Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, we all know you like chocolate, but is
Speaker 1: that a personal or a professional interest?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think I know where to draw
Speaker 2: the line anymore.
Speaker 1: I mean between your personal and professional interests.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's all just a big mush.
Speaker 1: Well, you're paid to do physics, but are you paid
Speaker 1: to eat chocolate?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I still have to pay for my own chocolate. It's
Speaker 2: not yet stocked in the department office supply. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've checked.
Speaker 1: So chocolate is personal, Lin, It's not necessary to eat
Speaker 1: it to do physics.
Speaker 2: You know, this is an excellent question, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to raise that with my department chair because I think
Speaker 2: it is essential.
Speaker 1: You're going to get a chocolate chair for your office.
Speaker 2: I want my chair dipped in chocolate.
Speaker 1: There you go, that's going to be great on your pants.
Speaker 2: Who wears pants in their office?
Speaker 1: Heyersonal choice man, not a professional one unless they're in
Speaker 1: a certain profession.
Speaker 2: See, the line can be fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm for him, a cartoonist and the author of
Speaker 1: Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, and I definitely consume chocolate to do
Speaker 2: physics really.
Speaker 1: Like, before you sit down to do any math or
Speaker 1: work out any physics scenarios or experiments, you have to
Speaker 1: eat a bar of chocolate.
Speaker 2: No, it's not as tightly corelated as like drinking coffee
Speaker 2: to think hard. But you know, I consume a fair
Speaker 2: amount of chocolate every week, and I do a fair
Speaker 2: amount of physics every week, and so there's definitely some
Speaker 2: in out relationship there.
Speaker 1: I see there's a correlation, but who knows what the causation.
Speaker 2: Is who it could be the physics leads to chocolate
Speaker 2: instead of chocolate leads to physics, Like.
Speaker 1: The physics is financing your chocolate addiction.
Speaker 2: That's definitely true, Yes, that in this podcast.
Speaker 1: But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 1: the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: In which we invite you along on an exploration of
Speaker 2: everything in the universe. The black holes, the quantum particles,
Speaker 2: the mysterious chocolate habits of physics professors. Everything out there
Speaker 2: is up for understanding and therefore grist for explanation.
Speaker 1: That's right, because it is a delicious, silky smooth universe
Speaker 1: out there, full of mysteries, flavors, and nuances that are
Speaker 1: still up for debit and still up for exploration and
Speaker 1: asking questions.
Speaker 2: And some of the most amazing and mysterious experiences in
Speaker 2: our lives do come down to the microscopic science, the
Speaker 2: physics or even gasp, the chemistry of your food determines
Speaker 2: what it feels like and what it tastes like in
Speaker 2: your mouth.
Speaker 1: That's right. Science is all around us in the physics
Speaker 1: of our presence here on the planet. There's chemistry and
Speaker 1: the foods we eat, and there's psychology in things like
Speaker 1: chocolate addiction.
Speaker 2: Chocolate addiction what I could stop any time?
Speaker 1: Sure you can, Dan, Yeah, sure, that's what they all say.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not going to prove it, but I
Speaker 2: know I could.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna like it, but you could. You're saying
Speaker 1: like you're gonna go into withdrawl and get the shakes,
Speaker 1: but uh, you can still do it exactly.
Speaker 2: And regular listeners of the podcast might have picked up
Speaker 2: on the fact that we're often making jokes about chocolate,
Speaker 2: connecting chocolate with physics, connecting physics with chocolate. But I'm
Speaker 2: a believer that there's more than just a few jokes
Speaker 2: to be had here, that there is a deep connection
Speaker 2: between physics and chocolate.
Speaker 1: M isn't there a graph you can find online of
Speaker 1: like number of Nobel prizes per country versus amount of
Speaker 1: chocolate consumed.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, there is an amazing correlation between the Nobel
Speaker 2: prizes per capita and the pounds of dark chocolate consumed
Speaker 2: per capita. It's really pretty tight. Switzerland is definitely in
Speaker 2: the upper edge of both of those categories.
Speaker 1: But of course I could just be a coincidence, right,
Speaker 1: because the Swiss love their chocolate, and the Swiss are
Speaker 1: the ones that issued the mobile price.
Speaker 2: No, those those are the Swedes. Man the Swedes, oh
Speaker 2: the sweeze, Oh boy, whoops? But close, I guess kind of.
Speaker 2: They're both European.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, Central Europe.
Speaker 2: I think the Swedes are also up there. So maybe
Speaker 2: it's a Swedish Swiss cabal that's behind all of it.
Speaker 1: Well, the question then, is is it a correlation or
Speaker 1: a causation and in which direction is the causation?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Or maybe there another confounding factor that fuels them both.
Speaker 2: Who knows? One of the deep mysteries of the universe.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you're just throwing your hands up in the air. Daniel, Here,
Speaker 1: I've embracing the mystery. Should need you apply for a
Speaker 1: grant to study this or something?
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to go have some chocolate and
Speaker 2: think deeply about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, But how are you going to
Speaker 1: pay for that chocolate?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm applying for a grant? Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: Applied to the National Snack Foundation the NSF. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, there is a chemistry everywhere and physics
Speaker 1: within chemistry all around us, even in the foods we eat.
Speaker 1: So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the physics
Speaker 1: of chocolate.
Speaker 2: There's definitely a physics of chocolate in the experience of
Speaker 2: eating it, but chocolate also plays other outsized roles in physics.
Speaker 2: We use chocolate for analogies all the time. Phyes this.
Speaker 2: Definitely eat a lot of chocolate. You can actually even
Speaker 2: use chocolate to do physics experiments.
Speaker 1: Now, hold on, I feel like you just made a
Speaker 1: statement there, which is that all physicists eat a lot
Speaker 1: of chocolate. Is that just based on your experiment of
Speaker 1: one with yourself, or is there really like a culture
Speaker 1: of chocolate within the physics world.
Speaker 2: You know, I anticipated you challenging me on this, and
Speaker 2: so I did a bit of research. I was able
Speaker 2: to dig up how much Americans eat in terms of
Speaker 2: chocolate per week. On average, Americans eat three chocolate bars
Speaker 2: per week, spending one hundred and twenty billion dollars a
Speaker 2: year year on this stuff. But I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: find any data on how much chocolate physicists consume. I mean,
Speaker 2: I have my own observations. I know the physicists or
Speaker 2: lovers of coffee and coffee chocolate often connected, and people
Speaker 2: are often having little squares of chocolate when they sit
Speaker 2: there coffee. But yes, I will admit at this point
Speaker 2: it's basically anecdotal.
Speaker 1: I see. So when you said I did some research,
Speaker 1: you mean you actually didn't do any research.
Speaker 2: I mean I ate some chocolate and I thought about it.
Speaker 2: That's research.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I mean. Did some research with an
Speaker 1: end of one, like one data point.
Speaker 2: I watched people in my department eating chocolate. That's end
Speaker 2: of like five or ten.
Speaker 1: Well, you would have to do a controlled experiment like
Speaker 1: good at the math department, go to the chemistry department,
Speaker 1: go to the sociology department, and then measure the chocolate
Speaker 1: consumption per professor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just outlined my proposal to the National Snack Foundation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Do I get to be a
Speaker 1: co author and thus a recipient of the money?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, absolutely. If I get money from the National
Speaker 2: Snack Foundation, we'll share it for.
Speaker 1: This study, all right, But I don't have to use
Speaker 1: it buy chocolate to egg or what if I use
Speaker 1: it to buy white chocolate, thus canceling out?
Speaker 2: Oh god. You know, they have pretty strict controls on
Speaker 2: how you spend government money. So as long as you
Speaker 2: can stand before Congress and defend that as a valid
Speaker 2: way to spend public funds, then hey, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, well I hear the National Snack
Speaker 1: Foundation gets into trouble all the time with that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about. You know, everything that we
Speaker 1: eat basically has chemistry and does physics in it. Right,
Speaker 1: there's science and then everything we do and everything we
Speaker 1: are and everything we put down our stomachs and everything
Speaker 1: that comes out the other head.
Speaker 2: That's right, the chocolate that goes in in the dark,
Speaker 2: matter that comes out.
Speaker 1: Well, you mentioned that there's some experiments you can do
Speaker 1: with chocolate. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: This is sort of famous at home measurement of the
Speaker 2: speed of light that you can do using a bar
Speaker 2: of chocolate. You take a bar of chocolate and you
Speaker 2: put it in the microwave, and you'll notice that certain
Speaker 2: spots on it faster than others. Those are because of
Speaker 2: the microwaves, which are actually just invisible light waves are
Speaker 2: heating some parts of the chocolate more than others because
Speaker 2: of the wave like nature of light. So you can
Speaker 2: use that to measure the wavelength of the light and
Speaker 2: then knowing the frequency already, you can derive the speed
Speaker 2: of light. So you can kind of measure the speed
Speaker 2: of light using chocolate and a microwave.
Speaker 1: Wait, what is this like a real experiment you can do.
Speaker 2: This is a real experiment you can do. You can
Speaker 2: google it and find instructions online. You put the microwave
Speaker 2: in the chocolate and you'll notice some melty spots here
Speaker 2: and there. Measure the distance between them, and you get
Speaker 2: basically the wavelength of the microwaves. You can convert that
Speaker 2: into the speed of light.
