June 8, 2023 • 30 mins
A successful military hinges on nutrition, and modern warfare is no different. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive to the strange deal Uncle Sam made with the Hershey chocolate company: creating a candy bar that tasted terrible -- on purpose.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up for the Man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer, Max, the candy Man, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Who and the condom on and where Joey does always with?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Uh? Well, can I say we're joined because I'm I'm
anyway I've been. We've got the one and only nol
the bagman Brown here.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh you remember, of course, I just want to be
the man. It's I think it's just the most underappreciated
of the heist crew. Uh.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You know, Rolls, we should talk hold the bag we
we should. It's a very powerful and crucial role. We
should talk about this. We've been into heist for quite
some time in our professional careers.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Together, and we have yet to pull one off.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
We have yet to uh, we have yet to have
been caught in hest That's that's a little bit of
pr spin. Yeah, we haven't. We haven't made a heist yet.
But we have spent over the years a lot of
time discussing our roles in heist, and we've appointed several
of our colleagues in heist. I think we made uh.
(01:37):
I think we made our pal Jonathan Strickland aka the
quist Or, aka Baby j the Patsy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
No one tell him because that will mess up his
role in the heist. But we're not talking about that today, Noel.
We're talking about something crazy. We're talking about a role
that chocolate played in war.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Surprising role. Yeah, you're not really use think about chocolate
and war and the same thought. But it turns out
that the Hershey's Chocolate Company played a big role in
the war effort, specifically in World War two. So let's
talk about World War Two. On June sixth, nineteen forty four,
the Old D Day took place whe one hundred and
(02:18):
sixty thousand troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. You know,
it was the big turning point in the war. And
many of those soldiers, likely on their persons, would have
been carrying a somewhat styled on Hershey's chocolate bar. So
not like the ones that we know and tolerate, because
(02:40):
let's be honest, the worst chocolate I mean, it's it's chocolate,
it's barely chocolate.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's like the cult forty five of candy bars, but.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It is a slice of history and you can't deny that.
And apparently Hershey Park has some pretty fantastic roller coasters,
so not going to throw them under the bustle. Gee,
and I don't mind the like cookies and cream Hershey bar.
Those are from just the standard Hershey bar. It's better
in Europe. Bro. Yeah, that's probably true on us more.
I'll take it sure on its own, No thanks, And
(03:11):
I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I love the town of Hershey. Back during the days
of my very first podcast, you and our pal Casey
Pegram please give me the sound cue if we got it, Uh,
you and our palell Casey Pegram and the legendary Scott
Benjamin took a long road trip participating in a road
(03:33):
rally that found us in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where we saw
this just absolutely stunning, astonishing car museum. For guy likes cars,
that was like poetry and even if you don't like cars,
it's a fascinating dip into American history.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, and Hershey the company is as a huge part
of American history in terms of branding, in terms of
their you know, advertising and marketing and all of that stuff,
you know, selling chocolate to the masses. Hershey's Chocolate Company
also made kind of a deal with Uncle Sam during
(04:09):
World War Two. You talk about I think you talked
about it on the show. We have done an episode
on it, but I think it's time we do have
one coming up. In stuff they don't want you to
know about mrs Meals Ready to Eat, maybe not a
whole episode. We've talked about go bags in the past,
things that you need for preparing for a disaster, you know,
for preparing to be in a situation where let's just say,
(04:32):
conditions are not ideal for survival, like war, you know,
and so you have these MREs, these meals ready to
eat that are portable, they don't necessarily have to be
heated up, and they need to supply you with the
appropriate amount of calories to keep you going. And there
were different ones. Ben, I'd love for you to speak
a little bout it. There's like the K rations, the DC,
(04:57):
the C rations, exactly. Once you talk a little bit
about some MREs that you're aware of that were kind
of historical, because that's the whole community of people that
like collect these and even like still will eat them.
I love I saw so YouTube videos of people like
cracking open these yeah K rations from seventy five years
ago and they'm like, ah, it's still pretty good.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's edible, it's food, I guess, you know, like Checker says,
you got to eat the most honest tagline ever.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But yeah, I've got.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
A bunch of MRIs actually just off screen here too.
So yeah, an army needs to feed itself and many,
many conflicts throughout human history have been decided based on
sustenance more so than whether or not the leaders had
(05:46):
good military tactics. It's dependent upon whether the army or
the military forces has the ability and the infrastructure to eat.
We're traveling to D Day, the infamous date on June sixth,
nineteen forty four, when more than one hundred and sixty
(06:07):
thousand troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. It was a
successful invasion. It was an absolute bloodbath. One thing that
you might not know, folks, unless you happen to be
there and have taken very good care of yourself and
then listening to a podcast in twenty twenty three, one
thing you may not know is that Hershey's chocolate bars
(06:30):
played a role and Noel, you and I have talked
about this. I can't even remember if it's on air
at this point. Man, we've talked about amazing inventions along
with our pal Matt Frederick, who is perhaps most famous
for the Max with the Fact sound cube, that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Seeking in the Fons bags and peace Fall in Love,
It's just for you right now here with the.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Bat and many other things. Hershey's also played a role
in the invention of the microwave, which we might get
to at the end of this show, but it's a
great one. So, like you said, they crack this bargain
with the US military during World War Two and they
say we're going to work with the US Army Quartermaster
(07:19):
Corps to make a survival ration bar. This is called
the d bar now modern day US MREs. As a
matter of fact, the vast majority of Western military rations
tend to contain some sort of treat for anyone who
wants to go down this rabbit hole with US. I
will go ahead and tell you that, just my opinion,
(07:42):
the best military rations out right now are the French rcirs.
