Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Julia Child, la Grandes Gourmande About this episode Julia Child is one of the most recognizable names in the cooking world, but even still so many of her accomplishments aren’t widely known. And the impacts she had on American culture, whoa! Join Josh and Chuck as they savor the flavor of Julia Child!
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Transcript 10,714 words · 7 speakers
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1:05 Josh Clark? Let's be real, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and yes, it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Introducing Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio, hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:40 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:49 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're stuffed on turkey, wearing aprons, got a little gravy on the sides of our mouths. And it's stuff you should know.
2:02 Speaker 03 That's right. Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S.
2:07 Josh Clark? And happy belated Thanksgiving to our Canadian listeners who celebrate it early.
2:12 Speaker 03 That's right. And since we're talking about Thanksgiving, we wanted to mention, you know, we have been working with COED, the Cooperative for Education, for many, many years, since they took us down to Guatemala. And they're, you know, if you haven't heard us talk about them, I'd be surprised, but their mission is to help eradicate poverty through education and largely through the children of Guatemala. It's a great organization NGO that we've been working with for a long, long time, and we're working with them again this year.
2:42 Josh Clark? Yeah, they see to it that kids who would almost certainly otherwise not have gotten any real education at all, get a really great education for fairly cheap, too. They're a really, really great, effective charity, which is why we've been working with them for so long. And one of the ways we work with them every year is to raffle off a chance to hang out with us online.
3:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, virtually. That's how we do things. But we've done this for a few years in a row now, like a Zoom, a COED Zoom hangout, and it's always super fun. We look forward to it. And this is how you can do that. You can join the Cooperative for Education for 20 bucks a month, and you can collectively sponsor students in the Rise Youth Development Program. In 2026, more than 1,200 students are going to start school in rural Guatemala through this program, and that's their biggest class ever. And they really count on us and you guys to help make that happen.
3:36 Josh Clark? Yeah. You can also give any donation that you like. They're happy with that. But do this by December 19th, and you will be entered into a chance to hang out with us, I think in January at some point. And also, just a little FYI, Giving Tuesday is December 2nd, so that could be a good day to do it, too. And whenever you're ready, go to cooperativeforeducation.org/sysk, and you can make your donations there.
4:05 Speaker 03 That's right. 20 bucks a month can really go a long way. And just to brag a little bit about the Stuff You Should Know Army, since we've been working with COED, over $1.4 million in charitable contributions have come from the Stuff You Should Know Army, sponsoring a total of 172 Rise students over that time.
4:23 Josh Clark? That is so cool. Thanks, you guys, for supporting COED so well.
4:26 Speaker 03 That's right.
4:28 Josh Clark? Well, Chuck, I say we get cracking with our episode today because I'm excited about this one. We're talking about Julia Child, arguably one of the most well-known cooks, chefs of all time.
4:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I have to step out real quick because I've cut the dickens out of my finger.
4:49 Josh Clark? That was pretty good, actually. I wasn't even gonna try it, but that was a dead-on Julia Child.
4:55 Speaker 03 Well, that was a dead-on Dan Aykroyd as Julia Child.
4:58 Josh Clark? I think you topped him, to tell you the truth.
5:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know, if you grew up in the 70s, in the 80s, and even into the 90s, and you ever surfed around your cable TV and crossed PBS, there was a good chance that the wonderful Julia Child came into your life in some way. I remember watching her a little bit when I was a kid even, and just thinking like, who is this, this giant, tall woman that talks funny, cooking in front of my face?
5:29 Josh Clark? But you were never intimidated by her, were you?
5:32 Speaker 03 No, I mean, she was always just so friendly and gregarious. I just, I had an instant liking.
5:37 Josh Clark? Yes, she was a very, very likable person. But even if you're not familiar with Julia Child, and you live in the United States, and you like decent food that's not processed, you owe an enormous debt to Julia Child because you can argue that she almost single-handedly introduced America to real food through French cuisine.
6:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, these days, it's taken for granted that, you know, farm-to-table and ingredients that matter and food preparation and sort of taking pride in cooking at home like that is just so commonplace. But that was not the case when Julia Child was coming into things. She really revolutionized and sort of rocked America's culinary world.
6:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, like, this was the time when she came around, when people were making Jell-O molds with, like, ground beef in them.
6:34 Josh Clark? That was nice. That was like showing off for a dinner party kind of stuff.
6:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
6:40 Josh Clark? So we'll talk about all the impact she had and why she was so beloved. But to start, we'll go a little further back toward the beginning. And if you've ever heard her speak, you really did do a pretty good impression. A lot of people think that she was British and she was not British. She was American. She was born in Pasadena. Apparently, her accent was one of those mid-Atlantic accents that she was taught. Growing up in private schools and private college, Smith College in Massachusetts.
7:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, she was Julia McWilliams. That's how she was born. And didn't have British parents either. They were, they had some money, though. Her parents were pretty well-to-do. Her dad was a financier. And her mom was an heiress of a paper company. So she grew up with a cook in the house. But it wasn't, it wasn't that that did it. As you'll see, she had quite a circuitous route to becoming the most famous cook in the world. And had a, had a pretty interesting life up until that point.
7:42 Josh Clark? She really did, like a surprisingly interesting one. She was apparently a disaster in the kitchen. And really didn't start cooking until I think she was in her 40s, maybe late 30s. I saw that the closest brush she had with being a gourmand and a host. Was when she was the chair of the refreshment committee. For the senior prom and the fall dance one year at Smith College. And that's, that's not really much of an exaggeration. That really probably is the closest she came to being a foodie. Before she got into cooking later on in life.
8:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, she was a history student. She was going to be a writer. And like I said, she was tall. She was six foot two and she was athletic. She played basketball. She played tennis. She played golf. She graduated in 1934 and moved to New York and was, you know, said she wanted to be a writer. She was an advertising copywriter for Sloane's, which was a furniture company. So that was her first gig, but she was always a well-liked person. She was a very, like I said, gregarious, that wasn't just a TV persona, very, very sociable. People really seemed to like her her whole life. She was the life of the party, but she wasn't like just, you know, even though she, she loved her wine. She wasn't just some, some South at the party. She was apparently a pretty, you know, responsible human, even early on.
