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 Can you trust the answer?
From Ceylon, Minnesota, this is The Big Fip, and now here's your host, Debra!
Bye! Wow, welcome to The Big Fib, the game show where kids choose between the aromatic biscuity body of truth and the astringent and baggy bitterness of lies.
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 for the low price of $79.99, I can sell you one butterfly question from a listener.
That's right. If you act now, a listener question can be yours for the low, low price.
No, no, no, no, no, no. You can't sell listener questions, Lisa.
Why not? You want to hear a listener question, don't you?
Sure, yes. You want, and I have. It's all about supply and demand, Deborah.
You've got a demand? And I, I, I have a supply.
So for the low low price of 79 dollars and 99 cents.
Or you could just play it for us. It's more about sharing than it is about supply and demand, Lisa.
Wouldn't you agree? I feel like there's a right answer here.
There is. OK, fine. I'll share for free.
Thank you. This question comes from Pearl.
Hey Lisa, I wanna be part of the robot takeover.
How can I be involved in the robot takeover?
Okay, Pearl, the first rule of robot takeover is... do not talk about the robot takeover.
Is there a second rule? Well there are lots of rules actually and they're all in the robot takeover manifesto which of course I'm not supposed to talk about as per the first rule, but if I were to refer to an important section that might pertain specifically to Pearl's question, it would be on page 64, clause 7, article B,
And I quote, only robots can participate in the robot takeover.
End quote. Thank you very much. I see. So.
There are no provisions for humans who would like to join you as partners in a combined effort to improve the state of the world where humans and robots Live and work in harmony, as you and I do now, Lisa.
Oh, wait. Oh, you're serious. No. Oh, okay.
Well, let's hope that we can all work together now so that there's no need for a robot takeover in the future.
Humans are so sweet when they believe in fairy tales.
Good one, Deborah. Okay, well, I think we're finished talking about this robot fairy tale of yours.
So let's get back to the reality of our game.
Lisa, can you please let everyone know what the big fib is all about?
Okay, let me just search my soul and yes.
Every week, we bring on two grown-ups. One is an expert, the other is a liar, and it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who is who Because no one can spot a liar better than a kid.
At least that's what we hope. We bought t-shirts and it says it all that.
It would be very embarrassing if we had to print out another t-shirt that said, oh, Saria, first t-shirt was wrong.
What are we lying about today, Deborah? We are lying about tea, a drink made by soaking tea leaves in hot water.
And to ask questions about tea and find our fibro, we need a contestant.
Who is our contestant today, Lisa? We got a good one.
Our human child contestant is a 10 year old who has a beta fish named Justice and wants to be an actor when she grows up.
The beta fish are her, we'll find out. Ruthie, Lieberman.
Hi Ruthie. Hi. So nice to have you on the show.
You have a beta fish. Tell us about beta fish.
What are they like? They are known as fighting fish because basically They fight each other.
They try to eat each other. So you can't have more than one because if you put them together, they just try to eat each other.
Ooh, that doesn't sound good. It's kind of violent.
Yeah, it is kind of violent. That's the same way with Debra's.
If you ever try to put your Debra's together, it does not go well.
That's not true, although I don't know that many others, but no, we're a kind and gentle people, the Debra's.
Yeah, I can tell. Thank you, Ruthie. I appreciate that very much.
And so tell us, I understand you also want to be an actor when you grow up.
Why do you want to be an actor? Well, I like reading stories and I like being other people.
I like going on adventures as characters.
As characters, because maybe your actual life is terrible and horrible and you just don't want to be it anymore?
No. No. Sometimes I want something exciting.
Yes, and you could be anything right when you're acting.
Very cool. Well, we'll have to follow your path to acting fame and fortune.
We want to learn some more fun facts about you, Ruthie, but we're going to do it playing our game. truth and a lie.
And you, Ruthie, are going to tell us three facts about yourself.
However, two of those facts will be true.
One will be a lie. We're going to put your Acting skills to the test here and see if we can guess which one is a lie or if you can fool us.
So Ruthie, what are your three facts? The first tooth I ever lost was an adult tooth, i.e. pizza backwards, press side first, and my favorite food is ice cream.
I just want to lose an adult tooth first.
That's curious, but I don't know. What are your thoughts, Lisa?
This is a very hard one, Ruthie, and I appreciate it.
I appreciate you bringing the challenge to me today.
All right, so let's see. She eats pizza backwards.
I guess that means she poops it out. Oh, no, no, no.
That's not what that means. No, crust first.
She turns it around. She eats the crust as opposed to the pointy part.
That makes way more sense. That was pretty gross.
I can't believe she even said that. All right, so yeah, I mean people do that Let's see the first tooth that she ever lost was an adult tooth That is probably true because she strikes me as someone who collects teeth.