They're kind of hard to find in the US. You
can order them online, you'll pay a premium, but they,
like the MREs, come with a treat. The last pack
of MREs I opened had some M and ms, so
watch hour.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But the uh but yeah, it's that thin candy shell
that keeps them, keeps them in such good condition.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, man, that's a good call. You're absolutely correct, noal,
And it's also why you will see a lot of
tortillas in MRIs because they keep well and they don't crumble,
and they're easy to pack. So why chocolate, Okay, why
(08:30):
would you put chocolate in a wartime situation? It has
high calories, it's got caffeine, and it gives you that
energy boost. Plus it's a bar, right, so it's it's handheld.
You don't have to have any cutlery or any other
implements to eat it or prepare it. You just peel
(08:51):
it out of the wrapper, chomp, chomp, chop, and you're off.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah. And I think you mentioned it has caffeine. And
it also has a history in military service. Like George Washington,
for example, in the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War,
would have eaten chocolate, probably in beverage form, which is
still a thing that can be done with these chocolate
rations because they're all cubed out and there's actually if
(09:15):
you look at the text on some of these rations,
these d rations, He'll say, can be crumbled into boiling
water if wished to be consumed as a beverage. So
you think about these MRIs, like you said, Ben, and
you kind of mentioned they were edible at best, you know,
because again they are going to be packed with certain
(09:37):
preservatives that are going to be really good for the
shelf life of them, but not necessarily super good for
the flavor of them. So the first run of these
bars from the Hershey's Chocolate Company go over really well.
They actually received the Army Navy e Production Award in
a ceremony that was held in nineteen forty two, and
(09:58):
the Quartermaster General, a fellow by the name of Major
General Gregory, came to the Hershey Company and presented Milton
Hershey with this award of achievement. And the General had
this to say of the Hershey Company's assistance in the
war effort. The men and women of Hershey Chocolate Corporation
(10:20):
have every reason to be proud of their great work
in backing up our soldiers on the fighting fronts. Because, Ben,
to your point, yeah, it's a treat, but it also
in a pinch, it's got enough calories to keep you going.
You know, this actually could mean the difference between life
and death. Here's the thing though, okay, so oh, but
(10:40):
by the way, of course, the corporation got a flag
that could fly above their plants there in Hershey and
lapel pins for every everyone gets a lapel pin, you know.
And by the end of the war in nineteen forty five,
they received a total of five of these awards. So
this is the thing, Ben, and I know that you
know this more than anybody. They made a ton of these.
(11:02):
I think the figure that I saw is like half
a billion of these chocolate bars or in production where
we're you know, we're rolled out. But the problem at
first was we need to figure out how to a
make this this delectable treat not so treatly that a
serviceman would just gobble it on down, right out the right,
(11:23):
right out of the box, because then it might not
come in handy during a time where it was crucial
to have that caloric intake, you know, when you were
really suffering from a deficit, if maybe you were holed up,
you know, or pinned down or whatever in the jungle.
So that was problem one right, they they had aquate
make it taste crappier. What was problem too, Ben.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, So there's a there's a series of problems, a
cavalcade of challenges. If we're being diplomatic. They're not designing
this to taste delectable. They're designing it to be rugged
to withstand a lot of things. So they're thinking in
terms of caloric intake, and then this problem too, they're
(12:07):
thinking in terms of temperature. They say, we'll figure out
to taste stuff. At the end, what we need to
do is make sure we build a thing that can
feed people X amount of calories, and we also need
to make sure that it can withstand terrible temperatures forty
nine degrees celsius Ballpark for US in the US, that's
(12:29):
one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit. And this is for
the quarter master. The temperature and the caloric value are
the two big things, because he needs to find an
emergency ration. So they create this thing that's called the
d ration. This is what Hershey Corporation initially comes up
(12:50):
with from this request. If you have three of these
d ration chocolate bars, then you can ingest one thousand,
eight hundred calories in an emergency situation again with nothing else.
You don't have to cook it, you don't have to
put it in water. You can if you want to
be kind of gross. But this is an elegant, efficacious
(13:12):
answer to the problem and the idea. They even had
instructions on how to eat it right, like you you're
not supposed to gobble them all down all at once,
Like what's that kid's name in Willy Wonka it gets
sucking something.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, he just eats the chocolate river.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You're right right, you can't eat him the way he does.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You got a munch on him slowly. And this guy,
this Quartermaster Paul Logan, who comes up with the idea.
He's writing to Hershey's and the dude literally says they
just need to taste quote a little bit better than
a boiled potato.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and apparently, according to some sources, the boiled potato
may have been preferable. But it's so funny, though, man,
because I watched a video YouTube video. I mean, give
this guy credit or credit? Are you talking about Mr Eats? Yeah?
It must be. It must be because he actually had
one of these and he unboxed it like did a
(14:09):
whole unboxing kind of situation, and he ate it, and
he was describing he described the flavor as being sort
of a combination of like hot cocoa mix, sort of
like a cocoa powder and in a hint, just a
hint of cardboard. So it certainly doesn't sound like it
(14:29):
was the most And he was also eating one that
was seventy five years old, and they're really really dense, apparently,
you know, when they were in circulation, it would be
very difficult to bite, so that folks would have to
actually shave off little pieces of it with like a knife,
you know, to even get a taste of it. And then,
like I said in this video, I'll get the get
(14:51):
the name of it in a second. He actually makes
hot cocoa out of one, because the text on the
thing indicate that you can use a square of it
and crush it up in boiling water, and it makes
this kind of kind of gross, unadvertising looking chocolate soup.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is it the guy Steve nineteen eighty nine, MRI info?
