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Two people claimed to know everything about something, but only one knows anything.
Lucky kids live on Mars and go to school flying cars.
Or at least they will one day. Believe me, I'm a historian.
An astronaut or driver, DeLorean. Would I lie?
It's hard to say Big Fit! Can you spot the light?
Big Fit! Some pigs can fly! Big Fit! And if you ask me why, can you trust the answer?
From Berryville, Virginia, this is The Big Fit.
And now, here's your host, Deborah Goldstein.
Welcome to The Big Fib, the game show where kids choose between the sweet and plummy flower of truth. and the drooping sour grapes of life.
I'm your host, Deborah Goldstein, and in the studio today is our sound effects robot, Lisa.
His name stands for live in studio audience.
I got one. I got one. I got one, definitely.
You got one, what? A listener question. I got one.
Oh, I see. Now I understand why you're so excited.
Please do play it for us. Okay, let me just twist this dial.
Wrong dial. Okay. Oh, this is the one. Here we go.
Hi Lisa, Bridget here from Australia. I want to know how robots go into sleep mode.
Do you count electric sheep? Hmm, great question.
Do you count electric sheep to go into sleep mode, Lisa?
You know, I gotta be honest with you, Bridget.
Can I call you Bridget? Bridget, it... I'm gonna just call you Bridget.
I've actually never tried to count electric sheep, but let me see here, just upload this file and flip this switch.
Okay then. One electric sheep. Two electric sheep.
Three... four... Lisa? Lisa? Lisa? Oh my goodness.
He fell asleep. I'd better turn off this sound file.
Lisa, Lisa, wake up. Okay, mom, what? Sorry, I must have dozed off there.
Okay, well, I guess that answers that question.
Well, what question was that? That you can go into sleep mode counting electric sheep.
Again? Are you sure? I should probably try this out.
No, I don't know. I think we need to wait until all your programs load now that you're out of sleep mode.
And you'll remember that in fact you can fall asleep counting electric sheep, but I don't think we need to wait for you to tell our listeners.
How are game works? Well, electric sheep, I miss you already.
Every week, we bring on two grownups. One. is an expert.
The other is a... wow. This really hurts me to say it.
The other is a liar. And it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who was who.
Because no one could spot a liar better than a kid.
At least we hope. I mean we put it on the side of the wall and the big sign and if it would be wrong we'd have to change the sign.
Okay. What are we lying about today, Deborah?
We are lying about berries, simple fruits with fleshy pulp and seeds.
Lisa, you like berries, don't you? Oh yeah, I always put a handful of berries in my llama smoothies and they really bring out the tartness of the llama for delicious.
Mmm, tasty. Okay, well, let's find out if our contestant also likes berries and smoothies.
Lisa, who is our contestant today? Our human child contestant is an 11-year-old who has seen every Marvel movie and likes eating pasta with her face a mealy of Frank.
Okay. Welcome, Amelia. Okay, did Lisa say that correctly?
You like to eat pasta with your face? Yeah.
Can you explain why that is? I did a challenge with my friend at camp where we had to eat a whole bowl of spaghetti with our faces and it was really fun.
Now, I'm not a human, but my understanding is that all humans eat with their faces.
I think she means without any utensils. Is that correct, Amelia?
Yeah. Stick your face in. Oh. Oh, Debra Goldstein style, yeah.
No, I don't do that. I do think that would be a lot of fun.
So does that mean that every time you have pasta, you eat it with your face and know utensils?
Sadly no. Oh, that is sad. But I do enjoy imagining you doing it at all.
And you have seen every Marvel movie. Do you have a favorite one or a favorite character?
My favorite movies are Captain Marvel and Ant-Man.
I like Ant-Man because I always love my accent. growing up and then to think that she could be a superhero and then she would always have like gum in her purse and she if you didn't have gum she would give it to you.
Okay, different end, but all right, it's good to make the connection.
All right, well, we want to know some more fun facts about you, Amelia. and to get into the spirit of the game, we're going to do it by playing two truths and allow you, Amelia.
We'll tell us three facts about yourself.
Two of those facts will be true. One will be a lie.
And we will try to figure out which one is the lie.
Amelia, what are your three facts? I'm fluent in Russian.
I have a little sister and I take Taigwondo lessons.
Can I ask you a question there? Yeah. What is your sister's name?
No, no, you can't do that. That's cheating.
No, no, no, no, no. Oh, I was attempting to cheat.
I see that. Instead, we're just going to think about which one of those things sounded like a lie.
What do you think, Lisa? She's fluent in Russian and I know that there are people who speak Russian So that's probably true.
She has a little sister, but she refused to say her sister's name because she said that was cheating.
