Pod Insights Civics 101 Holiday Trivia: What's been on the White House Christmas menu? About this episode In our latest edition of Holiday Trivia, a rundown of some of the quirky food, drinks, and celebratory ephemera at the White House during the most wonderful time of the year.
Have an opinion on the pronunciation of "praline?" Send us an email!
CLICK HERE: Visit our website to see all of our episodes, donate to the podcast, sign up for our newsletter, get free educational materials, and more!
To see Civics 101 in book form, check out A User's Guide to Democracy: How America Works by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice, featuring illustrations by Tom Toro.
Check out our other weekly NHPR podcast, Outside/In - we think you'll love it!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:10 Hannah McCarthy? This is Hannah McCarthy. You're listening to Civics 101.
0:12 Nick Capodice? This is Nick Capodice.
0:14 Hannah McCarthy? And this is Rebecca Lavoy.
0:15 Speaker 02 And this is Christina Phillips. And folks, it is barely noon and the sun already looks ready to set. There is a run on peppermint extract, probably because so many normal foods now have peppermint in them at the grocery store. And everyone seems to have stopped responding to emails, including us, which means it's time for our annual holiday-themed episode on Civics 101.
0:47 Speaker 02 So this year, we are talking about food, specifically holiday food at the White House, because there's an absolute treasure trove of historical documents about how presidents past celebrated the winter holidays. Now, most of our presidents were Christian or followed Christian traditions. So this trivia is a bit Christianity-centric, but as usual, the president is only our starting place. So we will be branching off from there. Now, I have divided this trivia into four courses. We have drinks, appetizers, the main course, and dessert. Yes. And before we begin, I just have one question, a little icebreaker for you. What is your opinion of fruit and chocolate? I'm thinking the chocolate
1:31 Speaker 02 orange, the cordial cherries. Rebecca, I'm getting a thumbs down.
1:34 Nick Capodice? I'm a massive fan of the chocolate orange. I think that's one of the greatest creations of human time.
1:38 Hannah McCarthy? The chocolate orange, especially when you leave it on your parents' dashboard, and then it gets all, like, melty. So specific.
1:45 Nick Capodice? And don't you have to crack it? You like take it and you smack it?
1:47 Hannah McCarthy? It might happen a handful of times. Yeah, well, that's if you don't leave it on your parents' dashboard. So if you, before you let it melt, you can, you can smash it and it'll break into slices. So good.
1:58 Nick Capodice? That was such decadence when I was a child. Like, you'd get that once a year.
2:01 Speaker 02 I'm sorry, the way you looked at me as though I would know Hannah, what you meant. You're like, you know, the way you leave it on the dashboard.
2:09 Speaker 03 Well, I think people universalize childhood experiences that happen more than once to them. They're like, oh, this is what kids do, but.
2:14 Speaker 02 I only ask because I hate them and I think they're disgusting.
2:18 Speaker 03 Every time I bite into like a Russell Stover, like one of those like waxy hard things, and it's like fruit flavored inside, I just like, I can't.
2:25 Speaker 02 It's like a betrayal.
2:26 Speaker 03 It's like, this is not what I consented to when I bit into chocolate. I wanted chocolate or chocolate adjacent flavors. Chocolate covered cherry I can do only because I know it's coming.
2:35 Hannah McCarthy? What about like chocolate covered pomegranate seeds?
2:38 Speaker 03 Nope.
2:39 Hannah McCarthy? What?
2:39 Speaker 03 No.
2:40 Nick Capodice? Where are those?
2:41 Speaker 03 That's basically just a fancy red net.
2:43 Speaker 02 That is something.
2:44 Hannah McCarthy? They exist if you make them, man.
2:53 Speaker 02 Speaking of cherry chocolate, actually, that's a great transition to our first course drinks. We're going to talk about the favorite holiday drinks of presidents past. This will be a free for all round, meaning the first person to shout out the answer gets the point. Have any of you ever heard of something called the Cherry Bounce?
3:12 Speaker 03 No.
3:12 Nick Capodice? No.
3:13 Speaker 03 Is it a beverage?
3:14 Speaker 02 It is a beverage. This is a favorite of George and Martha Washington. And we know that because there's a recipe from Martha's surviving papers at Mount Vernon. So here is your question. The Washington's Cherry Bounce was made of three main ingredients. Cherries, sugar, and this liquor, which is made by distilling wine.
3:38 Speaker 03 Distilling wine.
3:40 Nick Capodice? Brandy?
3:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
3:42 Speaker 03 Nicely done.
3:43 Nick Capodice? We were boiling it in Ireland before the snakes left.
3:46 Hannah McCarthy? Port is just fortified wine.
3:47 Speaker 03 That's right. Nicely done.
3:48 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, well done.
3:49 Nick Capodice? I only know it because of the wine in winter.
3:51 Hannah McCarthy? Brandy is distilled wine?
3:52 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
3:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's liquor made of wine.
3:54 Nick Capodice? They used to call it Brandy Wine.
3:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, and actually whiskey was more popular as a spirit back then, but the Washingtons really loved brandy and the recipe specifically called for 10 quarts of an old French brandy and then the juice of 20 pounds of ripe Morello sour cherries and white sugar to your taste, as well as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ground fermented cherry pits.
4:18 Speaker 03 That sounds great.
4:19 Nick Capodice? Wow.
4:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, how many people that's for, I'm not sure.
4:21 Speaker 03 One.
4:22 Hannah McCarthy? I do think it's kind of cute that they call it bounce. Bounce feels like a more modern word that you would apply to food, like to name a beverage the bounce. What is it, the 60s, you know, like that's 1960s.
4:34 Nick Capodice? Everybody doing the cherry bounce.
4:37 Speaker 02 I wish I had looked up the etymology of the word. I didn't look it up.
4:44 Speaker 02 Okay, so here is your next question. Cherry pits, along with the pits and seeds of other common fruits, are known to contain a compound called amygdalin, which can turn into what poisonous substance in the body?
4:59 Nick Capodice? Arsenic.
5:00 Speaker 02 No.
5:02 Hannah McCarthy? Cyanide?
5:02 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:03 Speaker 03 Nice.
5:04 Speaker 02 I was gonna say, Nick, you can guess again if you're...
5:06 Nick Capodice? No, I knew, the second I said it. It's also in like peach pits, when you, I used to eat them as a kid.
5:10 Hannah McCarthy? That's what I was thinking too. The peach pits can be really dangerous because of cyanide.
5:14 Speaker 02 The key here is that a lot of people think that they have been poisoned because they've eaten the stone of many stone fruits. Like, if you eat a cherry pit and you crunch on it, it will release amygdalin, which is the compound that when it gets into your body, your body breaks it down and turns it into cyanide. But if you swallow a cherry pit whole...