9:02 Josh Clark? Like if she put a lampshade on her head, she remembered doing it the next day. It was on purpose.
9:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
9:08 Josh Clark? She was all, she also had a really great work ethic, which served her well throughout the rest of her career, but really from the outset helped her because when World War II broke out, she's like, I want to become a spy. So she joined the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the direct predecessor of the CIA, and worked directly under no less than Wild Bill Donovan, the guy who founded the OSS.
9:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was a general and apparently that she didn't, you know, have a whole lot of like direct interaction with him, but it was a very big gig for her. It was pretty menial work, even though it was a job of, you know, responsibility that she was put in. It was kind of pre-computer work, like they needed human beings to do stuff that computers would do. So she would type up profiles on note cards of OSS officers just to keep sort of in the file cabinet before they had, you know, computers to do that kind of thing, along with several other women that she worked with. And like I said, she was charming. You said she had a great work ethic and she got promoted like several times through that job.
10:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, and she actually was promoted to become a member of the emergency C rescue equipment section.
10:23 Josh Clark? Which was tasked with coming up with a shark repellent because sharks were a problem for downed pilots, shipwrecked sailors. I think at least 20 sailors had been attacked by sharks since the beginning of the war, and this is only a couple of years in. So they needed some sort of shark repellent that would keep sharks away, but that was also highly portable. Apparently shark repellent did not exist to this point, and the shark repellent they came up with was so effective, it's still the shark repellent that's used today.
10:54 Speaker 03 Yeah. They would also bump into sea mines that were supposed to hit German U-boats and detonate those, which is no good for the cause or for the shark, obviously.
11:03 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah. Smile, you son of a...
11:06 Speaker 03 So, oh man, what a line. So she was in the test kitchen, essentially, trying to come up with a shark repellent. Obviously, had a lot of different tries on this. I think there were over 100 different attempts at this recipe. And what they came up with ultimately was a mix of decayed shark meat, organic acids, and what was the copper acetate was sort of the main ingredient that capped it all off.
11:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, copper acetate, they figured out, mixed with black dye, mimics the scent of a dead shark. And I guess sharks don't like to go near other dead sharks.
11:46 Speaker 03 No, who would?
11:46 Josh Clark? And they figured out how to basically make this into a little cake. Cake meaning like a little puck, not a cake, like a birthday cake. And you could attach it to your life vest, and it would apparently keep sharks away for six to seven hours.
12:01 Speaker 03 It's not bad.
12:02 Josh Clark? No. And she very facetiously, but also charmingly referred to that shark repellent as her first big recipe.
12:09 Speaker 03 You gonna say it like her?
12:10 Josh Clark? I'd... Okay. My first big recipe.
12:16 Speaker 03 Oh, that's perfect. That's also, it sounds like half of your Halloween characters.
12:21 Josh Clark? It really was pretty bad. Wait, hold on, let me do it naisely. Barfuspe.
12:25 Speaker 03 Oh, no. We had one person that wrote in and said they couldn't get through it.
12:29 Josh Clark? I know. I felt kind of bad for him.
12:31 Speaker 03 Oh, that's right. From 44 to 45, I think these were her last two years in the OSS. She served as chief of the OSS registry and was sent to some pretty faraway places. She went to China and Ceylon, which is modern day Sri Lanka, and had some really top notch security clearance. It was, you know, she really worked her way up the ladder in the OSS.
12:56 Josh Clark? I saw that she had top secret, the highest level security clearance for that assignment, which is, it's just nuts. One thing that we'll see later on is that she's basically always considered herself a feminist. And that's a good example that she worked her way to the top of the OSS to have the highest possible security clearance during the 40s, at a time when women were not really. I know that women worked a lot to support the war effort, but that seems like an unusual position for a woman at the time.
13:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. All that, you know, due to her hard work. One of the biggest things that happened, though, in the OSS was that she met her future husband, Paul Child. He was an officer and I say that not, you know, and like, oh, she met her husband there. So that's what matters. But she met her life partner and love of her life, who helped nurture her career and serve her. And they, by all accounts, they just seemed like this really, really wonderful couple, like the kind that you've always, you know, want to be in yourself, that kind of relationship, you know?
14:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, I saw from basically every source that talked about it, that they were the envy of their friends.
14:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:06 Josh Clark? So, yeah, they stayed together. They were married for almost 50 years from 1946 until Paul died in 1994.
14:14 Speaker 03 That's right. And the takeaway here is, is they landed in France at one point in 1948 as part of his assignment in the OSS. And when they were in France, they, and you know, it's, it's that sliding doors thing. Had they not gotten stationed in France, who knows if we ever would have gotten Julia Child.
14:32 Josh Clark? Yeah.
14:32 Speaker 03 Because he was a foodie and she wasn't. And he said, hey, I'm going to take you out to a real French meal and see what you think. So he took her to this very famous restaurant. How do you pronounce that, Josh?
14:44 Josh Clark? La Couronne.
14:45 Speaker 03 La Couronne, which is the crown. This is in the Normandy region, along the river there in northern France. And it has been a restaurant since the 1340s. So it is legit. Some people claim it's the oldest inn in all of France.
15:03 Josh Clark? That's pretty cool. So they know what they're doing with French cuisine, which by the way, if you don't really understand French cuisine, and I don't really claim to, I appreciate it, but it's not like that's, that's what you, me and I are making on Tuesday night at home.
15:19 Josh Clark? Yet, because I got her cookbook recently and I'm very excited about it. But just to kind of like a little back of the, the envelope sketch of it. French cuisine, French cooking was the first cuisine in the world to be recognized as a world heritage by UNESCO. That's how distinct and important French cuisine is. And this is the moment when Julia Child was introduced to it, this lunch at La Couronne.
15:46 Speaker 03 Yeah. And as I understand it, French cuisine, I've watched a lot of Top Chef over the years.
15:51 Josh Clark? Okay.
15:52 Speaker 03 All of it, in fact. French cuisine is, is very humble, a very basic ingredients. It's not this fancy thing. You think of, you know, French food, if you don't know much about it, as being like super, super fancy. But it's actually very humble with very basic ingredients, but really quality ingredients, really perfect technique. Real fats, real butters, real cream. That's French cuisine, basically. It's like impeccable technique. You know, paired with a very simple, humble, but very well sourced ingredients.
