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Thank you. Hi Smash Boom besties, we are hard at work on the new season of Smash Boom Best, and we'll be back with new debates soon.
But in the meantime, we wanted to tell you about our other show Forever Ago which returns this week for a brand new season.
Forever Ago is hosted by Smash Boom Best all -star debater, Joy Dolo.
who you may remember from Ghost vs. Zombies, Coral Reefs vs Rainforests or Mermaids vs. Bigfoot.
On Forever ago, Joy and the team dig into the surprising and fascinating history of things we think are ordinary, but they're not.
Like video games, baths and more.
We think you'll really like it and we have the newest episode to share with you.
It's all about ice cream flavors.
Do you prefer vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream or hamburgers?
Yeah, if you want to know what that is, give it a listen and let us know what you think and be sure to subscribe to forever ago wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll be back in your feed very soon with the exciting news on the release date for the new season of smash Boom!
Best. Until then, enjoy forever ago.
good morning mave well almost morning the sun should come up in just a bit hi joy why are you growing are you ready to get started yeah i'm just not sure why we had to start why it's so early it's still dark outside because it's our first episode of forever in a while and I'm way too excited to wait any longer.
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!
We're back with more secret histories of everyday things.
Right, because this is Forever A Go where we explore the before.
Did you just think of that?
I love that! Ooh! Ooh!
Ooh! Ooh! You could stop that anytime.
Sorry. I'm so sorry.
I'm so excited! And this morning, I thought we could celebrate with a sunrise ice cream social!
Ice cream? This early?
Yeah! Maybe a morning milkshake or a sunrise sundae.
And not just any ice cream, we're scooping up historical flavors of the past!
Whoa! But I mean, it seems like sunset could have been another option.
Oh, that would make way too much sense.
So, let's check that all of our supplies are ready.
Right because if you stay ready...
You don't have to get ready.
Okay I've got a Super Scoop.
Check! What's the difference between a regular ice cream scoop and a super scoop?
Mm... I don't know.
I think maybe the Super Scoop has an alter ego and fights crime at night?
Cool... and do you have your sunday spoon?
Check! Plus a straw?
Checkity -check! I think we should be all set.
Now let's warm up with a series of sprints and bad jokes.
Get on the treadmill!
Ready! Set... Joy, why do ice cream cones always carry umbrellas?
In case there are sprinkles?
Nice. Now bump up that pace.
Why do we always invite ice cream to the party?
Because, uh, we like eating it?
No, because it's cool!
Ah, of course! Last one, what do we keep in mind as we start this season up wherever I go?
Anything is popsicle!
Correct! I am warmed up and ready to scoop!
Let's explore the before!
Hello and welcome to Forever A Go from APM Studios!
I'm Joy Dolo, and I'm here today with Maeve!
And we're not just here today...
That's right, we're kicking off the new season of Forever A Go!
Yes! In every episode, we'll take something you think you know, and uncover its true origin story.
Sometimes you may look at an actual object like a Rubik's Cube.
But there are also lots of cool stories about stuff we do, like taking baths.
Because almost everything has a fascinating history if you dig into it.
Yay, it's so exciting to be back!
And today we're looking into the past of...
Ice cream flavors with this celebratory Sunrise Sunday social.
Before we scoop up the past, put it in a cone, and cover it with sprinkles, Maeve, do you like ice cream, or do you like popsicles better?
Um, I like ice cream better than popsicles.
Oh, really? Is it the cream factor or the ice water?
Uh, cream. I like milk.
What's your favorite ice cream flavor?
I like cookies and cream along with mint.
That's good. That's really good.
I think ice cream, that's one of my favorite ones, too.
What about you? Do you like ice cream cones or are you one of those people who mushes up their ice cream so it's more like ice cream soup?
You know, I'm a big cone girl.
I've always been a cone girl.
And not just like waffle cones.
Like I like the cheap, like the cheap plastic -y cones that you can eat.
Yeah, like the ones that are like a dollar, because there's just something that's just so crunchy and raw about them.
And even I grew up with it.
So it's like, you know, those are my favorite ones.
But they taste like plastic.
Well, the thing is there's like no taste to it, so it doesn't take away from the ice cream, which is a, you know, super tip for you.
And I, you know, I don't really like making ice cream soup.
I think that's weird. I think it's meant to be separated.
I've done it once. Did you like it?
I don't know. I don't remember it.
So long ago I was like seven.
And we're just way in the past. I had the grand idea of, what if I put milk in ice cream that's already made of milk.
It could work. I think so.
Put a little sugar on it.
