brooke. Hey, Dan. Nothing to see here. Hey, Dubner. Dan. Is that Lakshmi Singh? No, no.

• 19:43Speaker 06

  Ooh, there's a shrimp sale at that crab crib.

• 19:46Dan Pashman?

  Sometimes I think Anne isn't listening to me. Alright, we're entering the lunchroom. We got to the kitchen.

• 19:50Speaker 06

  Alright, 37 seconds.

• 19:51Dan Pashman?

  Took out my half a sub, sliced off a piece, ate it, put the rest back. Then I took it out again and ate some more because it was good. Then I put it away again and raced back to where Heather would have sat. Okay, Anne, how long?

• 20:04Speaker 06

  Alright, we are at 1 minute 59 seconds.

• 20:08Dan Pashman?

  Huh.

• 20:09Speaker 06

  I mean, it seems like, yeah, it could be done, but it seems far-fetched.

• 20:15Dan Pashman?

  Here's what I take away from my conversation with Kelly and the test Anne and I ran. I don't think Heather's insane. I just don't. I think her reaction to all this is pretty understandable. I've heard and seen her demonstrate normal human emotion towards me, like when she talks about the pain of losing all those sandwiches. But on all the other options, it's a toss-up. Could she have just accidentally misplaced her food over and over again? It's possible. Could she have made up the whole story just to get on this podcast? It's possible. Could all of human existence actually just be a dream in the mind of a giant space turtle? I asked my magic eight ball and the answer was, "Ask again later."

• 20:55Dan Pashman?

  Back at the call center, Heather was keeping her head down and avoiding the communal fridge. Weeks went by. She hadn't moved on, she was trying to stay focused on her work. Then came the burrito. She got promoted again, and a group of supervisors took her out for lunch to celebrate. They went to a place with really big, amazing burritos. Heather ate half of hers and got the rest wrapped up. She put it in the office fridge. Before she went home for the day, she went to grab it.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  It was a travesty. The wrapper was just torn open. The burrito itself was mangled. And I'm saying mangled as in like, a rabid dog went through it.

• 21:35Dan Pashman?

  Worst of all for Heather, only the chicken had been removed. The rest was left laying there, splayed open like a carcass on the savanna.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  I haven't felt that kind of anger since like, the Cubs didn't go to the series because that ball was caught by the fan. That's the type of anger I felt. But you know something? That burrito was the reason that I found out who it was.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Well, I was looking at the container that had the burrito. And within the burrito was a spork.

• 22:13Dan Pashman?

  So you see the spork that wasn't there before.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:15Dan Pashman?

  What's your first thought?

• 22:17Speaker 03

  My first thought was lipstick. There was lipstick on the spork. Yeah, it was neon orange. It was a very unique color. I knew right away. I mean, it was just like a light bulb went off in my head and all I saw was red. I mean, the anger. And the worst part is like, I had no run ins with this person. I really had no idea. Like, I couldn't tell you anything about this person besides that they wore that lipstick.

• 22:50Dan Pashman?

  We'll call this woman Karen. That's not a real name. Heather says they hardly knew each other. They didn't work closely together. Outside of the neon orange lipstick, Karen was totally unremarkable. She blended in, although maybe that was part of her cover.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  And so I'm holding the box with the burrito in it and the spork is in my hand. And like, out of nowhere, I see Karen walk by. And she's going towards the restroom. And I just, I lost it.

• 23:23Dan Pashman?

  Heather followed Karen into the bathroom, burrito and spork in hand. Karen was in a stall.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  I started banging on the door and just like, I need to talk to you. And I remember like, a voice very calm saying, can we talk some other time? And I was like, what the hell? Another time? No, this is the time. This is the place. We're doing this right now.

• 23:48Dan Pashman?

  Heather stood there waiting with her burrito for what felt like an eternity.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  I'm gonna get the truth out of her. She's gonna admit that she's my burrito thief. She's gonna admit all the atrocities that she's done to all my food. And that's all I was thinking. And I just remember sitting there staring at that stall door, like, why won't she come out? Like, hurry up? And that's when I heard, like, the crumbling sound, the crunching sound of food wrapper in the stall. She was eating in there.

• 24:21Dan Pashman?

  Wow.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  And that kinda for a second like broke my crazy seeing red anger. Cause like, what the hell, you know? And she finally did come out of the bathroom stall and there was food on her shirt. Like she was like brushing off crumbs on her shirt. And well, I kept on saying like, why? Well, you know, why me? And I remember saying, why me? And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, that is so, you know, ridiculous and pitiful to say that. But that's how I felt. And she just went to the sink, washed her hands and she turned around and looked at me.

• 25:06Speaker 03

  And she's just very calmly said, a person who doesn't finish a personal pizza doesn't deserve to have that pizza.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Oh, chills. Still till this day.

• 25:27Dan Pashman?

  For many, many minutes, we tried to contact Karen to tell her we were doing this story and in hopes that she might want to talk to us. In my 20 plus days of reporting, I've never tried harder to find anyone. Phone calls, social media, letters in English and Korean, even though I don't think Karen speaks Korean. Two private detectives, people knocking on doors in three different states. I even wrote her a note by cutting out words from magazines and taping them to a piece of paper to form sentences, then signing it in blood. You know, all the tricks you learn in journalism school. We never heard back from her. My best guess is that she wants to know part of this, which I respect. As for Heather, she hasn't trusted a communal fridge since. She never reported Karen to HR. They never spoke again.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  It was like my private, secret torture that I kept to myself. I was shameful. I didn't want other people to know.

• 26:19Dan Pashman?

  But in a way, it was almost maybe perhaps it might've also been like her torture for her. Cause it's like now she has this sort of. This guillotine over her head, like she knows that you have this incriminating information on her that you're holding on to and holding on to.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  You know, I never thought about it that way. I was so self-absorbed at the time. I was just thinking about me, me, me, like, you know, how am I going to handle this? You know, what am I thinking about this?

• 26:45Dan Pashman?

  You know, it's possible, Heather, that you had the best revenge by never doing anything. Even to this day, you lie awake thinking about her saying, "Why? Why?" But she could lie awake thinking about you. "What if she finds me on Facebook? What if we end up working in the same company or in the same town and what if I see her on the street? What if she reports it to my current boss?"

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Exactly. Because I'm always holding the other shoe for her.

• 27:10Dan Pashman?

  That's right. All you got to do is drop it.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Mind blown. Never thought about it that way. But now, now I feel like, you know, I have the upper hand. But I will drink her milkshake.

• 27:30Dan Pashman?

  This episode was originally produced by Anne Sandy and me with editorial help from Chris Bannon and Leetam Malad. The serial theme song was composed by Nick Thorburn. This update was produced by Andres O'Hara and mixed by Jared O'Connell. Our team also includes Emma Morgenstern, Johanna Mayer, and Tracy Samuelson. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Eric Eddings. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  And I'm Noni from New York City, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 28:19Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by

• 28:21Speaker 06

  Anna Palmer.

• 28:22Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer.

• 28:26Speaker 06

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 28:27Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Andres O'Hara.

• 28:29Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is. Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. At participating McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc. Hattie Day presents, in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated Weed Whacker Guy. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger, extra strength, Hattie Day.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Hattie Day. Hattie Day, bring it on.