16:23 Josh Clark? Well put.
16:24 Speaker 03 I, I hope so.
16:25 Josh Clark? Made by Frenchies. You forgot that part.
16:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, generally.
16:28 Josh Clark? So at this lunch in 1948, her first French meal, she had oysters.
16:35 Speaker 03 All right.
16:35 Josh Clark? Poulain fumé wine, which is the official Sauvignon Blanc.
16:39 Speaker 03 Okay.
16:40 Josh Clark? And sole mignon. Mignon means Miller's wife. So like you were saying, humble, simple dishes. It's sole fish that's floured and made with capers, lemon, butter, parsley, and not much more. And she said that that first true culinary experience, there's a few quotes I think we should trade off with.
17:02 Speaker 03 Okay.
17:02 Josh Clark? She said that it was an opening up of the soul and spirit for me, that first meal. It changed her life quite literally.
17:10 Speaker 03 Yeah. She also said it was a kind of coming to Jesus. And what else?
17:16 Josh Clark? She said it was the most exciting meal of my life.
17:19 Speaker 03 Yeah. And then that dish, that Dover sole that, you know, you, it's fried fish. You flour some sole, fry it up in some butter, put some, I think, I think the lemon and parsley and capers is part of any, what is it? The mignon?
17:36 Josh Clark? Mignon.
17:37 Speaker 03 Mignon, I think any mignon, that's basically what it is. But a very simple dish, and that became one of her, you know, one of her big signature dishes.
17:44 Josh Clark? Yeah. Put a little ketchup on there. You're in hog heaven.
17:48 Speaker 03 Oh, man. You and my daughter.
17:49 Josh Clark? So because she was moved by, she likes ketchup, huh?
17:52 Speaker 03 Oh, God, it's so annoying.
17:54 Josh Clark? She's very cool. We have a lot in common.
17:57 Speaker 03 It gets her to eat some stuff she wouldn't normally eat. So that's good, I guess.
18:01 Josh Clark? Like broccoli?
18:02 Speaker 03 No, she didn't put on broccoli. She doesn't like broccoli, but she eats.
18:05 Josh Clark? I don't like broccoli either. Does she hate peas too?
18:08 Speaker 03 No, she loves peas. She, in fact, she eats frozen peas as a snack.
18:11 Josh Clark? Well, they're really, that's probably, like, that distinction erases all of the similarities because I hate peas so much.
18:19 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
18:20 Josh Clark? I hate them so much, Chuck.
18:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, she loves sushi now, which was a big surprise for us.
18:24 Josh Clark? That's awesome.
18:25 Speaker 03 She just kind of started eating it when I got it and, because I think she likes stealing my food. So it started as a joke and then now she's just eating it.
18:33 Josh Clark? Do you remember what kind she eats? Is it like California rolls or nigiri?
18:37 Speaker 03 Nah, man. Like, yeah, nigiri and just any kind of crazy roll I get, she'll eat.
18:41 Josh Clark? Man, that's awesome. That's great to start.
18:43 Speaker 03 No soy sauce, though.
18:44 Josh Clark? You're not supposed to eat much soy sauce, if any, with it.
18:47 Speaker 03 I, I don't care supposed to or not. I'm telling you what I like.
18:50 Josh Clark? Oh, that's fine. I'm just saying, like, she's, she's actually, she could go to Japan right now and they wouldn't bat an eyelash at her for it.
18:57 Speaker 03 Hey, you think I don't remember our sushi episode?
18:59 Josh Clark? I didn't know. We did the black hole episode twice.
19:04 Speaker 03 That's a good point.
19:06 Speaker 03 Uh, all right. So where are we? Julia Child has eaten this meal.
19:08 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
19:09 Speaker 03 Uh, it blew her mind because she was raised on American food. Like you said, was not a foodie.
19:15 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
19:15 Speaker 03 And not only American food, but in recent years, post-war American food, which is when stuff started to get really sort of mass-produced and not very good. Like, very processed. Uh, and this French food just blew her mind.
19:28 Josh Clark? Yeah. Um, so she wanted to understand how that could happen, right?
19:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:32 Josh Clark? So she started taking cooking classes. And again, like, she's a total novice here. And I think she's, again, in her late 30s. So this is 1948. She's about 36 at this time and her life has just changed. Like, she's just figured out what she wants to do in life. So she starts taking classes, uh, ends up enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu.
19:51 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
19:52 Josh Clark? Uh, in 1951. That same year, she founds her own cooking school that she runs out of her own kitchen with her, uh, who would become long, longtime collaborators, Simone Beck and Louise Bertois. Um, and they founded the school called Le Col des Trois Gourmands, which means the School of the Three Gourmands.
20:14 Speaker 03 That's right. Uh, I didn't get this verified, but I did read somewhere that she was either the only woman in her class at Le Cordon Bleu or one of only two, maybe?
20:22 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
20:23 Speaker 03 Uh, it just, you know, back then, and, you know, there's still a lot of sexism in, in the, in chefs' kitchens and restaurants. It's come a long way. But for many, many years, it was, it was a profession of, of white men.
20:35 Josh Clark? Yeah.
20:36 Speaker 03 You know, I feel like that's something we say a lot on the show, but that's the case. Uh, within 10 years of being at Le Cordon Bleu, uh, she had sold her bestselling cookbook that you just bought, I guess. Did you get the OG?
20:48 Josh Clark? Yeah.
20:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. What's the name of that?
20:51 Josh Clark? Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
20:53 Speaker 03 That's right, 700-plus pages. And then about 50 years after she enrolled at Le Court en Bleu, her actual kitchen that she cooked in would be in the Smithsonian Museum of American History as a permanent exhibit.
21:06 Josh Clark? Pretty neat.
21:07 Speaker 03 Pretty amazing.
21:08 Josh Clark? I say we take a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about that cookbook that I got because it was groundbreaking, to say the least.
21:15 Speaker 03 All right.
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22:46 Josh Clark? Sure.
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25:00 Josh Clark? So Chuck, you said you mentioned the mastering the art of French cooking, this cookbook that Julia Child made with Simone Beck and Louise Z. Bertol. And it was designed specifically for America, for the United States, to introduce them to French cooking. And up to this point, cookbooks were basically like, take a little handful of flour and throw it at, you know, the elf that's helping you and put a little oil in there and fold it together and voila.
25:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:33 Josh Clark? Like, they were not very helpful and they assumed that you already had some sort of training, maybe apprenticeship, something like that. The mastering the art of French cooking did the exact opposite. Because having not that long ago been a total novice, Julia Child realized what people who are being exposed to this new way of cooking, new foods, new techniques, new ingredients, would need to know. And that was essentially everything. So they laid out everything that you would need to know to make these recipes in this cookbook, training anyone who bought this cookbook on French cuisine.
26:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, like, you know, a recipe might have said, "Julienne these carrots and then put them in butter." And she would say, "Well, what if they don't know what that means? Here's how you julienne."
26:18 Josh Clark? Right.
26:19 Speaker 03 And not only that, but here's the kind of knife that's ideal for that kind of thing.
26:22 Josh Clark? And the butter, too.
26:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, and the butter, oh, boy, she talked a lot about butter.
26:25 Josh Clark? Yes, it did.
26:26 Speaker 03 But like, here are the tools, here are the techniques, and here's how you do all of these for these 524 recipes. And it really just sort of, it broke down a wall in that it demystified, you know, sort of, high-class cooking, because she's like, "This is something that you can do in your kitchen."
26:44 Josh Clark? Yeah.
26:45 Speaker 03 And, you know, Sheboygan.
26:46 Josh Clark? Exactly. Oh, Sheboygan went nuts for this.
26:49 Speaker 03 Of course.
26:50 Josh Clark? All the men grew pencil-thin mustaches and wore berets. The women all wore pencil, pencil pants.
26:57 Speaker 03 Pencil pants?
26:58 Josh Clark? Yeah.
26:59 Speaker 03 Pencil skirts?
27:00 Josh Clark? No, one of the little short, almost clam diggers, but they were much more svelte. I thought they were pencil something.
27:05 Speaker 03 Oh, I don't know, maybe. I know what you're talking about, though. Kulats?
27:08 Josh Clark? No.
27:09 Speaker 03 No.
27:10 Josh Clark? I don't think those are French. I think those, those don't, no country will claim those.
27:14 Speaker 03 Oh, the coach of the Falcons wears those, which is probably why it sucks so bad.
27:18 Josh Clark? That is crazy.
27:21 Speaker 03 So on the book, you know, where she's demystifying the process and talking about quality ingredients and quality fresh herbs and high-quality butters and good meats, you would think that'd be like a slam dunk because they would say, no one's ever done anything like this before. But it got rejected, you know, like most success stories in the book world, there's usually like, yeah, I got rejected by like eight publishers. And she got rejected quite a bit before she finally landed with an editor named Judith Jones at Alfred Knopf Publishing.
27:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, so Judith Jones was already a legend by this time because just a few years before she'd kind of discovered this obscure French book and recognized how important it was and had it translated to English and published it as The Diary of Anne Frank. So she was the editor who got The Diary of Anne Frank out to the English-speaking world. So she already had a pretty great nose for this kind of thing. And she recognized that in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Not that it would be as important necessarily as The Diary of Anne Frank, but not necessarily that it would be that far behind as far as changing the world goes, or at least the United States.
28:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, man, we should do a short stuff on Judith Jones.
28:36 Josh Clark? Okay.
28:37 Speaker 03 Could you imagine like walking into any publishing event, she's like, by the way, Diary of Anne Frank and the art, what, mastery of French cooking? What is it?
28:48 Josh Clark? Mastering the Art of French Cooking, yeah.
28:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, she would say it better than that. She'd say both those, those were mine.
28:53 Josh Clark? Those are mine. We should also do an episode on Anne Frank sometime.
28:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm surprised we haven't actually.
28:58 Josh Clark? I am a little bit too.
28:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, let's do that.
29:01 Josh Clark? So one of the other things that made the cookbook finally successful when it did get published, and boy, was it successful. I saw in one place that it spent five years on the bestseller list, but I couldn't find any other place to verify it. It's still worth mentioning.
29:15 Speaker 03 We were on there for two weeks.
29:17 Josh Clark? We sure were, buddy. I think more than that, actually.
29:19 Speaker 03 I think it was two.
29:20 Josh Clark? Okay. Well, let's say two and a half. We'll split the difference. But Frenchiness was very chic at the time.
29:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, there was a French chef in the White House kitchen. Of course, you had, you mentioned Audrey Hepburn and wearing those French clothes, French designers, Jackie Kennedy was as well.
29:38 Josh Clark? Pencil pants.
29:39 Speaker 03 Pencil pants, that French wine was starting to be a thing at a time when, you know, again, now wine is so popular, but it wasn't that hugely popular, popular in the United States at the time. So French wine kind of became a thing.
29:52 Josh Clark? Yeah. And the first volume was so successful, a few years later, I think nine years later in 1970, they released volume two. It had another 257 recipes. And apparently you can spend up to 10K, actually I saw more than that, to buy signed volumes, one and two together.
30:12 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
30:12 Josh Clark? Of the first edition.
30:14 Speaker 03 That's awesome.
30:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, they became bibles for cooks in America. And again, this, it wasn't like people were already primed for this. This is what made people primed to consider cookbooks, bibles in their kitchen in the United States.
30:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, you know Judith Jones, also the bible.
30:31 Josh Clark? That's right. She, she helped write it.
30:36 Speaker 03 So everyone's probably saying like, yeah, this book's great, but what about television? Because that's where I remember her from my childhood. Here's where we get to TV, because she moved around Europe during the 1950s with her husband, Paul. Came back to the States in the 60s. I believe they had come back before on some, I don't know if you want to say visits, maybe some forced visits. When her husband, Paul was called for the blacklisting, blacklisted McCarthy hearings. So that was a thing. I don't think he got in trouble though, right?
31:08 Josh Clark? No, they were friends with a woman who was a suspected communist in the government and they wanted to know about her.
31:16 Speaker 03 Right, so they brought him in, but they ultimately landed for good in Cambridge, Mass. And when she was, you know, promoting her cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I finally got it. She went on PBS at WGBH there in Boston for a book review show called I've Been Reading Ellipses. And she was just doing a little demonstration on how to make an omelet. She brought everything with her, you know, her little hot plate and saute pan, her tools and her eggs. And everyone loved it. Everyone was like riding into the station saying like, this woman that you had on cooking that omelet was funny and gregarious. And we just loved her and we also learned something. And so they said, hey, we should give you your own TV show.
31:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, within a year, the French chef, her first cooking show was on the air on WGBH. And this is at a time where cooking shows were not a thing.
32:07 Speaker 03 Right.
32:07 Josh Clark? A lot of people say the fact that cooking shows are so widespread today, you can essentially thank Julia Child for that, too.
32:13 Speaker 03 That's right.
32:14 Josh Clark? And thank the French chef. It had a 10-year run and because it was a PBS joint, other PBS stations around the United States picked it up. It made its way to Europe and the UK via the BBC. It became a really big show very quickly and Julia Child became the most widely recognized chef in the entire world, at the very least in the United States during this period, the early 60s to the early 70s.
32:42 Speaker 03 You know, we had a TV show for a year.
32:43 Josh Clark? We did, and we became the most widely known kooks in the world, if not at least the United States.
32:51 Speaker 03 One thing I'm learning is that to compare our career to Julia Child's humbling experience.
32:57 Josh Clark? You were a spy for that little while, or you pretended you were at parties.
33:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's right. She won an Emmy and a Peabody Award for that show. And this is just a little feather in her cap, I think. It was the first TV show in the United States to feature closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing community.
33:15 Josh Clark? Yeah. Open captioning, I saw where it was for everybody. Everyone read it, but yeah.
33:21 Speaker 03 Oh, is that what closed captioning means?
33:23 Josh Clark? Yeah, where you have to select it to see it. Yeah, I didn't know that either. So I guess it was open captioning, but yes, that didn't exist on TV until then.
33:31 Speaker 03 I'm just learning so much because of you, my friend.
33:34 Josh Clark? Hey, right back at you, buddy.
33:38 Speaker 03 So, you know, the TV show was a big hit. She, because she was just so lovable and she wasn't patronizing and she, you know, had her closing phrase, "Bon appétit." And she would just, she would get in there and get dirty and make mistakes. And like, she would want people to leave, you know, the editors to leave the mistakes in there. She was like, "That's part of cooking."
33:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's a big deal because it also not only made her approachable, it made the people watching, who were trying these recipes too, realize that she wasn't infallible and therefore they didn't need to worry about not being infallible too.
34:13 Speaker 03 That is like us.
34:14 Josh Clark? Like mistakes are part of it. You just learn from them.
34:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:17 Josh Clark? But like that was, she made it way more approachable to people by doing that.
34:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I also read that, this is from, I believe the woman who made the documentary about her, Julia, which is really, really good.
34:29 Josh Clark? Okay.
34:30 Speaker 03 That another reason that she left the mistakes in was especially for women because she felt like, women felt like they, they needed to always feel bad when they mess something up. In life, period, but especially in the kitchen. And she was like, "No, it's okay to mess up." And, and while you're in that kitchen, like, you know, it was kind of in, in opposition in a way to like the feminist movement of the time, which is like, "Get out of the kitchen." Julia Child was saying like, "No, like, get in that kitchen and own it and cook for you and learn to make stuff that you want to make and not just like maybe what your husband and kids are yelling at you to make."
35:10 Speaker 03 Like, like, take over the kitchen as something that you love doing and that's for yourself.
35:16 Josh Clark? Right. I saw Bustle magazine describe her as a Banff, which I'm not familiar with, but they, based on context, it seemed like it was a, a good thing.
35:26 Speaker 03 What does that stand for?
35:31 Speaker 03 All right. Well, Josh just told me off air what it stood for. I agree.
35:35 Josh Clark? My joke. So you mentioned mistakes. There's actually some famous mistakes that she made. One was she was pulling a cake from the oven.
35:45 Josh Clark? And apparently it fell flat on camera. She said something like, well, that didn't work out. Can you, can you say?
35:51 Speaker 03 Well, that didn't work out.
35:53 Josh Clark? Very nice. And then everybody knows that she once dropped an entire raw turkey on the floor, on camera, left this in, picked the turkey up off the floor, kind of brushed it off and put it in the oven and baked it like nothing ever happened.
36:10 Speaker 03 I would do that.
36:11 Josh Clark? Well, yeah, we did a whole episode on the five second rule.
36:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I mean, for a raw thing like that, I know it sounds gross, but you can wash that thing off and bake it and it's fine.
36:21 Josh Clark? Yes. That you don't have a cooking show.
36:24 Speaker 03 No, exactly.
36:25 Josh Clark? So yes, the fact that she did this, well, I should say not the fact, because that's actually a urban legend, a rumor. It's something did happen, but it morphed into like the most spectacular version of itself.
36:39 Speaker 03 Wasn't a turkey?
36:40 Josh Clark? No, it wasn't. Snopes dated it back to at least 1989, but she once, the closest they could find was that she was flipping a potato pancake and flipped it out of the pan onto the countertop and it crumbled. And she said, like, I think she said, when you're in the kitchen, nobody can see you. And she pushed it back together and put it back in the pan and cooked it.
37:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, I love that because that's how it goes when you're cooking in your house. You know?
37:09 Josh Clark? Yeah, you, I've never not flipped a potato pancake onto the countertop.
37:15 Speaker 03 She had, you know, a string of successful cooking shows after that first one, all the way from the seventies through the eighties into the nineties. I believe she had 12 Emmy nominations total and seven wins.
37:30 Speaker 03 And by the time she got into the 1990s, they were shooting that show in her home kitchen in Cambridge. Her husband, Paul, designed this kitchen that was like part kitchen, part TV studio. And, you know, just so they could spend time at home. And he was heavily involved. Apparently, at times, he was on the floor with cue cards. And he helped design the original patch for the three gourmands that when she worked with the other two chefs. And so they were really a sort of a power couple working together to enrich her career.
38:04 Josh Clark? Yeah.
38:06 Josh Clark? Chuck, I say we take our second break and come back and talk about why Julia Child is so beloved.
38:11 Speaker 03 All right, we'll be right back.
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41:18 Speaker 03 All right. Why was Julia Child so beloved? I feel like we've already made a case. But let's talk about it some more.