Well, you know, my favorite ice cream flavor is vanilla.
Really? I think of vanilla as, well, a little boring.
Oh no. Vanilla is complex, and it has a pretty interesting story behind it.
Yeah we'll get to that but vanilla isn't the first flavor on our sundae bar.
Here! I made us a menu to follow as we set up.
Oh wow I don't really recognize the first few flavors.
Mace, orange blossom and ambergris?
Yeah honestly I had to look up how to pronounce that last one.
Ambergris but I guess it's in the United Kingdom it's amber -grease and all those flavors are from a way long time ago.
And they're different from the ones we know now.
So grab that super scoop and let's get started.
Super Sun Rise Sunday setup mode engaged.
So let's talk about where these first few flavors are from.
That would be England in the mid -1600s.
Kitchens are pretty different at this time.
There's no refrigerators, no gas or electric stoves.
Most kitchens wouldn't even have running water.
Seems like a really tough time for food safety over there Yeah, and cleanliness in general The bubonic plague is exploding in London around this time Oh bummer Yeah, definitely But still, ice cream exists for fancy people People like kings and queens keep ice frozen in cellars And they use some of that ice to freeze cream We know because someone wrote down a recipe And that someone was Lady Anne Fanshaw That's right I call it Icy Cream.
Lady Anne, hello. I was hoping you'd join us.
Tell us about your recipe.
It's where I got our first round of ice cream flavors.
Of course, my recipe is from around 1665.
So far, it's the oldest one that historians know of in English, and I had the good sense to give a few flavoring options.
I was one of the first people to flavor ice cream in this way.
So smart! So, here we have the first flavor, mace.
Right. You might boil your cream with a blade of mace, which is part of the nutmeg plant.
It's a little spicy and a little earthy.
Oh, nutmeg I know. Sometimes I put that in apple pie or on French toast. Excuse me, you're in England, not France?
Right, right. Please continue.
Or you could flavor the cream with orange flower water.
Oh, and orange blossom ice cream.
Sounds delicate and delightful.
And the last flavor I suggested might just be the best one.
That's ambergris. So that flavor is also earthy, a little perfume -y, and a bit sweet.
It's kind of hard to describe.
I haven't heard of that.
Oh, it's just an exquisite flavor.
It comes from this mysterious waxy substance that washes up on the beaches.
So is from the ocean.
And that's pretty much all I know about it.
Ahem. If I may speak for myself...
Are you Amber Grace?
That's me. I'd love to tell you where I'm from.
Please! So yes, I am, as they say, of the sea, but I am from a very specific place in the sea.
And that is... Ooh, let me guess!
Nova Scotia? Barbados?
Antarctica? Even more exquisite.
I'm from a sperm whale's intestines.
Oh boy. The sperm whale loves to eat squid.
but squids have a hard beak mouths and the sperm whale it cannot digest squid beaks so those beaks get all bunched up in the whales gut and then something truly deluxe happens so this can only and one of two ways see that's what you think but the beaks hard and altogether and they mix with whale poo that's also traveling through, so it's kind of a mentally of digested and undigested.
Wow. Very...deluxe.
Yeah. People used to think whales threw up, but actually, it's probably more of a dookie situation than a puke -y situation.
But it's not exactly either one.
Ah, I may need to lie down.
That's what ambergris is?
Yep. And people were really into it.
They still are, actually.
Ambergris isn't as much of a dessert ingredient now, but it's in lots of perfumes.
These days, there's synthetic ambergris, too.
It comes from labs rather than sperm whales.
And don't worry, I used the lab version to flavor our ice cream.
Nice. I really appreciate that.
So, Lady Anne, when would you have served icy cream like this?
Did you ever have it for breakfast?
Absolutely not. In my time, icy cream was for the end of an elegant dinner.
A show -stopping dessert, if I do say so myself.
Not something to eat willy -nilly.
Right, because sugar and ice were expensive.
They weren't things everyone had at home at the time.
So serving ice cream was almost a way to say check out how fancy I am.
Oh, definitely. Got it.
Thanks, Lady Anne. Toodles.
— So there we have our first station of this Sunday bar!
Mace, orange blossom, and ambergris!
Artificially flavored, of course.
— Quite a line up! — I know!
Ever since people have been making icy desserts, they've been tinkering with tastes.
But ingredients have actually changed a lot over time.
and, as food and kitchens change, what we eat changes a lot too.
I get that ingredients have changed over time but hamburgers really makes me feel like, where was good, old, plain vanilla when they needed it?