5:33 Speaker 03 It just goes through.
5:34 Speaker 02 It just goes through you.
5:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:35 Speaker 02 And if you ferment the cherries or you cook them, that removes that, inactivates the amygdalin.
5:41 Nick Capodice? No cyanide in that cherry bounce.
5:43 Speaker 03 Amazing.
5:43 Speaker 02 Yeah. Also, this is one of the more common calls that they get at the Poison Control Center is for people who think that they or their children are going to be poisoned by cyanide because they just like swallowed the pit of something whole.
5:55 Hannah McCarthy? Second only to is a watermelon gonna grow in my belly.
5:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
6:07 Speaker 02 Now, we are moving on to a cozier, but still somewhat risky drink. So here's your next question. Several sources mentioned that this president, former Secretary of State and founding father from Virginia, loved a cocktail known as a Yard of Flannel.
6:24 Speaker 03 Thomas Jefferson?
6:25 Speaker 02 No.
6:26 Nick Capodice? That's what I was gonna say.
6:28 Speaker 03 Andrew Jackson?
6:29 Speaker 02 Mm-mm.
6:30 Nick Capodice? Eleven presidents were Secretary of State.
6:32 Speaker 02 Founding father, former Secretary of State, and from Virginia.
6:36 Speaker 03 They were all from Virginia.
6:38 Speaker 02 I know, right?
6:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:39 Speaker 02 Madison.
6:40 Speaker 03 Ah.
6:48 Speaker 02 Okay, so now I need you to all, I gave you all a piece of paper and a pen. For this one, I'm gonna give you 10 seconds to write down three ingredients you think might be in a Yard of Flannel. Don't start yet. You'll get a point for each correct guess, even if multiple people guessed the same thing, and your timer starts now.
7:12 Speaker 02 Stop. Rebecca, I wanna start with you.
7:17 Speaker 03 Mine is so dumb.
7:18 Speaker 02 Give me your ingredients.
7:19 Speaker 03 Whiskey, rum, and cider.
7:21 Speaker 02 Mmm. All right, you got rum.
7:26 Speaker 02 No, none of the other ones. So rum, yes, you get a point. All right, Nick?
7:30 Nick Capodice? I wrote creme de menthe, creme de cacao, gin, and vodka.
7:34 Speaker 02 I'm sorry to say you got zero.
7:37 Hannah McCarthy? I wrote whiskey, apples, and cloves.
7:41 Speaker 02 Oh, that was so close, but you also got zero.
7:45 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. So in a way, it wasn't close at all.
7:48 Speaker 02 So you had like the spices you were getting there.
7:50 Speaker 03 I just covered my bases with old-timey liquors. I was just like, I'm not gonna guess any other ingredients.
7:56 Nick Capodice? Rum and shrub.
7:58 Speaker 02 Nick went for four things that never should be combined together.
8:02 Nick Capodice? I would have creme de menthe with gin.
8:04 Speaker 03 Oh dude, creme de menthe.
8:06 Speaker 02 All right, so here are the ingredients of a yard of flannel, which is not the same thing as a flannel shirt, which is also another cocktail that's more common nowadays. This is specifically the yard of flannel. Ale, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, and rum or brandy.
8:21 Speaker 03 Ooh.
8:22 Speaker 02 So this is sort of like an old gross version of an eggnog.
8:25 Hannah McCarthy? Honestly, I think without the ale, I would like it, but maybe the ale lends it some effervescence.
8:31 Speaker 03 Maybe the ale makes us, you don't get poisoned when you drink it.
8:33 Hannah McCarthy? Maybe that, yeah.
8:34 Speaker 02 Speaking of eggs, cooking eggs to at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit before consuming them destroys this bacteria, which causes an estimated 26,000 hospitalizations and 420 deaths in the US a year.
8:49 Speaker 03 Salmonella.
8:49 Speaker 02 Yes, it is salmonella. Okay, we're gonna give it to Rebecca.
8:52 Hannah McCarthy? The thing that I think I have three times a week.
8:55 Speaker 03 This is what happens when you have a paranoid Italian mother. You know all the poisons, all the ways that your food could kill you. You're gonna get trichinosis. I'll tell you that much.
9:12 Speaker 02 And on that note, we have reached the end of our drinks course. Hopefully still alive.
9:21 Hannah McCarthy? So good.
9:23 Speaker 02 All right. And the score is Hannah has one, Nick has one, and Rebecca has two.
9:29 Speaker 03 Despite knowing none of the presidents.
9:40 Nick Capodice? There is nothing quite like having stuff in your closet that you love and you know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that feeling. And this holiday season, Quince is where I'm finding those pieces. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and it is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories that cut out the middleman, so you get luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. As this lovely fall is winding to a close and we slouch into winter. I wish more than anything, someone had gifted me a yak wool hoodie.
10:25 Nick Capodice? I'm dead serious. It's good enough for the yak. I mean, it works really well for the yak, right? It would work for me. And it looks hot. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. And last thing, when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Civics 101. It's the best way to support the show. All right.
11:00 Nick Capodice? Have any of you out there ever Googled your own name? Like actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing. There are companies called data brokers whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over. So your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it up once and they keep working in the background.
11:45 Nick Capodice? You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
12:06 Speaker 02 We're moving on to our second course, which is appetizers. So our next question will be a first to guess style question. I'm going to read facts about this food and the first person who correctly guesses it gets the point. Clue number one. The Sherwin-Williams Paint Company color known as this food white is described in the following way. Float into any room painted with this creamy white. Its soft green beige undertone makes this hue both stylish and calming.
12:39 Hannah McCarthy? Survey.
12:40 Speaker 02 No.
12:42 Nick Capodice? I have one.
12:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:43 Nick Capodice? Potato.
12:43 Speaker 02 No. The largest of this food ever found was described by NPR as "the size of a man's shoe." It was found in Denmark-
12:54 Speaker 03 Truffle.
12:55 Speaker 02 Nope. It was found in Denmark in 2014. Next clue. It is not recommended that you consume more than a dozen of this food in one day.
13:04 Speaker 03 Oysters.
13:04 Speaker 02 Yes.
13:05 Nick Capodice? Wait, who doesn't recommend a dozen oysters in a day?
13:10 Speaker 02 I feel like a lot of, like, health websites recommend it, like, intentionally.
13:15 Speaker 03 They collect all the stuff. I mean, I could eat 12 dozen of them.
13:17 Nick Capodice? I've had, I had five dozen in one day, one day.
13:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:21 Speaker 02 Well, you and Thomas Jefferson, who was rumored to have eaten more than 50 in one night while traveling to Amsterdam.
13:25 Speaker 03 No problem for me.
13:27 Speaker 02 The other facts I have are that humans are considered to be one of the greatest predators of this food, which makes sense.
13:32 Speaker 03 Because we're the ones that get into it. We're trying to open an oyster.
13:35 Speaker 02 And even so, it's a relatively common food to be allergic to. I am allergic to oysters, and I also find them disgusting. So I'm, like, so baffled by this delicacy, which actually is not, it's sort of seen as a delicacy now. It was extremely, extremely common in the 18th and 19th century because they were everywhere, especially on the east coast.
14:00 Speaker 02 Our next questions are gonna be about oysters.
14:02 Nick Capodice? Hurrah!
14:03 Speaker 02 Yeah. Wait, who, who doesn't like oysters here? I knew you wouldn't.
14:07 Speaker 03 Nick, I know what we're doing for our next after-work activity.
14:10 Nick Capodice? Yep.
14:11 Hannah McCarthy? Gulba chewy salt water. Who wouldn't want that?
14:14 Speaker 02 Sometimes, living.
14:15 Speaker 03 Sorry, I know the rest of the people on Earth love them.
14:17 Nick Capodice? No, no, you're in the majority, I think.
14:28 Speaker 02 Rebecca? This question is for you. This river on the east coast, once home to the largest supplier of oysters in the world, shares its name with a fictional university and a long-running crime television series. Name the river.
14:44 Speaker 03 Hudson. Where the bad guys go to school.
14:46 Speaker 02 Yes. The Hudson River, also the Hudson University of Law and Order and Law and Order SVE, right? It's across-
14:54 Speaker 03 Yes, and other television shows. For instance, the governor of Montana in Yellowstone had a degree from Hudson on her wall.
15:00 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, interesting.
15:01 Speaker 03 It's a whole television trope.
15:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's become like an Easter egg in other TV shows.
15:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:05 Nick Capodice? I know that Henry Hudson, when he landed in New York, he reached and he lifted an oyster the size of a dinner plate.
15:10 Speaker 02 Wow. Oh, my goodness.
15:11 Nick Capodice? It's like a thing that happened.
15:12 Speaker 02 Question number eight. This is for Hannah. For the low, low price of $425, you can purchase an oyster-shucking knife described as, quote, "unapologetically handsome" with a, quote, "old-world-looking blade and bi-color bone-and-horn handle" from this website. Created and curated by an A-list actress who named her daughter after a fruit featured in the 1961 Harry and David Fruit of the Month Club.
15:39 Hannah McCarthy? That would be goop.
15:40 Speaker 03 Yes.
15:41 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah.
15:42 Nick Capodice? What's the daughter fruit?
15:43 Hannah McCarthy? Apple.
15:44 Nick Capodice? Oh, I didn't know Gwyneth Paltrow had an apple.
15:46 Hannah McCarthy? Famously, everyone was like, "How dare you?" And now everyone's like, "That's the simplest name we've heard in three decades."
15:52 Speaker 03 What's a celebrity name?
15:53 Speaker 02 It has the actual letters of the alphabet in it, so. Nick, this question is for you. This bay, the largest estuary in the contiguous United States, was the location of a series of conflicts between pirates and river workers, starting in 1865 and continuing for almost a century, known as the Oyster Wars.
16:13 Nick Capodice? Give me a second. Pirates?
16:14 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
16:15 Nick Capodice? Did you say pirates and river workers?
16:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:17 Nick Capodice? And it's a bay?
16:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:19 Nick Capodice? I'm gonna ask one question, because I'm having a tough time here.
16:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:22 Nick Capodice? Does it have the word "bay" in it?
16:25 Speaker 02 Yes, it does. Do you want me to give you one more?
16:26 Nick Capodice? I'm gonna do one. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna throw one out. I'm gonna say Chesapeake Bay.
16:29 Speaker 02 It is Chesapeake Bay.
16:31 Nick Capodice? Only bay I know.
16:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, so what's funny about this is that, once the New York harbor started to be polluted and the Hudson River was no longer a great place to get oysters, all those people started trickling down to the Chesapeake Bay, and Maryland, and then later Virginia, tried to outlaw anyone fishing for oysters or harvesting oysters, whatever it's called, off of Chesapeake Bay, and then it led to a bunch of pirate conflicts that lasted almost a century, so.
16:56 Nick Capodice? Wow.
16:56 Speaker 03 Incredible.
16:57 Nick Capodice? Well, you said oysters are tremendous river cleaners.
16:59 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
17:00 Nick Capodice? And they used a ton of oysters to clean the Hudson?
17:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
17:02 Nick Capodice? And what happened is the water got so clean that all the worms, which had been dead from the pollution, ate all the piers, and all the wooden piers just collapsed into the Hudson, because the water was clean again.
17:13 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah, you always regret cleaning things up. All those sharks. Yeah, everyone's like, "Why did we make the water habitable again?"
17:30 Speaker 02 We're done with oysters.
17:32 Speaker 03 All right.
17:33 Speaker 02 We're moving on to eggs.
17:34 Nick Capodice? Ooh.
17:36 Speaker 02 Because I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the absolutely strange and chaotic activity that is the White House Easter egg roll. Have any of you ever been?
17:48 Hannah McCarthy? No.
17:48 Speaker 03 Have you?
17:49 Speaker 02 No.
17:50 Speaker 03 You said it like, don't we?
17:53 Speaker 02 I wish.
17:54 Nick Capodice? I can't go every year, but I try.
17:56 Speaker 03 Every time I see it on TV and it's like all these hundreds of kids and I was like, whose kids are those? They're just like going to hang out with the president.
18:02 Speaker 02 I know the answer to that. It's a lottery. You have to apply to a lottery to get in with your kids.
18:06 Hannah McCarthy? Well, that's way cooler than just like the child of a diplomat.
18:10 Speaker 02 No, it's yeah, it's a lottery system.
18:11 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, sweet, okay.
18:12 Speaker 02 I was reading on Reddit, there's like all these strategies and people have applied many, many years to get into this lottery system.
18:18 Nick Capodice? You're gonna tell us, but is an egg roll where you like, you roll an egg or do you just lie on the ground and roll around yourself?
18:24 Speaker 02 So egg roll is literally, you have a spoon and you roll an egg across.
18:29 Speaker 03 Like a race?
18:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a race.
18:31 Speaker 03 Oh, yes, actually, I've seen.
18:32 Nick Capodice? It's like a boy with a stick, but instead it's a.
18:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
18:35 Nick Capodice? It's an egg.
18:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. So.
18:37 Nick Capodice? You have a stick in the hoop, the little urchin boy running around.
18:40 Speaker 02 I, I had to like type into Google. I was like, why do we roll eggs? Does anyone want to take a guess at the Christian centric origin of this tradition?
18:50 Nick Capodice? Easter?
18:51 Speaker 02 Easter.
18:52 Nick Capodice? Rebirth?
18:53 Speaker 02 Sort of, okay.
18:54 Nick Capodice? Resurrection? What is the egg?
18:56 Hannah McCarthy? But the roll, you're talking about the actual rolling away the stone?
18:59 Nick Capodice? The stone?
19:00 Hannah McCarthy? Are you serious?
19:00 Nick Capodice? Oh, my God.
19:02 Speaker 02 I wish I had your camera on your face. I think it's the way you looked at me like, I know what it is.
19:07 Speaker 03 That's wild.
19:08 Nick Capodice? Three days.
19:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, so the simplest explanation is that the egg symbolizes the stone rolling away from the entrance to the tomb where Jesus was buried during the resurrection.
19:17 Nick Capodice? Little did we know, there was a little boy with a spoon that got our Lord and Savior out of the cave.
19:22 Speaker 03 That is some serious pagan washing going on with that tradition.
19:27 Hannah McCarthy? That's wild.
19:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. So I'm going to ask you each a couple of questions about the Easter egg roll. And Nick, this question is for you.
19:36 Nick Capodice? All right, here we go.
19:37 Speaker 02 So, the White House egg roll involves using a wooden spoon, traditionally, to push a hard-boiled egg across the grass. However, one recent president chose plastic spoons instead. I'm talking like, the plastic spoons that you get in a set when you eat at a picnic, like the small ones, not like a nice plastic ladle that you'd use on nonstick cookware.
19:56 Nick Capodice? No, this is like putting your kids' lunch.
19:57 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. So was it George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden?
20:07 Nick Capodice? Plastic spoon.
20:08 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
20:09 Nick Capodice? I'm gonna say Donald Trump.
20:10 Speaker 02 No, it was George Bush.
20:12 Nick Capodice? Oh, man.
20:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:14 Hannah McCarthy? I feel like that was the last time you could get away with using plastic in public, was George Bush. It was like, that's over now, let's all pretend we never did it.
20:21 Speaker 02 It was George W. Bush.
20:23 Nick Capodice? Did he just forget the wooden spoon? Oh, jeez.
20:25 Speaker 02 Well, it happened several years in a row, because I went back and I looked at some of the photos from the White House Easter egg rolls, and like, at least three of his were like, these small spoons, these plastic spoons that kids were trying to roll with. And then, the other presidents had like, these nice wooden spoons, you know, some of them were slotted, some of them were just like a regular roll, like, long wooden cooking spoon. So yeah, plastic spoons if you went during George W. Bush's presidency. Rebecca?
20:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:51 Speaker 02 The next egg-related question is for you.
20:52 Speaker 03 Okay.
20:53 Speaker 02 This is multiple choice.
20:54 Speaker 03 Oh.
20:55 Speaker 02 First Lady Grace Coolidge brought Rebecca, her pet what, to the annual Easter egg roll in 1927? Was it Rebecca the parrot, Rebecca the pig, or Rebecca the raccoon?
21:06 Speaker 03 It was a raccoon.
21:07 Speaker 02 Yes.
21:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, I know, yeah, the Coolidges had a lot of animals, they were super into animals. They had a farm, they made cheese.
21:15 Hannah McCarthy? Silent cow? Wouldn't it have been funny if it was mongoose? They eat eggs.
21:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, actually, one of Rebecca the raccoon's favorite foods was an egg. So I'm imagining it was like the most exciting time. But the story of how Rebecca became a pet of the Coolidge's is that there was for years, this guy known as the poultry king from Rhode Island, who supplied the turkey at Thanksgiving to the presidents, and then he died. And I think there was like sort of a power vacuum of like, who gives the president turkeys? And so other people would send other things to be like, well, maybe now the tradition will be, you know, quail or chicken. And so one year Coolidge received a raccoon and he was like, I don't want to eat this. And then First Lady Grace Coolidge was like, well, now she will be my pet.
22:00 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, wow.
22:01 Nick Capodice? That's a nice little tale.
22:02 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
22:13 Speaker 02 Hannah.
22:14 Hannah McCarthy? Yes.
22:15 Speaker 02 This question is for you.
22:16 Hannah McCarthy? Okay.
22:17 Speaker 02 There is something called the American Egg Board. Are you familiar with this?
22:21 Hannah McCarthy? I am now.
22:22 Speaker 02 It is a commodity checkoff program. So it's like, sort of like a lobby, but it promotes one type of product. It's not supposed to be promoting.
22:29 Hannah McCarthy? The cotton board or like, yeah, yeah. Wear cotton. I always thought that was so interesting.
22:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, well. The feel of cotton.
22:35 Speaker 03 It's beef is what's for dinner.
22:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, the American Egg Board had the incredible edible egg.
22:43 Speaker 02 Eggs don't run out.
22:48 Speaker 02 And they were also in charge of overseeing the donation of over 30,000 hard boiled dyed eggs to the White House Egg Roll every year. So they got into a little bit of controversy when in the early 20 teens, the American Egg Board launched a secret two year investigative and marketing campaign against a company making a vegan version of what condiment that traditionally contains egg yolk?
23:12 Hannah McCarthy? Mayonnaise?
23:13 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:13 Nick Capodice? Nicely done.
23:14 Hannah McCarthy? Wow. They launched an investiga- how dare they?
23:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:19 Hannah McCarthy? Or like, they can't call it mayonnaise, maybe?
23:21 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, so they, they investigated and then they also sent out a marketing campaigns about how great mayonnaise is with eggs. And they also were like, you can't call it mayo because it's not mayo. And this was a company called Beyond Eggs and it was just mayo. That's the. Name of the mayonnaise.
23:37 Hannah McCarthy? Milk, big milk is like, you can't call, you know, any nut milk, milk. Spell it with a Y.
23:43 Nick Capodice? Really?
23:44 Speaker 02 Really?
23:44 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah.
23:45 Nick Capodice? Oat milk is oat milk.
23:46 Hannah McCarthy? There's a whole thing opposed to any company making non-dairy milk being allowed to call it milk with an I.
23:53 Speaker 02 Well, apparently the Department of Agriculture, which is supposed to oversee this board and how they're spending money, they launched an investigation against them and they found out that there were email exchanges putting hits out on the guy who invented Just Mayo.