I follow him?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Let's see it is Steve nineteen eighty nine, Mr Info, Yeah,
he's the guy nineteen forty nine US Army Field ration
D emergency MRI, and the text indeed reads it actually
gives you the the ingredients, so it says chocolate, sugar, skim, milk, powder,
(15:35):
cocoa fat, oat flour, which is actually the added ingredients
that would not have been in mass produced you know,
hershey chocolate bars, artificial flavoring. I guess that's their secret.
Sauce zero point four or five milligrams of vitamin B
thiamine hydrochloride six hundred calories, like you said, says to
be eaten slowly in about a half hour, can be
(15:58):
dissolved by crumbling into a couple of boiling water if
desired as a beverage, which you kind of have to.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It's almost like Hardtack for sailors, like easily that was
to dilute it with water, and you nailed it.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The oat flours, why it's so dense. So go back
going back to this guy Paul Logan again, I think
he's kind of a pill. He says, you know, we
want this to not be the kind of bar you
would buy it a candy store able to be resilient.
And the problem was Hershey's when they had this recipe,
(16:34):
you know, the chocolate sugar, the cocoa fat instead of
cocoa powder, skim milk powder instead of milk fat, that
oat flour. They couldn't get the gunk of it to
liquefy enough to get into standard chocolate bar molds, so
they had to knead it into specially made molds. And
(16:55):
not only did it not taste good, not only was
it physically difficult to bite into, which which is nuts
because your jaw is the strongest muscle in a human body.
It also was no good no bento for your digestive system.
Over time, soldiers hated this stuff so much they started
calling the d rats Hitler's secret weapon.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yep, that's right. You must have infiltrated the infiltrated the
Hershey company. I guess No, No, these things weren't necessary, though.
It's a good point, ben, because to eat it too
quickly would be wasteful. It would not spread it out,
you know, those calories as much as we're talking like,
you know, really difficult situation. So if you eat it
all at once, it would not be good for that,
(17:37):
and it would give you a pretty gnarly stomach ache.
But you're right. It was not beloved by the servicemen
of World War Two, and it was often just thrown
away because, as our YouTube friend Steve nineteen eighty nine
MRI info points out, there could be some surface kind
(18:00):
of bubbling that actually, you know, he points it out,
it sort of looks like almost like mold growing on
the service of it, but it's actually just sort of
a discoloration that comes from the shrink wrapping process or
the cellophane process, which was actually I believe what was
the company that was making the cellophane. It was DuPont
I think anyway, there was like another giant American corporation
(18:23):
that was making the cellphane. When you take it out,
even if it was fresh, it would still sometimes have
this kind of distort, this discoloration on the top. So
there is a massive surplus of these because they were
often either discarded or they just you know, were returned,
you know. And so you're gonna see some of these
floating around out there in MRI land if you're like
(18:45):
in those circles.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, and hershey is hearing the people they're trying to
respond to this. By the end of World War two,
they had made more than three billion ration bars overall,
but they weren't all the same version. Later in the war,
they introduced something called the tropical bar, which was specifically
designed to be used in the Pacific, but it became
(19:09):
a thing that everybody in the arm services. Heck, probably
everybody in the US knew these bars taste terrible. On purpose.
Probably the army goes back to Hershey and they say,
all right, we've had enough. It's nineteen forty three at
this point, and the company says, all right, we're going
to try to make something that tastes better. This is
(19:31):
where they make the tropical bar. It still didn't taste
that great, and a lot of soldiers said, you know what,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
You tried.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It was a big swing, but this chocolate is so
bad that it's not worth the calories. They were throwing
a bunch of this stuff away, and then they took
up a new practice. They would trade it to people.
And you know, they would say, okay, we will trade
this chocolate over to other folks, because it's a ration
(20:02):
that you can tolerate if you're already sick with dysentery.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right. Not only that, though, the rapper was different and
it looked a little more commercial, right, so they could
trick people sometimes into like giving them a trade if
they didn't know, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Right, they thought it was a civilian one, right, tropical. Okay,
So this chocolate bar thing, it continues to be a
part of the standard military rations through the wars in
(20:42):
Korea and the fifties, through the Vietnam War. It doesn't
get discontinued until after Vietnam. And we got to talk
about this idea. So these guys are trying to for
a long time, they're trying to make sure this chocolate
doesn't melt, right, That's why they got the weird oat
flour in it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Never everything.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
They want it to be in a solid, a solid,
easily consumable form. But if you're a fan of chocolate,
let's be honest, you like it when it's melty. It's
kind of like the rule with cheese. Melted cheese is
pretty great.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
No, absolutely, I mean, it has its place. You surely
don't want it melting in your pocket, you know, which
is why they made such efforts to make sure that
the melting point was higher for these rations. But melted
chocolate and is a great part of a recipe used
as a topping, you know, great for baking obviously, and
(21:34):
an important use of the chocolate. If you watch any
kind of great British baking show you know about like
tempering chocolate and all that stuff, it's a whole other
use for the stuff. And the question then becomes what
is the best, most effective, quickest way to do that thing.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, and when we get to the idea of melting chocolate,
we find there's another invention that was accidentally created due
to melting chocol We want to give a big, big
thanks to Percy Spencer explored this in a previous previous
show He's to do back in the day called Stuff
of Genius with Matt Frederick with our pal Paul Deckett
(22:14):
and several other folks including Christian Steinman's formerly of stuff
that they're blew your mind. Percy Spencer is the reason
we have the microwave of it, and chocolate is the
reason Percy came up with the microwave of it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, he was a junior engineer. He only had They
make it real clear on this article in New England
Historicalsociety dot com that he only had a fifth grade education,
but he actually he was no slouch. He earned patents
that were really important towards the war effort, you know,
and also to you know, zapping yourself a nice stofer's
(22:52):
you know, in a pinch. So he was actually the
fourth person hired by a little company out of Cambridge,
Massachusetts called Wraith. You may have heard of it now
much more known as a defense contractor, right Ben.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, Raytheon and get their tentacles and a lot of pies.