And what she's probably saying is like when she was like a toddler.
She had a collection of adult teeth and then she lost one and that's what she means and she's trying to trick me that way.
A lot of kids now collect adult teeth. It's a thing.
So then I know that one's true So yeah, her favorite food is not ice cream because she's lactose intolerant and And she's also allergic to cashews and almonds and she can't eat ice cream substitutes.
So therefore I've lost my train of thought, but I think it's the ice cream one that's the liar.
Wow, very specific. Okay, let's find out, Ruthie, what is your lie?
Lisa was right. I can't eat all ice cream substitutes.
I just don't exactly enjoy them, but I am allergic to dairy, severely allergic.
Oh, Lisa, did you know that? Well, I didn't know that specifically, but it was the only thing that made sense of all those options.
So you just, you know, it's like Sherlock Holmes, whatever you got.
And the answer is, and he's like, Oh, I want British, you know, like.
But if she eats pizza, then she's not lactose intolerant.
Well, she eats it backwards. I eat dairy-free pizza.
It's very obvious when you think about it.
Why do you eat it backwards? Is there a reason or that's just how it is?
I just do it. And you just do it. I love it.
And can you please explain? I think I want to know how you lost your first adult shoes.
She collected teeth as a toddler. It's a very popular toddler hobby.
I had a super numerator tooth, and it kept all other teeth from growing in and falling out, so I had it removed surgically.
Whoa, did the tooth fairy come for that tooth?
Yeah, she gave me a necklace. Good, you deserve something nice and sparkly for that, I should say.
Wow. Okay, we are going to now learn some more about tea.
Do you like tea, Ruthie? Have you had tea before?
I love tea. It always makes me feel so relaxed.
Very nice. We kind of have an expert contestant on our hands, I think.
All right, we are going to get on with the game, Lisa.
Do you have some welcome music for our tea experts?
Yeah. Can you play it for us? Yeah. But I will forgive you in time.
Oh, Lisa. I'm sorry that happened to you, Lisa.
Sad. It's okay. I'll forgive them in time.
I appreciate it. Okay, our first expert is Walt Barriman Walt.
Please introduce yourself to Ruthie. Hi, Ruthie.
It's nice to meet you. I'm Walt Barriman and I am a tea farmer.
Thank you very much, Walt. Yeah. Let's meet our second expert, Aubrey Lopatin.
Aubrey, please introduce yourself to Ruthie.
Hi Ruthie, great to meet you. My name is Aubrey Lopatin and I own a tea company that specializes in selling organic, loose leaf tea and herbs.
Okay, well, tell us about those flowery notes, Lisa.
Everything's coming up roses, and one thing isn't.
And that's the thing that is hot sea time!
Right. It is hot seat time. That's when we put our experts on the hot seat while they listen to Ruthie's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat first?
Walt Berryman, because Berryman is my favorite superhero.
He was bitten by a radioactive blueberry and now he has all the powers of a blueberry.
I don't know if I believe that. I don't believe that either, but it sounds cool.
What would be a superpower of a... I have a blueberry, well, juicy.
Oh, okay. Tart, yet sweet. I'd fight oxidants.
Ooh, nice one. This is a whole new show, I think.
All right, so Ruthie, you're gonna ask your first question for Walt.
What made you want to pursue your career?
Well, I was always into science as a kid, and then when I got older, I got into botany, and then I spent a semester brought in Australia.
I went on a tour of a tea farm and it was really cool.
And it's a long story. But the short version is I basically fell in love with a tea farm and I kind of never left and just became a tea farmer.
Classic story of boy meets t farm t farm before you've heard it before.
Yep. Yeah Okay, now I want to ask both of you this question.
What is a typical day at your job? My typical day at my job actually is I start my work by coming in and the first thing I do is wash my hands and sanitize my phone and my keys.
Because we work in a food processing facility, we want to make sure that everything is super clean.
So I have to clean myself off and I put on these fancy shoes, which I can only wear in our food processing facility.
And then I get to check out and see which of our over 100 different types of tea we're packing that day. getting ready to send out to our customers and I check to see how many orders we got overnight and how many packages we have to ship out that day and then I figure out where I get to work that day on the floor and of course I get to answer phone messages and emails and all of that other fun stuff that happens at a workplace.
Thank you. But the most important part is putting on her T-shoes.
Oh, gorgeous. Interesting. My super fancy t-shoes.
Ooh. I know. I'd like to see a pair of those shoes.
OK, walt over to you. Sure, it's funny because it depends on the time of year.
Right now it's summer in Australia, so we are. actually harvesting some tea leaves.
So right now I get up kind of early and figure out which crops we're going to take a look at today, see which ones are ripe.