24:06 Hannah McCarthy? Wow.
24:06 Speaker 02 And they were like, oh, no, no, we were just kidding. It was just a joke, you know, a funny joke.
24:09 Hannah McCarthy? Wow.
24:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:16 Speaker 02 We have reached the end of the appetizer course and our scores are as follows. Hannah, you have five. Nick, you have two. And Rebecca, you have five.
24:26 Hannah McCarthy? Wow.
24:26 Nick Capodice? Yikes. Is it going to be possible for me to make up this deficit?
24:30 Speaker 02 Yes, I believe so. But before that, and before we get to our main course, we are going to take a quick break.
24:49 Nick Capodice? Haven't you out there ever Googled your own name, like actually done it? You'll find your address, your phone number, maybe even that police report from the time you went to see Rain Man in the movie theater, but you were underage? Maybe that one's just me. But here's the thing, there are companies called data brokers, whose entire business model is collecting your personal information and selling it to advertisers, to strangers, sometimes to people running scams. And once your data's out there, it just keeps circulating. That is where Incogni comes in. Incogni contacts data brokers on your behalf and sends them removal requests over and over. So your info doesn't just pop right back up. You set it
25:31 Nick Capodice? up once and they keep working in the background. You can even track the progress on a dashboard. And for our listeners, we have an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan. Just go to incogni.com/civics or use the code civics at checkout. There's a link in the episode description. Remember, they can't harm you if they can't find you.
26:01 Speaker 02 All right, we're back. This is Civics 101. We are doing holiday meal trivia at the White House. And we have reached our third course, which is our main course. So I had this idea to talk about different ridiculous meat courses served during the holidays, and then quickly found that there is nothing like wild and exciting about meat courses during the holidays. It's usually like ham or turkey. So I decided I would go with something else that's a staple of dinner at the White House, and this is the humble potato. So we are going to trace the potato through three presidencies. And I will ask each of you questions individually, starting with you, Rebecca.
26:40 Speaker 03 All right.
26:40 Speaker 02 In a celebration for St. Patrick's Day, a dinner hosted by this president and his first lady, one of the things on the menu was new potatoes with sour cream and chives. Invited guests included Faye Dunaway, who had recently starred in the movie Network, and would next year go on to star in Mommy Dearest with actress Joan Crawford. Who is that president?
27:05 Speaker 03 Um, Mommy Dearest. I know, I know, it came out like in the 70s, late 70s, I think. Um, I am going to say Jimmy Carter.
27:15 Speaker 02 It is Jimmy Carter.
27:16 Nick Capodice? Yeah, well done.
27:17 Speaker 03 Done.
27:18 Speaker 02 And my other clue is where this president is the longest-lived president in US history, and also the first to be born in a hospital. Go you, Jimmy Carter. So this meal was called America's Irish Experience, and it also included creamed oysters in a pastry shell, sliced sirloin of beef, and Irish soda bread. My next question, this is for anyone, what are new potatoes?
27:40 Speaker 03 I used to know. My father would be so ashamed.
27:44 Nick Capodice? Oh, did you harvest them earlier? And is that why they're called new?
27:47 Speaker 02 That's exactly it.
27:47 Speaker 03 Nice.
27:49 Speaker 02 New potatoes, because they are, have a thinner skin, smaller size, and are moister, and have a sweeter flavor. So you got that one, Nick.
27:55 Speaker 03 Nicely done.
27:56 Nick Capodice? Well, that was generous of both of you to let me have.
27:58 Speaker 03 You had it.
27:59 Speaker 02 All right, Hannah. Next question is for you. Jimmy Carter's home state is Georgia, which is where this fast food restaurant, known for, among other things, their waffle fries, was founded.
28:10 Hannah McCarthy? Uh, well, I know a place that serves waffle fries, and that would be Chick-fil-A.
28:16 Speaker 02 It is Chick-fil-A.
28:17 Hannah McCarthy? Okay, alright.
28:18 Speaker 02 Yes. So Chick-fil-A didn't actually introduce the waffle fries until 1985, which brings us to Reagan, the next president in our little history of potatoes and three presidencies. Now, on Christmas Day in 1981, Reagan wrote a note in his diary that said the following. "Earlier, a letter arrived from Brezhnev. It seems we're intervening in Poland, and he's upset about it. I suggested that in our reply, we remind him that we are only suggesting the Polish people be allowed to have a voice in the kind of government they want." Now, of course, Brezhnev was the leader of the Soviet Union during this time, and the US had released a number of pro-democratic opposition messages in support of the Polish people.
29:02 Speaker 02 Reagan and Brezhnev never met in person, but they exchanged a bunch of letters that are all kind of interesting and funny. Nick, this question is for you.
29:09 Nick Capodice? Sure.
29:10 Speaker 02 Reagan, who also made an effort to cultivate relationships with the Polish-American community, proclaimed October National Polish-American Heritage Month. Another person Reagan exchanged letters with for a number of years was this Polish and Italian-American pianist, singer, and actor, who at the height of his fame, was said to be the highest-paid entertainer in the world.
29:36 Nick Capodice? Wow. This is fascinating. Polish singer and pianist.
29:42 Speaker 03 Actually, I think it's Polish-Italian.
29:43 Speaker 02 Polish and Italian.
29:44 Nick Capodice? Polish-Italian-American. So this person was born in the United States. But he's of Polish and Italian heritage. Wow. Do you guys know who this is?
29:53 Speaker 03 I have a, I have a feeling I do.
29:55 Nick Capodice? Is there one more clue?
29:56 Hannah McCarthy? I think I know who it is.
29:58 Speaker 02 Uh, I don't know if this helps, but my other clue is that he gave the Reagans a chocolate piano one time.
30:04 Nick Capodice? Liberace.
30:05 Hannah McCarthy? Yes.
30:06 Speaker 03 Nicely done.
30:07 Nick Capodice? Good job you guys for knowing that before I did.
30:09 Hannah McCarthy? My, like, most of my young life, I thought Liberace was a composer from, like, the 18th century.
30:16 Speaker 02 I wonder if he did that on purpose?
30:19 Speaker 03 Well, now I know.
30:20 Nick Capodice? Boy loved his mother. He really did.
30:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:37 Speaker 02 So we're still in the Reagan era.
30:39 Speaker 03 All right.
30:40 Speaker 02 This question is for anyone. Reagan was invited to the American Polish Festival in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in 1984, and a statue of him and Nancy doing what stands in Doylestown today?
30:53 Speaker 03 The mashed potato, the dance? No.
30:56 Nick Capodice? Oh, I wish it was.