I would say, if you want to learn more about that,
check out stuff. They don't want you to know. Raytheon
plays no okay role here. They're relatively innocuous.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh, I say, what's most important is that this fellow
has a chocolate bar in his pocket, a Hershey's chocolate
bar in his pocket, and he's hanging out in the
lab like you do, and testing these things called magnetrons
in nineteen forty five at Raytheon and he walks by.
It's a type of vacuum tube that creates and emits
microwaves that are used in radar systems. But he noticed
(23:42):
it's like so many of the stories of like incredible
inventions and Eureka moments are all about kind of happenstance.
He walks by one of these tubes and he notices
that the candy bar in his pocket is getting a
little warm, he's trying to melt. So he's like, hmm,
let's explore this. So he goes to the lab in
(24:03):
the city of Waltham the next day and he takes
some popcorn and he notices a similar but much more
noisy effect. The colonels start to pop. So he houses
one of these magnatrons inside a metal box, just like
for his own purposes at this point, right then.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, well you're getting situations. I mean, he's he's unfailingly curious.
We should also say he has a he has a
lot of patents that he is accruing here. He's a
very very curious guy. But yeah, just for his own
what if giggles, he does a choose your own adventure move.
He makes Maguyver level microwave we could call it. And
(24:44):
at first, you guys, he entirely uses this to reheat
his lunch at work.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
That's what I mean. Yeah, it's kind of like as
a lark, you know, so I made this thing. Yeah no,
I mean, you know again, it's not oftentimes the job
of the inventor to see the big picture of the thing.
It's more just someone who's curious about how science interacts
with stuff. And then it's the job of like marketers
and the whole nother department to figure out how to
(25:09):
put to slap a label on it and ship it
and you know, make gazillions of dollars, which did, of course,
inevitably happen with the old microwave oven. Here's my question
about it. Did he know if this was safe? Because
he's just like, takes this stuff, and it's ever know
if it's there.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
There is if you just very slightly tilt this axis
of this story, there is this guy in my co
words of stuff. He died three weeks later for a radiation.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah. Maybe I'm playing too much fall out right now,
but I'm like reading this no, man.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
But I mean, you know, she paid him, she paid
him blood for her tremendous breakthroughs. Yeah, you don't. You
can't know what you don't know. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld,
whom I do not respect.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
No, yeah, that guy's a real dick. But no, it's true.
I mean an oftentimes adventures are using themselves as guinea
pigs in their own experiments, you know, And I think
that's it can be noble, you know what I mean.
It's certainly better than you know, human experimentation without people's consent,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Somebody's got to be first, right, somebody's got to be first.
And Raytheon sees the advantage here, They see the potential,
I should say, they patent the technology. They're sampling microwave
meals in the C suite, in the executive dining room,
and soon they're selling something called the radar range, which
(26:36):
is fun to say. It's very expensive at the time.
It's primarily used for commercial cookers. And we can go
on and on about the history of the microwave, but
that may be a story for another day. What you
need to know is that if that guy had not
liked chocolate, we might not have microwaves today. Chocolate has
(27:00):
many many other stories to tell. As Noel said, you
can tune into an upcoming conversation we're gonna have on
stuff they don't want you to know, to learn more
about it. But in the meantime, thank you chocolate for
helping the Allies win World War Two.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, and hershey chocolate remains he even at its best,
not tasting super great again, I do stand by the
white chocolate took cookies and cream variety. But you know,
big ups to the company, you know, for for for
taking one from the tea. By the way, during this time,
we didn't mention this, but maybe it goes without saying.
Chocolate was much less available back home to regular folks. Yeah,
(27:41):
they were rational and then they were They made, like
we said, I think we said that at some point
half a billion of these things. And if you if
you're looking around, and if you maybe go to military
surplus stores, uh, you may run into some of these.
And like I said, the Mr Guy he ate it,
and he certainly didn't lose his lunch on camera, and
(28:01):
you know, he said it was actually not that bad.
He even shows the inside of it. You can see
how dense it is, but it also is a little
bit porous, yea, which maybe is a product of the age.
But it almost looks like a little bit airy. You know,
I'm kind of intrigued. I don't know, Ben, have you
ever eaten an ancient ration?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, not really recommended unless you specifically want that experience,
But having hung with people who have tried those chocolate
bars too, I think for us in the modern day,
it will taste less bad because we all know it's
supposed to taste horrific. But if you know, imagine your
(28:39):
young kid is World War two and you say, oh wow,
a chocolate bar and you try to bite into it.
So it's all about expectation, right, that's so much of
a fine dining in the first place. But you guys,
of course, Noel Max, of course you are cordially invited
to come over to my place or hang out. Then
(29:01):
try MRIs whenever you would like. Because I got a
deal on some I basically got a pal I got
a palette of them.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, you guys, I'm making these go bags and stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So thanks to thanks to that hookup who will probably
for legal purposes stay anonymous, and uh thank you again
thanks to thanks to chocolate.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
You know, I wonder how many people how to get
serious medical attention from eating these things.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I mean MRIs too.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
They already have.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
They still have the reputation of the modern day, you know,
the it's got a bunch of street acronym meanings.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
One of my favorites is meal refusing to exit. Yes,
oh boy, I get an exit like the boy. It's
a poop joke. We're doing poop jokes.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
We can vote, isn't that crazy? We can? We can
and we do this for a living. So how far
we have fallen? But huge thanks to the Hershey Corporation.
Uh to Max Williams, super producer extraordinaire, to Alex Williams
compose this theme.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, Big
big thanks to Ease, Jeffcoat, to our pals and research associates,
doctor Z and Jeff B. Big thanks of course, do
you know into you once again?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Next We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is the production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's give it up for the Man,
the myth, the legend, our super producer, Max, the candy Man, Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Who and the condom on and where Joey does always with?