Oh, you said that. Yes, I did. I just feel like the Taekwondo thing, if she did take Taekwondo, she would probably be fighting bad guys right now.
I see. And I'm not seeing any bad guy fighting, so I think that's the lie.
So I think that one's probably the lie. Okay Amelia, which one of those three facts is actually a lie?
I don't have a little sister. I have a little brother.
Oh, nice one. Interesting. Oh, that's why she wouldn't tell me her sister's name.
And what is your little brother's name? His name is Julian.
Shout out to Julian, hi Julian, which means, wait a minute, that means you take Taekwondo lessons and you are fluent in Russian?
Yes. How do you say podcast in Russian?
I bet you don't know that. Actually, I think it's just podcast with a Russian accent.
Fantastic, that's amazing. I wish I could say a few words to you in Russian, but da is all I have.
All right, let's get on with the game, I think.
We're talking about berries today. Amelia, do you like berries?
Yes, I like berries. You do? Me too. I like berries a lot.
Do you put them in smoothies? Yeah. Lama smoothies?
No. They're really good. Well, now that we've established that we like berries in smoothies and outside of smoothies, we're going to get on with our game.
Okay, Lisa, can we get some music for our berries experts?
I'm talking about the fruit, not the guy who lives down the street named Barry Our first expert is Marvin Pritz.
Marvin, please introduce yourself to Amelia.
Hi Amelia. My name is Marvin and I'm a professor of horticulture.
Our next expert is Nima Singh Mason. Nima, please introduce yourself to Amelia.
Hi Amelia, I'm Nima Singh Mason and I am a fruit hybrid scientist.
I also am a lecturer with the Indian Institute of Horticulture and the North Carolina State University.
Thank you very much! Tell us about those sounds you foraged, Lisa.
Oh, I foraged for some hot seed beads. Nice.
That is correct. That's when we put our experts on the hot seat while they answer Amelia's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat first?
Nima Singh Mason because she has punctuation in her name, and so do I. Mmm, I like that thinking.
Okay, very good. Amelia, you are going to ask Nima your first question, and then after that, you can ask questions to whomever you like, okay?
So what is your first question for Nima?
What is your favorite berry themed dessert?
My favorite berry themed dessert is Banofi Pie with Cream.
And that's because banana is a berry. Bet you didn't know that.
What? I didn't know that. What's going, Debra?
What's going, Debra, come on. She just basically said she was the liar.
I mean, pretty much. Bananas aren't berries.
Explain yourself, Mima. Explain yourself.
What is a berry? It's a fleshy fruit with many seeds in it.
What does a banana have? does have fleshy fruit.
And seeds in it, the black spots that you see are fruit.
So by classification, bananas are berries.
Did you know that to Amelia? Yes, I did.
Everybody, everybody knew this? Deborah, did you know that?
I didn't know that. I thought it was just a fruit.
I gotta update my banana email list. So many things I need to learn.
This is for both of you. What is horticulture?
Yeah, that's a good question. Who would like to answer that one first?
I can take that one, Amelia. So horticulture is the art and science. of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, ornamental trees, and grass.
And it's distinguished from agronomy, which is the cultivation of field crops like corn and wheat and soybeans.
So at universities, Like Neiman and I work at, you know, we sort of divide that into two groups.
And there's the horticulturists that work on what we would call specialty crops, and then the agronomists that work on what we would call field crops.
Do you get along? Hey, you horticulturalist!
Get out of here! This is a gary town! We do get along.
Get your specialist plants out of here! We're field plan people!
Well, some of that does happen occasionally.
Oh, my. This question is for both of you.
What is a normal day like at your job? Okay, wake up crying.
Okay, no, first of all, Lisa, she's asking the experts.
And second of all, I really hope that that's not true, but let's put a pin in that one.
All right, since Marvin answered first, The last time I'm gonna have Nima answer first this time.
Okay, what's a normal day like at your job Nima?
So I am a fruit hybrid scientist. So a normal day looks like me going out into the field, finding new berries and fruits that haven't been documented.
Some of them don't even have names in English yet.
So I find them, I bring them back to the lab.
I look at all the characteristics, try to give them a name in English.
And then I look at which other fruits I can hybrid grow them with so that I can get super fruits. or fruits that are able to grow in certain weather conditions or have certain characteristics like they may be sweeter than the original fruits.
So basically you just discover a new type of barrier through every single day.
Not every single day. We do have a huge list of berries that are already in the queue that need to be named in English.
So by the time we work through that, it's going to take a lot of time.
I'm talking about decades. Just calling them all frank and then, you know, take the rest of the week off.