30:58 Speaker 03 Wouldn't that have been great?
30:59 Hannah McCarthy? Mashing potatoes together.
31:02 Speaker 02 Nope.
31:02 Nick Capodice? Digging potatoes?
31:04 Speaker 03 Oh, just eating.
31:04 Speaker 02 Eating potatoes.
31:05 Nick Capodice? That's it, is just eating a potato?
31:07 Speaker 02 Eating a potato pancake.
31:08 Speaker 03 Okay.
31:09 Speaker 02 So specifically eating a potato pancake.
31:10 Speaker 03 Oh.
31:11 Speaker 02 But what's funny is that the sculptor did not want to put the potato pancake in the statue because he thought it would block Reagan's face. So it's just them sitting at a table and Reagan is holding up his fingers as though he's about to eat a potato pancake, but there's no potato pancake there.
31:27 Speaker 03 Interesting.
31:27 Nick Capodice? There's no potato pancake there.
31:28 Hannah McCarthy? It's the absence of the pancake that calls you to put it in there with your mind.
31:33 Nick Capodice? Yeah, the potato pancake that he didn't have.
31:35 Speaker 03 The theater of the mind.
31:36 Nick Capodice? It's the notes they don't sing. Sisine pazun, pom de terre pancake.
31:48 Speaker 02 We're moving on to Bush. H.W. Bush, to be specific.
31:51 Speaker 03 All right.
31:52 Speaker 02 This is our third president in this presidential potato history. President George H.W. Bush apparently loved potatoes and couldn't get the quality potatoes he wanted at the White House, to the point where the first lady, Barbara Bush, apparently complained to the governor of Idaho at the time, Cecil Andrus, and he coordinated with the White House chefs to send a bunch of russet Burbank potatoes for the president to enjoy. Idaho, of course, is the largest producer of potatoes in the United States. For this question, I'm going to go around and ask each of you to name one of the four other states that round out the top five in potato production. Rebecca, you waved your hand, so you first.
32:31 Speaker 03 Maine.
32:32 Speaker 02 No.
32:34 Speaker 02 Nick?
32:34 Nick Capodice? California.
32:36 Speaker 02 No.
32:36 Nick Capodice? Oh, it's so big.
32:41 Hannah McCarthy? Ohio.
32:42 Speaker 02 No.
32:44 Speaker 03 New Jersey.
32:44 Speaker 02 Nope.
32:46 Nick Capodice? Washington State.
32:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
32:47 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, nice.
32:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:51 Hannah McCarthy? I can like see it on a bag of potatoes.
32:54 Speaker 03 That's Idaho.
32:55 Hannah McCarthy? No, no, no, no, it's not Idaho. It's not Idaho. Vermont.
33:00 Speaker 02 No. Wisconsin, Colorado, and North Dakota.
33:03 Speaker 03 Oh.
33:04 Speaker 02 Vermont was so far off. I'm sorry.
33:06 Hannah McCarthy? Well, because Rebecca thought it was Maine, so I was like, maybe it's closer to Maine.
33:09 Nick Capodice? Five potatoes last year in the Green Mountain State.
33:13 Speaker 02 Okay. And finally, what potato-related gaffe did Bush's vice president Dan Quayle make in 1992?
33:21 Hannah McCarthy? Spelled with an E.
33:23 Speaker 02 I think it's Rebecca.
33:24 Hannah McCarthy? What?
33:25 Speaker 03 I was specific. I said spelled it with an E.
33:27 Nick Capodice? I said misspelled it.
33:29 Speaker 02 Okay.
33:29 Hannah McCarthy? I didn't know the answer.
33:30 Nick Capodice? Technically, he added the E.
33:32 Speaker 03 That's right.
33:32 Speaker 02 Yes. So he was at a spelling bee and he told a student that the student had spelled potato wrong and corrected him by saying it was spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E.
33:43 Speaker 03 Oh, dear.
33:43 Nick Capodice? He drew it on a chalkboard. He went up and he said, nope, you're missing a letter. And he drew it with an E.
33:47 Speaker 02 Oh, that's even worse.
33:48 Nick Capodice? Yeah, it was really bad.
33:57 Nick Capodice? Isn't our state vegetable in New Hampshire?
33:59 Speaker 02 I'm sure.
33:59 Nick Capodice? The potato, the white potato.
34:00 Speaker 02 Our state food is boiled dinner.
34:03 Speaker 03 Yeah. Don't get me started on that.
34:09 Speaker 02 Hannah, you have six points. Nick, you have six points.
34:14 Speaker 03 Nice.
34:14 Speaker 02 You have caught up. Rebecca, you have seven points.
34:17 Speaker 03 Oh, this is unprecedented.
34:19 Speaker 02 I know.
34:24 Speaker 02 Heading into a very close final round, we have reached our fourth and final course, which is dessert.
34:30 Speaker 03 Best.
34:31 Speaker 02 This is my favorite part of the meal and also my favorite part of every trivia I write for Civics 101, This or That.
34:38 Speaker 03 Hmm, this is fun.
34:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:40 Nick Capodice? Yeah.
34:41 Speaker 02 Nick looks thrilled.
34:43 Nick Capodice? I love this and that.
34:44 Speaker 02 This or that.
34:48 Nick Capodice? Isn't it a thing? I don't even know what it is, this or that.
34:51 Speaker 03 You can get with this, or you can get with that.
34:54 Speaker 02 Exactly. Over the years, many first families have had desserts named in their honor. They may be recipes that the first family became known for enjoying, or maybe they had a recipe for, or it reflected the political attitude of the time. So, a dessert that evokes a presidency. I have examples of both, but, given that it is the holiday season, I would be remiss if I didn't sneak in one of my favorite seasonal joys, which is the absurdity of perfume marketing. And, I know that fragrance is a year-round business, and it's a very complicated and historically important one, but for some reason, the marketing around perfumes in the holiday season always reminds me of how weird our preferences for what we want to smell
35:37 Speaker 02 like are, and how we try to sell those smells, especially when you can't actually sniff it. So, I'm going to read you a list of ingredients. You need to decide if the things I list for this or that describe the ingredients of a presidential dessert, or the fragrance notes of a perfume.
35:55 Speaker 03 Okay.
35:56 Speaker 02 And I will go around the room. Okay? Hannah, this one is for you. Vanilla, pineapple, apricot, rice.
36:06 Hannah McCarthy? I'm gonna have to go with that is a dessert.
36:09 Speaker 02 Yes.
36:10 Speaker 03 Now it is a dessert.
36:11 Nick Capodice? Some sort of rice pudding?
36:12 Speaker 03 It's the Condoleezza Rice Pudding.
