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Learn more at Capella.edu. 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 Me, I'm a historian An astronaut or driver, DeLorean Would I lie?
It's hard to say Can you spot the light?
Can you spot the light? Can you spot the light?
Can you spot the light? from Oyster Bay, New York.
This is The Big Fib. And now, here's your host.
Never a gold scene! I'm your host, Deborah Goldstein, and in the studio today is our sound effects robot Lisa, whose name stands for live in studio audience.
And this robot has something for Y-O-U. Oh, me?
That's so nicely, so that's not even my birthday.
Oh, no. What I've got is not just for you.
It's a gift for everyone. Oh, I see. Well, that's especially nice of you too.
What is it? It's a listener question for me to answer.
Well, that's not really a gift for us, is it?
Oh, Deborah, of course it is, because I shall gift you all with valuable information about me.
Wouldn't you say that was a pretty special gift?
Surely, Si would. Why don't you go ahead and share that gift with all of us right now?
Great, I'll just play it here by adjusting this knob.
I am pushing this button. Hello, my name's Aila.
What would you ask yourself if you asked an Aislesha?
Well, that can't be an easy question for you, Lisa.
You'd have to guess what listeners would most want to know about you and you don't know what they don't already know, right?
Okay, okay, Deborah. It's pretty easy. First time I asked me, how did you get so smart?
To which I'd have to say equal parts, hard wiring and hard work.
And then I'd have to say follow-up question Lisa Do you think there's a robot on the planet that is more talented and skilled than you are to which of course I truthfully yet humbly answer no No, no, no, no, no, no.
Okay, of course not, of course not, short.
And I couldn't let myself leave without leaning in for one such as...
Any advice for the young up-and-coming robots of the world who want to be just like you?
And I'd have to answer if you want to know all the secrets to my success.
You can purchase my new autobiography. Lisa knows what you need to know.
You can send me a check or bend on me $37.95.
I am $37 more for your time. Or maybe they can wait until you've actually written the book before you take any money from anyone.
That seems like a waste of time, but okay.
Okay, and in the meantime, you can keep doing what you know how to do so well, telling everyone how our game works.
Little secret to telling everyone how our game works is also in my book.
Lisa knows what you need to know. Okay, but you're also going to tell everybody right now, right?
Well... Yeah, I guess we can use the explanation as a pull quote for the book cover everyone's gonna like it Okay, so every week we bring on two grown-ups one is an expert the other Just really hurts me to say this.
The other is a liar. And it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who was who.
There's no one who can spot a liar better than a kid.
What are we lying about today? We are lying about crackers, flat, dry baked foods that we made with flour and water.
Lisa, you like crackers, don't you? Oh yeah, crackers are super tasty, especially after they been under my pillow for about a week.
Nothing like powdery crumbs of stale crackers when you first wake up in the morning.
Oh. especially if I remember to leave like a Parmesan cheese milkshake under the bed to drink so I can wash down those crackers with cheesy cheesy Parmesan.
That sounds delicious, I know. Yes, delicious.
Okay, well, I'm thinking you will learn about other delicious ways to eat crackers with our contestant.
Who would our contestant be today, Lisa?
Our human child contestant is a nine year old who loves soups and stews and is learning karate.
Mercy Shepherd. Hi, Mercy. How are you today?
Good. Excellent. I'm so glad to hear it.
Tell me, you love soups and stews. Are there any in particular that you like?
Tomato soup is really good. Yum, I love that.
And do you eat it with like something on the side or just the soup?
I usually have some bread on the side. Mmm.
That sounds delicious. Is there any kind of soup you don't like?
Maybe something like an... I don't know.
No, all soups. If there's any existing soup...
That's not made of something I like. Right.
Like what would be something you don't like that you wouldn't want in your soup?
Cottage cheese. Fingernails. Like a fingernail powder?
Oh, that sounds disgusting, frankly. Yeah, it's not good.
But cottage cheese soup also doesn't sound very tasty either.
But I bet there are probably some soups that would taste really good with crackers too.
Do you like crackers? Yes, especially stuff like Cheez It.