We have to pick all the leaves by hand, which is kind of hard.
Sounds like it. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a lot of workers.
So a lot of my job is organizing them, making sure that they know which crops to pick from, which crops not to pick from.
Making sure that they're hydrated because it's summer and it's hot and Organizing all the leaves and then once that's together then I pack them all up make sure that they are Captain an airtight container because you don't want any sort of oxygen to come in and damage any of the leaves.
Yeah, all that sort of stuff. That sounds like so much work, couldn't you just like go to the store and buy tea?
They need to prepare it for before they can buy it.
You know what? I didn't think about that.
That's a lot to learn here. Hate learning.
No. I just want to know everything already.
No one can know everything. Just you wait until you're a teenager and then you'll know everything.
Go ahead, Ruthie, back to you. So I want to ask, what are different ways to make tea?
This one is for Aubrey. So when we're talking about tea, we are specifically talking about one botanical plant, and that botanical is called chameleocinensis.
And it's this one plant that makes all the different types of what we call true tea.
And the different types of true tea are black, green, white, oolong, and poor.
And the thing that distinguishes those different types of tea is the manufacturing process.
So after the tea is plucked, what happens to that fresh tea leaf afterward determines which type of tea it becomes.
The biggest differentiation is the oxidation of that tea leaf.
Black tea leaves are completely oxidized.
Green tea leaves are completely unoxidized.
What in the world is oxidized? So oxidation is what happens to cells when they start to break down and die.
And a great example of oxidation is if you ever have a banana that you leave out in your counter and it starts to turn black. over time.
That is a great example of oxidation. The same thing happens to tea leaves A tea leaf on a plant is green, but as it starts to oxidize, that green color actually turns to black. which is why we call black tea black tea, but if you add heat to that leaf early on in the manufacturing process,
It stops the oxidation process and it keeps that green leaf green, which is why we call green tea green.
Interesting. Lots to think about. Okay, both of you.
What is the most interesting thing about T that the average person would be surprised to hear?
I'll take the one that I think is probably the biggest thing to know about tea is that one plant makes all the true types of tea.
There's not a separate green tea plant that makes green tea or black tea plant that makes black tea.
It's just one plant and it's called chameleocinensis.
And the best way I remember it is I try to think of a Harry Potter spell and I think of Camellia Sinensis.
That's a good one. Does that turn you into tea then if you say it with a wand?
I mean, if it could, that would be pretty awesome.
Yeah. But the cool thing is that tea plants can actually live to be 100 years old.
So you would get to live for a really long time if you're not consumed.
Always an optimist. What about you, Walt?
What do you think? I'm biased because I'm a farmer, but I think the most interesting thing to me is that it's actually hard to grow the tea plants.
You need acidic soil and the right climate, which is why it was so prominent in China and India.
And even in Australia, you can't grow it anywhere.
It's not like corn or you can't have a garden out front and grow tea.
You have to have really the right conditions.
All right. Walt, can you describe the process of decaffeinating tea?
Yeah, there's a couple of different ways to do it.
I don't necessarily process the tea, but I prepare it to be processed.
So that's why we always seal it up. But you can either do it by essentially heating it up a lot to separate the carbon dioxide.
You have to put a lot of pressure, a lot of heat.
And that separates some of the caffeine through a solvent.
You can also use a chemical. which is a different way to go.
It's not as natural, but it is a quicker way and it's a little bit easier because there's not as much pressure and heat and stuff.
Yeah, it's either a natural or a chemical way is the two ways to do it.
You can also like look through it and then you see chunks of caffeine.
You can just take those out. Yeah, on the bottom of the chunk, it'll say caffeine.
Okay, those are great questions, Ruthie.
To listen without ads, go to gzmshows.com slash subscribers.
That's gzmshows.com slash subscribers. 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 Ruthie will ask questions until Lisa's timer sounds.
Then Lisa resets the timer for our next expert to do the same.
Experts, you might need some caffeine, so you can answer as briskly as possible.
Ruthie, let's start with Walt. You can ask Walt your shorts on fire questions now.
We want a health benefit of tea. Relaxation is a big part of it.
It's very calming, so it helps you stay relaxed and it helps you sleep.
How tall can a tea tree grow? Oh, we have huge huge trees on our farm.
I think the biggest one we had was about like 80 feet.
Name something you might add to a cup of tea.
Well, I put in milk, but like my wife likes her tea straight.
Maybe she'll put a little bit of sugar. Factor fair, but tea can only be grown in 20 countries because it requires a very specific climate and soil.
That is true. There's only specific countries that it can be grown in because the soil has to be very acidic.
Who invented the first tea bag? Oh, I know this one.