Right? Vanilla feels kind of like the automatic flavor for ice cream, but obviously, it wasn't always.
In fact, at one point vanilla only came from a few places on Earth.
We'll get to that in just a minute, right after we play a round of...
First things first!
First things first!
It's the game where we try to put things in order from oldest to newest. Maeve, do you wanna read today's three things?
Sure, so they're chocolate sprinkles, ice cream cakes, and popsicles.
Okay, now we have to guess.
Which one came first?
Which came second, and which came most recently in history?
So, what do you think?
Um I think popsicles came first while then it was chocolate sprinkles and last but not least ice -cream cakes That's so funny.
I actually think the same thing.
Why do you think popsicles came first?
Um I think it came first because like if you freeze fruit that's basically a popsicle.
Mm -hmm and chocolate sprinkles It's chocolate but sprinkles and then ice cream cake seems like the most complex in history so We'll be back with the answer in just a bit Okay, so obviously we love sitting down to a nice big bowl of the past. But history is always happening.
So here at Forever ago, we're building a time capsule about the time we live in now.
A time capsule is a collection of things that shows people in the future what our lives are like today.
When future people look at our time capsule, they'll learn about our present, which will be their past. And we want to know what you'd put in the time capsule, what things really capture the essence of today.
Record yourself telling us about the item you have in mind, and why you want to save it.
And send it to us at forevargot .org slash contact.
Maybe you have a favorite recipe, a super ice cream scoop that must live on for posterity, or even a favorite food that you'd want people in the future to know about.
Maeve, what would you put in the time capsule this week?
Like any food? Yeah.
Curry! Like curried lamb with like potatoes in it and all the good stuff because it tastes amazing and I live for it.
Oh, cool. Yum. We'll hear what more listeners would put in the time capsule at the very end of the show after the credits.
Send us your recording at foreverago .org slash contact.
We can't wait to hear what you come up with.
More Forever A Go in just a moment.
Don't go anywhere. This is FOREVERAGO, I'm Maeve.
And I'm Joy! Let's reveal which of our First Things First is actually the oldest. Maeve, you're gonna love this.
Oh no. So the first thing is ice cream cakes.
What? Can you believe it?
Ice cream cakes was like the last thing I thought I know all I think is like you know birthdays like I think I had an ice cream cake So it's like it must be you know current But actually food historians believe ice cream cakes were invented in the 17th century in England Ice cream cake recipes dating back to the 18th century have also been found And in 2004 ice cream company Carvel broke the world record for the largest ice cream cake weighing over guess how much?
um 800 pounds 12 ,000 pounds of ice cream cake.
I can't even, that's almost as heavy as an elephant.
There's an elephant sized ice cream cake.
Well, may I have it please?
I really like ice cream.
Well, I'll help you with the ice cream cake.
So number two was popsicles.
Oh. So popsicles were actually invented by a kid and it was a complete accident.
In 1905, 11 year old Frank Epperson mixed sugary soda powder and water and left it outside overnight, and it was so cold the mixture froze.
Then he was like, oh, I'm gonna eat this.
I left it outside, I'm going to put this in my mouth.
But the name Popsicle came from him because he named it an epsicle and started selling it around his neighborhood.
So that's where the name came from.
I never knew that. And last, but definitely not least is Chocolate Sprinkles.
Wow. The Just Born Candy Company is widely accepted as the creator of Chocolate Sprinkles, or jimmies, as they called them, in 1923.
And though another company may have come up with it first, a newspaper article from 1921 included an ad about a treat made with chocolate sprinkles before Just Born started.
And Americans put sprinkles on cupcakes, ice cream, and cookies, but in the Netherlands, in Australia, sprinkles are used on bread called fairy bread.
Is it bread made of fairies, or bread made by fairies?
I think that it's just it's fairy bread because it's got sprinkles on it.
Disappointing. But you can make fairy bread at home.
Just take a slice of, you know, wheat toast and put some sprinkles on it.
No, you're not impressed.
I am not impressed.
I'd rather have like magical bread made by fairies that gives me either magical powers or like, I'm transparented to the fairy realm.
All right, Maeve, let's get back to setting up the rest of our Sunrise Sunday Bar.
This is gonna be the best Sunrise Sunday social ever!
Yeah, you think there have been a lot of other events like this?
I thought it was pretty unique.
I mean, no, I've never eaten ice cream at the crack of dawn.
Good, we're trying to keep things original.
For sure. So far, our ice cream flavors are definitely unexpected.
Right, we set up mace, orange blossom, and ambergris, that mix of old squid beak and whale poo.