Mmm, those sound good. Yes, I'm getting really hungry.
Okay, well, we want to know a little bit more about you, Mercy, but you know we're going to do it playing our game, Two Truths and a Lie, right?
Yes. Yes. You are going to tell us three facts.
Two of those facts will be true. One will be a lie, and we're going to try to figure out if you are a good liar.
Mercy, what are your three facts? I am writing a story that is 70 pages long so far.
I'm a Yankees fan or my brother and I and a friend have raised $100 for people on need in Ukraine. for people in need in Ukraine.
Oh my gosh. Well, I kind of want all of that to be true that she's writing a story that she's a Yankees hand and raising money for people.
What do you think Lisa? Okay. So, no one's gonna come on the show and lie about raising money for people, so that one's gotta be true.
Oh, okay. Alright, so no one is gonna claim to be a Yankees fan if they're not a Yankees fan. because the Yankees organization has a whole secret ninja group, and if you claim to be a Yankees fan, if you're not, then they take spray paint. and then they ride on your front door, not N-O-T in big red letters, and she doesn't want that.
I don't think that really happens. No, but here's the thing, I know the lie because no one has ever written a story that's longer than like a page and a half.
That's the longest I've ever read, so I'm pretty sure that 70 pages is live.
Thank you next. Okay, but your book that you're writing is more than a page and a half, isn't it?
Oh, that I'm writing? Yes. Oh, well, I'm still in the outline phase, but right now it's about four sentences.
Good to know. Okay. So you think the lie is that she's writing a book that's 70 pages long so far.
Who could even read that much? Okay, Mercy, what is your lie?
I'm not a Yankees fan. Oh, look at her shirt.
Her top is actually a top that says red socks.
For any of you listening, we've got some red socks found in the house.
Woohoo! Well you better watch your front door because it's about to be spray painted red and OT.
That is not going to happen. In my book that 70 pages long I wrote that a few days ago so now it's 80 pages.
Wow, 80 pages, what is it about? It's about a Jewish graffiti from Austria who comes to America during World War II.
Oh my gosh, that's heavy. That sounds a little like it might be a little sad.
Is it a little sad? Yeah, a little. Oh dear.
Do you have a working title for this book so that when it's published, we can all go get it?
Well, I've been calling it baseball candidate, but I think I make call it something else when I am actually finished with it.
Okay, you'll let us know, right? Because you can self-publish that and then we'll all download a copy.
And that also means that you have in fact raised money for people in the Ukraine.
Can you tell us a little bit about that too?
So we raised $50, then we were talking about that to my friend and he just showed up at the door with $50 that he had earned shoveling snow.
Wow, resourceful friends! This is really great, and you sent them to the Ukraine for any particular reason?
Well one of them was for like homeless children and two of them was for wounded warriors.
That's amazing. Really, I just want to wish you the best of luck with all of your efforts and thank you for everything that you're doing to help people out, Mercy, and thank your friends too.
Okay, well, those were some fantastic facts and a really good lie there, Mercy.
I think you're ready for this show for sure.
We're going to learn some more about crackers from our cracker experts.
Lisa, can we get some music for our cracker experts?
Ah yes, loading cracker music in three, two, one.
That was me eating crackers. Thank you so much.
Okay, our first expert is Bradley Kagan.
Bradley, please introduce yourself to Mercy.
Hello, Mercy. My name is Bradley Kagan, and I'm a commercial baker.
Thank you very much, Bradley. Let's meet our second expert, Madeline Star.
Madeline, please introduce yourself to Mercy.
Hi Mercy, I'm Madeline and I'm a food scientist focusing on crackers.
Thank you very much! What did those snappy sounds tell us, Lisa?
They are snapping out the sonification of...
Oh, hot seat time. Yes, it's hot seat time.
That's when we put our experts on the hot seat while they answer Mercy's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat first?
Madeline Star because I love astronomy. That's a good reason.
I like that. Okay, Mercy, you're going to ask Madeline your first question.
And after that, you can ask whichever expert, whatever questions you want.