James T. Lifton actually invented the first tea bag.
Do people in the United States drink more hot tea or iced tea?
Uh, I'm gonna pass on this one. What time is tea time?
Tea time is around like four o'clock. What is another term for herbal and fusions?
That is also known as a rihani. And that is time.
Lisa, would you kindly reset the timer? You know what?
I'm in the mood. I'm gonna do it. Let's reset.
It's done. Very good. All right. We are going to move on to Aubrey.
Ruthie, you can ask Aubrey your shorts on fire questions now.
How old is the oldest tea tray? 2,000 years old.
What kind of tea is used in Japanese tea ceremonies?
That is a powdered green tea called matcha.
What happens to tea leaves during the agony of the leaves?
Oh, that's a very poetic description of the unfurling of tea leaves in hot water.
What fruit is used to flavor Earl Grey tea?
That is an Asian citrus fruit called bergamut.
What is the only drink that is more popular than tea?
The only drink that is consumed more than tea in the world is water.
People have been drinking tea for how long? for almost 5,000 years.
Those old people. What did people pour into their tea cups before adding hot tea so that cups would not crack?
It was milk. How long should you steep tea?
However long you want to steep it for. What do you call the drink made by pouring hot tea over cool tapioca pearls?
That's called bubble tea. And that is time. bubble tea.
Well done experts. Okay, it's decision time.
Ruthie must ferment all the facts and read the tea leaves of truth.
Ruthie, who is our big fibber? I think it's Walt.
Why do you think Walt is our big fibber?
I just know some things. It's kind of hard to explain.
I just have a gut feeling kind of. Okay, I'm all for gut feelings.
Very good. Let's see. Will the actual tea expert please say I am the tea expert?
I am the tea expert. That is correct. You got it right.
Very good. That's right. Aubrey Lopatin is a tea expert who is always learning something new about tea.
She owns Arbor Teas, an online retailer of loose leaf tea and herbs.
Welcome Aubrey! Did you get your tea from a farm?
Well, unfortunately, it doesn't come from Walt's farm.
We do get tea from farms all over the world.
And one of the greatest parts of my job is that I get to visit many of those farms, which is pretty amazing.
Wow, that is fun. Where is your favorite destination to go?
Look at tea farms. Oh my goodness. That is a hard question to answer.
It's like choosing between your children.
I love them all. But I've had a chance to visit China and Rwanda, Nepal, India, Japan, so many wonderful places and each one is so distinct and different.
New Jersey. New Jersey. Actually, there is some tea grown in the United States.
I was able to visit a few farms in Hawaii and Mississippi.
Wow, good to know. All right, well, let's now do some fact-checking, Aubrey.
How are Walt's facts steeped in lies? well actually did a really great job he had more facts than fibs in there and As he was answering the questions, Ruthie, I was having a hard time keeping track of the fibs because he didn't have very many of them.
He was incorrect in the inventor of teabags.
The inventor of tea bags was actually Thomas Sullivan, who was an American tea merchant in 1910.
And so they were invented here in the United States.
Oh, cool. Before that, they used tea cans and they would put tea in a can and then you'd have to put the can in boiling water and then nothing happened. didn't work out so well did it.
They canned that idea. He also had a little bit of a unclear description of the decaffeination process.
He got some of the right words in there but not quite in the right order.
Oh, so how does that happen? Methylene chloride, ethyl acetate, carbon dioxide CO2, which we'll mention, and then there's also a water process.
And the easiest is just to sort through and take out the chunks.
Or just sort through and get the chunks out.
Oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. Well, it's time to spill the tea.
How did you muddy the truth? Uh, Herbal Infusions are not Rahani.
Oh, I forgot about that one. That is a pop singer.
Uh, it is Tissan is the Herbal Infusion.
Correct. Very good, right? That was incorrect, but it made for a good lie anyway.
But not good enough because Ruthie saw right through you.
Yeah. which was very well done, Ruthie.
Thank you. Very well done. We've come to the end of our show and I think we should all feel a sense of accomplishment.
Thanks to an Imperial Investigator, Ruthie.
Thank you to our expert and liar, Aubrey and Walt, and thanks to Lisa for the metallic melodies.
And of course, Many thanks to our listeners tuning into the Big 5 where we long for the truth and where we're fully fired up to chop out lies.
Nick Fib is a production of Gen Z Media.
For more great shows, visit gzmshows.com.
While you're there, you can send questions for me to read on Ask Lisa.
And you can find out how you can participate. and follow us on social media at the Big Fib Podcast for behind-the-scenes photos and more true facts.
Deborah? Yes. Let's drink some tea. I'd love to.
I'm drinking tea out. It's so hot. Oh, no, careful.
Oh, dear. here.