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Uh? Well, can I say we're joined because I'm I'm
anyway I've been. We've got the one and only nol
the bagman Brown here.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh you remember, of course, I just want to be
the man. It's I think it's just the most underappreciated
of the heist crew. Uh.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You know, Rolls, we should talk hold the bag we
we should. It's a very powerful and crucial role. We
should talk about this. We've been into heist for quite
some time in our professional careers.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Together, and we have yet to pull one off.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
We have yet to uh, we have yet to have
been caught in hest That's that's a little bit of
pr spin. Yeah, we haven't. We haven't made a heist yet.
But we have spent over the years a lot of
time discussing our roles in heist, and we've appointed several
of our colleagues in heist. I think we made uh.
(01:37):
I think we made our pal Jonathan Strickland aka the
quist Or, aka Baby j the Patsy.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
No one tell him because that will mess up his
role in the heist. But we're not talking about that today, Noel.
We're talking about something crazy. We're talking about a role
that chocolate played in war.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Surprising role. Yeah, you're not really use think about chocolate
and war and the same thought. But it turns out
that the Hershey's Chocolate Company played a big role in
the war effort, specifically in World War two. So let's
talk about World War Two. On June sixth, nineteen forty four,
the Old D Day took place whe one hundred and
(02:18):
sixty thousand troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. You know,
it was the big turning point in the war. And
many of those soldiers, likely on their persons, would have
been carrying a somewhat styled on Hershey's chocolate bar. So
not like the ones that we know and tolerate, because
(02:40):
let's be honest, the worst chocolate I mean, it's it's chocolate,
it's barely chocolate.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's like the cult forty five of candy bars, but.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It is a slice of history and you can't deny that.
And apparently Hershey Park has some pretty fantastic roller coasters,
so not going to throw them under the bustle. Gee,
and I don't mind the like cookies and cream Hershey bar.
Those are from just the standard Hershey bar. It's better
in Europe. Bro. Yeah, that's probably true on us more.
I'll take it sure on its own, No thanks, And
(03:11):
I mean yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I love the town of Hershey. Back during the days
of my very first podcast, you and our pal Casey
Pegram please give me the sound cue if we got it, Uh,
you and our palell Casey Pegram and the legendary Scott
Benjamin took a long road trip participating in a road
(03:33):
rally that found us in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where we saw
this just absolutely stunning, astonishing car museum. For guy likes cars,
that was like poetry and even if you don't like cars,
it's a fascinating dip into American history.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah, and Hershey the company is as a huge part
of American history in terms of branding, in terms of
their you know, advertising and marketing and all of that stuff,
you know, selling chocolate to the masses. Hershey's Chocolate Company
also made kind of a deal with Uncle Sam during
(04:09):
World War Two. You talk about I think you talked
about it on the show. We have done an episode
on it, but I think it's time we do have
one coming up. In stuff they don't want you to
know about mrs Meals Ready to Eat, maybe not a
whole episode. We've talked about go bags in the past,
things that you need for preparing for a disaster, you know,
for preparing to be in a situation where let's just say,
(04:32):
conditions are not ideal for survival, like war, you know,
and so you have these MREs, these meals ready to
eat that are portable, they don't necessarily have to be
heated up, and they need to supply you with the
appropriate amount of calories to keep you going. And there
were different ones. Ben, I'd love for you to speak
a little bout it. There's like the K rations, the DC,
(04:57):
the C rations, exactly. Once you talk a little bit
about some MREs that you're aware of that were kind
of historical, because that's the whole community of people that
like collect these and even like still will eat them.
I love I saw so YouTube videos of people like
cracking open these yeah K rations from seventy five years
ago and they'm like, ah, it's still pretty good.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's edible, it's food, I guess, you know, like Checker says,
you got to eat the most honest tagline ever.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But yeah, I've got.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
A bunch of MRIs actually just off screen here too.
So yeah, an army needs to feed itself and many,
many conflicts throughout human history have been decided based on
sustenance more so than whether or not the leaders had
(05:46):
good military tactics. It's dependent upon whether the army or
the military forces has the ability and the infrastructure to eat.
We're traveling to D Day, the infamous date on June sixth,
nineteen forty four, when more than one hundred and sixty
(06:07):
thousand troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. It was a
successful invasion. It was an absolute bloodbath. One thing that
you might not know, folks, unless you happen to be
there and have taken very good care of yourself and
then listening to a podcast in twenty twenty three, one
thing you may not know is that Hershey's chocolate bars
(06:30):
played a role and Noel, you and I have talked
about this. I can't even remember if it's on air
at this point. Man, we've talked about amazing inventions along
with our pal Matt Frederick, who is perhaps most famous
for the Max with the Fact sound cube, that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Seeking in the Fons bags and peace Fall in Love,
It's just for you right now here with the.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Bat and many other things. Hershey's also played a role
in the invention of the microwave, which we might get
to at the end of this show, but it's a
great one. So, like you said, they crack this bargain
with the US military during World War Two and they
say we're going to work with the US Army Quartermaster
(07:19):
Corps to make a survival ration bar. This is called
the d bar now modern day US MREs. As a
matter of fact, the vast majority of Western military rations
tend to contain some sort of treat for anyone who
wants to go down this rabbit hole with US. I
will go ahead and tell you that, just my opinion,
(07:42):
the best military rations out right now are the French rcirs.