That's a good idea. I like that. Maybe that's the next Marvel movie.
Superfruit. in search of Frank. Very good.
And over to you, Marvin. So my job consists of three parts.
And one is teaching students and other is doing research on berry crops.
And the third component is extension where we work with farmers and advise them.
So no day is the same as the other, but usually they consist of parts of each of those three components.
I might be teaching a class, I might be helping at a conference for growers, or I might be going out into the field and doing research and helping my graduate students.
So that would be a typical day. Amelia, what is your next question and for whom?
Again, for both of you. What is the scariest or most exciting thing that has happened at your job? working in the lab can get a bit boring.
But this one time we do tests on seeds to see what kind of weather conditions they can sort of lived through.
So we have a bunch of seeds that have gone through all of this testing.
They've been heated, they've been roasted, they've been subjected to radiation tests and so they're dead.
All these seeds are dead. And we have a bin in the corner of our lab where we throw all of the seeds.
And we just kept throwing these seeds that we thought were dead.
And one day the intern looked in and saw these really weird leaves and tendrils growing out of it.
And everybody in the lab freaked out because we thought we had started the first mutants. zombie plant.
But that just lasted for two minutes because it turns out the other lab was dumping their seeds into our bin as well.
And so those seeds were in depth, so it just happened to grow.
Crisis averted. Very interesting. Okay, over to you, Marvin.
When I was in graduate school, I was doing my PhD research on blueberries.
And blueberries are a native plant that grows throughout the northern part of the United States.
And I was at Michigan State University. And oftentimes we would take trips to explore and look for new fruits, at least do cultivars or new genotypes of blueberries. in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and around all these wild places and sometimes we would go and get stuck out in the middle of the wild or we would get lost.
And that was probably the most exciting thing specifically related to blueberries.
But because I teach, I often arrange for trips to different places. during spring break or during our January break to look at agriculture and berry growing and things like that.
And I've been on trips with students before where we've discovered really cool things to do like jumping off a cliff in Belize. or intertubing down rivers through the jungle, or my favorite was riding a toboggan down the side of a volcano in Nicaragua.
Wow. Who knew horticulture could take you all around the world doing such amazing things?
Have you ever been to this place called a grocery store?
They have like a lot of berries there, and you're allowed to bargain.
Have you a water ski down a waterfall? I have water skied and I have jumped off of waterfalls but I have not water skied down a waterfall.
Only wild. All right, Amelia, what is your next question?
And for whom? For Nima. How do you juice a berry?
I like using a cold press machine. I don't like using a blender because that generates heat and makes the berries taste weird.
So yeah, you use a cold pressed juicer. Okay, for Marvin.
What is the weirdest bearing you've ever eaten?
I think probably the word is very is a cross between a black current and a gooseberry.
They're both in the same genus, and you can cross them, even though they're different species.
And you get this really unusual black, fruited, big sweet fruit that's just really unusual to taste and see.
Okay, do you have some more questions, Amelia?
Marvin, what is the weirdest use of berries that you've ever seen?
People do extract the anthocyanins from the fruit and use it for dye.
So you can dye clothing. with berries, dye fabric, and weave it. into a scarf or something like that.
So I don't know if you can say that weird, but it's a use that most people don't think of when they think of berries.
Yeah, and then you can eat the scarf. Oh my gosh.
I think this is an excellent idea. And it's an ass.
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It's time for the shorts on by-around when our experts have to answer as many questions as they can before time runs out.
Lisa is going to set a timer for the first expert.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
And then Amelia will ask questions until Lisa's timer sounds.
Then Lisa resets the timer for our next expert to do the same.
Experts, this is a fast paced round. Try not to choke, Barry.
Amelia. We are going to start with Nima.
You can ask your shorts on fire questions now.
Blueberries, cranberries, both of them actually.
Which small red berries come from Tibet and Mongolia and are known as happy berries?
Goji berries? What kind of bee is best for pollinating blueberries in North America? the wild bumblebee native to North America.
What is the scientific name for a plant that produces berries?
Backs if it is. The boys and berry is a crop between what two berries?
I would say black berry and Logan berry.
Which famous Barry writes the song that makes the whole world sing?
Chuck Berry? I don't know this one. Do all Barry's have seeds?
Yes they do. What is your favorite berry?
Oh, my favorite berry has to be the wishberry.
This is a Korean berry that has the consistency of cooked rice.
It confuses my brain each time I eat. And that is time.
Lisa, please restart your timer for Marvin.
Hey, Timer. Reset from Marvin. Okay, I'll do it.
It's reset. Okay. Amelia, you can ask your questions for Marvin now.