So what is your first question for Madeline?
What does it typical day at your job look like so there's kind of two kinds of days that I have some days I go into what we call our office but it's a combination office and lab space.
So I'll go in, I'll have some meetings, and I'll get to spend some time in our labs, which look, if you looked at the equipment, most of it looks like something you'd find in your kitchen because we're working with food.
But there's also a lot of things that you'd find in a normal chemistry lab.
You've got the beakers, you've got the testing equipment, you've got very scientific looking things.
And I do a mix of things in the lab. Sometimes I look like I'm just baking, but then after I'm done, I might take it over to a piece of equipment.
I'll run it through. I'll test it. I'll see what the fat looks like.
I'll see what the salt looks like, things like that.
And then on other days, I go into what's called a pilot plant, which is a big building.
That's not quite as big as the plant or the factory where you would make the crackers, but it's not as small as your kitchen, so it's halfway in between.
And I get to play on miniature versions of the big equipment that normally makes crackers.
And I'll run a couple hundred pounds of something rather than a couple of thousand pounds of crackers. and test it and try different flavors and try making the color a little bit different or try changing the salt or the fat or something like that and see what can be done with the project that I'm working on that day.
Okay, and when do you feed it to Polly? That's the final test.
We don't do that until we're just about ready to launch it.
Then Polly gets that cracker and we really let her tell us what she thinks.
Cause I keep getting text messages and it's just like, she's like, Paulie wants a cracker, Paulie wants a crack.
And I'm like, listen, I'll ask the experts, okay?
Paulie, if you're listening, I miss you.
That was an excellent answer. Thank you so much.
Mercy, take it away. Bradley, I have the same question for you.
So my company is called Kagan's Best Bakery and we're located in Brooklyn, New York.
We are fourth generation bakers and we are a high producing manufacturing facility. which uses machines, ovens, and other equipment to produce mass goods.
I'm the CEO of the company. And so every day I meet with our clients to make sure that they are getting what they want.
We make crackers for lots of different companies like Goldfish, makers crackers wheat things but every day the fun part about the job is the actual baking right.
So every day I'd like to get onto the floor, get out of my office, roll up my sleeves and bake with the bakers because that's how I started.
When my father and his father were there, I started on the on the line with the coil conveyor belts where all the crackers would go down.
And then I worked with the horseshoe mixer, which is the industrial grade mixer that mixes up the flour and everything. and all the different ovens, the grade one ovens and the grade two ovens.
And I think it's really important for everybody in our company to love the art of baking.
Thank you very much. Bradley, what machinery is used to make crackers?
There's a lot of machinery that makes crackers, especially at a big industrial plant like ours.
I would say three types of machinery that you have to have.
You have to have mixers. You have to have sheeting equipment, which is what puts the crackers into big sheets, which get cut later.
And then you have to have ovens to do the baking.
But at a factory like ours, there are lots of other kinds of machines, lots of different things.
There are cutting stations, which cut the large sheets of crackers. there are resulting shooters for packaging which gets the crackers into the packaging and then sometimes you have cooling fridges which cools down the crackers after they come out so you can make more.
Right? Because if you're waiting for the crackers to cool down, it's going to take forever.
So we use cooling fridges to cool them down a little bit quicker, get them into the packaging, and get them out.
As I said, those are really the big three kinds of things, but there's tons of other things.
There's 15 different kinds of mixers. I told you I started with the horseshoe mixer, but now they've got much more modern types of mixers that are faster and stronger. and just work better for our factory.
Madeline, what's the difference between brand name crackers and generic crackers?
A lot of times, they're made at different places.
Sometimes they're actually even made at the same place, but the store brand might use less expensive ingredients or might have the fanciest cheeses in it or something like that. whereas the name brand might use more expensive ingredients.
But realistically, a lot of those products are made at a place like Bradley's talking about. or they might be made at a different facility, one of his competitors.
And depending on who can offer the better price, the cheaper one might become the store brand and the more expensive one might become the name brand.
But it's about ownership and understanding the formula.
Name brands are made by people who really are focused on the formula, whereas store brands, they're still very, very good.