They're kind of hard to find in the US. You
can order them online, you'll pay a premium, but they,
like the MREs, come with a treat. The last pack
of MREs I opened had some M and ms, so
watch hour.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
But the uh but yeah, it's that thin candy shell
that keeps them, keeps them in such good condition.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Yeah, man, that's a good call. You're absolutely correct, noal,
And it's also why you will see a lot of
tortillas in MRIs because they keep well and they don't crumble,
and they're easy to pack. So why chocolate, Okay, why
(08:30):
would you put chocolate in a wartime situation? It has
high calories, it's got caffeine, and it gives you that
energy boost. Plus it's a bar, right, so it's it's handheld.
You don't have to have any cutlery or any other
implements to eat it or prepare it. You just peel
(08:51):
it out of the wrapper, chomp, chomp, chop, and you're off.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah. And I think you mentioned it has caffeine. And
it also has a history in military service. Like George Washington,
for example, in the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War,
would have eaten chocolate, probably in beverage form, which is
still a thing that can be done with these chocolate
rations because they're all cubed out and there's actually if
(09:15):
you look at the text on some of these rations,
these d rations, He'll say, can be crumbled into boiling
water if wished to be consumed as a beverage. So
you think about these MRIs, like you said, Ben, and
you kind of mentioned they were edible at best, you know,
because again they are going to be packed with certain
(09:37):
preservatives that are going to be really good for the
shelf life of them, but not necessarily super good for
the flavor of them. So the first run of these
bars from the Hershey's Chocolate Company go over really well.
They actually received the Army Navy e Production Award in
a ceremony that was held in nineteen forty two, and
(09:58):
the Quartermaster General, a fellow by the name of Major
General Gregory, came to the Hershey Company and presented Milton
Hershey with this award of achievement. And the General had
this to say of the Hershey Company's assistance in the
war effort. The men and women of Hershey Chocolate Corporation
(10:20):
have every reason to be proud of their great work
in backing up our soldiers on the fighting fronts. Because, Ben,
to your point, yeah, it's a treat, but it also
in a pinch, it's got enough calories to keep you going.
You know, this actually could mean the difference between life
and death. Here's the thing though, okay, so oh, but
(10:40):
by the way, of course, the corporation got a flag
that could fly above their plants there in Hershey and
lapel pins for every everyone gets a lapel pin, you know.
And by the end of the war in nineteen forty five,
they received a total of five of these awards. So
this is the thing, Ben, and I know that you
know this more than anybody. They made a ton of these.
(11:02):
I think the figure that I saw is like half
a billion of these chocolate bars or in production where
we're you know, we're rolled out. But the problem at
first was we need to figure out how to a
make this this delectable treat not so treatly that a
serviceman would just gobble it on down, right out the right,
(11:23):
right out of the box, because then it might not
come in handy during a time where it was crucial
to have that caloric intake, you know, when you were
really suffering from a deficit, if maybe you were holed up,
you know, or pinned down or whatever in the jungle.
So that was problem one right, they they had aquate
make it taste crappier. What was problem too, Ben.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yes, So there's a there's a series of problems, a
cavalcade of challenges. If we're being diplomatic. They're not designing
this to taste delectable. They're designing it to be rugged
to withstand a lot of things. So they're thinking in
terms of caloric intake, and then this problem too, they're
(12:07):
thinking in terms of temperature. They say, we'll figure out
to taste stuff. At the end, what we need to
do is make sure we build a thing that can
feed people X amount of calories, and we also need
to make sure that it can withstand terrible temperatures forty
nine degrees celsius Ballpark for US in the US, that's
(12:29):
one hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit. And this is for
the quarter master. The temperature and the caloric value are
the two big things, because he needs to find an
emergency ration. So they create this thing that's called the
d ration. This is what Hershey Corporation initially comes up
(12:50):
with from this request. If you have three of these
d ration chocolate bars, then you can ingest one thousand,
eight hundred calories in an emergency situation again with nothing else.
You don't have to cook it, you don't have to
put it in water. You can if you want to
be kind of gross. But this is an elegant, efficacious
(13:12):
answer to the problem and the idea. They even had
instructions on how to eat it right, like you you're
not supposed to gobble them all down all at once,
Like what's that kid's name in Willy Wonka it gets
sucking something.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, he just eats the chocolate river.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You're right right, you can't eat him the way he does.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
You got a munch on him slowly. And this guy,
this Quartermaster Paul Logan, who comes up with the idea.
He's writing to Hershey's and the dude literally says they
just need to taste quote a little bit better than
a boiled potato.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and apparently, according to some sources, the boiled potato
may have been preferable. But it's so funny, though, man,
because I watched a video YouTube video. I mean, give
this guy credit or credit? Are you talking about Mr Eats? Yeah?
It must be. It must be because he actually had
one of these and he unboxed it like did a
(14:09):
whole unboxing kind of situation, and he ate it, and
he was describing he described the flavor as being sort
of a combination of like hot cocoa mix, sort of
like a cocoa powder and in a hint, just a
hint of cardboard. So it certainly doesn't sound like it
(14:29):
was the most And he was also eating one that
was seventy five years old, and they're really really dense, apparently,
you know, when they were in circulation, it would be
very difficult to bite, so that folks would have to
actually shave off little pieces of it with like a knife,
you know, to even get a taste of it. And then,
like I said in this video, I'll get the get
(14:51):
the name of it in a second. He actually makes
hot cocoa out of one, because the text on the
thing indicate that you can use a square of it
and crush it up in boiling water, and it makes
this kind of kind of gross, unadvertising looking chocolate soup.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Is it the guy Steve nineteen eighty nine, MRI info?
I follow him?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Let's see it is Steve nineteen eighty nine, Mr Info, Yeah,
he's the guy nineteen forty nine US Army Field ration
D emergency MRI, and the text indeed reads it actually
gives you the the ingredients, so it says chocolate, sugar, skim, milk, powder,
(15:35):
cocoa fat, oat flour, which is actually the added ingredients
that would not have been in mass produced you know,
hershey chocolate bars, artificial flavoring. I guess that's their secret.
Sauce zero point four or five milligrams of vitamin B
thiamine hydrochloride six hundred calories, like you said, says to
be eaten slowly in about a half hour, can be
(15:58):
dissolved by crumbling into a couple of boiling water if
desired as a beverage, which you kind of have to.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
It's almost like Hardtack for sailors, like easily that was
to dilute it with water, and you nailed it.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Man.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
The oat flours, why it's so dense. So go back
going back to this guy Paul Logan again, I think
he's kind of a pill. He says, you know, we
want this to not be the kind of bar you
would buy it a candy store able to be resilient.
And the problem was Hershey's when they had this recipe,
(16:34):
you know, the chocolate sugar, the cocoa fat instead of
cocoa powder, skim milk powder instead of milk fat, that
oat flour. They couldn't get the gunk of it to
liquefy enough to get into standard chocolate bar molds, so
they had to knead it into specially made molds. And
(16:55):
not only did it not taste good, not only was
it physically difficult to bite into, which which is nuts
because your jaw is the strongest muscle in a human body.
It also was no good no bento for your digestive system.
Over time, soldiers hated this stuff so much they started
calling the d rats Hitler's secret weapon.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yep, that's right. You must have infiltrated the infiltrated the
Hershey company. I guess No, No, these things weren't necessary, though.
It's a good point, ben, because to eat it too
quickly would be wasteful. It would not spread it out,
you know, those calories as much as we're talking like,
you know, really difficult situation. So if you eat it
all at once, it would not be good for that,
(17:37):
and it would give you a pretty gnarly stomach ache.
But you're right. It was not beloved by the servicemen
of World War Two, and it was often just thrown
away because, as our YouTube friend Steve nineteen eighty nine
MRI info points out, there could be some surface kind
(18:00):
of bubbling that actually, you know, he points it out,
it sort of looks like almost like mold growing on
the service of it, but it's actually just sort of
a discoloration that comes from the shrink wrapping process or
the cellophane process, which was actually I believe what was
the company that was making the cellophane. It was DuPont
I think anyway, there was like another giant American corporation
(18:23):
that was making the cellphane. When you take it out,
even if it was fresh, it would still sometimes have
this kind of distort, this discoloration on the top. So
there is a massive surplus of these because they were
often either discarded or they just you know, were returned,
you know. And so you're gonna see some of these
floating around out there in MRI land if you're like
(18:45):
in those circles.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, and hershey is hearing the people they're trying to
respond to this. By the end of World War two,
they had made more than three billion ration bars overall,
but they weren't all the same version. Later in the war,
they introduced something called the tropical bar, which was specifically
designed to be used in the Pacific, but it became
(19:09):
a thing that everybody in the arm services. Heck, probably
everybody in the US knew these bars taste terrible. On purpose.
Probably the army goes back to Hershey and they say,
all right, we've had enough. It's nineteen forty three at
this point, and the company says, all right, we're going
to try to make something that tastes better. This is
(19:31):
where they make the tropical bar. It still didn't taste
that great, and a lot of soldiers said, you know what,
I get it.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
You tried.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It was a big swing, but this chocolate is so
bad that it's not worth the calories. They were throwing
a bunch of this stuff away, and then they took
up a new practice. They would trade it to people.
And you know, they would say, okay, we will trade
this chocolate over to other folks, because it's a ration
(20:02):
that you can tolerate if you're already sick with dysentery.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right. Not only that, though, the rapper was different and
it looked a little more commercial, right, so they could
trick people sometimes into like giving them a trade if
they didn't know, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Right, they thought it was a civilian one, right, tropical. Okay,
So this chocolate bar thing, it continues to be a
part of the standard military rations through the wars in
(20:42):
Korea and the fifties, through the Vietnam War. It doesn't
get discontinued until after Vietnam. And we got to talk
about this idea. So these guys are trying to for
a long time, they're trying to make sure this chocolate
doesn't melt, right, That's why they got the weird oat
flour in it.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Never everything.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
They want it to be in a solid, a solid,
easily consumable form. But if you're a fan of chocolate,
let's be honest, you like it when it's melty. It's
kind of like the rule with cheese. Melted cheese is
pretty great.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
No, absolutely, I mean, it has its place. You surely
don't want it melting in your pocket, you know, which
is why they made such efforts to make sure that
the melting point was higher for these rations. But melted
chocolate and is a great part of a recipe used
as a topping, you know, great for baking obviously, and
(21:34):
an important use of the chocolate. If you watch any
kind of great British baking show you know about like
tempering chocolate and all that stuff, it's a whole other
use for the stuff. And the question then becomes what
is the best, most effective, quickest way to do that thing.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, and when we get to the idea of melting chocolate,
we find there's another invention that was accidentally created due
to melting chocol We want to give a big, big
thanks to Percy Spencer explored this in a previous previous
show He's to do back in the day called Stuff
of Genius with Matt Frederick with our pal Paul Deckett
(22:14):
and several other folks including Christian Steinman's formerly of stuff
that they're blew your mind. Percy Spencer is the reason
we have the microwave of it, and chocolate is the
reason Percy came up with the microwave of it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah, he was a junior engineer. He only had They
make it real clear on this article in New England
Historicalsociety dot com that he only had a fifth grade education,
but he actually he was no slouch. He earned patents
that were really important towards the war effort, you know,
and also to you know, zapping yourself a nice stofer's
(22:52):
you know, in a pinch. So he was actually the
fourth person hired by a little company out of Cambridge,
Massachusetts called Wraith. You may have heard of it now
much more known as a defense contractor, right Ben.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Yeah, Raytheon and get their tentacles and a lot of pies.
I would say, if you want to learn more about that,
check out stuff. They don't want you to know. Raytheon
plays no okay role here. They're relatively innocuous.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh, I say, what's most important is that this fellow
has a chocolate bar in his pocket, a Hershey's chocolate
bar in his pocket, and he's hanging out in the
lab like you do, and testing these things called magnetrons
in nineteen forty five at Raytheon and he walks by.
It's a type of vacuum tube that creates and emits
microwaves that are used in radar systems. But he noticed
(23:42):
it's like so many of the stories of like incredible
inventions and Eureka moments are all about kind of happenstance.
He walks by one of these tubes and he notices
that the candy bar in his pocket is getting a
little warm, he's trying to melt. So he's like, hmm,
let's explore this. So he goes to the lab in
(24:03):
the city of Waltham the next day and he takes
some popcorn and he notices a similar but much more
noisy effect. The colonels start to pop. So he houses
one of these magnatrons inside a metal box, just like
for his own purposes at this point, right then.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
Yeah, well you're getting situations. I mean, he's he's unfailingly curious.
We should also say he has a he has a
lot of patents that he is accruing here. He's a
very very curious guy. But yeah, just for his own
what if giggles, he does a choose your own adventure move.
He makes Maguyver level microwave we could call it. And
(24:44):
at first, you guys, he entirely uses this to reheat
his lunch at work.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
That's what I mean. Yeah, it's kind of like as
a lark, you know, so I made this thing. Yeah no,
I mean, you know again, it's not oftentimes the job
of the inventor to see the big picture of the thing.
It's more just someone who's curious about how science interacts
with stuff. And then it's the job of like marketers
and the whole nother department to figure out how to
(25:09):
put to slap a label on it and ship it
and you know, make gazillions of dollars, which did, of course,
inevitably happen with the old microwave oven. Here's my question
about it. Did he know if this was safe? Because
he's just like, takes this stuff, and it's ever know
if it's there.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
There is if you just very slightly tilt this axis
of this story, there is this guy in my co
words of stuff. He died three weeks later for a radiation.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah. Maybe I'm playing too much fall out right now,
but I'm like reading this no, man.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
But I mean, you know, she paid him, she paid
him blood for her tremendous breakthroughs. Yeah, you don't. You
can't know what you don't know. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld,
whom I do not respect.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
No, yeah, that guy's a real dick. But no, it's true.
I mean an oftentimes adventures are using themselves as guinea
pigs in their own experiments, you know, And I think
that's it can be noble, you know what I mean.
It's certainly better than you know, human experimentation without people's consent,
that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Somebody's got to be first, right, somebody's got to be first.
And Raytheon sees the advantage here, They see the potential,
I should say, they patent the technology. They're sampling microwave
meals in the C suite, in the executive dining room,
and soon they're selling something called the radar range, which
(26:36):
is fun to say. It's very expensive at the time.
It's primarily used for commercial cookers. And we can go
on and on about the history of the microwave, but
that may be a story for another day. What you
need to know is that if that guy had not
liked chocolate, we might not have microwaves today. Chocolate has
(27:00):
many many other stories to tell. As Noel said, you
can tune into an upcoming conversation we're gonna have on
stuff they don't want you to know, to learn more
about it. But in the meantime, thank you chocolate for
helping the Allies win World War Two.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, and hershey chocolate remains he even at its best,
not tasting super great again, I do stand by the
white chocolate took cookies and cream variety. But you know,
big ups to the company, you know, for for for
taking one from the tea. By the way, during this time,
we didn't mention this, but maybe it goes without saying.
Chocolate was much less available back home to regular folks. Yeah,
(27:41):
they were rational and then they were They made, like
we said, I think we said that at some point
half a billion of these things. And if you if
you're looking around, and if you maybe go to military
surplus stores, uh, you may run into some of these.
And like I said, the Mr Guy he ate it,
and he certainly didn't lose his lunch on camera, and
(28:01):
you know, he said it was actually not that bad.
He even shows the inside of it. You can see
how dense it is, but it also is a little
bit porous, yea, which maybe is a product of the age.
But it almost looks like a little bit airy. You know,
I'm kind of intrigued. I don't know, Ben, have you
ever eaten an ancient ration?
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Yes, not really recommended unless you specifically want that experience,
But having hung with people who have tried those chocolate
bars too, I think for us in the modern day,
it will taste less bad because we all know it's
supposed to taste horrific. But if you know, imagine your
(28:39):
young kid is World War two and you say, oh wow,
a chocolate bar and you try to bite into it.
So it's all about expectation, right, that's so much of
a fine dining in the first place. But you guys,
of course, Noel Max, of course you are cordially invited
to come over to my place or hang out. Then
(29:01):
try MRIs whenever you would like. Because I got a
deal on some I basically got a pal I got
a palette of them.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, you guys, I'm making these go bags and stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
So thanks to thanks to that hookup who will probably
for legal purposes stay anonymous, and uh thank you again
thanks to thanks to chocolate.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
You know, I wonder how many people how to get
serious medical attention from eating these things.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
I mean MRIs too.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
They already have.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
They still have the reputation of the modern day, you know,
the it's got a bunch of street acronym meanings.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Right.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
One of my favorites is meal refusing to exit. Yes,
oh boy, I get an exit like the boy. It's
a poop joke. We're doing poop jokes.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
We can vote, isn't that crazy? We can? We can
and we do this for a living. So how far
we have fallen? But huge thanks to the Hershey Corporation.
Uh to Max Williams, super producer extraordinaire, to Alex Williams
compose this theme.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Big big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister, Big
big thanks to Ease, Jeffcoat, to our pals and research associates,
doctor Z and Jeff B. Big thanks of course, do
you know into you once again?
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Next We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!