Name a health benefit of berries. Berries often have more vitamin C per weight than even oranges, and they have all sorts of antioxidants in them.
What kind of berries are pumpkin? Pumpkin is called a curbit because it's related to cucumbers and it has that same kind of structure.
Witchberry is one of the 12 sacred life medicines to the Navajo people.
The Strawberry, it has an important role in with many indigenous peoples in their religions and beliefs.
Which famous Barry was actually the first automatic electronic digital computer?
I have to pass on that one. I don't know.
I know that was my ex-girlfriend that was Blackberry.
We'll see about that. Go ahead. Who is known as the mother of the blueberry industry?
That would be Elizabeth White from New Jersey.
That is actually true. That ruling was made in 1893 because of his argument between Mexico and the United States about importing Vegetables.
The Supreme Court ruled that it was a vegetable because we eat it like a vegetable.
What berry can you find in Swedish meatballs and come from the Arctic Tundra?
Those are called Liggan berries. And that is time.
Okay, I'm sorry, I have an update. That's time.
Very good. All right, it's decision time.
Amelia must germinate the decision while using all the information she's heard today.
Amelia, who is our big fiver? I think Marvin is the fibber.
Why do you think Marvin is our fibber? In fact, he said we're very, like, unbelievable, and some of them I know were false.
And he also seemed too confident of his answers, like he practiced them.
Because he doesn't actually know. Uh-huh, he practiced.
I see. Do you any facts off the top of your head that were... dubious or that you weren't sure about or that you were outright false?
I do number and also I don't think that jumping down a waterfall has anything to do with very studying.
Even on your travels to look for berries in other places.
You probably hike down the side. Okay. Okay, very interesting.
I like how much thought you've put into this Amelia.
Very good. Let's see. All right. Will the actual berry expert please tell us who you are?
I'm Marvin Pritz. I'm a professor of horticulture at Cornell University.
I've been working with berries for 37 years at Cornell and prior to that I got my PhD in blueberries.
And in between, I grew strawberries for 14 years.
Wow! I just don't know what to believe anymore, Deborah.
I know, this is blowing my mind. Alright, it's time to do some fact checking.
Marvin, what were the facts that Nima shared that made you a blueberry?
Yeah, so the blueberry breeders don't really search for unusual unnamed berries in the wild to bring into cultivation.
First of all, most berries they grow other places so you'd be pretty limited if you just stuck to the local area to look for new varieties of berries and then once you find them there's crossing and selection has to go on for maybe 20, 25 years before you choose a new variety.
So it's quite a long process. So it's not as simple as going out. and finding the germ class and then giving it a new name.
It's quite involved. Yeah, Nima, it's much more complicated than that.
I know now. Okay, Mima, what facts did you share that were pure pulp fiction?
Oh, definitely, as Marvin pointed out, this entire process, I just, yeah, exactly like how Marvin said, I imagine like catching a wild animal naming it and really see it back into the forest.
And now I know that that's not how berries work.
Wishberry, which is my favorite berry, is not a berry.
Oh, I wish it were. It's a Silicon Valley startup.
Very good. All right. Well just for your information the famous Barry who writes the song that makes the whole world sing is Barry Manolo and also I was just curious about this Elizabeth White Marvin, known as the mother of Blueberry.
What is that about? Well, back in the 17-1800s, when the Europeans came over here, they found blueberries because they're native to North America. and they would go out in the woods and pick them and bring them to the house and all they tasted really good and Elizabeth White was a cranberry grower but she thought I mean, these blueberries that are growing in a while would be really good to develop into more of a cultivated crop.
So she would pay her workers if they could find blueberries in the wild. that were bigger than what her ring finger could fit over.
And she would have those dug up and brought to her place and had a collection of them.
Then a scientist from the USDA, George Darrow, met with her and saw this and said, this is a wonderful collection.
He started to make some crosses and some selections. to develop the first really domesticated varieties of blueberries.
And those were distributed and sold, and some of those varieties are still grown today from those original selections from Elizabeth White.
Well, thank you, Elizabeth White. Well, we've come to the end of our show when we need not stew over anymore facts.
Thanks to our contestant Amelia for her. very insightful questions.
Thank you to our expert and liar, Marvin and Nima and to Lisa for his sporadic sounds, and of course many thanks to our listeners tuning into the Big Fit where we preserve the truth and never seed to lies.
The Big Fib is a production of Gen Z Media.
For more great shows, visit cheesymshows.com.
And hold on, while you're there, you can send questions for me to read on Ask Lisa.
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Okay, hold on and follow us on social media at the big fit podcast for behind the scenes photos and more true facts.
And now I'm going to eat this scarf.