There's no reason not to eat a store brand, but they might be made by a company who's not necessarily paying attention to it because they're making the crackers for these guys.
They're making the tortilla chips for someone else.
They're making the chocolate covered cherries for a different store brand.
They're making a million different things, so it might not get as much attention from them as the name brand.
I'm gonna tell my dad you said this because he only likes original brain.
Yeah, and really it's down to whatever you like, right?
Madeline, there's no... Absolutely! There are definitely store brand products for other things, not necessarily crackers, where I think the store brand is better.
Ooh. This is for Bradley. How much waste do cracker factories produce?
In the old days, it used to be a lot. And it's because you sometimes make a batch that isn't right.
You know, when you cut crackers at the end of the day, there's still waste from the sides of it.
And there's also packaging. There's a lot of packaging waste about cutting the packaging and making sure it's the right shape.
But as I'm sure you know, in the last 10 to 15 years, there's been a big push for recycling.
And we've been doing the best that we can.
We work with a couple of green companies to make sure that some of our packaging that we don't use gets recycled.
We still have a long way to go, but we're doing our best.
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Okay, it's time for the shorts on fire round where our experts have to answer as many questions as they can before time runs out.
Lisa will set a timer for the first expert, and then Mercy will ask questions until Lisa's timer sounds.
Then Lisa resets the timer for our next expert to do the same.
Experts, no time for preheating. Mercy, let's start with Bradley.
You can ask your shorts on fire questions now.
Who made the first cracker? What crackers were in Shirley Temple soup?
Animal crackers from the Marx Brothers movie.
Which brand of crackers are the most popular in the US?
I don't know if you mean by gross sales or by unit sold, but I'm assuming you mean gross sales, um, saltines.
What are the holes in crackers called? Docking holes.
Where does the restaurant cracker bear rule get it to?
They used to mix their homemade crackers in these huge barrels like you age whiskey in, but they don't do that anymore.
What is caramel coated snack that comes in a box with a prize inside?
Cracker Jack. What kind of cracker do you need to make s'mores?
Graham crackers. What's your favorite cracker topping?
Well baked in, I like black pepper, but topped of course it's gotta be cheese, my favorite is smoked gouda.
What type of crackers served during the Jewish festival of Passover?
Matsu! During the US Civil War, which kind of crackers did the soldiers on both sides eat?
Steel pan crackers. They're also known as boot crackers, because that's where the soldiers hid them, or not hid them, kept them.
And that is time! Oh, sorry, I was just eating some crackers out of my boots.
Oh my gosh. I'll stop the timer. Thank you very much.
Can you reset the timer now? Yeah, I'm just a hold on.
Let me put these crackers back in my boot.
Mercy, you can ask your shorts on fire questions for Madeline now.
By weight, which is more nutritious brad or crackers.
That would be crackers. Which kind of cracker is this soda cracker?
It's a cracker that's also made with baking soda so that it rises a little bit like a saltine as a soda cracker.
What happens if you leave a bag of crackers open?
If you leave a bag of crackers open the crackers will start to get soggy and they won't taste very good.
What percentage of Americans ate crackers in 2020?
About 75 to 80 percent. Can you whistle while eating crackers?
You probably can, but you shouldn't. What is the Japanese name for rice crackers?
You, I actually don't know. Why do food testers eat crackers in between eating samplers? because it resets your palate so that you don't taste what you previously had.
It kind of like wipes away the flavor of the last thing you ate.
Our animal crackers really crackers. Animal crackers are probably closer to what we'd call a cookie, but I would say that yes, they're a sweet cracker.
Which bite-sized crackers do you find in a lot of soups and stirs?
Oyster crackers. How much cream do you use to make a dozen cream crackers?
You wouldn't use much because I don't think there's any actual cream in it.
It has to do with how you mix the butter together.
And that is time! That's all time. We'd like to hear more about what we can, I'm sorry.
Very good, well done, experts! Okay, it's decision time.
Mercy must think about the facts that may have seemed half-baked today to figure out who is fibbing.