41:25 Josh Clark? All right. I mean, we've covered some of it, but not all. A big one is that she introduced fresh ingredients to America. This is really kind of... We hit on this, but it's worth saying. This is a time when people were using canned soup as an ingredient, not just the canned soup, right? So everything was very processed. And she insisted on fresh ingredients. Like, there was no... Way around it. You had to use these or else these things were going to turn out very well. But at the same time, she also said, like, you need to let the food stand on its own. Like, yes, you want herbs, but you want the herbs to complement it. You don't want the herbs to cover up. You don't want to use a bunch of A1 on your sole muniere. Like, you, you let the thing stand on its own. You let the fish taste like fish.
42:10 Josh Clark? Like, that was kind of like a, like a subtext, I guess, of introducing fresh ingredients, teaching people to enjoy the thing that they were cooking, rather than the thing that they were cooking plus, again, A1 sauce.
42:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. And, and that technique, you know, if you, if you cook a piece of fish perfectly, you don't need anything more than a little salt and pepper and butter. And maybe a squirt of lemon.
42:35 Josh Clark? Even tilapia.
42:37 Speaker 03 Yeah. But despite all this, she was not a food snob. She was very approachable. She loved In-N-Out Burger. She used Hellmann's mayo in her tuna salad. Apparently she liked Costco hot dogs even.
42:49 Josh Clark? I, I don't blame her.
42:52 Speaker 03 Never had one. What's?
42:52 Josh Clark? Oh, they're great. They're like a-
42:54 Speaker 03 What's different, though? Isn't it just a hot dog?
42:58 Josh Clark? Yes, it's just a hot dog. But do you know how every once in a while your school lunch would give you something that you're like, this is amazing?
43:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:06 Josh Clark? That's like their hot dogs. They have their own taste and it's an amazing taste, but they're on par with like a school lunch type hot dog.
43:15 Speaker 03 In the best way. I got you.
43:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's, we're, people go to Costco just to eat the hot dogs. And the pizza's not bad, too, but it's worth going to just for the hot dogs, which technically, in a weird way, gives it one Michelin star.
43:28 Speaker 03 Well, you know, buddy, our friend, Joe Garden, friend of the show, former writer of The Onion. Joe lives there in Woodstock and he posts pictures on his Instagram eating those Costco hot dogs.
43:41 Josh Clark? See, he knows what's going on.
43:43 Speaker 03 Joe always knows what's up.
43:44 Josh Clark? He's got his finger on the pulse of Julia Child.
43:47 Speaker 03 That's right.
43:48 Josh Clark? So she also reintroduced America to wine. At the time, Americas, Americans were drinking the stuff that's now on the bottom shelf of grocery stores.
43:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, the jug wine.
43:59 Josh Clark? Yeah. So not only did she reintroduce America to wine, she, she normalized- She normalized it by doing the same thing she did with mistakes. She drank wine on camera as part of her show. On some episodes, apparently she would start to get a little tipsy. She never got drunk or sloppy or anything like that, but the fact that she was drinking this wine, and by the way, pretty good wine, made Americans realize what they were drinking was just bottom of the barrel stuff. And let's see what else we've got. And as a result, California wine became super dominant, essentially in part from her normalizing it.
44:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think that happened in the seventies when California started making good wine on par with the French.
44:45 Speaker 03 You know, according to everyone but the French. She also liked beer. And this sounds very gross to me, but she she enjoyed something called an upside down martini, which is you swap the vermouth parts in the gin, so it's much more vermouth than gin.
44:58 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's also lower ABV, so you don't get quite as trashed as quickly.
45:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, but man, that's kind of one of the good parts about a martini, right?
45:07 Josh Clark? For sure. She also had a really great sense of humor. Apparently another longstanding rumor that sometimes fans would confront her with, they were like, I remember that time you drank wine directly out of the bottle on one of your episodes. And that apparently never happened either. Again, it was just the extreme version of what she was actually doing, which is drinking wine out of a glass. But she said, I would never do that on television.
45:32 Speaker 03 Right?
45:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know, I opened with the Dan Aykroyd bit. If you didn't know what I was doing, it was a very famous SNL sketch from back in the day in 78, where Dan Aykroyd portrayed Julia Child, where he cut the dickens out of his finger. And you know, blood's just going everywhere. Of course, they had the blood pack just squirting blood all over everything. He was a big fan, apparently, and there was a real incident. I think about a month before that sketch where she was working with Jacques Pepin on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, where she had cut herself pretty bad. And I guess that was the inspiration for that.
46:09 Josh Clark? She also apparently was very proud of that sketch and thought it was hilarious. So she kept a videotape of it and would show people sometimes. And then at a really particularly fun, enthusiastic dinner party, she might act it out like word for word by heart.
46:24 Speaker 03 Can you imagine?
46:25 Josh Clark? Oh, I would have loved to have seen that.
46:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, incredible.
46:28 Josh Clark? She was also super charming and funny on TV appearances, but particularly Letterman. You can watch compilations of her on Letterman. She could hold her own against Letterman, no problem.
46:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, you sent me that one clip. I actually think I remember seeing that in high school, but Letterman was, you know, I love Letterman. He was, I felt like he was not being too kind about the food.
46:50 Josh Clark? Sometimes he's cranky.
46:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, so I felt a little bad for her in that she was serving him, kind of a version in this one of a
46:59 Josh Clark? Tartar?
46:59 Speaker 03 What do you call it? Yeah, of a steak tartare, but it was with ground beef and melted cheese. And he just sort of kept making fun of it and then he spit it out. And at the end, I think she said something that kind of made me feel bad. She was like, well, maybe next time I can serve something you like or something like that.
47:12 Josh Clark? Well, she used an acetylene torch to melt the cheese, which is pretty hilarious. I had the impression that they didn't have the equipment she needed to make a burger, so she made the most out of it.
47:24 Speaker 03 Oh, interesting. Well, using a torch is very commonplace in kitchens now, but Dave made it, I guess back then it was unusual because Dave was like, thought it was the weirdest thing he'd ever seen.
47:32 Josh Clark? For sure.
47:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:34 Josh Clark? One other thing we mentioned too, that we have to touch on is she was known for her love of butter.
47:40 Josh Clark? She taught America to cook all through the decades where America started to become health conscious and fat free and all that stuff. And so she would become criticized for pushing things like real butter on people. And she would say things like, well, if you're afraid of butter, use cream instead, which is at least as bad as butter. And her whole thing was like, yes, you shouldn't just be gorging yourself on butter all the time. But if you're going to make a meal, use the real butter and enjoy every bite of it. Like, that's the point is enjoying every single bite of this stuff, not enjoying every single bite until you start eating mindlessly because you eat this 10 times a day, right?
48:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:19 Josh Clark? And she had, she quoted, she quoted Oscar Wilde, which I thought was great, but she said, everything in moderation, including moderation.
48:29 Speaker 03 That's a great quote. I got a little kitchen tip. If you're health conscious and you're thinking like, I don't want to use a lot of butter, I use olive oil or whatever. Use that olive oil, but you can also throw in like one pad of butter in with that olive oil.
48:45 Speaker 03 You can mix those two things and it's great.
48:46 Josh Clark? For sure.
48:46 Speaker 03 And it adds just a little unctuousness that olive oil won't give you.
48:49 Josh Clark? I love that.
48:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:51 Josh Clark? And don't forget the A1.
48:54 Speaker 03 My friend Clay still loves that stuff.
48:57 Josh Clark? So, uh, well, it's, it's classy.
49:00 Speaker 03 Yeah. I, I mean, it's a very specific taste. I love that tart tangy A1. I just don't use it.
49:05 Josh Clark? So Chuck, we talked about volumes one and two of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We should say in addition to the string of successful TV shows, she had a bunch of cookbooks. But these were her two classics and put together 781 recipes between the two of them. But if you go on to food sites and you look up something like Julia Child's Best Recipes, some of them kind of, um, percolate to the top where you're like, you see them on just about every list. And I think that we should go over a few of those, starting now.
49:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Uh, if you've ever seen the movie, uh, Julia and Julia, did you see that?
49:42 Josh Clark? I haven't. I heard it was great.
49:44 Speaker 03 It's really good. Um, that is the story of a woman named Julie Powell, who, uh, I think was sort of felt lost in life and, and wanted to dive into this project of cooking every recipe. Uh, I think she had a blog or something, maybe. It was a really good movie though. Amy Adams, uh, played Julie Powell, who very sadly passed away a few years ago at the young age of 49.
50:06 Josh Clark? Oh, wow.
50:07 Speaker 03 And Meryl Streep, I don't know if she won the Academy Award. I know she was nominated for playing, uh, Julia Child. So it sort of tells those two stories, um, together and it's a wonderful movie from Nora Ephron. But in that movie, um, she's cooking all the recipes and when the big, big one from the book that she was most well known for, that she really wanted to master out of the gate was the boeuf bourguignon.
50:30 Josh Clark? Which is essentially a beef stew with red wine. But again, you take some deceptively simple ingredients and put them together in the right way. It's going to produce a, a smash hit dish and that's what beef bourguignon is.
50:44 Speaker 03 What else?
50:45 Josh Clark? Kiche Lorraine, which everybody knows. You can get Kiche Lorraine at the grocery store by the slice.
50:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:52 Josh Clark? Because Julia Child introduced it to the United States with her cookbook.
50:57 Speaker 03 That's right. Very, again, very simple, clean recipe bacon, onions, egg, cream, a few cheeses, some spices, of course, eggs.
51:05 Josh Clark? Well, I just real quick about bacon. Remember I said that she didn't want to cover up the taste? She wanted to let things to stand on their own.
51:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:12 Josh Clark? One of the things she talks about mastering the art of French cooking was that with American bacon, you have to blanch it first to remove the smoky flavor. So you actually lightly boil it for a little bit until you get the smoky flavor off. And then you start to use bacon, which I think is actually a huge tip for a lot of people out there, believe me.
51:33 Speaker 03 If they don't like smoky flavors, I guess.
51:35 Josh Clark? Or, but the problem is, is the bacon smoke, smokiness is going to take over. Like that's all you're going to taste. Whereas you're not, if you can get rid of that smoky flavor, then you're in, you're in hog heaven, as she always said.
51:47 Speaker 03 I don't mind. I like that apple with, and I also cook it in the oven. I think that is the best way to cook bacon.
51:52 Josh Clark? Agreed.
51:53 Speaker 03 And they, on a baking sheet.
51:55 Josh Clark? With the little elf laying on it to keep it flat.
51:59 Speaker 03 Uh, what about a cassoulet? That's a very classic French dish.
52:02 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's pork and beans, poultry, sausage. There's a dark brown crust on the top of the whole thing. She had a great quote about that.
52:11 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, cassoulet, that best of bean feast is everyday fare for a peasant, but ambrosia for a gastronom, though its ideal consumer is a 300 pound blocking back who's been splitting firewood nonstop for the last 12 hours on a sub zero day in Manitoba.
52:28 Josh Clark? And like, if you look at pictures of the cassoulet, it's like, I want one so bad.
52:34 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, it looks really good.
52:36 Josh Clark? And what about chocolate mousse?
52:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's another one that apparently she made a mistake on air. Uh, it didn't set correctly and you know that mousse has to set, but a good chocolate mousse is out of this world.
52:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, I couldn't find the episode, but apparently a 1992 Wapo article mentioned it. Um, but supposedly it is surprisingly easy to make and the, the outcome is just amazing. I saw light, airy, silky, smooth, says the endless meal. Um, and it's just a few ingredients, including rum, chocolate, coffee. And she teaches you these techniques of how to make it, how to fold it, how to whip the egg whites and just get it just right. And yeah, every time I hear chocolate mousse, I think of a chocolate mousse from Top Secret.
53:24 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
53:25 Josh Clark? He's great.
53:26 Speaker 03 Uh, this is a good movie. R.I.P. Val Kilmer.
53:29 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
53:31 Speaker 03 Uh, and then, of course, French onion soup. I know that you and I both talked on the air about our love for French onion soup.
53:36 Josh Clark? Yeah.
53:37 Speaker 03 Uh, if it's on a menu, there's two, there's two things in my life. If it's on a menu, I will get it. One is French onion soup and the other is a French dip sandwich.
53:45 Josh Clark? You love the French.