These are actual flavors from a recipe that's older than the United States.
And ambergris sounds pretty out there but over the next hundred years or so people write a lot more ice cream recipes including recipes for artichoke ice cream, gross and asparagus ice cream, double gross.
I see we left those off the Sunday bar list. Uh, yeah, we did.
Anyways, to set up the next part of our Sunday bar we have to talk about a major change that was happening.
It actually starts before Lady Anne Fanshawe's time and continues on afterward. So now we're going past Lady Anne Fanshawe a bit to about 250 years ago.
There's still no refrigeration, no electricity, and no trains or cars.
People light their homes with candles and they don't bathe very much. And at the time, fizzy water was a new invention.
But it wasn't just drinks that were changing, so was food.
For centuries, people in Europe only ate grains, fruits, vegetables, and meat they could get from Europe or from trading with Asia.
They had lots of ingredients we'd recognize now like apples, carrots, onions, cabbage, bread, chicken, and beef.
Along with some ingredients we don't use as much today like ambergris, mace, and orange flower water.
All three of those flavors would come from Europe or Asia.
But if you're only eating foods from a few continents, you're missing out on some awesome flavors.
Right. Some foods that are super common now like potatoes and tomatoes are plants that first grew only in Central and South America.
People in Europe didn't have access to those foods until ships started making long voyages across the ocean to bring them back.
Historians call this time the Columbian Exchange because Christopher Columbus and his big voyage to North America in 1492 kinda kicked this off.
But like lots of things in history, the Columbian Exchange wasn't just one moment.
It was a shift that happened over many years as people sailed back and forth across the Atlantic.
And the Columbian Exchange spread two flavors that all self -respecting sundae bars include, chocolate and vanilla.
That's right. I better be on this sundae bar.
It took me a long time to make it as an ice cream flavor.
Who's that? It sounds like it's coming from the vanilla ice cream?
I'm Speccy. You know those little, black specks in really good vanilla ice cream?
Well, I'm one of those specks.
Whoa! Nice to meet you.
to meet you, Specky.
You too. What do you mean it took you a long time to make it as an ice cream flavor.
You're like the biggest ice cream flavor ever.
Let's keep it that way, but I didn't start out super big.
And to be honest, it was a little tricky for me to spread around the world.
Here, meet Rosa Abreu.
She wrote a book all about vanilla's history.
She's going to help me fill in these facts.
Hi, Rosa. Hello. So first, a little more about me.
Vanilla has grown wild in Central and South America for millions of years.
It grows as a vine, and the vine grows small white flowers.
Those flowers grow vanilla beans.
Each bean is about the size of a green bean.
Here's Rosa. So it is green and then it starts turning color.
And once it turns color to black, this is where it has these tiny, tiny little seeds that are inside.
and that's where the vanilla flavors come from also me I'm one of those little tiny seeds and even before I was global I was special different people gathered vanilla beans in the wild the Toltec people the Maya to name a few they used vanilla in medicines and food and the vanilla vine was so special people shared legends about it so the people who knew you knew you were great exactly and then in what's now Mexico The Tadinnac people started growing vanilla themselves.
Then the Aztec people got vanilla from the Tadinnac people and used vanilla to boost chocolate's flavor.
So for a long time, Mexico was one of the only places where people could grow and harvest vanilla.
The vine just hadn't traveled anywhere else.
Until people from Europe sailed to Mexico.
Right, and after that, European people brought vanilla beans around the world.
Yoo -hoo, I'm a European trader And I love sailing with vanilla beans to sell.
People love them. So then in Europe and around the world, people were using vanilla in foods and desserts.
But it was pretty special and rare.
Couldn't traders also take the vines and then grow more vanilla beans in other places?
See, that's the thing.
I tried. And even in other tropical places.
But take it from vanilla expert Rosa Abreu.
It didn't go well. They sold some flowers, and maybe some beans here and there, but not the production that they wanted.
Mostly the flowers fell off the vines, without growing the best bit, the beans.
Womp, womp. For almost 100 more years, vanilla kept growing in Mexico and Central and South America, but not anywhere else.
But vanilla is so popular now.
Someone must have figured out how to get the beans to grow.
Exactly! He was named Edmund Albius.
He was an enslaved boy who lived in Reunion, That's an island a bit east of Madagascar.
His enslaver was a botanist. Oh, so, he probably learned all about plants.
Bingo. He knew that vanilla plants only grow beans if they get pollinated.
Pollination happens when this tiny stuff called pollen travels from one little bit of the flower to another bit of the flower.