36:16 Speaker 02 It's actually, the name is a little lamer than that. It's Jefferson's Apricots and Rice.
36:23 Hannah McCarthy? Plus pineapple.
36:27 Hannah McCarthy? Apricots and rice?
36:28 Speaker 03 You can say a lot about Jefferson, but you can't say that he's good at naming desserts.
36:32 Speaker 02 Well, it actually, so, what's funny is it wasn't named by him. It was actually created long after his death, but it was named by a guy who was sort of famous for putting certain foods on the map by naming them after people. So, this was created by chef Charles Ranhofer, who once worked at New York City's famed Delmonico's Restaurant, which is like, a huge legacy in the United States. It's been around since 1837.
36:55 Hannah McCarthy? And Ranhofer is credited with putting the dessert baked Alaska on the map.
37:00 Speaker 03 Yep.
37:00 Hannah McCarthy? I've always wondered. I thought that was gonna be one of the questions.
37:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, actually, so I do have a bunch of facts about baked Alaska if you want them.
37:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:07 Speaker 02 So it was originally called the Alaska, Florida. People thought that was because it was like hot and cold. Do you guys know what a baked Alaska is?
37:14 Speaker 03 It's like a basically a fried ice cream situation. It's like ice cream inside a thing.
37:17 Hannah McCarthy? They light it on fire.
37:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. So it's ice cream. It's like an ice cream cake and then it's frozen super solid and then it's covered in meringue, which is egg whites, and then it's blow torched to give it a burnt.
37:26 Hannah McCarthy? So you don't light it on fire?
37:28 Speaker 02 I mean, you can, I think.
37:29 Speaker 03 That's Cherry's Jubilee.
37:30 Nick Capodice? That's Cherry's Jubilee or Bananas Foster.
37:31 Hannah McCarthy? Bananas Foster. That's what I'm thinking.
37:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, but.
37:35 Hannah McCarthy? I want some tableside flames.
37:36 Nick Capodice? Yeah, me too.
37:37 Hannah McCarthy? I never had that in my youth.
37:38 Speaker 02 Would a tableside like mini blowtorch work?
37:41 Nick Capodice? No. I want something to just lick the sky.
37:45 Speaker 02 Um, so the recipe can be traced back to a thing called the Norwegian omelet, which was created at the 1867 Paris World's Fair as a way to show off the discovery of low thermal conductivity of eggs. Part of the key of the baked Alaska is you can heat up the eggs and they still retain their shape. And the guy who discovered that, Benjamin Thompson, actually lived in Bavaria, but the chef who created the dessert thought Bavaria was in Norway instead of Germany.
38:10 Hannah McCarthy? Oh.
38:11 Speaker 02 So that's why it's called the Norwegian omelet. And by the way, Thompson, who was born in the Massachusetts colony and eventually married a woman whose family owned most of what is now Concord, New Hampshire.
38:22 Speaker 03 Huh.
38:22 Speaker 02 He was a loyalist during the Revolutionary War and so he went to Europe. And he was living and working in Bavaria where he helped cultivate potato farming there.
38:32 Speaker 03 Nice.
38:32 Hannah McCarthy? Wow.
38:33 Speaker 02 Full circle.
38:38 Speaker 02 Nick.
38:38 Nick Capodice? Oh, God.
38:39 Speaker 02 This one is for you. Is it an ingredient to a dessert or a fragrance? Molasses, ginger, cinnamon, sugar, beef drippings.
38:50 Nick Capodice? Mmm.
38:53 Nick Capodice? Now, I would eat the heck out of this. And I'm trying to think of who would want beef drippings in a scent besides me.
39:00 Speaker 02 I didn't say it was perfumes. It could be colognes.
39:02 Nick Capodice? Oh, it could be a cologne, right?
39:03 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
39:05 Nick Capodice? Just because of the beef drippings and all those delicious things and like a big dessert with some beef in it, I'm just gonna say it's a recipe.
39:13 Speaker 02 It is a recipe.
39:14 Nick Capodice? Oh, thank heavens. What is it? I want to eat it.
39:16 Speaker 02 This is Dolly Madison's gingerbread.
39:18 Nick Capodice? Oh, she would use some beef drippings in a gingerbread.
39:21 Speaker 02 Rebecca.
39:21 Speaker 03 Hmm?
39:22 Speaker 02 Cinnamon, tonka bean, vanilla, praline.
39:28 Speaker 03 Praeling?
39:29 Speaker 02 Praline.
39:29 Speaker 03 Praline. Is that how you say it?
39:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's how it's said.
39:33 Nick Capodice? I wondered how that was gonna get.
39:34 Speaker 02 I thought it was praeling. I also say raccoon. Everyone in this room says raccoon.
39:39 Speaker 03 I say raccoon.
39:40 Speaker 02 There's a little apostrophe.
39:41 Nick Capodice? I believe in New Orleans, they say praline.
39:43 Speaker 03 I know. I think it's like pecan and pecan. I don't know, but I say praeling.
39:47 Speaker 02 Praline.
39:47 Speaker 03 Uh-huh.
39:49 Speaker 02 Cinnamon.
39:50 Speaker 03 Uh-huh.
39:51 Speaker 02 Tonka bean and vanilla.
39:53 Speaker 03 Well, I'm gonna just throw this out there. A praeling is like a made up thing that like you make. So I don't think that that's a perfume smell, so I'm going with dessert.
40:01 Speaker 02 It's a perfume.
40:02 Speaker 03 Oh.
40:03 Hannah McCarthy? The tonka bean was a dead giveaway.
40:05 Speaker 02 Tonka's only in perfume. I think you also, so the praline is like a baked food, so it almost makes more sense that it would be described as a perfume note.
40:13 Speaker 03 Exactly. I don't, I don't agree.
40:15 Nick Capodice? Sort of a caramel-y, pecan-y.
40:17 Speaker 03 Textural note for ice cream is what it is.
40:19 Speaker 02 Exactly, exactly. No, I disagree with you.
40:21 Speaker 03 Dang it.
40:21 Nick Capodice? If we do a call out to ask listeners if it's pronounced praeling or praline, I'm gonna bet you guys five bucks. Linda Monk, you listening? Tell me how we messed up praline.
40:29 Speaker 03 Please.
40:30 Speaker 02 So this is a perfume called Angel's Share by Killian. And here are the scent notes. Opening with cognac oil upon a bed of oak absolute, cinnamon essence, and tonka bean absolute. The scent's long-lasting notes of sandalwood, praline, and vanilla make for a delicious finish. A rare concoction only angels should experience.
40:50 Speaker 03 Okay.