Speaker 1: But do you have to disable the rotating table?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, you can't let it rotate.
Speaker 1: And thankfully you don't need a chocolate for these you
Speaker 1: can use butter or maybe wax.
Speaker 2: Right, No, you need to do chocolate. Oh, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: You don't need chocolate. It's just kind of fun.
Speaker 1: You just can do it chocolate.
Speaker 2: Well, at the end of the chocolate version experiment, you
Speaker 2: have a nice, warm, melti bar of chocolate. The end
Speaker 2: of the wax version, you don't have any snacks.
Speaker 1: Mm, but you only have a few warm pools of chocolate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: You have a pattern of melted chocolate. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: what are we doing in this episode? We're talking about
Speaker 1: the physics of chocolate, the signs behind chocolate.
Speaker 2: We're going to do both. We are going to talk
Speaker 2: to an ex physicist who has done a deep dive
Speaker 2: on the process of chocolate, reading research papers and going
Speaker 2: from dirt to bar, growing his own chocolate pods and
Speaker 2: making his own chocolate bar in his lab, and also
Speaker 2: talk to experts in commercial production of chocolate. What are
Speaker 2: the tricky bits of the process, what's hard about making
Speaker 2: an eminem taste the same all the world around? And
Speaker 2: why does Hershey's have that particular kind of flavor?
Speaker 3: Mmm?
Speaker 1: Interesting? All right, Well, let's take a big dip into
Speaker 1: this fondue of Chocolate Physics, starting with Daniel's interview with
Speaker 1: ex physicist Seamus Likely.
Speaker 2: Seamus grew up in New Mexico as I did, has
Speaker 2: a PhD in particle physics like I do, worked at
Speaker 2: Formulab just like I did, and there are stories diverge.
Speaker 2: He went off into an industry where he created the Xbox,
Speaker 2: and more recently he's been well known online for scraping
Speaker 2: the insides of ancient Egyptian vessels to cultivate yeast and
Speaker 2: bake ancient bread. Okay, so then it's my great pleasure
Speaker 2: to welcome the podcast the Infamous, the one and only
Speaker 2: Seamus Blackly. Seamus, thanks very much for joining us. Thanks
Speaker 2: for having me man. You know, I wanted to give
Speaker 2: an introduction to the listeners, had an idea of who
Speaker 2: we were talking to here, but it was just such
Speaker 2: an overwhelming process to try to sketch your background. It's
Speaker 2: really incredible. So can you give us like a brief
Speaker 2: summary of how you got to here today to a
Speaker 2: place where we're talking about nerding out about chocolate details.
Speaker 5: You know, people always say that now when they're talking
Speaker 5: to me or trying to introduce me at things and
Speaker 5: It's confusing to me because from my standpoint, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm bored all the time, and so none of this
Speaker 5: seems very interesting to.
Speaker 4: Me at all.
Speaker 5: But perhaps that's why I have had the good luck
Speaker 5: to do all sorts of different things, because I guess
Speaker 5: I get bored very easily, and I'm very interested in
Speaker 5: how everything works. But the long and short of it,
Speaker 5: and I think specifically from the standpoint of you know,
Speaker 5: the most important thing we share in common, which is physics,
Speaker 5: is that I grew up in New Mexico. I thought
Speaker 5: I was going to be a musician, and at some
Speaker 5: point I realized that all of the jazz piano guys,
Speaker 5: which is what I was, who were really respected, who
Speaker 5: played the best, were like still living with their mothers
Speaker 5: when they were in their forties.
Speaker 4: And that was cool.
Speaker 5: I mean, there were really amazing people, and I don't
Speaker 5: mean to cast dispersions on them, but I realized that
Speaker 5: I couldn't do that, and so I had to figure
Speaker 5: out something else to do. And it turned out at
Speaker 5: that point I was an undergraduate and I had burned
Speaker 5: through two years, and I had to find something else
Speaker 5: that I could study that might make me some money.
Speaker 5: And I guess the idea that physics would be a
Speaker 5: career that would make you money. I mean, yeah, sure,
Speaker 5: but probably more than jazz piano at the time. And well,
Speaker 5: the only majors available you could do in two years
Speaker 5: without some kind of maze of prerequisites that would be
Speaker 5: impossible were basically physics and math at the time, and
Speaker 5: the physics department at Tufts I went to school was
Speaker 5: filled with all of these really cool guys doing experimental
Speaker 5: hyenergy physics and phenomenologists and a couple of theorists. And
Speaker 5: they were all like Vietnam draft who went into physics
Speaker 5: to go to graduate school and.
Speaker 4: Not go to Vietnam.
Speaker 5: And they were, you know, like touching the face of
Speaker 5: God to be frank, I mean, they were trying to
Speaker 5: understand the fundamental nature of the universe. And in my mind,
Speaker 5: the work felt the same as jazz, and I just
Speaker 5: kind of stepped through that door and was suddenly, you know,
Speaker 5: at formula.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to me that you grew up in northern
Speaker 2: New Mexico near two national labs, but didn't really discover
Speaker 2: your passion for physics until you left and went to Boston.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and I had interestingly you know, in high
Speaker 5: school has really focused on music and you know, musical
Speaker 5: theater and all this stuff. So yeah, and I think
Speaker 5: that the nature of New Mexico as being such an
Speaker 5: incredibly bizarre, fascinating, beautiful, creative and technical place was hot
Speaker 5: and all of this for me in any case, So
Speaker 5: I go to Framer Lab and you know, I'm setting
Speaker 5: up postdocs, and I go to graduate school and I
Speaker 5: find something in the Magnet Accelerator Physics group for the
Speaker 5: super Condutting SuperCollider that looks great. And then Congress cancels
Speaker 5: the SuperCollider, and there's a big politics thing around the
Speaker 5: top Quark, and all these things sort of combined together
Speaker 5: to cause me to be very unhappy, and so I
Speaker 5: bailed out and went and took a job designing airplanes
Speaker 5: that didn't quite materialize. So I had a temporary job
Speaker 5: doing a thing nobody had ever heard of before, which
Speaker 5: was writing physics for video games, which was not even
Speaker 5: a thing. And suddenly I was in the video game business,
Speaker 5: and you know, it was so exciting and wonderful to
Speaker 5: be around, work with the people and contributing to the
Speaker 5: beginnings of what is now you know, video games like
Speaker 5: three dimensional video games and three D rendering. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: you know, like my variable names and the stuff are
Speaker 5: still used in all those engines because I was just
Speaker 5: around at the right time, like a guy looking for
Speaker 5: the men's room, right who walks in the wrong room,
Speaker 5: and then that's where I was.
Speaker 2: And well certainly right place, right time, with the right
Speaker 2: skills as well.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was still fairly awkward to tell people
Speaker 5: you worked in video games, because it hadn't occurred to
Speaker 5: most people yet that video games were made by people.
Speaker 5: I mean, it sounds odd, but it's not like it
Speaker 5: is now. So so I did that for a long
Speaker 5: time and that led to me trying to make a
Speaker 5: big magnum opus game at a new company called DreamWorks,
Speaker 5: where I was like, you know, the eightieth employee or something,
Speaker 5: and you know, just biting off more and I could
Speaker 5: chew and failing at that, you know, and I worked
Speaker 5: for Steven Spielberg and I knew all these guys, and again,
Speaker 5: you know, the typical for me, I was just sort
Speaker 5: of walking through this place thinking, wow, okay, of course
Speaker 5: everybody hangs out with Steven Spielberg, and it wasn't really
Speaker 5: you know, the work you're doing this is such a
Speaker 5: physicist thing, like the work you're doing is so hard
Speaker 5: that everything else kind of seems peripheral and it's not
Speaker 5: like you're sleepwalking. But I know it's really aggravating for
Speaker 5: people around you because they don't see the thing in
Speaker 5: your mind that you're working on. They don't see the
Speaker 5: kind of you know, infinite landscape of thought that you
Speaker 5: have going on.
Speaker 4: All the time.
Speaker 5: So you just seem like a space kit it and
Speaker 5: you're not paying attention. But it's quite the opposite, right,
Speaker 5: So that's what Games was like then, because we were
Speaker 5: figuring out, hey, what is a renderer? Like what like,
Speaker 5: how do you how would you what when you go
Speaker 5: through a door? How do you deal with that in memory?
Speaker 5: Because we have four megabytes and you know this kind
Speaker 5: of stuff. And anyway, my big game there failed because
Speaker 5: I was, you know, working with a bunch of movie
Speaker 5: people who didn't get it, and I was, you know,
Speaker 5: twenty seven or twenty eight or something, and I feel
Speaker 5: like I probably wasn't even toilet trained, you know, I
Speaker 5: was really so young. And that huge failure led to
Speaker 5: me going to try to hide out at Microsoft because
Speaker 5: I had met Bill Gates again. Sleepwalking through all this stuff.
Speaker 5: And he had said, based on some of the physics
Speaker 5: demos that he saw that we were doing, and you know,
Speaker 5: locomotion physics that we'd done with dinosaurs and humans and
Speaker 5: all this, that I should come work at Microsoft someday.
Speaker 5: And so I sort of sheepishly mailed him, and then
Speaker 5: I ended up working at Microsoft. And then couldn't help
Speaker 5: myself when I realized that Microsoft could you know, could
Speaker 5: make a game console that could beat Sony and et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. So I just keep on, you know, looking
Speaker 5: at seeing interesting stuff to work on, and I, for
Speaker 5: some reason, don't have the common sense that most people
Speaker 5: have about well that's really stupid. You're gonna lose your house.
Speaker 5: I just go ahead and do it anyway. So there
Speaker 5: you go. And so now we end up with you know,
Speaker 5: me doing you know, another secret project that I can't
Speaker 5: tell you about right now, and and and a lot
Speaker 5: of hobby.
Speaker 4: Projects that I talk about.
Speaker 5: A lot, like the ancient Egyptian bakery, which I believe
Speaker 5: it or not, you know, we're now I think going to.
Speaker 4: Build in Cairo, and this chocolate stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I talk a lot in the podcast
Speaker 2: about teaching people to think like a physicist, you know,
Speaker 2: which is not to use your common sense, but to
Speaker 2: follow your curiosity and your intuition and try to make
Speaker 2: sense of the world and to you know, think differently.
Speaker 2: And I think that's something we definitely should cultivate. And
Speaker 2: so maybe you're training as a physicist is what helped
Speaker 2: you follow your curiosity and end up in all these
Speaker 2: exciting adventures.
Speaker 5: This is I think probably universally true about all him
Speaker 5: and endeavor has come from someone following that curiosity and
Speaker 5: and doing as Penduleete says, you know, an amount of
Speaker 5: work on something that most people would consider insane, right,
Speaker 5: you know, he says, that's what magic is, right, Magic
Speaker 5: is somebody working on something, you know, in a way
Speaker 5: that most people will consider to be insane. But that's
Speaker 5: truly what like everything, all human progress, like every story
Speaker 5: you read about anything important, beautiful, world changing, you know,
Speaker 5: always has an element of an individual or group of
Speaker 5: individuals who are working on it despite all indications that
Speaker 5: it's insane, and following that. And I think that within
Speaker 5: physics we need more of that because sometimes you get
Speaker 5: to see a secret, and you're not going to see
Speaker 5: that secret unless you open yourself to being compelled to
Speaker 5: just follow in that curiosity despite every practical concern And
Speaker 5: it's weird because you are a physical being. You have
Speaker 5: to have practical concerns. You have to eat, you have
Speaker 5: to have relationships. You know, you don't want to have
Speaker 5: like Fiman's second wife's divorce papers saying all he thinks
Speaker 5: about is calculus. But also, I mean all I think
Speaker 5: about is calculus. I mean that's like, it's just how
Speaker 5: it is because sometimes you know, it turns up a
Speaker 5: gold nugget, man, So that's so important. It's really, really,
Speaker 5: really important. And I mean to get back around a
Speaker 5: chocolate That's where the chocolate comes from, is the musing
Speaker 5: of how strange is it that dirt can produce this
Speaker 5: chocolate bar? And you know, could we do that? We
Speaker 5: could try. Let's try. Let's see what it's like, because
Speaker 5: it'll just be a thing we do in the background.
Speaker 5: I will take years for the tree to let's just
Speaker 5: see if we cannot kill the tree.
Speaker 2: But why chocolate specifically, I mean, were you're trying to
Speaker 2: develop a useful skill so you can create something valuable
Speaker 2: in the end times or do you think that's a
Speaker 2: deep physics chocolate connection it's chocolate. What else do you need?
Speaker 2: I mean, all right, so let's get to chocolate. Then
Speaker 2: can you walk us through the process, because I know
Speaker 2: you did a deep dive into the research of how
Speaker 2: to go from dirt to bar. Walk us through every
Speaker 2: stage of the process of how you grow this thing,
Speaker 2: how you ferment it, how you roasted. What are all
Speaker 2: the secrets there that humanity has slowly discovered over thousands
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 5: It's impressive, kind of in the same vein as coffee.
Speaker 5: And I was thinking about coffee because I did grow
Speaker 5: coffee also years ago, and it's just so interesting that
Speaker 5: we would, you know, cultivate these plants because they had
Speaker 5: a stimulant in them, and everybody knew that a stimulant.
Speaker 5: So it's like tea. You cultivate these plants and they
Speaker 5: make these little red berries. I don't know if you've
Speaker 5: ever seen coffee berries on a tree. And then you
Speaker 5: harvest them when they're red, and then you throw away
Speaker 5: the fruit and you keep the seed okay, fair enough,
Speaker 5: and then you dry the seeds, and then you roast
Speaker 5: the seeds, and then you grind the seeds, and then
Speaker 5: you boil the seeds, and then you also throw the
Speaker 5: seeds away and you drink the water. That's insane. Nobody
Speaker 5: would think of that, And so there's some kind of
Speaker 5: evolutionary process in there that's very lucky. And part of
Speaker 5: what you wonder is if that is the optimal way
Speaker 5: to enjoy the coffee bean or not, or if it's
Speaker 5: merely habitual. And you know, there are many coffee traditions,
Speaker 5: but they all basically follow that same extraction principle. And
Speaker 5: it is a biological extraction, right, I mean, it's a
Speaker 5: biology lab kind of a process, but the biology lab
Speaker 5: process probably came from people understanding that type of extraction
Speaker 5: and applying it elsewhere. So the question is how it
Speaker 5: fits together, and that's a little bit of the motivation
Speaker 5: or chocolate. So, as I said, in my lab, we
Speaker 5: have space and temperature control and some humidity from a
Speaker 5: water jetta, a machine that cuts difficult stuff using high
Speaker 5: pressure water. It has a big water tank and so
Speaker 5: there's always a kind of a humid environment around it.
Speaker 5: So we had accidentally grown some plants around it just
Speaker 5: for some cheer, or actually we had a contest to
Speaker 5: see how big a tomato plant we could grow. And
Speaker 5: in this environment, this little tomato ceiling in six or
Speaker 5: seven months, you know, grew like twenty five feet to
Speaker 5: the ceiling and was winding out onto the ceiling. So
Speaker 5: we thought, all right, well, this is a great growing environment.
Speaker 5: What's the most interesting thing we could grow? And you know,
Speaker 5: chocolate is probably the weirdest and most interesting thing you
Speaker 5: could grow, because I don't think intuitively, at least for me,
Speaker 5: I didn't think about chocolate as being a plant, you know,
Speaker 5: what is it as a petroleum product?
Speaker 4: Like what does it come from?
Speaker 5: And so we you know, got some seeds and planted
Speaker 5: them and they sprouted, and then we had a few
Speaker 5: years of you know, just happily, you know, figuring out
Speaker 5: how to not kill them, and you know it had
Speaker 5: to do with soil acidity and such, and there are
Speaker 5: papers you can read. So we kind of, you know,
Speaker 5: did the classic nerd thing, which is to look to
Speaker 5: the literature. And it's kind of scant for for cacaw
Speaker 5: and chocolate actually, And part of that is because the
Speaker 5: industry could be kind of kind of secretive, like a
Speaker 5: lot of industries. And part of it is because in
Speaker 5: the places where cocaw grows, it's kind of weed like,
Speaker 5: and so the idea of you know, nutrition of cacao
Speaker 5: plants is you know, an absurd kind of a study,
Speaker 5: given the fact that the chocolate industry is real problem
Speaker 5: is like child slavery. So and the reason there's child
Speaker 5: slavery is the plants grow around anywhere, and so the
Speaker 5: economics are around harvesting and moving the product around, not
Speaker 5: around optimizing for growth. Anyway, we're nerd, so we're optimizing
Speaker 5: for growth. And we got these beautiful trees and they
Speaker 5: started to flower, and we're thinking, all right, well, we
Speaker 5: have no idea if these things are self fertile or not,
Speaker 5: you know, and these are indoors, so we're not going
Speaker 5: to introduce a bunch of you know, pollinators in here,
Speaker 5: so let's hope. So we waited a really long time
Speaker 5: and yeah, they're not self fertile. And we you know,
Speaker 5: we have a day job too and other projects.
Speaker 2: So meaning that you're wondering if like one flower can
Speaker 2: fertilize another flower, or if you need a whole separate
Speaker 2: plant to have some basically cacao secs.
Speaker 5: We have microbiologists and other people with a background of
Speaker 5: biology in our staff, so there was a time, you know,
Speaker 5: there was some debate about this at lunchtime, and then
Speaker 5: finally we looked up the literature and realized that not
Speaker 5: only are they not self fertile, but they need to
Speaker 5: be fertilized by trees that are preferably, you know, somewhat
Speaker 5: genetically distant from themselves. And the preferred pollinator is a
Speaker 5: certain kind of biting gnat that lives only in these
Speaker 5: environments where the trees come from. And so that was
Speaker 5: not good news. So we then started a program of
Speaker 5: learning how to pollinate these things by hand.
Speaker 2: You couldn't just go on like cacou tinder and look
Speaker 2: up a matching tree, you know, put them on a
Speaker 2: date and to hope it works out.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, that's not not there yet. But it's a good
Speaker 5: business idea for your game, So go for that.
Speaker 2: That's my next side project.
Speaker 5: But you know, interestingly, if you if you if you
Speaker 5: actually look up online, there's a there's not a lot
Speaker 5: of information that's particularly helpful if you actually have trees
Speaker 5: and you don't know what to do with them, because
Speaker 5: everybody who has trees already knows what to do with them,
Speaker 5: which is just leave them and their fruit appears. You know,
Speaker 5: we feel like we're the only people in the world
Speaker 5: who like have these trees without the pollinator around. Okay,
Speaker 5: so we, you know, get out microscopes and the electron
Speaker 5: microscope and we start looking at the in and the
Speaker 5: different parts of the structures in the in the flowers.
Speaker 5: We have three trees now because we know we need
Speaker 5: genetic diversity. The flowers are slightly different. We identify the parts.
Speaker 5: We tried different strategies and schedules for pollination, and we
Speaker 5: start getting flowers that that will create fruit. We start
Speaker 5: we get a little fruit and then the fruit falls off,
Speaker 5: and we learn a little bit more about when to pollinate.
Speaker 5: We learn a little bit more about about care and feeding,
Speaker 5: and we get fruit that sticks. And now we have
Speaker 5: a bunch of pods growing on trees, and we realize
Speaker 5: we have another problem, which is that we have no
Speaker 5: idea what to do next. You know, how do you
Speaker 5: know when these things are ripe?
Speaker 4: What do you do?
Speaker 5: And so again, you know, you look to the internet
Speaker 5: and there's really you know, there's a lot of information
Speaker 5: that plenty of people take a tour of a of
Speaker 5: a cacao arm and see the fermentation and the drawing
Speaker 5: and all these things, and there are lots of videos
Speaker 5: like you know, like travel promo videos or like you know,
Speaker 5: Starbucks promotional type videos of like you know, the the
Speaker 5: cute indigenous people like you know, mixing the beans with
Speaker 5: their feet in all this, but there's nothing like, here's
Speaker 5: a fermentation schedule. So again we looked at the literature
Speaker 5: and discover again, you know, not as much as you
Speaker 5: would want, but there are some good studies of cacao fermentation,
Speaker 5: which seems like the most relevant next thing.
Speaker 4: We need to learn.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, fermentation is something that I know a great deal
Speaker 5: about from all of the you know, ancient bread projects
Speaker 5: and other types of wild beast collection and stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, fermentation is basically helpful rotting, right, It's like
Speaker 2: microbial processing of your gunk into other kinds of gunk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's it's nanomachinery at your command. And so
Speaker 5: it's primarily a yeast fermentation that then becomes a bacterial fermentation.
Speaker 5: You can tell because of the temperature profile and timing
Speaker 5: and the the off gassing that happens during cow fermentation.
Speaker 5: And it's really an art form more than a science.
Speaker 5: It's been studied some, but all the papers are from
Speaker 5: you know, agriculture research stations, and so they're not really
Speaker 5: you know, it's not the kind of paper that you
Speaker 5: would look at and think this is really good, well
Speaker 5: controlled data. But it's enough of a hint that we
Speaker 5: felt we could figure it out, and so we did
Speaker 5: a couple of things.
Speaker 2: But I think it's worth pausing there and noting like
Speaker 2: a lot of this knowledge obviously wasn't developed using what
Speaker 2: we would consider to be modern scientific empirical studies. Right,
Speaker 2: It's like thousands of years of people accidentally doing stuff
Speaker 2: and discovering, oh look what happens. Right, this is like
Speaker 2: a random walk through through possibility space.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And look, I mean I think this is the
Speaker 5: perfect example of the mind of a physicist in the
Speaker 5: sense that you know, this is really a deeply kind
Speaker 5: of artfull thing with a lot of feel in it,
Speaker 5: and if you're going to bring a scientific process to it,
Speaker 5: you need to bring that scientific process to it in
Speaker 5: an open way, in a way where you're paying attention
Speaker 5: to what's going on. And I think that this is
Speaker 5: really the difference between like physics and engineering is like,
Speaker 5: you know, I have a book project that's given me
Speaker 5: the opportunity or the excuse to read you know, like
Speaker 5: all of Heisenberg's papers and and Rutherford and you know
Speaker 5: in his lab and you know, finding the neutron and
Speaker 5: the thought process that those guys had. It's it's the
Speaker 5: perfect analogy here. It's that you know, you cannot overpower this,
Speaker 5: you cannot brute force this. They didn't have the equipment
Speaker 5: to do that. So they had to just pay attention.
Speaker 5: They had to surf along with nature. They had to
Speaker 5: see what she would give up. Very careful, very aughtful.
Speaker 5: And the rigor of your process isn't about like a
Speaker 5: scorched earth colonization of ideas into engineering principles to be
Speaker 5: put into a book. The rigor of your approach is
Speaker 5: your own discipline in listening well and really seeing what's
Speaker 5: happening right, and then that can give you a useful
Speaker 5: tool and model that you can use then to understand
Speaker 5: and then to predict perhaps. So that's what we tried
Speaker 5: to do. You know, all of these people who talk
Speaker 5: about being to bar and all of these chocolate people
Speaker 5: who you know have their artisanal chocolate and curated blah
Speaker 5: blah blah, assaulted carmel thing, you know, are buying cacabeans
Speaker 5: from somewhere most of the time already dried and fermented,
Speaker 5: and then talking about how they've made chocolate from scratch,
Speaker 5: and that's not chocolate from scratch. We were making chocolate
Speaker 5: from scratch and it was pretty hard. So we did it,
Speaker 5: and it was a lot of work, and it was
Speaker 5: really satisfying. And the best part is that, unlike when
Speaker 5: you spend weeks, you know, solving some horrible partial differential
Speaker 5: equation that gives you a part of a result that
Speaker 5: you thought you needed but turns out not to be
Speaker 5: what you wanted, but you still feel a sense of
Speaker 5: soul and pride that you did it, and you can
Speaker 5: only share it with yourself and two colleagues who can understand.
Speaker 5: When you make chocolate, everybody's happy.
Speaker 2: Okay, we have so much more chocolate and physics to
Speaker 2: talk about it, but first we have to take a
Speaker 2: quick break. Okay, we're back, and I'm talking to Seamus Blackley,
Speaker 2: ex particle physicist, X inventor of the Xbox, current grower
Speaker 2: of bread from ancient yeast, and CEO of a secretive
Speaker 2: tech startup. And I'm talking to him because he has
Speaker 2: made chocolate from dirt to bar. I want to hear
Speaker 2: all the details, like you grow it, you harvest it,
Speaker 2: you ferment it, you dry it, you roast it. Now
Speaker 2: you have the nibs. How do you go from the
Speaker 2: nibs to the actual bar.
Speaker 5: You buy a sea, or you find a seed, you
Speaker 5: plant it, it grows a tree. You raise the tree, well,
Speaker 5: you pollinate it. Pods appear. Interestingly, the pods on cacao
Speaker 5: trees grow off of the trunk, not off the branches,
Speaker 5: so it looks a little bit alien. And the pods
Speaker 5: themselves actually look a little bit invasion of the body snatchers,
Speaker 5: which is cool. When they're mature, they turn these beautiful
Speaker 5: fall leaf colors, like it's the very new England of them,
Speaker 5: Like these deep yellows and oranges and reds, very beautiful.
Speaker 5: And you cut them off and you split them open,
Speaker 5: and inside are these seeds that are covered in a
Speaker 5: white pulp. And it's delicious. It smells like leachy fruit.
Speaker 5: It's very fresh, very fragrant, and it tastes really good.
Speaker 5: But the beans themselves are them very bitter, and it
Speaker 5: tastes nothing like chocolate. There isn't a hint of chocolate
Speaker 5: in any of the flavor profiles of any of this, okay.
Speaker 5: The pods have a very planty smell, okay, very very fragrant,
Speaker 5: like fresh cut grass, and the pulp has a kind
Speaker 5: of a stringent but very pleasant, slightly sweet, light chy flavor.
Speaker 5: And the beans are sort of these like purple bitter
Speaker 5: soft seeds. And so when you hold this in your hand,
Speaker 5: you think, how the hell does this become chocolate? Right,
Speaker 5: So the next step is to ferment them. And to
Speaker 5: do this, the beans are put into piles for thermal
Speaker 5: purposes so that the heat of fermentation can build up,
Speaker 5: which accelerates fermentation. And they have to be covered with
Speaker 5: something that prevents moisture from escaping, because they require a
Speaker 5: moist environment to ferment. And so we crew I have
Speaker 5: plenty of fermentors that do excellent temperature control, so we
Speaker 5: set up some fermentors with different piles. And in the
Speaker 5: literature there are people in the industry who errate their piles,
Speaker 5: who mix their piles, who don't touch them. There are
Speaker 5: different varieties of cacao. We now know which variety we have,
Speaker 5: but we didn't at the time. So the fermentation profiles
Speaker 5: are apparently different between like let's say a creole, which
Speaker 5: is one variety in.
Speaker 4: A front taro, which is a different variety.
Speaker 5: But fundamentally what happens is a yeast regular you know, sacrimics.
Speaker 5: Yeast fermentation takes place and that creates a certain temperature profile.
Speaker 5: So let's say the fermentor is running at eighty five
Speaker 5: degrees and height. It will then go up to ninety
Speaker 5: five or ninety eight degrees fahrenheit because of the heat
Speaker 5: induced by the mechanical action of fermentation itself. The biological
Speaker 5: action that will then fall off and you can smell
Speaker 5: as you you know, as one does is going to
Speaker 5: measure the temperature of your cockau fermentation piles. You can
Speaker 5: smell a strong yeast nut, so you get a ready
Speaker 5: note out of it, and the temperature will drop and
Speaker 5: then it will rise again as the bacteria that are
Speaker 5: symbiotic with those yeasts begin their fermentation process, and they
Speaker 5: are an acid producing bacteria actually similar to the bacteria
Speaker 5: that make acetic acid, and probably identical in many cases,
Speaker 5: and you can smell that ascetic smell as you do
Speaker 5: your temperature checks and potentially your rotations. There's a second
Speaker 5: spike in temperature and then that goes down and this
Speaker 5: takes anywhere from five to seven days, and you want
Speaker 5: to be very careful because once that bacterial action ceases,
Speaker 5: you're in danger of a mold step, which comes afterward
Speaker 5: as the mold is no longer deterred in its growth
Speaker 5: because of the action of the other organisms.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: So, like in a lot of fermented foods, the preservation
Speaker 5: comes from biological competition, not from sterility. So you know
Speaker 5: in most fermented foods, or like in your starter for
Speaker 5: your sourdough, the reason that it doesn't go bad right
Speaker 5: away is because there's so much you know, bacterial action
Speaker 5: from the yeast in bacteria in your starter that no
Speaker 5: other organisms can compete, and that keeps it sterile. Okay,
Speaker 5: So the same thing is happening in the cacao. You
Speaker 5: don't want to let it go too long. But during
Speaker 5: the end of that bacterial fermentation phase, and this is
Speaker 5: the craziest thing in the universe, it starts to smell
Speaker 5: like brownies.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's when the chocolate comes back.
Speaker 5: So it goes from and I was not prepared for this,
Speaker 5: and you can't read about this apparently, you know. I
Speaker 5: have one of my son's best friends is from Trinidad,
Speaker 5: and while I was doing this. He visited with my
Speaker 5: son from from college and I was doing this fermentation
Speaker 5: and he looked over and he's like, oh, you for
Speaker 5: men and chocolate. Cool, because of course he'd seen this
Speaker 5: his whole life, right, But for me, I was unprepared
Speaker 5: for this transformation to take place. And it really smells
Speaker 5: just like brownies. So it's gone from this very sort
Speaker 5: of like grassy pod, light y, bitter thing to smelling
Speaker 5: like bread to smelling like vinegar, and one day you
Speaker 5: open the fermenter and it smells like brownies.
Speaker 4: It's insane.
Speaker 2: Makes me wonder who the first human was to experience that,
Speaker 2: you know, thousands of years ago.
Speaker 5: One experiment that I will do shortly is to just
Speaker 5: leave some cocow pods around and to see if I
Speaker 5: let them ferment internally. If I crack them open, at
Speaker 5: some point they smell like chocolate. You can imagine that
Speaker 5: somebody happens upon one that's sat for the right amount
Speaker 5: of time and it's delicious smelling, right, it might occur
Speaker 5: to that person to try to recreate that somehow, right,
Speaker 5: So then you dry them. They have at this point
Speaker 5: become kind of like a very dry mac and cheese consistency,
Speaker 5: So you spread the beans out on a dehydrator or
Speaker 5: out in the sun. We use a dehydrator because we
Speaker 5: can control it, and you get them to about three
Speaker 5: percent moister content, and I have all the equipment to measure,
Speaker 5: but you know, it just basically means pretty dry, and
Speaker 5: it takes a while. It takes about two days, and
Speaker 5: if you're running the drying machines in your house, it'll
Speaker 5: drive you insane because your whole house will smell like brownies,
Speaker 5: but at first, sort of acid brownies, because the vinegar
Speaker 5: smell is still there, and as you dry them, it
Speaker 5: goes down, but there's still notes of vinegar from the
Speaker 5: bacterial fermentation process in the beans, and you end up
Speaker 5: with these brown cacao beans and they're a little shrunken
Speaker 5: and a little sad looking. And then you're ready to roast.
Speaker 5: And the roasting is again, it's pretty similar to coffee roasting,
Speaker 5: but it's much easier and shorter. And I'm really glad
Speaker 5: that I had done coffee roasting in the past because
Speaker 5: it prepared me for this. But you roast them with
Speaker 5: a decreasing thermal profile from about two hundred and fifty
Speaker 5: down to two hundred sea and you want the bean
Speaker 5: temperature to get to around two hundred C at the end,
Speaker 5: and you'll hear them crack. If you have three percent moisture,
Speaker 5: that moisture the inside the bean will boil and and
Speaker 5: pop the shell. Actually it's it's kind of like ads, right.
Speaker 5: It goes from it changes the curvature of the shell,
Speaker 5: and then you get a pop and then you know
Speaker 5: that you're done. And people will do two pops or
Speaker 5: one pop. And there's a lot of YouTube video on
Speaker 5: this because people buy a lot of fermented dried beans
Speaker 5: from South America and process the chocolate at them. That's
Speaker 5: one of the things that a fancy San Francisco chocolate
Speaker 5: chop will do. Okay, so we sort of after I
Speaker 5: did the fermentation and the drawing, I re entered the
Speaker 5: realm where there's a lot of video help on how
Speaker 5: to do this right. But I didn't really look at
Speaker 5: it because I was like, I'm better than all of them.
Speaker 5: I did all this right, So do the roasting. And
Speaker 5: then you have these beans that are sort of like
Speaker 5: now puffy, so they're kind of you know, rugby ball shaped,
Speaker 5: and then you have to shell them and they are
Speaker 5: machines that do this. When you buy commercial nibs, the
Speaker 5: nib is actually the bean itself once it's been shelled,
Speaker 5: after being roasted and dried, dried and roasted, they're all
Speaker 5: little bits and it's because of the machine in order
Speaker 5: to remove the shell mechanically has to sort of pulverize everything.
Speaker 5: But if you do it by hand sitting in front
Speaker 5: of the television, you get the complete beans out. And
Speaker 5: they're a pictures of this on my Twitter. And I
Speaker 5: have to say, during the roasting process, what happens is
Speaker 5: the vinegar smells and all the other strange odors go
Speaker 5: away and you're left with just a pure chocolate smell.
Speaker 5: And it's very very remarkable. It smells like the most
Speaker 5: incredible chocolate cake brownie that you've ever baked in your
Speaker 5: oven at the end of the roasting process.
Speaker 2: I've actually roasted cacao beans myself on the stovetop and
Speaker 2: been amazed. It's like a a river of chocolate smell.
Speaker 2: It's like snorting pure chocolate. It's incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so then from there you go on and do
Speaker 5: the normal thing to make chocolate. And it's important to
Speaker 5: have a wet grinder it's important to let it go
Speaker 5: for you know, three or four days, because the cocow
Speaker 5: beans are actually just basically wood and it's extremely fibrous,
Speaker 5: but it contains you know, a lot of fat, the
Speaker 5: cocow butter inside that fibers structure. And there's a sort
Speaker 5: of a magical thing that happens when you grind this
Speaker 5: and you get a little bit of heat out of
Speaker 5: the mechanical grinding action, which is that you start to
Speaker 5: get this magical paste and that's that's getting close to
Speaker 5: the thing that we think of as chocolate. And you
Speaker 5: have to wet grind this thing and a wet stone
Speaker 5: grinder for days and days to get the average particle
Speaker 5: size small enough in that fiber structure that on the
Speaker 5: tongue it feels like.
Speaker 4: You would expect from smooth chocolate.
Speaker 5: And so that takes a lot of time, and it
Speaker 5: turns out some equipment and knowledge. I did a little study,
Speaker 5: you know, because I have microscopes and autoclaves and all
Speaker 5: the stuff in my kitchen from the bread projects. So
Speaker 5: I was able to do some smears and look at
Speaker 5: average particle sizes and correlate that. Because I was given
Speaker 5: the hint from some chocolate tears correlate that with the
Speaker 5: current drawn by the malange by the wet grinder. There's
Speaker 5: a pretty linear relationship between you amount a current that
Speaker 5: you're using and the particle size, and that's how they
Speaker 5: determine when they get done.
Speaker 2: So you can tell the size of your chocolate particles
Speaker 2: by how hard your grinder has to work. Basically that's correct, yeah,
Speaker 2: at a given temperature. And then there's some chemistry involved
Speaker 2: in like actually making it a bar. It's got like
Speaker 2: some complex crystal structure that you need to reach with
Speaker 2: the right temperature voyage for this whole process. Right.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm going to go ahead and call that
Speaker 5: physic because it's really crystallography. You know, I work with
Speaker 5: a lot of chemists, so we can we you know,
Speaker 5: we can fight over this.
Speaker 4: But yeah. The trick then after that.
Speaker 5: Is to make it into a stable bar, and that
Speaker 5: means establishing with the cacao butter with that fat. It's
Speaker 5: type two crystal, which is a stable crystalin matrix in
Speaker 5: shirt sleeve room temperature conditions for human beings. That's referred
Speaker 5: to in the industry as temper, but it's really a
Speaker 5: crystaline structure as you know, and alluded to, and so
Speaker 5: finding out how to establish that is a bit of
Speaker 5: a trick. And part of the problem that we had
Speaker 5: is we know too much. So it was me and
Speaker 5: biologists and chemists and another physicist, and so we knew
Speaker 5: too much about crystallography. So we did all these crazy
Speaker 5: schemes that only kind of partially worked. And then finally
Speaker 5: we just did the thing that everybody else doesn't work
Speaker 5: fine and made bars. And you know, when we made
Speaker 5: the first chocolate from our own beans from our trees,
Speaker 5: all of us thought it was the best chocolate we'd
Speaker 5: ever had, easily, And I am still completely ruined. It's
Speaker 5: been six months now, but I am ruined, and my
Speaker 5: wife is ruined, and everyone is ruined. We can't we
Speaker 5: get other chocolate and it's just not as good. And
Speaker 5: recently I was very very very brave, and I gave
Speaker 5: a bar of this chocolate to my friend jose Andres,
Speaker 5: the chef, and he said it was the best chocolate
Speaker 5: he's ever had, and he's now told other people it's
Speaker 5: the best chocolate he's ever had. And so, you know,
Speaker 5: I think that keeping everything simple and pure, you know,
Speaker 5: not adding anything, the only ingredient in ourcolate bar is
Speaker 5: sugar in some measure to give you, you know, the amount.
Speaker 4: That you like.
Speaker 5: How dark do you want your chocolate? In our case,
Speaker 5: we went to about seventy percent. How it sounds amazing,
Speaker 5: there's nothing else in it, and it's it's really good,
Speaker 5: and you know, we're going to keep on doing it
Speaker 5: because it's so good. It's it's it's very interesting and really,
Speaker 5: even though it's so hard to do and has so
Speaker 5: many steps, the magic in the last part of the fermentation.
Speaker 4: Is worth it. It's worth it.
Speaker 5: I do it over and over again because I never
Speaker 5: tire of that moment when it changes to chocolate.
Speaker 4: It's incredible.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm around fermentation all the time. We
Speaker 5: have the Ancient Bread project, other bread projects, other fermentation projects,
Speaker 5: and you know, the even when you're doing beer making,
Speaker 5: the fermentation is a you know, nano machinery process and
Speaker 5: service of something else, in service of getting CO two
Speaker 5: distributed evenly through you know, a piece of dough so
Speaker 5: that you can freeze it in the oven and have
Speaker 5: bread right freeze the structure by baking. In the case
Speaker 5: of the cacao, the fermentation it is the flavor, it's everything.
Speaker 5: It's remarkable.
Speaker 2: So, now that you've had this incredible dark chocolate and
Speaker 2: you understand it all the way from Dirk to bar,
Speaker 2: what are your thoughts on industrial chocolate, for example Hershey's.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's a valid industrial product. Sometimes you have to
Speaker 5: have these things, and you know, I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 5: not going to crap on them. It's it's an incredible story. Actually,
Speaker 5: the Hershey's story is an incredible story, both from a
Speaker 5: business and a technology standpoint. But I am ruined now,
Speaker 5: and I very seriously considering, you know, expanding this operation
Speaker 5: and maybe trying to grow a bunch more trees kind
Speaker 5: of hydroponically in this way and seeing if you could
Speaker 5: make more of this special chocolate in that way, so
Speaker 5: we'll see.
Speaker 2: Sounds amazing and sounds delicious. Well, thanks very much for
Speaker 2: taking us on a tour of your chocolate adventure. Really
Speaker 2: happy to be grabbing on your coattails and following along
Speaker 2: to learn.
Speaker 5: Daniel, it's always a pleasure to talk to you man.
Speaker 5: Send me more of your best students, please.
Speaker 4: We'll do.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Take care all.
Speaker 1: Right, pretty interesting conversation there, Daniel. What is your big
Speaker 1: takeaway from all of this chocolate science.
Speaker 2: The takeaway for me is that once a physicist, always
Speaker 2: a physicist. You're trained to think like a physicist. You're
Speaker 2: going to apply that to everything else you do in
Speaker 2: your life, whether it's baking bread and venting new video
Speaker 2: game consoles or growing chocolate bars.
Speaker 1: Now, do you think knowing all of this physics is
Speaker 1: helping him make better chocolate or is he actually leaning
Speaker 1: on chemistry?
Speaker 2: I think there's a fuzzy line here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it sounds like pretty straight up chemistry. He's definitely
Speaker 1: scientific thinking, no offense, no offense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine, I get it. You know, the chocolate
Speaker 2: is more chemistry than physics. I'll admit it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so his physic preparation is of no help.
Speaker 2: I mean he didn't get down to like the fundamental
Speaker 2: chocolate particle or anything. So having been a particle physicist,
Speaker 2: I don't think is an issue. But definitely his scientific
Speaker 2: background helped him, like read the papers and do this
Speaker 2: carefully and methodically and you know, gather some data.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like this is maybe like a small
Speaker 1: badge type of chocolate production. But things get a little
Speaker 1: bit more complicated and maybe more difficult when you try
Speaker 1: to scale it up and you try to give chocolate
Speaker 1: to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You have a lot more freedom to play
Speaker 2: when you're making up just a few bars for you
Speaker 2: and your friends. But when you're the chief chocolate officer
Speaker 2: at one of the world's biggest snacks food companies, then
Speaker 2: you have a whole different set of challenges.
Speaker 1: Well, you actually got to talk to a former research
Speaker 1: scientist at a large corporation. How did you meet this fellow?
Speaker 2: So One of our listeners, Darcio, is a chocolate researcher
Speaker 2: in Brazil, and heard us joking about chocolate on the
Speaker 2: podcast and wrote to me suggesting that we do a
Speaker 2: deep dive into chocolate. He was actually the inspiration for
Speaker 2: this episode and introduced me to his friend Jim Kaiser,
Speaker 2: former chief chocolate officer at Mars Inc.
Speaker 1: Well wait, wait, wait, wait, we know an actual chocolate researcher, Like,
Speaker 1: what's this research?
Speaker 2: It's like chemical engineering, you know, industrial processes for producing
Speaker 2: chocolate at scale with consistency and purity and quality.
Speaker 1: WHOA yeah, because I guess they farm a lot of
Speaker 1: chocolate in Brazil, right.
Speaker 2: They do farm a lot of chocolate all over the world,
Speaker 2: and in the interview with him, we talk about the
Speaker 2: challenges of getting chocolate from all different locations where the
Speaker 2: processes are different.
Speaker 1: M how there is a different taste that come from
Speaker 1: different themes.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, which is not what you want if you're
Speaker 2: the Mars company. You want your eminem to taste the
Speaker 2: same no matter where you are in the world and
Speaker 2: which batch of chocolate it was. We'll get into all that,
Speaker 2: but first let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back
Speaker 2: and we're talking about physics and chocolate.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's Daniel's interview with Professor Kaiser, former
Speaker 1: chocolate research scientists at Mars Corporation.
Speaker 2: So it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast. John Kaiser,
Speaker 2: an expert in mass production of chocolate and a researcher
Speaker 2: who has worked on the forefront of chocolate knowledge. John,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Daniel. That's a happy day if I get
Speaker 3: to talk about chocolate. I appreciate you invited me to
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Well. First, I want to know how does
Speaker 2: one become a chocolate researcher. Is that something you grew
Speaker 2: up wanting to be and followed your passion or you
Speaker 2: stumbled into it.
Speaker 3: I knew I wanted to work on food. My father
Speaker 3: had worked on food at PNG, their brands pring, goals, folders,
Speaker 3: and I love the black box. And that's what chemical
Speaker 3: engineers solve. We have raw materials, dried potatoes and everyone
Speaker 3: inside the box, and you have a beautifully shaped pring
Speaker 3: go out the other end. It tastes, it looks straight.
Speaker 3: So I was always fascinated by what's the black box?
Speaker 3: So I knew I did enter the food industry, and
Speaker 3: I started craft in Chicago, first up in glen View,
Speaker 3: working on a variety of food brands, ice cream, mayonnaise,
Speaker 3: and Miracle Web. And then that led us to a
Speaker 3: role at Mars working on cocoa and chocolate. That's where
Speaker 3: I spent almost thirty years. Wow, every aspect of coca
Speaker 3: and child production globally.
Speaker 2: So what do people not know about making chocolate? I mean,
Speaker 2: it's much more than just roast the beans and blend
Speaker 2: them up. What it is sort of the secret sauce
Speaker 2: to turning cocoa beans into chocolate that people might not understand.
Speaker 3: Well, I'd say the fascinating part of chocolate, and I
Speaker 3: always include cocoa as part of that is how difficult
Speaker 3: it is to produce a consistent, wonderful tasting product. And
Speaker 3: that's really what's kept me intrigued in this area for
Speaker 3: so many years, and I still work on it here
Speaker 3: at iowas Fate. So the linkage I see is nearly
Speaker 3: every aspect of the unit operations a chemical engineering study,
Speaker 3: from harvest of a cocoa pod in origin, all the
Speaker 3: way to a molded product in M and M or
Speaker 3: she makee chocolate bar. Nearly every aspect has a linkage
Speaker 3: to flavor and texture and solving that, Understanding that and
Speaker 3: understanding that in an operational role every day is not easy.
Speaker 3: So that's really kept me very interesting because there is
Speaker 3: issues all along that product pipeline.
Speaker 2: Give us an example of something that's challenging in mass
Speaker 2: production of delicious chocolate.
Speaker 3: So back to the complexity. So cocoa is not cocoa,
Speaker 3: first of all, So the variety of cocoa that you
Speaker 3: find in the origin can have an bone on flavor.
Speaker 3: So you have to pick what you want, and what
Speaker 3: you want is what the consumer ultimately wants, so you
Speaker 3: have to really start with the consumer. But how that
Speaker 3: product is harvested really more how it's fermented in origin
Speaker 3: can again have a major impact on flavor. For example,
Speaker 3: and practices are not standardized. Growers farmers across the globe
Speaker 3: don't have a script and say oh, this is how
Speaker 3: we do it now. They don't have the script. They
Speaker 3: do it based on history, they do it based on economics.
Speaker 3: It's not well controlled. As soon as pods are opened
Speaker 3: in the origin, they're opening with machete. I mean, that
Speaker 3: is the typical way of opening a pod. Pods have
Speaker 3: a very thick husk. You extract about fifty beans from
Speaker 3: a pod, and the beans are surrounded by the sticky, gooey,
Speaker 3: high sugar, high acid, relatively speaking, pulp that actually tastes delicious.
Speaker 3: By the way, if you're in origin, taste taste the beans.
Speaker 3: Don't chew the beans because extremely a stringent it. We'll
Speaker 3: get to that point here about fermentation. But as you
Speaker 3: suck the pulp off the beans, they have a very
Speaker 3: pleasant fruity characteristic that those in Ecuador and Brazil. Darcie
Speaker 3: who can speak to this, will extract that and convert
Speaker 3: into a beverage.
Speaker 2: Like a chocolate fruit beverage.
Speaker 3: It really doesn't taste like chocolate at all. It just
Speaker 3: has a fruity, pleasant flavor.
Speaker 2: I wonder how many people have ever tasted that. I
Speaker 2: don't think I know anybody else who's ever tasted the
Speaker 2: actual chocolate fruit.
Speaker 3: It's definitely rare. You know, you have to pasteurize it
Speaker 3: in origin if you want to ship it somewhere. Because
Speaker 3: here's the point. It's the microfloor in environment automatically goes
Speaker 3: after those sugars as soon as you open it, so
Speaker 3: fermentation starts the instant you open the pot. Those beans
Speaker 3: are manually scooped out. And this may seem a bit
Speaker 3: our kid because it is because it has not really
Speaker 3: changed over the course of you know, at least one
Speaker 3: hundred years. Where those beans are then piled on banana LEAs,
Speaker 3: typically on the ground in origin heat and the fermentation begins.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, fermentation means like microbial processing. Right,
Speaker 2: basically we're talking about desirable rotting, right.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's exactly correct, okay, but has a huge influence.
Speaker 3: So if you and some growers do this around the
Speaker 3: globe where they'll skip the fermentation, they'll go straight to
Speaker 3: dry it. And if you do that, the beans are
Speaker 3: very very stringent, very bitter, and there are some recipes
Speaker 3: that may be an attribute you want and it's another
Speaker 3: i say, processed driver that you can use to influence
Speaker 3: your flavor. But typically say the fermentation is between five
Speaker 3: and seven days, five.
Speaker 2: And seven days sitting there rotting on a banana leaf.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now the larger drowers will have i'll call box fermentation.
Speaker 3: They'll place these beans in a much larger, larger wooden
Speaker 3: box and then they'll actually use a hand agitator really
Speaker 3: just hand scoop and move those beans around, because you
Speaker 3: imagine the thermal heat of the fermentation will be greatest
Speaker 3: in the center, so you want to spread that out
Speaker 3: across the whole box. So yeah, for sure, beings that
Speaker 3: are not fermented and those that are fully fermented will
Speaker 3: taste dramatically different. And those practices are very different, y'all say,
Speaker 3: the more the standardized fermentation process that we've witnessed or
Speaker 3: those that you see in West Africa Ivory Coast, Godam
Speaker 3: where they're typically fully fermented. Now keep in mind, you
Speaker 3: can go, you can be over fermented, and that will
Speaker 3: also cause a flavor impact. And then anything in between
Speaker 3: zero and say five to seven days. So this is
Speaker 3: where the complexity just begins Dandiel. So you can have
Speaker 3: a whole range of flavor influences and I won't call
Speaker 3: it a flavor defect because flavor is subjective. You may
Speaker 3: love it, hey, I love an over fermented being in
Speaker 3: its flavor or totally underfremented. So it actually ends up
Speaker 3: being a consumer driven experience. What do they want?
Speaker 2: But if you want to produce the same eminem every day,
Speaker 2: every year for thirty years, how do you you handle
Speaker 2: that when you get a batch of over fermented and
Speaker 2: a batch of under fermented. Do you have to adjust
Speaker 2: the process or do you have some way to mask
Speaker 2: it or how does that work?
Speaker 3: That's one of the distinctions you're hitting right now is
Speaker 3: the small versus large. I'm a little biased because I
Speaker 3: spent my career at Marsin and we're working on all
Speaker 3: these challenges across thirty years, and it is difficult to
Speaker 3: make an eminent taste the same around the globe. It
Speaker 3: is very difficult because you have so many influences, including
Speaker 3: the practices they're observed. So the way you mitigate that
Speaker 3: is a lot of coke we purchased off the market,
Speaker 3: but per our spec, per our flavor and chemical spec.
Speaker 3: So you want to make sure that it is fermented
Speaker 3: properly and you're buying best specification. So that's how Marge
Speaker 3: will do it all the way to mitigate am I
Speaker 3: giving anything? Wait here, this is pretty typical for a
Speaker 3: Hurshy and Mars and I'm on delays.
Speaker 4: Is there's a.
Speaker 3: Cocoa recipe, You would not bank the farm on a
Speaker 3: single origin. You want a percentage of different origins and
Speaker 3: that gives you the flavor profile that is consistent, and
Speaker 3: it also helps mitigate that risk because civil wars do
Speaker 3: occur in ivory coasts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have.
Speaker 3: Weather impact, sustainability concerns. Lots of these things will occur
Speaker 3: over the course of a year, and you have to
Speaker 3: be prepared to move around and ensure that the product
Speaker 3: still meets the products back.
Speaker 2: So what's the major difference between like very fancy, artisanal
Speaker 2: small batch bar chocolate you might pay like eight dollars
Speaker 2: for and something like a Hershey bar. Is it the
Speaker 2: quality of the chocolate? Is it preservatives? Is something different
Speaker 2: in the process? What is basically the difference between the
Speaker 2: spectrum of quality for chocolate?
Speaker 3: The large manufacturer has a lot more at risk. So
Speaker 3: if you have a recall a product because of some
Speaker 3: microbial contamination or adulteration due to incidental form matter that's
Speaker 3: in the product you're recalling. It could could really sacrifice
Speaker 3: your brand. So the large manufacturers tend to be very conservative,
Speaker 3: but they're very consistent, I'd say very consistent. The smaller
Speaker 3: players have more leeway, they have less at risk, and
Speaker 3: they're faster, they're more flexible, you know. I think the
Speaker 3: thing that I think is interesting is the large manufacturers
Speaker 3: have a business. Eminem's the biggest global brand for chocolate.
Speaker 3: They want to be as flexible as small guys, but
Speaker 3: they can't. The small guys want to have more market share,
Speaker 3: but that's a challenge for them also, so the small manufacturers,
Speaker 3: as you said costs before this call, it just took
Speaker 3: a look at a cost program. Two cents per gram
Speaker 3: for a Dove or Hershey no chocolate roughly sense a
Speaker 3: gram for she had Dandili, which is a very specialty
Speaker 3: niche product. Really, you know, that's the difference in order,
Speaker 3: mattitude in difference. So what are consumers willing to pay
Speaker 3: for what they get?
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the Hershey bar also because it's iconic.
Speaker 2: On the podcast, recently, I commented that I was not
Speaker 2: a particular fan of the Hershey bar because it has
Speaker 2: this sour flavor to it. Where does that sourness come from?
Speaker 2: Is it some property of milk chocolate? Is it some
Speaker 2: secret process that Hershey has? Why are Hershey bar so sour?
Speaker 3: Yes? I love the history of chocolate, so let's talk hershy.
Speaker 3: Hershey started making caramel in Lancaster, PA. That's where my
Speaker 3: family and I spent thirty years just north of there
Speaker 3: in Mannheim. Started that business, Uh, grew it pretty well
Speaker 3: downtown Lancaster, went to the expo in Chicago, to this
Speaker 3: famous expo where this iconic Columbian Expo in Chicago, where
Speaker 3: he came across Layman, which is a German may Fast
Speaker 3: of chocolate, really liquored melliing equipment came across that thought
Speaker 3: at that time that the future is chocolate, not carmel.
Speaker 3: So moved to child production, bought that equipment in Chicago,
Speaker 3: brought it back and started Hershey pid making chocolate small scale.
Speaker 3: Didn't know how to do it yet, didn't know how.
Speaker 3: He hired a German scientist by named of Klein Klein
Speaker 3: and with him began to learn about child production. And
Speaker 3: if you ever talked to a European I go into
Speaker 3: this fair Hersey. I just want to give you kind
Speaker 3: of what my skew is. I might spin on it is,
Speaker 3: and you've already mentioned this. The Europeans are not accustomed
Speaker 3: to sour milk in their chocolate. They're just not accustomed
Speaker 3: to it. And that's the history of chocolate and whether
Speaker 3: a child taste very different from those in the US.
Speaker 3: So the story is, and I'm sure a Hershey representative
Speaker 3: may dispute my spin on this, is we talked to
Speaker 3: Europeans and say, you know, they got the process of
Speaker 3: drying liquid milk wrong in that it became the lipid
Speaker 3: catalysis that creates organic acids that gives you the sour
Speaker 3: character that you get from baby puke.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, did you just say baby puke?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 3: And I've heard those terms from other Hershey people, so
Speaker 3: I'm not taking these terms out of context.
Speaker 2: So we have it on the record from an expert
Speaker 2: in chocolate that Hershey's tastes like baby puke.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Introbution on this one. And as I said, flavor
Speaker 3: is subjective. My father loves Hershey chocolate that's what he
Speaker 3: was offered. That's what he ate. He still loves it,
Speaker 3: and it has a unique i'll call it a unique
Speaker 3: acid character. It's organic acid, but tyic acid flavor in
Speaker 3: that chocolate. It gives it that unique flavor. So the
Speaker 3: story is, and it could be a myth that in
Speaker 3: the process because it was not known how to dry
Speaker 3: liquid milk and do it in an efficient way that
Speaker 3: did not harm the quality, not in the US. Nestley
Speaker 3: was figuring that out in Europe. Okay, so they were
Speaker 3: figuring it out Hers. She was trying to do it
Speaker 3: his way and came up with a way to do it.
Speaker 3: Developed this acidic flavor which became the profile, which is
Speaker 3: now their signature flavor, and it is well welllife. It's
Speaker 3: the biggest brand in the US, so they've got something
Speaker 3: going on there. So, you know, no disparaging Hershey, they've
Speaker 3: got a well, well liked product that consumers here really love.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you can make a billion dollar business
Speaker 2: out of a baby puke candy, then hats off to you, right,
Speaker 2: Like wow, very impressive. I could never pcomplished that. I
Speaker 2: don't think I'd invest in that startup, but I'd be wrong. Apparently.
Speaker 2: So then you know, if we are still innovating on
Speaker 2: chocolate and still using chemical engineering and creative ideas to
Speaker 2: develop new chocolates, what's happening right now, what's like at
Speaker 2: the forefront of chocolate research, the most brilliant minds in chocolate.
Speaker 2: What problems are they trying to crack right now?
Speaker 3: So if you look at the headlines today, sustainability, carbon dioxide,
Speaker 3: so things are around. Replacing dairy powders with plant based
Speaker 3: proteins are hot. They were hot five years ago. I
Speaker 3: know there's interest in it and they are still very
Speaker 3: important to consider to reduce greenhouse gases to manage I
Speaker 3: know Mars for sure has a sustainability plan, and all
Speaker 3: the large manufacturers certainly have a public disclosed approach that
Speaker 3: they're taking for that. So anything around the way that
Speaker 3: is processed is being examined to reduce energy consumption. That's
Speaker 3: I say a blanket statement because each of these components
Speaker 3: where it's roasting, conching which is an intensive mixing step,
Speaker 3: or size reduction, are very energy intensive. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of energy that's required to get to the state that's
Speaker 3: appealing to consumers. So any place now it's more innovation
Speaker 3: on the process side. Okay, it's innovation with the process side,
Speaker 3: but it's really important, important for the manufacturer, and also
Speaker 3: the consumer is also looking at businesses to see what
Speaker 3: they're doing that's good for the planet. So for sure,
Speaker 3: that's where a lot of the innovation is occurring. And then,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, on the ingredient side, is more plant
Speaker 3: based raw materials that can be used and still deliver
Speaker 3: that superior taste.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Now, you mentioned you started your career being intrigued
Speaker 2: in things like pringles. You've taken the potatoes one side
Speaker 2: and outcome these perfect crisps. And I've noticed this bizarre
Speaker 2: innovation in desserts recently, this chocolate covered pringles. And since
Speaker 2: you began your career in pringles and you ended up
Speaker 2: in chocolate, I wondered, is this something you came up with?
Speaker 2: Is this your unholy unification of the snack universe?
Speaker 3: I can't take credit for that, I could, but do
Speaker 3: you enjoy them?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 3: For sure? Yeah? I think that said the savory sweet combination,
Speaker 3: I think it is very good, really appealing, and coming
Speaker 3: from the chocolate capital of the US, which is southeastern Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: that's Hershey, Bars's large operation there. You have Blomber, which
Speaker 3: is a large industrial producer there, get divers based out
Speaker 3: of it. You have a lot of candy, a lot
Speaker 3: of candy, your peppermint patties, your Pennsylvania so you have
Speaker 3: a lot of candy production that curve there. It's also
Speaker 3: the savory snack capital. Oh I see, so hey they're
Speaker 3: both there. Why not?
Speaker 2: So nobody knows snacking like Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: Pressols a lot of pressol production the Dutch. You know,
Speaker 3: if you ever go to live as Pennsylvania, it's deemed
Speaker 3: the place for prezols in the US for first created.
Speaker 3: And that's not far from Lancaster. So yeah, pretzels and
Speaker 3: savory snacks are really big in that part of the country.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we have Pennsylvania to thank us for
Speaker 2: pushing us forward on the forefront of human snacking. That's amazing,
Speaker 2: And thanks very much John Kayser for telling us all
Speaker 2: about chocolate production and the challenges in producing huge quantities
Speaker 2: of consistent chocolate that everybody enjoys around the world. Really
Speaker 2: appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks for the invitation. This has been a blast
Speaker 3: for me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right, interesting. What did you think about how they
Speaker 1: approach chocolate making in large scales.
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating how the small batch people are
Speaker 2: really trying to make a unique flavor and the large
Speaker 2: batch people are really not. They're really struggling with the
Speaker 2: same question, but they're on different sides of the issue.
Speaker 2: Jim talks about how the difference in the fermentation process
Speaker 2: leads to different kinds of flavor, and that sounds awesome
Speaker 2: if you're artisanal, but that's a nightmare if you're industrial.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like it's not like they're not trying
Speaker 1: to come up with anique, unique flavor. It's like they're
Speaker 1: trying to keep the flavor consistent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: They might be aiming for, like the flavor of the
Speaker 1: most amount of people like and to make that consistent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that is exactly what they're going for.
Speaker 2: And also I didn't realize what a deep rivalry there
Speaker 2: is between Hershey and Mars. There's a long history there
Speaker 2: involving like espionage and theft and like really deep anger
Speaker 2: between these two companies. And you all know that Hershey's
Speaker 2: isn't my favorite, but no disrespect to those who love it.
Speaker 2: Because it's not about costs. There's lots of cheap chocolate
Speaker 2: out there I love, and expensive ones I don't. It's
Speaker 2: just personal preference. So probably if I want an unbiased
Speaker 2: opinion about the flavor of Hershey's chocolate, I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been talking to somebody from Mars.
Speaker 1: Well, I didn't even know there are two separate companies,
Speaker 1: Like there's just those two, Like those are the big chocolate.
Speaker 2: Those two Pennsylvania snack companies really do dominate the chocolate market.
Speaker 1: And they're both based in Pennsylvania, m.
Speaker 2: Exactly the snack capital of the world. According to Jim Geyser.
Speaker 1: Wow, why Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: Somebody from Pennsylvania has to answer that for us?
Speaker 1: Well, we might have to buy him at Bar Chocolate.
Speaker 1: We live to tell us.
Speaker 2: Once that grant comes in, we'll be ready to do that.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, another interesting dive into daniels as snack habits.
Speaker 1: Hasn't your doctor at this age told you, like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe you should dial down on the saturated fats.
Speaker 2: There, No chocolate is healthy. Man has all sorts of
Speaker 2: good stuff in it in moderation.
Speaker 1: Again, we're doctors, but we're not that kind of doctor.
Speaker 2: Fermented foods. Man, My wife tells me fermented foods are
Speaker 2: good for your gut.
Speaker 1: These statements of not being approved by the Federal Drug Administration.
Speaker 2: Do not take health advice from me. Please, do not
Speaker 2: take healthy peace. Don't even take writing advice from me
Speaker 2: or anything that's right.
Speaker 1: Don't they advice.
Speaker 2: Career advice, life advice, any of that stuff. Just listen
Speaker 2: for the jokes and the knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how about physics.
Speaker 2: Advice and doing my best to give us an honest
Speaker 2: understanding of the physics of the universe for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us. See you next time.
Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
Speaker 2: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, disc, Org, Insta,
Speaker 2: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
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