Bees do this, and in Mexico and Central and South America, there are special small bees that can fly into these tiny vanilla flowers.
As they go in to get food the pollen falls on their body and when they come out they actually pollinate the plant So those special bees were the trick but far away from Mexico on islands off the coast of Africa like Reunion and Madagascar Those tiny bees don't exist. So vanilla could grow but never be pollinated which meant no beans and no flavor Boo!
But when Edmund Albus was 12, he figured out how to pollinate vanilla plants by hand.
So cool. What'd he do?
He basically used a little bamboo stick to act like a bee and move the plant's pollen.
And this is now how vanilla became commercial.
Commercial meaning I hit the big time.
Now vanilla plants could be grown and sold all over the world, instead of just harvested from the one area where they grew in the wild.
That's how I spread across the globe.
Wow. What a big change.
I know. And Edmund Albius was eventually freed from his enslaver.
But the way his story turned out is really disappointing.
He made this huge discovery.
And it helped farmers and traders make a bunch of money, but he never saw any of it.
Because of people's racism, they couldn't believe he'd really done this work.
and no one back then gave him any credit.
Ugh! He really should have gotten more credit, especially because what he did really stands up.
Most farmers today who grow vanilla still pollinate their plants the way Edmund Albius did.
Totally! So hats off to you, Edmund Albius.
Your work let my favorite ice cream flavor really take off.
Your favorite? I knew we'd get along, Joy.
Anyways, not long after that, chemists also worked out how to make artificial vanillin, which is a chemical that tastes like vanilla.
But, if you ask me, it's not as good as the real thing.
Sure, the real deal rules.
Thank you. But, between growing vanilla around the world and making vanilla flavoring in labs, the taste of vanilla really took off.
And I mean, how could it not have?
I was met for the center stage.
Now that you know the story, vanilla, would you like a scoop?
Of course! Perfect timing, Rosa.
Do you two hear that?
It's the sound of dawn breaking.
Time to get this sunrise Sunday soiree started.
I'm starting with this orange blossom.
Can you pass me the sprinkles?
Oh, I hope I'm in time.
But I have no idea what a Sunday is.
Lady Anne Fanshaw, yes, hello.
So glad you could come back.
Yeah, I guess Sundays came a bit after your time.
It's ice cream with extra things on top.
Oh, any excuse for a bit of icy cream.
Please, pass the hamburgers.
Oh, Lady Anne, you have to try vanilla.
It's my fave. Don't forget the dressy sundaes, everybody.
So the whole point of this sundae bar, besides being a total yum celebration, is that the way we eat has always depended on what ingredients we can get our hands on.
And we think of lots of flavors as super normal now, but it took time and effort for all those foods to spread around the world.
Also, a few hundred years ago, there were some really wild ice cream flavors.
Yeah, that too. But you know, I actually really like this mace one, Spicy Ice Cream.
Spice cream! Let's keep workshopping that.
Spicy ice cream. It's creamy spice.
Creamy ice spice. Spicy ice.
This episode was produced by Maynica Wilhelm, Sandyn Totten, and Molly Blum with additional production support from Anna Goldfield, Kelaysha Totti, Grace Torter, and Tara Anderson.
Theme music and sound design by Mark Sanchez, voice acting by Marielle Seguera, Nick Wilson, Beth Pearlman, and Rosie DePont.
We had engineering help from Johnny Vince Evans and Michael Osborne.
Beth Pearlman is our executive producer.
The executives in charge of APM Studios are Chandra Kavati, Joanne Griffith, and Alex Shaffert.
Special thanks to Ken Iballa, Jude Steward, Jerry Quenzio who wrote Of Sugar and Snow, A History of Ice Cream Making, and also to Rosa Abreu, who teaches at New York City College of Technology and wrote vanilla, a global history.
And now it's time to add things to our time capsule.
Here's what we're putting in this week.
I will put a car in my time capsule because we have to drive cars today, and I think in the future, we should put cars to make them drive their selves.
Hi. My name is Owen, and I live in Washington, D .C.
And what I would put in a time capsule is masks because, well, the pandemic is long and I think people should remember it in ways besides photos.
Hello, my name is Ellie.
I live in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada.
In a time capsule I would put a mask, sanitizer and some plastic gloves to show people what COVID was like.
I think it would also be nice to put a scrapbook in and write in it and put photos in.
Thanks to Morty, Owen and Ellie for those time capsule ideas.
Send us your time capsule idea at foreverago .org slash contact, we'll feature new answers in every episode!
And of course, as always, we'll go waaaay back.
Thanks for listening!
You