40:51 Nick Capodice? Well, the angel's share is a booze-making term. It's for the whiskey that evaporates from the barrel and, you know, and then it's so the angels drink it.
41:02 Speaker 02 Hannah.
41:02 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:03 Speaker 02 Pistachio, cardamom, peanut, saffron.
41:07 Hannah McCarthy? I was with you until you said peanut.
41:09 Speaker 03 Mmm.
41:10 Hannah McCarthy? Peanut?
41:13 Speaker 03 Perfume known as Jif.
41:15 Hannah McCarthy? Yeah. I'm gonna say that's a food.
41:17 Speaker 02 It's a perfume.
41:18 Hannah McCarthy? Oh! What perfume? Who wants to smell like a peanut? Nuts indeed!
41:22 Speaker 02 Luscious perfume by French Avenue opens with a vibrant and captivating fusion of bergamot, pistachio, and cardamom. The creamy, subtly sweet aroma of peanut adds an enticing gourmand element. Nick. Salt, caramel.
41:37 Nick Capodice? Alright.
41:38 Speaker 02 Popcorn? Vanilla.
41:42 Nick Capodice? This is hard. I am, I just, no one would want to smell like popcorn. I'm gonna say a food, because I don't want anyone smelling like popcorn.
41:51 Speaker 02 Okay, so if you had to describe what food this would be, salt, caramel, popcorn, and vanilla.
41:55 Nick Capodice? Like a, like a old fashioned caramel corn kinda dish, like you'd get for Christmas.
42:00 Speaker 03 Is it a popcorn ball?
42:02 Speaker 02 Or, it's House of Odes, "What About Pop?" Unveils a crunchy salted popcorn that is then enveloped in delicious caramel. This is the magic of an encounter rendered sublime by a woody signature which bestows an unprecedented persistence upon the fragrance.
42:17 Speaker 03 God, darn it.
42:18 Hannah McCarthy? An unprecedented persistence!
42:21 Speaker 03 Nevertheless.
42:22 Nick Capodice? Yeah, you don't want it there, and it just keeps showing up.
42:33 Speaker 02 Alright, Rebecca.
42:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:35 Speaker 02 Pineapple, pistachio, marshmallow, vanilla.
42:40 Speaker 03 I'll tell you what that sounds like. It sounds like ambrosia salad, so I'm gonna say it's a dessert.
42:45 Hannah McCarthy? Wow! Did you make it? I haven't had this since my grandmother was with us.
42:50 Speaker 02 We have! With us! I have bra de sal.
42:54 Hannah McCarthy? Ambrosia!
42:54 Speaker 02 Ambrosia salad, AKA Watergate salad.
42:58 Speaker 03 I love it.
42:58 Hannah McCarthy? Wait, this is what the Watergate salad is?
43:00 Speaker 03 Well, Watergate salad is the green version of this.
43:03 Hannah McCarthy? Nick, have you ever had this?
43:04 Speaker 03 So Watergate salad has the pistachio pudding in it.
43:06 Speaker 02 You are from Normal, so that makes sense.
43:08 Speaker 03 And ambrosia salad does not have the green, but it is one of my favorite holiday foods. People will say it's so gross, but I love it.
43:15 Hannah McCarthy? No, I love it too. It's so nostalgic for me.
43:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:18 Hannah McCarthy? Christina, thank you.
43:20 Speaker 02 So first, yes, this is ambrosia salad, but it's pistachio pudding, marshmallows, pineapple. I got the wrong pineapple. It's like shredded pineapple.
43:30 Hannah McCarthy? It's okay.
43:31 Speaker 02 It has the texture of hair, so I'm sorry.
43:34 Speaker 03 It's still real good. All it tastes is very marshmallow forward.
43:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:37 Hannah McCarthy? Oh, my God. Wow, that's whoa. Oh, wow.
43:41 Speaker 02 So while you enjoy, do you want to hear the history of the Watergate salad?
43:45 Speaker 03 Please.
43:45 Speaker 02 Yeah. It was not prepared at the Watergate Hotel, as some people think, but it can be traced back to a woman named Christine Hatcher in the Hagerstown, Maryland's The Morning Herald in September 1974. It was getting really popular. People were calling it the Watergate salad. And some people theorize that it was a way to keep the memory of Watergate alive, since it was such a popular dessert during that time period. So it was named the Watergate salad as like, hey, don't forget about Watergate. Eat this pistachio marshmallow pudding.
44:17 Speaker 03 Is it a salad or a dessert? That's the question. Some people put mayonnaise on that.
44:22 Speaker 02 No, why?
44:23 Speaker 03 Because they do, because people are gross.
44:25 Speaker 02 That's.
44:27 Speaker 03 No offense, gross people who disturb me to say that.
44:29 Speaker 02 I wonder if it would be better with just mayo.
44:39 Speaker 02 All right, so the final score is Hannah, you have seven, Nick, you have seven, Rebecca, you have eight.
44:46 Hannah McCarthy? Yes. Very well done.
44:49 Speaker 02 It's like I'm like a golden retriever. I am very food-ivated.
44:51 Hannah McCarthy? What's it like at the top, Rebecca?
44:59 Speaker 02 That brings us to the end of our holiday food at the White House trivia. Thank you all for being here.
45:04 Hannah McCarthy? Especially me.
45:07 Speaker 02 And some party advice. Make sure to ferment your cherry pits, cook your eggs, don't eat more than a dozen oysters in one sitting, and of course, don't break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant listening devices unless you want a pudding named after your actions.
45:24 Hannah McCarthy? That was so fun.
45:33 Nick Capodice? The perfume I wear, they don't, they don't say. You can always have maximum confidence in the original odor protection of Speedstick.
45:40 Speaker 02 This episode of Civics 101 was produced by me, Christina Phillips. Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy are our hosts. Rebecca Lavoy is our executive producer and the one who edited this episode. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound. And Civics 101 is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio, NHPR.
46:27 Speaker 02 Richard Nixon ate cottage cheese with ketchup. There we go. That's my tongue twister. Okay.
46:33 Speaker 04 This is Phil Bradison, former Democratic governor of the state of Tennessee. If you love digging into how history shapes US policy, check out the new season of You Might Be Right.
46:43 Speaker 05 And this is Bill Haslam, former Republican governor. This season, we're asking the questions that have defined every pivotal moment in American political history. Is democracy really under threat? Or is that just a story as old as the republic itself? We're tackling the biggest questions shaping the 2026 midterms. So join us.
47:00 Speaker 04 Follow You Might Be Right wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous How do tariffs work? Next Presidential Funerals: How and Why We Mourn Our Leaders Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated