Speaker 1: Hello everyone, ridiculous historians. Thank you for tuning in. This
Speaker 1: is the show where we look at some of the strangest, weirdest,
Speaker 1: most bizarre, and yes, ridiculous people, places, things, and events
Speaker 1: throughout the span of human civilization, animals, vegetables, minerals today.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which category this topic falls under, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a thing, it's historically driven, and it's a
Speaker 1: fun thing. It is a fun thing. You know what
Speaker 1: just happened? I want to plan out. By the way, Ben,
Speaker 1: what's that? Noel, our super producer Casey Pegram said, Okay,
Speaker 1: start talking, go right, go. He literally cracked the whip
Speaker 1: at us I I because you would you had thrown
Speaker 1: both Casey and I under the bus before the before
Speaker 1: the show started. Yeah, by by saying that you are
Speaker 1: more grateful than anyone for particularly surprising, amazing thing we
Speaker 1: have happening in this episode. That's just me overcompensating. You
Speaker 1: notice about me, Ben, You're notice about me? Do you
Speaker 1: want how about this? Let's let's drop the drop the goods.
Speaker 1: What do we have today? That's right, that's correct. Yes,
Speaker 1: So we have today, uh, an amazing story about an
Speaker 1: iconic food product that everyone in the US is aware
Speaker 1: of and I assume many people throughout the world are
Speaker 1: aware of this. It is called spam. But you and
Speaker 1: I are not exploring this story alone. Today. Thank god,
Speaker 1: we called in an expert. Folks, we'd like to introduce
Speaker 1: you to our friend and today's co host, Annie Reese. Hi, everybody,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for having me. Guys, did you know
Speaker 1: that you were a spam expert? Annie? Spam s Burt?
Speaker 1: You know, I am disgusting. That does sound really gressy.
Speaker 1: It didn't work. It's like what happens when you open
Speaker 1: the can and a little bit of the juice. Oh
Speaker 1: I did not need that mental image, did You didn't
Speaker 1: know it? But she did? Any Okay, expert? Maybe not.
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're all kind of like armchair experts
Speaker 1: on a lot of things. We have a good time researching.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you would get the qualification of
Speaker 1: spam expert, but I'm gonna refer to you as our
Speaker 1: spam spirit guide today. How about that about spam consultant.
Speaker 1: I'm going like an email, like I come in and
Speaker 1: you're getting a lot of spam sorted out, Like make
Speaker 1: all the filters on your emails, I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: chopping at a grocery store and I'm going, oh wait,
Speaker 1: there's so many different things, and then you appear and
Speaker 1: you explain it in a step by step basis, And
Speaker 1: I just want you to know that I am, um
Speaker 1: preemptively very appreciative of that. I feel like i'd be
Speaker 1: good at that. I'm not sure more very efficient and
Speaker 1: you are. You are a co host of our food podcast,
Speaker 1: Saver Food Lifestyle Travel. Could you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about sabor. Yeah. Saver is a show where we
Speaker 1: explore the science history culture of food and drinks and
Speaker 1: why we like what we like and how you can
Speaker 1: get more of that. It used to be called food Stuff.
Speaker 1: We recently rebranded, but we did a whole episode on
Speaker 1: spam um back when it was old school food stuff.
Speaker 1: And I have a confession to make that Noel and
Speaker 1: I were talking about it briefly before this. Anyone who
Speaker 1: knows anything about Apple podcast reviews, you don't read them
Speaker 1: unless you're a massa chist, yeah right, which I am. Well,
Speaker 1: you're a brave result in me. But one time a
Speaker 1: friend of mine left review and was like, you've got
Speaker 1: to go find it. You've got to read it and
Speaker 1: I said, do you know what you're asking me to do?
Speaker 1: But eventually I got over it and delved into the nightmare,
Speaker 1: into the shark pit, that is podcast reviews like I
Speaker 1: like the reviews. That might say something about you, but
Speaker 1: it might say something about me as well. But one
Speaker 1: of the number one recurring negative reviews was that I
Speaker 1: have never tried any of the foods we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And when we recorded spam, I had not tried it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was You're very open about it on the show,
Speaker 1: though it seems like a very misplaced complaint. You know,
Speaker 1: you're talking to your owning up to it. You honestly,
Speaker 1: maybe it's better that you haven't tasted the stuff. It
Speaker 1: makes you more objective about it. Have you still tried it?
Speaker 1: I tried it. Afterwards, I went and got um spam
Speaker 1: subi and that was it was lovely spam what musubi? Musubi? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very popular you can find it convenience stores
Speaker 1: in Hawaii, that's how popular it is. And it kind
Speaker 1: of to me looks like nagiri like sushi, but it's
Speaker 1: it's spam. Oh yes, okay, yeah, I'm familiar with that,
Speaker 1: and what we know nowadays, is that in most grocery
Speaker 1: stores that carries spa am, you won't just see the
Speaker 1: iconic regular garden variety spam. You'll see stuff like turkey spam,
Speaker 1: spam with bacon, spam light. And because this is so recognizable,
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves, how how did this thing
Speaker 1: which people love or hate, how did it become so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous in the world today? How how come everybody vegetarians,
Speaker 1: vegans included. I know what you're talking about when you
Speaker 1: say spam. Well, first of all, it's good branding, right,
Speaker 1: say the SPUs sound is one of my favorites, and
Speaker 1: then add the am and it's just a delight to
Speaker 1: say out loud. Um, and it's it's it's meant to
Speaker 1: be an acronym, but the origin of what its acronym
Speaker 1: actually might be is a little bit lost to history.
Speaker 1: Or it's kind of a little murky, right, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of stories about where the name came
Speaker 1: from from the people who should know where it came from.
Speaker 1: One is that it's like spiced ham, or maybe it
Speaker 1: stands for scientifically processed animal matter animal matter so delicious
Speaker 1: not quite meets animal matter. And there's there's others. Two,
Speaker 1: there's a shoulder of pork and ham and like you said,
Speaker 1: spiced ham. And then if you want to really get
Speaker 1: into the weeds that's utterly not food related. There's Stop
Speaker 1: Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act. There's also the State Police
Speaker 1: Association of Massachusetts that we forget. I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: that was in the running schools of the Pacific Atmospheric
Speaker 1: Monitoring Society for the Publication of American Music UH Systems
Speaker 1: Personnel Activity Meeting that's from Yale in my personal favorite
Speaker 1: society for palm top advancement through meetings, through only through
Speaker 1: meeting That seems like a fascinating use of time. But okay,
Speaker 1: so Spam. It dates back to nineteen thirty seven in
Speaker 1: a town called Austin, Minnesota, a k a. Spam Town USA,
Speaker 1: and it was made by Hormel Foods. They initially pitched
Speaker 1: as a way to help busy homemakers serve quick and
Speaker 1: easy pork dishes without having to slave away for hours
Speaker 1: in front of an oven. But in like an Edward
Speaker 1: Burnet's style stroke of genius, it also did a thing
Speaker 1: where it um Hormel the guy um had a slaughterhouse,
Speaker 1: and he had these byproduct parts that weren't very sellable,
Speaker 1: aka the pork shoulder. Um, we now kind of dig
Speaker 1: pork shoulder. That's like a thing that's like a delicacy,
Speaker 1: right or like people eat it at the Thanksgiving table
Speaker 1: or whatever. People are into it now, yeah for barbecue,
Speaker 1: I think, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly so. But he
Speaker 1: had this surplus of pork shoulder. It was not a
Speaker 1: popular cut, and so he wanted to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to make this, as you say, ben convenient product
Speaker 1: that could be marketed to homemakers who were all about
Speaker 1: canned food at the time. It was all the rage,
Speaker 1: and they haven't really fussed with the ingredients too much.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's strange because when you think of
Speaker 1: shelf's stable, that shall stable being the term for stuff
Speaker 1: that can stay at room temperature without going bad. I
Speaker 1: guess getting worse than it originally was. When you think
Speaker 1: of that, usually think of a ton of chemicals with
Speaker 1: so many syllables in the name that it sounds like
Speaker 1: a spell from Harry Potter, right. But in the case
Speaker 1: of spam, they have what six ingredients is just pork slash, ham,
Speaker 1: salt water, potato, starch, sugar, and of course sodium nitrate.
Speaker 1: Of course for color. Yes, that captivating pink issue. It
Speaker 1: describe it. So spam didn't immediately become this worldwide sensation.
Speaker 1: There were other things happening across the planet that eventually
Speaker 1: would lead to uh spam becoming like the king of
Speaker 1: canned meat. And it goes into an angle that a
Speaker 1: lot of people might not be aware of. It goes
Speaker 1: to tensions between the US and Japan during the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: There's a guy, Donald M. Shug at the University of
Speaker 1: Hawaii who published a paper on this, and he says
Speaker 1: that the US military began to view Hawaii's fishing fleet
Speaker 1: as a serious threat to national security. So, you know,
Speaker 1: at this time, Hawaii is still not a US state, right,
Speaker 1: So when the Japanese government arranged for many of Hawaiis
Speaker 1: Japanese fishermen to attend fishing schools in Japan, there were
Speaker 1: concerns that these fishermen were actually being interrogated by Japanese
Speaker 1: navy officials. Yeah, but to what end? Band to what end?
Speaker 1: So this eventually, okay, walked through this real quick. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three years after the invention of span.
Speaker 1: Suspicions about the loyalty of Japanese immigrants resulted in the
Speaker 1: implementation of a federal statute that stopped or banned fishing
Speaker 1: vessels of five tons or more from obtaining licenses unless
Speaker 1: the ers who owned the vessel was a US citizen.
Speaker 1: The next year one they passed the law prohibiting quote,
Speaker 1: aliens from fishing with gil perse or these different kinds
Speaker 1: of nets within one mile of shore because they wanted
Speaker 1: to preserve the fishery resources for Native Hawaiians and US citizens.
Speaker 1: This ended careers of a lot of people in the
Speaker 1: fishing industry in Hawaii, and then that meant that without
Speaker 1: spam these other can meets and sardines, the economy would
Speaker 1: have collapsed. They had to find something to replace this
Speaker 1: massive fishing industry. And let's not forget about Executive Order
Speaker 1: nineties sixty six UM where Franklin Roosevelt basically banned Japanese
Speaker 1: Americans citizens who were occupying military zones had them put
Speaker 1: in internment camp. So this whole anti Japanese sentiment was
Speaker 1: wide rife in the country, and weirdly enough, it trickled
Speaker 1: down to this canned meat product and Of course, these tensions,
Speaker 1: these discriminatory laws and economic practices were only ripples of
Speaker 1: a much larger event on the horizon, which is World
Speaker 1: War Two. And when the war begins, spam also has
Speaker 1: a part to play. Yeah, it does, because, um, if
Speaker 1: you remember, spam was pretty new around the time that
Speaker 1: America was getting involved in World War Two, but it
Speaker 1: was a popular option for soldiers because, um, getting fresh
Speaker 1: meat or fresh anything to Hawaii was difficult, um for
Speaker 1: American soldiers station there. So the US government was sending spam,
Speaker 1: or it might not have been exactly spam. Wasn't it
Speaker 1: just kind of like leftover meat parts that they had
Speaker 1: that they shipped to Hormel and then they made them
Speaker 1: my spam like stuff. Yeah yeah, yeah, so Hormels canning them.
Speaker 1: But it probably wasn't exactly what spam is today or
Speaker 1: what we think of it today. And it was cheap,
Speaker 1: non perishable, could withstand all sorts of weather conditions. But
Speaker 1: soldiers weren't exactly happy with spam. They were sometimes eating
Speaker 1: it three times a day, so I'm sure they were
Speaker 1: tired of it. Some of them even wrote hate mail
Speaker 1: to Hormel, which the company kept In a quote scurril
Speaker 1: less file and some of my favorite dishes are quote
Speaker 1: meat loaf without basic training, ham that didn't pass its
Speaker 1: physical and the real reason war was hell, that's great,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic. It's pretty harsh, So there's some sick burns.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this would have been like branded
Speaker 1: as spam, wouldn't have come in the tins, like with
Speaker 1: the logo on it and everything, because you kind of
Speaker 1: made a point on your episode of food Stuff back
Speaker 1: when it was called that that almost like the proper
Speaker 1: spam kind of got a bad rap because this was
Speaker 1: like almost like bootleg spam, but it was being manufactured
Speaker 1: in Hormel's canning facilities. Because I'm wondering if they like
Speaker 1: branded it differently or called it like Mr. E Spam
Speaker 1: or something, or I don't know, do you find anything
Speaker 1: about that in your east. I didn't find much about
Speaker 1: that at all. In fact, the fact that it wasn't
Speaker 1: spam was sort of a deep cut. It was kind
Speaker 1: of lost on people. Clearly they were writing those letters,
Speaker 1: those angry letters. Oh yeah, and it's also it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the kind of people that write mean things
Speaker 1: about podcasts. Well, it's also in the case of spam,
Speaker 1: there's an interesting linguistic thing that occurs because they're using
Speaker 1: it as one word to describe this umbrella of umbrella
Speaker 1: of processed meat. So the image it just got weird
Speaker 1: for me. But you know, it's it's similar to the
Speaker 1: way that instead of people saying search for something on
Speaker 1: the Internet, they say google it, or instead of make
Speaker 1: a copy, xerox this right, and it's it seems pretty
Speaker 1: certain in the history that only a few soldiers received
Speaker 1: genuine spam. But because there had already been this can
Speaker 1: be product around since the late thirties, that's just what
Speaker 1: people called it. So maybe spam got an unfair uh mark,
Speaker 1: a screw realist mark on its its reputation. I wonder
Speaker 1: if it's possible too that because spam was new and
Speaker 1: at the time there was such a push to be
Speaker 1: like but behind the boys and you know, all American soldiers,
Speaker 1: and America is doing great in the war. Annie is
Speaker 1: Annie has throwing some great propaganda. She's got these tiny
Speaker 1: American flags and she's gently twisting between her thumb and
Speaker 1: four fingers shut off a firecracker. I always come with crops,
Speaker 1: I always come with props um. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: maybe they made a miscalculation and thought, oh, spam is
Speaker 1: supporting the soldiers, and this will really get our name
Speaker 1: out there. And it did, but not in the way
Speaker 1: that they were hoping. Oh man, this is like a
Speaker 1: like an attempt, like a ham fisted half attempted, a
Speaker 1: kind of stunt fisted spam fisted attempt. That's even better.
Speaker 1: And he took her the next level, like you do.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious if there was an element of that
Speaker 1: behind it, because I could see I could see the
Speaker 1: calculation there, because it is free advertising when you think
Speaker 1: about it. That's a good point because these soldiers from
Speaker 1: the US are traveling around the world. They're going to Europe,
Speaker 1: they're going to the Pacific, they're going to various different islands,
Speaker 1: and they're bringing spam along with them. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a government contract, so you're getting paid to do it.
Speaker 1: I bet there was something like that going on, and
Speaker 1: the backlash from the soldiers generated one of my favorite
Speaker 1: quotes about spam, because there are a lot of excellent
Speaker 1: quotes about spam. Hormel describes it as meat with a
Speaker 1: pause button, which I love. I'm gonna need you to
Speaker 1: unpack that for us a little bit meat with a
Speaker 1: pause button, meaning like it never goes bad. Or is
Speaker 1: that the implication? Yeah, like where you put it in
Speaker 1: that can, it's like a time capsule. It's just gonna
Speaker 1: stay the same. I got it pushing pause. Another one
Speaker 1: of my favorite quotes comes from a New Yorker piece.
Speaker 1: It was all about as a profile on J. Hormel,
Speaker 1: and in the article, the author wrote, I got the
Speaker 1: distinct impression that being responsible for spam might be too
Speaker 1: great a burden on any one. Man. I love that idea,
Speaker 1: being cursed by the success of spam. Yeah. So is
Speaker 1: it that the soldiers genuinely didn't like the taste? Or
Speaker 1: is it? Do you think it's really more because as
Speaker 1: you said, they were eating it so often. I think
Speaker 1: it was a couple of things. I think it was
Speaker 1: they were eating it so often, they were eating it cold.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I found when looking into
Speaker 1: this question of why spam is so popular in Hawaiian
Speaker 1: and like other Asian Pacific countries, is because not only
Speaker 1: were they kind of their hand was forced because of
Speaker 1: the things you were talking about earlier, where Japanese immigrants
Speaker 1: couldn't fish, they also were incorporating spam in ways that
Speaker 1: were delicious, like they were putting them in recipes that
Speaker 1: they made. Anyway, they were adding them into spam fried
Speaker 1: rice or spam and eggs. Um soldiers were just eating
Speaker 1: them cold. Out of ten, I think I have very
Speaker 1: limited experience with spam. I don't know about the two
Speaker 1: of you, but limited purpose. I will make a confession
Speaker 1: that Casey and Annie probably know, you probably don't know
Speaker 1: UM I received in my early years working when we
Speaker 1: all started working together, I received an m v P award.
Speaker 1: Do you remember this, Annie? It's just three cans of
Speaker 1: spam that have been wrapped together and artistically artistically designs
Speaker 1: so that parts of the spam logos say m v
Speaker 1: P or something like that, and uh, it's It's one
Speaker 1: of the most prestigious awards I've ever received. It's also
Speaker 1: still in our office in case of an emergency, in
Speaker 1: case of a trophy emergency, case of a trophy murdery
Speaker 1: case we're trapped here and we have to eat spam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think about that. But but the UM
Speaker 1: I might have just a little bit more familiarity with
Speaker 1: this stuff because in boy Scouts we would camp a
Speaker 1: lot and we would have to we would have to
Speaker 1: eat that stuff, and we tried to find different ways
Speaker 1: to make it taste interesting. So it's not the same
Speaker 1: old thing, but it's already spiced. I mean, what else
Speaker 1: does it needs? Right, the secret and I don't know
Speaker 1: what else you're missing, but yeah, it's I think it's
Speaker 1: the thing that a lot of people did, as you said,
Speaker 1: the the assimilated spam, yes, um, and to get back
Speaker 1: to the point that they were putting it in things
Speaker 1: that I think we're probably much well definitely much more flavorful.
Speaker 1: And so they had a positive experience with spam um.
Speaker 1: And on Hawaii after soldiers left, a lot of soldiers
Speaker 1: when they went home, they brought with them their distaste.
Speaker 1: They were also turning spam into spaminade, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were flooded and inundated with all this the spam,
Speaker 1: and because they couldn't get protein from fishing, and didn't
Speaker 1: the US kind of like send them a lot of
Speaker 1: the spam because they had like a surplus of the stuff.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't just during World War two, continue during
Speaker 1: the Korean War as well. I believe, yes, because um
Speaker 1: spam was included in a lot of foreign aid packages,
Speaker 1: and during the Korean War people made something that I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure what's in there, and other folks weren't either,
Speaker 1: but they called it army stew, and uh, spam was
Speaker 1: one of the ingredients that we do know. It was
Speaker 1: featured in Armies Army ste And to this day, Korea
Speaker 1: is spam's second largest market and it's a popular gift
Speaker 1: on Lunar New Year in that country. Oh wow, Oh
Speaker 1: that's cool. Is there? Do they have different varieties of
Speaker 1: spam in different countries, like different flavors and such. I yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not I couldn't speak to specific, but I do
Speaker 1: know that there's a wide variety of spam flavors and
Speaker 1: that it does vary in um different countries. But Hawaii
Speaker 1: for sure is the biggest market. Yeah. Do you have
Speaker 1: some stats for us about that? Do I? Ever? And
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I didn't know that spam had this
Speaker 1: association with Hawaii until I did that the research for
Speaker 1: that episode, But I think it's pretty common knowledge at
Speaker 1: least here in the United States. But Hawaiians consume about
Speaker 1: five million pounds of spam every year, which is about
Speaker 1: two million a little over two million kilograms and on
Speaker 1: average that's about three pounds per person or about one
Speaker 1: point three kilograms a year, or I think around six
Speaker 1: cans a year for every man, uh, every man, woman, child,
Speaker 1: any type of humans consuming about six cans of spam
Speaker 1: a year. I can't we completely forgot hey, Casey, yes,
Speaker 1: do you have do you have an experience or familiarity
Speaker 1: with spam? Just the other weird al song, the R
Speaker 1: E M parody? Yeah? Wait, which was spam in the
Speaker 1: place where you live? You know that one? I don't.
Speaker 1: It's a deep weird alcave. Let's stand by R E M.
Speaker 1: But stand I was not aware there was is this?
Speaker 1: Is this like classic? Yeah? Mid eight I means whenever
Speaker 1: stand was out so that I did not Casey on
Speaker 1: the case, Casey on the case. I like that has
Speaker 1: a sound effect and everything. Any oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's got to because he's on the case. We we
Speaker 1: love being able to drop the sound cuse and multiple times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well just listen after after Casey spinds this intofferent spins
Speaker 1: the spam into gold, We're gonna be shocked. Um. Hawaii
Speaker 1: also has what looks to be one of the festivals.
Speaker 1: I would just be over the moon to attend. It's
Speaker 1: called spam Jam Festival in y Ki Ki and I
Speaker 1: was looking at pictures for it. There's just mascot stressed
Speaker 1: as all the different types of spams, spam eating contest.
Speaker 1: I think somebody got married there once. It looks awesome
Speaker 1: and I would love to go and um. Spam is
Speaker 1: also called Hawaiian steak, which I wasn't sure if it
Speaker 1: was a joke or not when I was reading that.
Speaker 1: In the state they call it Hawaiian steak. Okay, so
Speaker 1: actual native Hawaiians call it that, But from what I
Speaker 1: understand from what the Internet tells me is okay. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm trying to figure out if if we can
Speaker 1: say that or if that's mocking it. Yeah, right, I
Speaker 1: not here to mock. Surely they also have steak in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Surely they do, but probably yeah, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: steak is certainly much more expensive than it is here
Speaker 1: on the mainland, that is true. Yeah, yeah, they kind
Speaker 1: of take for granted the fact they are sort of
Speaker 1: isolated and require all of their goods to be shipped
Speaker 1: in literally you know, by plane or by sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes things expensive. So the legacy of spam established
Speaker 1: during World War Two and the Korean War takes this
Speaker 1: canned food product, this animal matter from Minnesota to its
Speaker 1: new home in He said, Hawaii's by far the largest market,
Speaker 1: Korea's second. That that would that should surprise a lot
Speaker 1: of people, right, because spam feels like such an American
Speaker 1: food because of the way it's spread across the planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it surprised me. I do find it really fascinating that
Speaker 1: it's so local. Lot, it's so specific where people love it.
Speaker 1: And then I feel like the rest of the world
Speaker 1: and and the rest of the US, we're kind of like,
Speaker 1: that's that weird food thing. What is that exactly? But
Speaker 1: I would like to mention that there is an amazing
Speaker 1: I've never been, but listeners have sent like, um some
Speaker 1: some stuff they've gotten from this museum and um austin Minnesota,
Speaker 1: which is, like you said, spam m USA. And if
Speaker 1: anyone has the opportunity, I highly recommend it. Its hands
Speaker 1: on you the sam hands on right. Nice. You get
Speaker 1: to race to see how many cans of fake it's
Speaker 1: fake spam that you can make in a minute. It's practice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to shove it into the can and
Speaker 1: you're competing against like a robot. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the world of Coca Cola in Atlanta, but with spam. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would hope that you would have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: sample different spam, the spams of the world, a world
Speaker 1: of cove that would be super cool. Um. We didn't
Speaker 1: really talk about this, and I think it's fine to
Speaker 1: save it for the end. Spam is cooked in the can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way it's made it isn't that weird that that
Speaker 1: struck me as super odd And there's a reason for that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it has to do with that whole shelf stable
Speaker 1: thing because you wanna you wanna mix the meat in
Speaker 1: a vacuum and vacuum seal it and then cook the
Speaker 1: whole cam that's part of the whole meat with a
Speaker 1: pause button thing. It's so nothing gets in there that
Speaker 1: you don't want, unless maybe you don't want the spam,
Speaker 1: but that's a whole different argument. Um. And when you
Speaker 1: cook it, the meat breaks down and you're left with
Speaker 1: a little a little loaf of spam and some juices.
Speaker 1: We're not making it sound very appetised, semi gelatinous, almost
Speaker 1: not as gelatinous as it could be if it didn't
Speaker 1: have that additive right, because it was there, one of
Speaker 1: those additives that keeps it from forming like a gross
Speaker 1: congealed layer of goo on the top, to make something
Speaker 1: that's already not super appetizing practically inedible. And I'll tell you, guys,
Speaker 1: I will I make a mean spam fried rice if
Speaker 1: you ever want to come over. If you cut it
Speaker 1: in the little cubes like that, it's like you hide it.
Speaker 1: It's like the way I feed my kid vegetables. I
Speaker 1: chopped the carrots up so small you can't even see them.
Speaker 1: I mean, spam, for all intensive purposes probably taste fine,
Speaker 1: but the texture of it and the look of it
Speaker 1: and the idea of it just give me the give
Speaker 1: me the gross out. It's the fact that it comes
Speaker 1: out can shaped. I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you see the rills in the can and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not everybody. Not everybody hated it, right, we said,
Speaker 1: Hawaiian's welcomed it with open arms. People in parts of
Speaker 1: the Pacific Rim also really enjoyed it, and the Russians
Speaker 1: liked it. They called it Roosevelt sausage. Had to be fair.
Speaker 1: Russian Russian food is pretty gross. I feel like, in
Speaker 1: terms of cuisine, Russians already very familiar with a lot
Speaker 1: of canned meat products, you know, like anchovies, different potted meats,
Speaker 1: So maybe it was just something that already seemed familiar
Speaker 1: to them. Okay, And first of all, for any Russian
Speaker 1: listeners out there, I want to apologize for insulting the
Speaker 1: entire cuisine of Russia, but I just never really run
Speaker 1: across Russian food that was particularly appetiting to me. It
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of cabbage, a lot of like
Speaker 1: barred based things and borsch and you know, very rustic
Speaker 1: kind of there's a stuff. There's a great Russian restaurant
Speaker 1: up north of Atlanta where we are based, and I
Speaker 1: would highly recommend checking it out. And actually, you know,
Speaker 1: in defense of Russian food, this is totally non span
Speaker 1: but in defense of Russian food, Uh, make friends with
Speaker 1: someone who cooks Russian food themselves and it will be amazing.
Speaker 1: There's always like thirty dishes of things. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: imagine that there's probably a lot of food that is
Speaker 1: historically Russian that is we just have lost. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we've forgotten that it is, or we've made it our
Speaker 1: own thing. I'm sure there's I'm not thinking of any
Speaker 1: right now, but I'm sure there's good Russian fair and
Speaker 1: we do like a chicken Kiev. Yeah, we could do
Speaker 1: a Russian food update to I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 1: get some emails about this one. Another one of, perhaps
Speaker 1: one of the most famous Russian fans of spam was
Speaker 1: Soviet Premier Nikki Ta Kruschev. Oh yeah, he wrote about
Speaker 1: spam in his memoirs called Krushchev remembers not the most
Speaker 1: amazingly innovative threat. Yeah, he probably had some threats in there.
Speaker 1: He probably took some shots. But in the memoir he
Speaker 1: specifically shouts out spam by saying, quote, there were many
Speaker 1: jokes going around in the army, some of them off
Speaker 1: color of American spam. It tastes good. Nonetheless, without spam,
Speaker 1: we will not feed our army. We would have lost
Speaker 1: our most fertile land, most fertile land. Got it? Got it?
Speaker 1: Who was that Russian guy? I was? It was terrible.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we've got to I've got a practice
Speaker 1: on the accents, folks. But he raises an interesting point,
Speaker 1: you know that similar to what was happening with war
Speaker 1: survivors in the countries on the Pacific Rim. There were
Speaker 1: people who would have starved without access to this easily transportable,
Speaker 1: infinitely durable food. Yeah, kind of along the same lines.
Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher called it a wartime delicacy. She called spam
Speaker 1: a wartime delicacy. And it's interesting, I think, because there
Speaker 1: is an odd sense of nostalgia for spam that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have, and I feel that it needed
Speaker 1: time to get away from the war the direct aftermath,
Speaker 1: but then after that people had this association with spam.
Speaker 1: It was there for me when I needed it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also one of those things where it's like it
Speaker 1: hasn't changed much. The branding is the same. It's you know,
Speaker 1: people have fond memories of that and they like the idea.
Speaker 1: You know, everything in this in this fast paced, mixed
Speaker 1: up world of ours, everything's always changed in a mile
Speaker 1: a minute. But we can rely on spam. Yes, the
Speaker 1: spam never changes. Like our true North. There we go,
Speaker 1: true North of canned animal matter. I do have a question,
Speaker 1: this is something that I was wondering if we could
Speaker 1: explore together, how did spam also become a term for
Speaker 1: uh deluges? Of bizarre emails. Well, then it has to
Speaker 1: do with Monty Python. Oh yeah, yeah, that's catch right. Yes,
Speaker 1: can you describe the games? We should just play a
Speaker 1: clip of it all. You got the egg and bacon, egg,
Speaker 1: sausage and bacon. I can span egg, bacon and SPA,
Speaker 1: Bacon sausage and Span, SPAN bacon sausage and SPA, SPA
Speaker 1: Stan bacon and Span, Span Span spanag and Span, spam
Speaker 1: spam spans, Span, Span Span BA clean spam spam span aspall. Oh,
Speaker 1: lost door prevents for the moon. I saw collanda and
Speaker 1: probably and span. Do you want anything without spaming it? Well, span, egg,
Speaker 1: sausage and span. There's not much spamming it. I don't
Speaker 1: want any spam. The end credits for that episode, by
Speaker 1: the way, include UM spam with every company member spam,
Speaker 1: Terry Jones, Terry Spam, sausage spam, eggspam UM, and the
Speaker 1: idea of just like inundating you with something, yeah, like
Speaker 1: annoying you always kind of just blaring in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind. UM. It has no appreciable content. It's omnipresent.
Speaker 1: But as you can imagine, Hormel doesn't exactly love that association. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they've even tried to. I think there was
Speaker 1: some very quickly defeated legal way they tried. It's not
Speaker 1: like anybody branded spam. It's just in the zeit guys.
Speaker 1: You would just toss it around, you know it. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure everyone, I'm not sure what they thought. They
Speaker 1: could just send out a message to everyone, a spam message,
Speaker 1: and say, please use a different term for this, what
Speaker 1: this thing is that we're sending. Usually when people or
Speaker 1: institutions or companies attempt to do something like that, they
Speaker 1: just make the problem much much worse, such as when
Speaker 1: a celebrity politely asked the Internet to take down a
Speaker 1: photo of them. Yeah, what I mean, So they've probably
Speaker 1: done the math and they thought, if we ask people
Speaker 1: to not do this, it's not gonna work. I know
Speaker 1: there's some Um, there's a bit of a renaissance sometimes
Speaker 1: for spam, every so often in more high end restaurants, right, yes, Um.
Speaker 1: I saw this a lot when I was in San
Speaker 1: Francisco a couple year or so ago. And there's one
Speaker 1: restaurant I think it's called Leo Leo Yacht Club something
Speaker 1: like that, and they have a lot of spam options
Speaker 1: on their menu, and it's a very nice restaurant. Visit Hawaiian. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just like, what's this loco moco I keep hearing about.
Speaker 1: Loco is good. It's like spam with gravy or something. Yes, rice,
Speaker 1: maybe it's rice, spam gravy and a fried egg. You
Speaker 1: can also get it with ground b for other meats,
Speaker 1: for a hamburger patty. Yes, so that's what I had.
Speaker 1: I didn't have spam locomoco okay, okay, I did have
Speaker 1: the other one. And it was very interesting that there's
Speaker 1: like high end Hawaiian restaurants that still use this uh
Speaker 1: pretty cheap, not very nutritional canned meat. Speaking of nutrition,
Speaker 1: just want to point out real quick that one of
Speaker 1: these Kansas spams twelve ounces and it apparently contains about
Speaker 1: six servings um which contain so the six servings and
Speaker 1: they can which come only, and it contains of the
Speaker 1: daily recommended fat intake for the US and thirty of
Speaker 1: the sodium. So it's not a health food no. But
Speaker 1: but there's another set. American ze'd approximately three point eight
Speaker 1: cans per second. Problem with that step because I think
Speaker 1: Hawaii is throwing off the average. I yes, I would agree,
Speaker 1: I can't really recall spam ever coming up in my
Speaker 1: childhood as an option. Well, you clearly didn't have elderly
Speaker 1: parents like I did. They you know, remembered it fondly
Speaker 1: from the wartime where my parents weren't alive in World
Speaker 1: War Two, but their parents were, and so it was something.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people that went through the depression,
Speaker 1: they like they learned how to hoard properly, and they
Speaker 1: learned how to like be frugal and like use canned
Speaker 1: meats and things. I remember growing up and my grandpapa
Speaker 1: would make brains and eggs, which is like the brain.
Speaker 1: It's literally I didn't even realize this until many years later.
Speaker 1: It's like cow brains and eggs. But it was like
Speaker 1: a cheap part that you could just you know, added
Speaker 1: a little texture and a little flavor to your eggs.
Speaker 1: Same with spam or something called liver pudding or scrapple
Speaker 1: is what it's known as in the wearing that the
Speaker 1: Midwest like up in the Yeah, yeah, exactly. I liked
Speaker 1: all of those things and didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1: But they're both kind of these congealed meat cubes that
Speaker 1: you then slice up and fry like spam, So there's
Speaker 1: there's there's other analogs to spam. Absolutely, these are foods
Speaker 1: that come about out of necessity, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think necessity and nostalgia are inextricably intertwined here. So I
Speaker 1: guess I guess the next question would be what is
Speaker 1: the what is the future of spam? Are they slowing up?
Speaker 1: Are they speeding up? I think they they're in a
Speaker 1: good place. I definitely don't think that they need to
Speaker 1: be worried. I Hawaiians love it. They're going to keep
Speaker 1: the market going. Um. Like we said, these fancier restaurants,
Speaker 1: and this is a trend. We see a lot where
Speaker 1: the combination of high end and low end. I've seen
Speaker 1: around Atlanta government cheese at really nice restaurants pretty frequently.
Speaker 1: So I don't think they have to be worried. What
Speaker 1: they should be worried about is theft. That's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about this? Yes,
Speaker 1: we love well. I can't speak for you, but I
Speaker 1: love I love a good high story. Do you love
Speaker 1: a good high story? Now you were wrong. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: have spoken. Of course, I love a good high story,
Speaker 1: especially when it involves an absurd potted meat a spam
Speaker 1: high story is it's up there. That's a good one. Lately,
Speaker 1: there have been a spate of spam thefts in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: In one account, three women filled a cart with eighteen
Speaker 1: cans of spam at a drug store and made a
Speaker 1: dash for the exit. But this customer, he just planted
Speaker 1: himself in front of the doors and said, what are
Speaker 1: you doing with that spam? He didn't say that, but
Speaker 1: along those lines, and they made a run for it,
Speaker 1: and they did not succeed in their heist, but enough
Speaker 1: people have that now some stores have started storing their
Speaker 1: cans of spam locked in those plastic cases that are
Speaker 1: typically used for expensive items electronics. Yeah, now spam is
Speaker 1: back there. You have to go ask for key. The
Speaker 1: reason for this is super interesting. It has to do
Speaker 1: with a change in the law in Hawaii where I
Speaker 1: think like in the past theft up to three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars was considered a felony, and then they raised it
Speaker 1: to seven hundred, So you could steal up to seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars worth of spam and it would be just
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor if they caught you. But also it's like,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna, you know, track down the purp
Speaker 1: if you don't catch them doing it. And the fact
Speaker 1: that this famous spam shelf stability means that you don't
Speaker 1: have to fence it right away. You can sit on
Speaker 1: your stash for a while. And this great article from
Speaker 1: grub Street that you turned us onto Annie Hawaiian grocery
Speaker 1: stores reportedly overrun with spam bandits spammed its um that
Speaker 1: it's it's like an epidemic, and it's a lot largely
Speaker 1: the article can jectures folks are stealing the stuff so
Speaker 1: that they can flip it and buy drugs. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's so flippable because the market for spam in Hawaii
Speaker 1: is like through the roof. Yeah. Tina Yamaki, the president
Speaker 1: of Retailed Merchants of Hawaii, calls it organized retail crime,
Speaker 1: and she she's spoken a lot about the spam black
Speaker 1: market and how you can buy spam out of somebody's car,
Speaker 1: like out of their trunk. Wow, it's just you know,
Speaker 1: usually if I see somebody with a ton of canned
Speaker 1: meat in their trunk standing by the side of the road,
Speaker 1: my first instinct isn't to ask them how much and
Speaker 1: what the going prices. You clearly are not a spam fan, Ben,
Speaker 1: I'm not. You know what I'm I can say safely.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan, but I don't think I'm built to
Speaker 1: be a spam tycoon. I hope they're out there somewhere
Speaker 1: in Hawaii. I hope there's a black market spam tycoon.
Speaker 1: And I hope that you are listening to this show.
Speaker 1: We want to make God have mercy on your soul.
Speaker 1: You gotta have mercy on your spam. I think we
Speaker 1: all want to hear spam recipes from listeners if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of spam. Well, speaking of spam recipes, when
Speaker 1: we talked about like how the Hormeil company is doing
Speaker 1: and moving forward or whatever, well they've really embraced a
Speaker 1: lot of this kitch surrounding spam and like the Massu
Speaker 1: bees and all that, and they have like recipes on
Speaker 1: their site. For this fantastic national geographic article by April
Speaker 1: Fulton shows some images of some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. One of them is a Hello Kiddie
Speaker 1: Spam musubie that they show you how to make um.
Speaker 1: They also have a tour, a national tour called the
Speaker 1: Tiny House of Sizzle Tour where they are shopping around
Speaker 1: the whole us of a um a spicy spam breakfast
Speaker 1: burrito recipe made by their chef Jordan's and Dino, and
Speaker 1: it's like a traveling link Spam food truck, sort of
Speaker 1: the way you see the Oscar Meyer wiener Uh mobile
Speaker 1: or whatever. So you know, Spam's not slowing down. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're rising to the occasion. They're adapting to the times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're adapting times. They always haven't want to show you, guys.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite pictures, so Annie on this show.
Speaker 1: We love vintage advertise too, So Spam Dandy is one
Speaker 1: of my one of my favorites. And they have these
Speaker 1: collections of all their ads that have the exact nostalgia
Speaker 1: tone um for anybody who enjoyed our previous episode on
Speaker 1: what was It? Noal? Was it meat jello? Yeah, aspects
Speaker 1: and also just like various savory gelatin dishes that were
Speaker 1: very popular as like centerpieces and made you seem like
Speaker 1: you really had your homemaking skills in order. And spam,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's all part of this, like the food
Speaker 1: of the Future movement. Oh, we'll just eat out of tins,
Speaker 1: and that's super progressive and like shows that we have
Speaker 1: money or something. Even though it was cheap and gelatine
Speaker 1: was cheap, it was a very odd dichotomy and that
Speaker 1: really interesting to look back on. Gelatin Just when you
Speaker 1: see pictures of those things at the center of a
Speaker 1: dining table, it strikes me as love crafty and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest, it's something from like the Dark beyond
Speaker 1: the stars. Oh, I love looking at a good aspect
Speaker 1: or meat jelly. They're they're hilarious and they are that
Speaker 1: interesting intersection of At the time, if you didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of money, you wanted to put a lot
Speaker 1: of work and artistry into a thing to show that
Speaker 1: you were successful and that you could afford to do this.
Speaker 1: But it was a cheap food thing. It was everyone
Speaker 1: was participating in kind of this masquerade, of this facade.
Speaker 1: And and spam is a similar food in that it
Speaker 1: does have that futuristic it'll last forever vibe, but it's
Speaker 1: very cheap. And during the recent recession in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: because of this, spam saw an increase of sales of
Speaker 1: ten because yeah, it is a food that that people
Speaker 1: people can't afford and there aren't strict numbers, but according
Speaker 1: to the Hormel website UM they estimate of point eight
Speaker 1: cans of spam are consumed every second across the planet.
Speaker 1: Mostly that's not even to speak of the ones that
Speaker 1: are just hoarded in a bombshell right or in the
Speaker 1: trunk of a Cadillac driving so where near you. I
Speaker 1: love it. Well. I don't know about you, guys, but
Speaker 1: I'm filled with gratitude at the end of this episode
Speaker 1: for you, Annie. My heart is just bursting out of
Speaker 1: my chest with gratitude, clearly more gratitude than either Been
Speaker 1: or Casey are capable of mustering. Annie, I wasn't really
Speaker 1: listening when Nolan is talking about I do want to
Speaker 1: say thank you so much for coming on the episode.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, no, I think we're both really happy that
Speaker 1: you took the time here and uh taught us so
Speaker 1: much about spam. I'm wondering if I'm going to cook
Speaker 1: something this weekend. We've talked so much about it. I
Speaker 1: feel like we've almost in a way consumed it ourselves
Speaker 1: just by exploring this concept. I think we should do
Speaker 1: a potted meat like uh pot luck. Let's do it Look,
Speaker 1: it would be a pollock potted potted meat. Look, this
Speaker 1: is the office to host such an event. There would
Speaker 1: be very creative concoctions behind the curtain. Folks. We recently
Speaker 1: hung out after work and had a game night where
Speaker 1: we learned. Uh. Well I think you already knew all
Speaker 1: the games, Annie, but we both learned some really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: So shout out to Dix it right, Dix it fun
Speaker 1: to say, fun to play. That should be their tagline.
Speaker 1: That should have it. You're gonna give it to them
Speaker 1: for free? Well, I don't know. They can send me
Speaker 1: some some swag, some mugs or something. You guys can have.
Speaker 1: It was so fun, it was It was really really
Speaker 1: enjoy and it was a successful game nine. I look
Speaker 1: forward to doing it again, um, but I also look
Speaker 1: forward to having you Annie on the show again. Yes, please,
Speaker 1: yes please. This was so this was so much fun. Yes,
Speaker 1: We're so glad you enjoyed. Uh. I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of food history, as you know from some of our
Speaker 1: works outside of this show. But in the meantime, before
Speaker 1: you make another return appearance, where can our listeners here
Speaker 1: more of your work with how Stuff Works? You can
Speaker 1: find me um over at Favor podcast your Internet humans,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can find it, but I will say
Speaker 1: it's Savor without the you. So for the non American
Speaker 1: listeners among you. Um, and I also am a co
Speaker 1: host of a show called Stuff Mom Never Told You,
Speaker 1: which you can google Google right away and you'll find it.
Speaker 1: Fantastic shows. Do check them out, Uh, the shows that
Speaker 1: I personally listened to in my free time. So okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want a fanboy out too much, but maybe
Speaker 1: i'll ask your autograph after the show. I definitely listened
Speaker 1: to the Spam episode today and crypt most of my
Speaker 1: notes of this episode from that episode. So this is
Speaker 1: where that yeah mistake that consumes its tale. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we have more tales to tell. We had earlier said
Speaker 1: that we would be exploring some more spooky stories as
Speaker 1: we lead up to Halloween, So tune in next time
Speaker 1: when we delve into of this strange story of well mummies,
Speaker 1: yeah Mexican mummies to be precise. And in the meantime,
Speaker 1: like to thank casey our superproducer Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 1: our theme, research associates Christopher Hasciodas and Eve's Jeff Code
Speaker 1: and Ben as usual I'd like to throw a little
Speaker 1: thanks your way, my friend, and just being you, I
Speaker 1: would like to treat that thanks like a boomerang, add
Speaker 1: some extra thanks to it, and make sure it gets
Speaker 1: right back to you. Why do you guys have to
Speaker 1: want up be on the thanks my man? I just
Speaker 1: like hanging outright. We'll see you next time, folks,