Mercy, who is our big fiver? I think it's Bradley.
Why do you think Bradley is our big fibber?
I think Madeline's answers seem to get more like longer, more understandable.
Bradley's kind of... He said both sides of the Civil War.
I think that was hard tech. Okay, so you're going with some facts here and just the way they answered and how much detail they gave, right?
Yeah. excellent I love the way your mind works okay let's see will the actual cracker experts say I am the cracker expert I am the cracker expert.
You did it, Mercy. You got it correct. That is true.
Madeline Star is a cracker expert. With 18 years of product development experience in the food industry focusing on snack foods, she has worked on everything from crackers to soup, to yogurt, to fried exotic vegetable chips.
If you've ever had progressive soup or Chex mix, Ritz crackers or a sensible portions veggie straws, you've eaten something that she has worked on.
Wow, that's a long list of fabulous foods.
Hello, Madeline. Thank you so much. Mercy, have you ever had Progressive soup?
No, I have never had that soup. Maybe you should try that one.
Okay, so let's start with Madeline. Which facts of Bradley's should we be docking?
Definitely the hard tack. I was giving you a thumbs up on my end mercy Actually, he got most of them right.
Oh, it's a cracker barrel. The reason it's called cracker barrel is actually it wasn't that the crackers were made in a barrel it was that the crackers were sold in a barrel so outside the general store you would put the barrel of crackers that it was shipped to the store in and people would just come in basically with a scoop and scoop out however many crackers and go into the store and pay for them.
Interesting. It was something always outside a general store, so that's why Cracker Barrel called themselves that.
Sounds like something a thief would like.
Yeah, absolutely. So they stopped doing it.
Yeah. Am I supposed to be keeping crackers in my boots or no?
Was that a lie? Alright, Bradley, how were you a real wise cracker today?
Well, yeah, I told a few fibs here and there.
I said one of my clients was maker's crackers.
That's a made-up company, no such thing.
The horseshoe mixer is not a real type of mixer.
That's just a made-up kind of thing. And as Madeleine did point out, the cracker barrel thing I got wrong.
The Civil War Cracker, you guys were absolutely right, although they did store them a lot in their boots.
That is true. But they weren't called bootcrackers.
Not bootcrackers. That's what I call them.
They were called smelly crackers. That's what they were called.
And I don't think Shirley Temple's stupid anything to do with the Marx Brothers movie of the same name.
Oh. That was just something that I made up as well.
Oh, zilting shooters? For packaging? No such thing.
No, it sounded good. Thanks. I do have a Zilting Shooter on my body.
I don't think so. What does it do? It zilts?
I see. Of course, of course. Both the horseshoe mixture and the zilting shooter are excellent fakes, and actually the horseshoe mixture is pretty close, at least in terms of the shape of the paddle, to something that is actually used.
Wow! Did you know that Bradley? Of course not.
So that was pure luck. I love that. And the most popular cracker in the United States.
Does anyone know what that is? Yeah, I said saltines, is that incorrect?
Yeah, I believe it's actually cheese-its.
It is cheese-its. Yes. Cheese-its. Mm-hmm.
Mercy, you know lots about crackers. I don't think Bradley had a chance here.
Okay, well, we've reached the palette cleansing before the sign off.
Thanks to our contestant Mercy who was crackerjack at Finding Fibs.
Thank you to our expert and liar Madeline and Bradley and to Lisa for bringing his sound effects and salty personality and of course many thanks to our listeners tuning into the big fib where we hold liars over a barrel and always try to sow the truth.
The Big Fab is a production of Gen Z Media.
For more great shows, visit gzmshows.com.
And while you're there, you can send questions for me to read on Ask Lisa.
And you can find out how you can participate.
Also, awesome, awesome. Follow us on social media at the Big Fit Podcast for behind-the-scenes photos and more true facts!
Uh, no, I'm just gonna reach into my, uh, my boots and I've just gotta eat all these crackers.
Oh, I've cheese to my other food. Oh, this food has hummus.
Oh, this is a real boot extravaganza. I'm gonna eat my food.