53:47 Speaker 03 Two of my favorite things, uh, and it's not on, you know, the most menu. So when I see it, I order it. And that French onion soup, crusty on top and that delicious oniony broth and the bread. It's just one of life's treats.
53:59 Josh Clark? Have you ever made it?
54:01 Speaker 03 I've never made it myself. I should try that.
54:03 Josh Clark? It's really good. All it takes is patience. It's not hard. But it takes a while for everything to come together. It takes a while to like genuinely caramelize the onions. But man, it is so worth it. It's really good.
54:16 Speaker 03 Don't you just get one of those Lipton packets?
54:18 Josh Clark? Yeah. And out of the can. That's how I do it.
54:22 Speaker 03 Well, you take one of those Lipton packets and you put it in a turkey burger. That's what you do.
54:26 Josh Clark? Uh, yeah, that's supposed to be pretty good. I've not had that. I found a recipe for a roast. That has a packet of au jus, you know, the, the dry au jus packet, a packet of ranch, dried ranch mix.
54:40 Speaker 03 Mm hmm.
54:40 Josh Clark? Um, pepperchini? And like maybe one other thing in a roast. So you put it in a slow cooker and it, it's supposed to be a knockout dish and I can't wait to try it.
54:50 Speaker 03 Oh, man. We got, you gotta watch Julia and Julie and Julia.
54:54 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
54:55 Speaker 03 And then start cooking that stuff and let me know how it goes.
54:58 Josh Clark? Okay. Yeah. I definitely plan to make some stuff, so I'll let you know for sure.
55:01 Speaker 03 All right. Uh, sadly, we're at the end of this episode, uh, and Julia Child met the end of her life at the almost age of 92. I think she was just a couple of days short of her 92nd birthday when she passed away. At her home at the time in Montecito, California in August 2004 of liver failure.
55:20 Josh Clark? Yeah. Uh, Elaine Ducasse, who I think is the only three-star Michelin chef in the world. Said, today, the entire community of cooks is sad and feels like orphans.
55:32 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
55:33 Josh Clark? I know. Isn't that sad?
55:34 Speaker 03 That's brutal. Yeah.
55:35 Josh Clark? So she's actually buried in one of the more interesting places I've ever heard of. Had you heard of the Neptune Memorial Reef before?
55:42 Speaker 03 No, that sounds kind of cool, though.
55:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, so they took her cremated remains, mixed it together with some concrete, and formed a headstone out of it, put it underwater. I can't remember how deep it is, but this is an acre-long underwater cemetery off of Key Biscayne in Florida.
55:59 Speaker 03 That's crazy.
56:00 Josh Clark? And on the headstone, again, made from her cremated remains, there's a plaque with a knife and a fork inscribed on it and a quote from her, "Fat gives things flavor."
56:10 Speaker 03 I love it.
56:11 Josh Clark? Yep.
56:12 Speaker 03 That's pretty fun for a scuba diver to see, I bet.
56:14 Josh Clark? For sure. So RIP Julia Childin. Thanks for everything.
56:19 Speaker 03 That's right. Our berets are off to you.
56:23 Josh Clark? Let's see. We talked about Julia Childin. You took off your beret. Yeah, that means it's time for listener mail.
56:31 Speaker 03 All right, so this is from Nathan Winger in Carmel, Indiana. And Nathan went through the trouble of calculating how many Olympic pools deep and how many Big Macs we are.
56:44 Josh Clark? Okay.
56:45 Speaker 03 As a show.
56:47 Speaker 03 He loves, he says, "I love nerd math, so I did some calculations. Using my trusty search engine, I found out there are over 2,600 episodes of Stuff You Should Know." "We're just going to use 2,600 to make it simple," he says.
56:58 Josh Clark? Okay.
57:00 Speaker 03 "All told, the average length is 45 minutes," which that makes me feel good because that's what we're shooting for.
57:05 Josh Clark? Yeah.
57:07 Speaker 03 He said, "I'm going to, he said, "That seems low, though, so I'm going to adjust it up to 55." I think these days it's 45. They used to be longer, so that's probably what he's witnessing.
57:14 Josh Clark? Okay.
57:15 Speaker 03 "At average conversational speed, humans speak about 130 words a minute. You guys do a great podcast, and as pros, have honed your conversational skills to not be fast nor slow, so I'm going to stick with that median figure."
57:26 Josh Clark? Thanks.
57:27 Speaker 03 "The average number of letters per English word is five, but since you often talk about subjects that require words like spooktacular and hinch or kayfek, I'm going to up your average to six. And finally, we're going to convert your speech into inches based on the size of a standard size 12 font, which is .167 inches." I love this stuff.
57:45 Josh Clark? Yeah.
57:47 Speaker 03 So based on all that, we can get inches per word, one, inches per minute of speech, 130, inches per episode, 7150, total episode inches, 18,590,000, and total episode feet, which is 1.549167 feet. That equates, so one episode of Stuff You Should Know, equates to the depth of 238,333 Olympic swimming pools.
58:13 Josh Clark? Wow.
58:14 Speaker 03 A bit short of Josh's estimate of 10 to 15 million, and for the sake of transparency and Chuck's liking, that is 7.745 and change million Big Macs at an average of 2.5 inches per burger.
58:32 Josh Clark? Woo, man, who is this?
58:34 Speaker 03 This is Nathan Winger, or Winger.
58:37 Josh Clark? Okay.
58:37 Speaker 03 I'd say Winger.
58:39 Josh Clark? I think it's Winger, in the tradition of Kip Winger.
58:42 Speaker 03 Well, it's W E, though, so that's Nathan. He's in Carmel, Indiana. That's a lot of work to go through, Nathan.
58:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, Nathan, I could tell you're a true fan with that little trusty search engine aside. I caught that.
58:53 Speaker 03 I love it.
58:54 Josh Clark? Thank you for doing that. I always wanted to know how many Big Macs we are and Olympic pools. So thanks a lot, Nathan, and happy Thanksgiving to you. And happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there, including our Canada friends. And if you want to send us an email like Nathan did, send it off to [email protected] .
59:16 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
59:32 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.
1:00:07 Speaker 05 Welcome to The Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From Gothic masterpieces to poppy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts.
1:00:33 Speaker 06 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
Previous Short Stuff: Pies Next Selects: How Black Friday Works Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated