# Selects: Chopsticks > Forks

An episode of [Stuff You Should Know](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/278981407), 4 Jul 2026, 51 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/a91018a4-ea4f-4130-bf55-ae270180c327/fee0f3b7-bdc9-4ee0-b1cc-b479014c2d8d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=44710ecc-10bb-48d1-93c7-ae270180c33e

In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh sit and converse on the simple, elegant chopstick. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, chuck here, we are moving forward through time
[0:04] Speaker 1: in the year twenty twenty, the year of COVID, and
[0:06] Speaker 1: I think we're at sort of ground zero here, everybody,
[0:09] Speaker 1: because the date for this episode is March seventeenth, and
[0:12] Speaker 1: I know that that was right around the time that
[0:14] Speaker 1: things shut down because my birthday is March fifteenth, and
[0:17] Speaker 1: one of my very good friends birthday is March twelfth,
[0:20] Speaker 1: and every year we go out on a birthday dinner
[0:23] Speaker 1: with our wives and family, and I remember being out
[0:28] Speaker 1: might have been like the sixteenth or seventeenth of that year,
[0:31] Speaker 1: to dinner and us being.
[0:33] Speaker 2: Like should we be out?
[0:36] Speaker 1: You guys like they're starting to say things are getting weird,
[0:39] Speaker 1: and we're all washing our hands and saying the.
[0:42] Speaker 2: ABC's and stuff.
[0:43] Speaker 1: But this feels like maybe the last dinner we're going
[0:46] Speaker 1: to have for a while, And it was that was
[0:48] Speaker 1: the last dinner out I had for a very long time.
[0:51] Speaker 1: But this episode from March seventeen, twenty twenty, right when
[0:54] Speaker 1: it all shut down, is pretty great. It's all about chopsticks,
[0:58] Speaker 1: and it's called Chopsticks Greater than Forks.
[1:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
[1:15] Speaker 3: Hey and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
[1:17] Speaker 3: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and this
[1:21] Speaker 3: is stuff you should know. All about the song Chopsticks.
[1:27] Speaker 2: I wondered if you're going to make a joke about that.
[1:29] Speaker 3: Jerry beat me to it when she was like, what
[1:32] Speaker 3: are we recording today? And I told her she's like
[1:33] Speaker 3: the song d D D D. No, it's d D D.
[1:40] Speaker 3: Didn't Oh is that chopsticks? Aren't there two chopsticks? No,
[1:43] Speaker 3: I'm just teasing. That's heart and soul.
[1:45] Speaker 2: Oh okay, so what I said from big that was chopsticks?
[1:49] Speaker 3: Right? Totally? Yekay, Robert uh, Robert Losia. Yeah, man, I
[1:54] Speaker 3: should have continued rolling and said James Kahn.
[1:57] Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a very James conn like roll,
[2:00] Speaker 2: wasn't it.
[2:00] Speaker 3: Totally? I think he played that role in locket in.
[2:06] Speaker 2: Uh.
[2:06] Speaker 3: Well, he's a crime boss in Bottle Rocket Way.
[2:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of.
[2:09] Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a good movie truly. We watched Misery
[2:12] Speaker 3: the other day. It still holds up.
[2:14] Speaker 1: Oh man, I remember seeing that for the first time
[2:17] Speaker 1: in Athens when I was in college.
[2:19] Speaker 2: M hm, so great. Kathy Bates can do no wrong.
[2:24] Speaker 3: She did great. But if you watch James Kahn, he
[2:27] Speaker 3: did really well too, Like sure, his whole kind of
[2:30] Speaker 3: trepidacious manner toward her was really well done and not
[2:34] Speaker 3: overdone at all, And like he did a great job
[2:37] Speaker 3: as well.
[2:38] Speaker 2: And he had to lay there in a bed for
[2:39] Speaker 2: weeks and weeks and act. Yeah, sounds like a dream.
[2:43] Speaker 3: Yeah. And if he balked at it, they would attach
[2:47] Speaker 3: a catheter to him and make him pee in his
[2:48] Speaker 3: own mouth as punishment, like a little known fact about
[2:52] Speaker 3: that movie.
[2:53] Speaker 1: Oh so chopsticks, Right, we should point out here that
[2:59] Speaker 1: in researching this chopsticks and customs and etiquette, if we
[3:04] Speaker 1: covered all the countries and all that stuff that use chopsticks,
[3:07] Speaker 1: we'd be here all day. Yeah, so there's kind of
[3:10] Speaker 1: a focus here on Japan.
[3:12] Speaker 3: Well, they seem to be a little uh, the most
[3:18] Speaker 3: sensitive to transgressions with chopsticks out of all of the
[3:21] Speaker 3: Asian cultures. I think perhaps they have the most rules
[3:24] Speaker 3: against them at the very least.
[3:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you read them, it's they could all
[3:28] Speaker 1: be summed up as just don't be a dumb American.
[3:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, or don't have any fun whatsoever with your chopsticks.
[3:35] Speaker 3: Is another way to buy.
[3:36] Speaker 1: You're like, what's wrong with making them antenna's in a
[3:38] Speaker 1: restaurant and going mart meat?
[3:41] Speaker 3: Right, I'm a Walrus, now, why can't I be a Walrus?
[3:44] Speaker 2: Right?
[3:45] Speaker 3: But we are talking chopsticks, not the song. Sorry to
[3:48] Speaker 3: disappoint you everybody, but I saw that that song is
[3:50] Speaker 3: actually called chopsticks because it was originally called the Celebrated
[3:54] Speaker 3: chop Waltz. Okay, written by a sixteen year old schoolgirl
[3:59] Speaker 3: from England. It seems about right, sure, so, but we're
[4:03] Speaker 3: talking about the utensils, and like, when you think chopsticks,
[4:06] Speaker 3: obviously you think like Asia, sure, and you don't think
[4:10] Speaker 3: that there was ever anything but chopsticks in the history
[4:13] Speaker 3: of Asia. And while chopsticks are actually surprisingly old, I
[4:17] Speaker 3: think they go back about seven thousand years. I also
[4:21] Speaker 3: saw five thousand years. I'm going with seven. I think
[4:24] Speaker 3: they're actually about as ancient as that. They weren't like
[4:27] Speaker 3: the go to utensil for Asia until this millennium.
[4:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, the spoon was kind of the go to. Yeah,
[4:35] Speaker 1: who knew the word chopstick? They think maybe pigeon English
[4:41] Speaker 1: Chinese pigeon English meaning chop chop or quickly right, But
[4:47] Speaker 1: you know this is one of these etymologies.
[4:49] Speaker 2: It's sort of tough to pin down.
[4:50] Speaker 3: It looks like, but that's the English word for it.
[4:52] Speaker 3: In all of the chopstick using cultures, they have their
[4:55] Speaker 3: own word, like in Japan it's hashi, it's kuwa easy,
[5:00] Speaker 3: in China nice. I'm not sure if I said that
[5:03] Speaker 3: right at all. Geo garok in Korean, all.
[5:08] Speaker 2: Right, not not as nice?
[5:11] Speaker 3: And deui dei dua in Vietnamese. All right, I'm sorry
[5:16] Speaker 3: half of the world's population.
[5:18] Speaker 1: I love that you started strong in Japan though, because
[5:20] Speaker 1: you feel pretty confident in your Japanese pronunciations.
[5:22] Speaker 2: That's a good way to go.
[5:24] Speaker 3: Yes, I have a great tutor, that's right.
[5:27] Speaker 1: So five to seven thousand years ago they were used
[5:33] Speaker 1: initially for cooking, and we'll get more into the ins
[5:36] Speaker 1: and outs of the history, but they were made from
[5:38] Speaker 1: twigs probably, and it was much much later, Like you
[5:43] Speaker 1: said that, they were table utensils, right, and it was
[5:47] Speaker 1: all very much like practicality based.
[5:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, because initially they figured out pretty early on these,
[5:57] Speaker 3: the Chinese from five thousand to seven thousand years ago,
[6:00] Speaker 3: that's a really bad idea to stick your hand into
[6:02] Speaker 3: a pot of boiling water to get something out of it,
[6:06] Speaker 3: say like a bone or a piece of meat or
[6:08] Speaker 3: something like that. It's way better to use a twig,
[6:12] Speaker 3: and it's even better to use two twigs, as if
[6:14] Speaker 3: they were kind of a pair of detached tweezers. That's
[6:18] Speaker 3: apparently where they initially started to come into use was
[6:21] Speaker 3: during cooking and food preparation, not the actual eating process.
[6:25] Speaker 2: That's right.
[6:26] Speaker 1: There was a big population boom in China at one point,
[6:31] Speaker 1: some might say, there continues to be said, and the
[6:35] Speaker 1: resources became a little more scarce. They started cutting their
[6:39] Speaker 1: food up into little tiny pieces for reasons of like it.
[6:43] Speaker 2: Helps it to cook faster. I wonder I didn't.
[6:47] Speaker 1: See anything about this, but I wonder if that also
[6:48] Speaker 1: just made it.
[6:50] Speaker 2: More shareable among a larger family.
[6:52] Speaker 3: I could see that. That's a great point too. And
[6:55] Speaker 3: isn't it fascinating though, the idea that a population boom
[6:58] Speaker 3: led to widespread use of the chopstick.
[7:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. And then Confucius also was a vegetarian
[7:06] Speaker 1: and noted knife hater. He has a quote about knives.
[7:11] Speaker 1: The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both
[7:14] Speaker 1: the slaughterhouse and the kitchen, and he allows no knives
[7:17] Speaker 1: on his table. And I think that was a little
[7:19] Speaker 1: more because a knive was equated with eating meat, right,
[7:22] Speaker 1: less than like it's a garbage tool.
[7:25] Speaker 3: You don't You don't need a knife to eat a plant. Basically.
[7:28] Speaker 2: Yeah, some might argue you might want to cut a
[7:30] Speaker 2: piece of broccoli.
[7:32] Speaker 3: Maybe, but you don't have to. I just summed up Confucius.
[7:35] Speaker 3: That's the level of arrogance that I'm operating at now.
[7:40] Speaker 1: And I think some of the early and you know,
[7:41] Speaker 1: it started in China, and then you know, pretty soon Korea, Vietnam, Japan,
[7:46] Speaker 1: we're all using them. But I think that Chinese chopsticks
[7:53] Speaker 1: were joined at what they are now?
[7:56] Speaker 2: What are they called now?
[7:57] Speaker 1: If they're joined and you got to split them apart?
[8:00] Speaker 3: Oh warabashi that's Japanese. This is the term for disposable chopsticks.
[8:05] Speaker 1: Okay, But I thought the Chinese chopsticks were originally joined
[8:09] Speaker 1: like that.
[8:09] Speaker 3: Yes, No, it was Japanese. Okay. There was a single
[8:12] Speaker 3: piece of bamboo that was like split, kind of like
[8:15] Speaker 3: giant tweezers.
[8:16] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I'm reading this now. I had a sometimes
[8:20] Speaker 1: I just now reading this, Well, no, I get sometimes
[8:23] Speaker 1: and it's the dumbest thing. But I get confused between
[8:26] Speaker 1: former and ladder. Oh yeah, it's not that I get confused.
[8:30] Speaker 1: I just have to go back and sort of picture
[8:32] Speaker 1: it in my brain.
[8:33] Speaker 3: It just takes an extra second, I think for everybody
[8:35] Speaker 3: that's right. It's definitely not intuitive, so I don't feel bad.
[8:38] Speaker 1: I also thought this thing about food poisoning was interesting
[8:42] Speaker 1: was that in dynastic times in China, they would use
[8:47] Speaker 1: and I guess people that are a little more well
[8:49] Speaker 1: healed would use silver chopsticks because they thought that if
[8:54] Speaker 1: it came into contact with something that was poisonous, then
[8:58] Speaker 1: the chopsticks would turn black and they would know not
[9:00] Speaker 1: to eat it.
[9:02] Speaker 3: I mean, it just makes sense. When you're rich and wealthy,
[9:04] Speaker 3: more people want to kill you, so it's better to
[9:07] Speaker 3: have something that shows if somebody's trying to poison you,
[9:10] Speaker 3: like your chopstick's turning a color if you're being poisonous
[9:15] Speaker 3: cyanide or something like that. The problem is that doesn't
[9:17] Speaker 3: actually work, and I don't know why they didn't just
[9:20] Speaker 3: think that through from the get go, like, oh well,
[9:22] Speaker 3: let's get ourselves some cyanide and stick a silver chopstick
[9:25] Speaker 3: in it and see what happens and see that it
[9:28] Speaker 3: doesn't work. But apparently it does work in the presence
[9:31] Speaker 3: of garlic or rotten eggs because they put out hydrogen
[9:35] Speaker 3: sulfide so it will turn silver a different color. So
[9:39] Speaker 3: I don't know how garlic ever made itself into a
[9:43] Speaker 3: staple of Chinese cooking, but there we have it.
[9:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, And the other thing I thought was interesting and
[9:47] Speaker 1: we should mention too. This came from a variety of places.
[9:51] Speaker 1: Teagan Jones at Gizmoto, Lisa Brahman from Smithsonian mag Q.
[9:56] Speaker 1: Edward Wang from Cambridge blog huff Po Believe it or Not,
[10:00] Speaker 1: got in the works, yeah, and some other places. But
[10:04] Speaker 1: I thought that Q. Edward Wang's history was really interesting
[10:08] Speaker 1: because he mentions that wheat is kind of the first
[10:14] Speaker 1: reason before rice, which really surprised me.
[10:18] Speaker 3: It was very surprising. I think he knew all along
[10:21] Speaker 3: that that was a big reveal, you know. Yeah, but
[10:25] Speaker 3: that's what gave chopsticks a shot in the arm. So
[10:28] Speaker 3: first we have cutting food into smaller pieces to have
[10:34] Speaker 3: it cook faster, so you use less firewood because there's
[10:37] Speaker 3: a population boom. And then as wheat becomes kind of
[10:41] Speaker 3: fashionable and widespread, you start to use chopsticks because you're
[10:46] Speaker 3: making things like noodles and dumplings. And prior to this,
[10:50] Speaker 3: millet was the go to grain. And millet's really small,
[10:54] Speaker 3: it's much smaller than rice, and you certainly aren't going
[10:56] Speaker 3: to turn it into like a noodle or a dumpling
[11:00] Speaker 3: make a gruel out of it. And so for thousands
[11:03] Speaker 3: of years, the go to utensil that people use to
[11:06] Speaker 3: eat with in China was a spoon because they were
[11:09] Speaker 3: eating gruel or porridge or whatever by hated life. But
[11:13] Speaker 3: when wheat came along and they started turning into noodles
[11:15] Speaker 3: and dumplings, they said, oh, yeah, I remember those things
[11:18] Speaker 3: that we use those twigs to cook with. What if
[11:21] Speaker 3: we made a smaller version of those to eat with too,
[11:25] Speaker 3: And that's where the chopstick got its first like real
[11:27] Speaker 3: boost in usage around Asia.
[11:30] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, try to eat a big spoonful of
[11:34] Speaker 2: noodles and just watch as they flop off and sling
[11:38] Speaker 2: delicious sauce all over you, all over the place.
[11:41] Speaker 3: There is literally nothing more frustrating than trying to eat
[11:46] Speaker 3: noodles with a spoon in the entire world.
[11:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, sure you could chop them up
[11:53] Speaker 1: into tiny little pieces, so they rest in your spoon.
[11:56] Speaker 2: With some broth. Sure, but who wants to do.
[11:59] Speaker 1: That that cuts up their buskehetti at the table into
[12:04] Speaker 1: tiny bits?
[12:05] Speaker 2: Is a six year old? Yeah?
[12:09] Speaker 3: Or just thoroughly un American? True? One of the two,
[12:13] Speaker 3: maybe both, depending on how sophisticated the six year old is.
[12:17] Speaker 2: You know.
[12:17] Speaker 1: The other thing I thought was interesting too from mister
[12:20] Speaker 1: Wang's article was he talked about stew, which is gang
[12:23] Speaker 1: and Chinese. They ate a lot of stew back then,
[12:26] Speaker 1: and chopsticks would be very useful for picking up things
[12:29] Speaker 1: like the more solid objects in the stew, like the vegetables.
[12:33] Speaker 3: Right, so you've got wheat coming into vogue, you've got
[12:38] Speaker 3: smaller pieces vegetables stew being eaten. Chopsticks are like, come on,
[12:43] Speaker 3: we're gonna do what we gotta do this. We just
[12:44] Speaker 3: need one more thing to get us over the hump,
[12:47] Speaker 3: and people are gonna know us everywhere around the world.
[12:49] Speaker 3: And that one thing was a particular kind of Vietnamese
[12:53] Speaker 3: rice that ripens early apparently, and it's a shorter grain
[12:58] Speaker 3: or a medium grain, which means that it's easier to
[13:02] Speaker 3: it clumps more easily. It also has a lot of
[13:04] Speaker 3: like starches to it, so it's just kind of clumpy,
[13:07] Speaker 3: sticky rice. And here in the West, we're not really
[13:10] Speaker 3: used to that kind of rice, so we're like, how
[13:12] Speaker 3: are you going to use chopsticks to eat this stuff?
[13:15] Speaker 2: Like, try eating some uncle bens with chopsticks.
[13:18] Speaker 3: You can't do it. It's like trying to eat noodles
[13:20] Speaker 3: with a spoon.
[13:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, or you would just do that move.
[13:23] Speaker 1: And this is what I didn't understand when I was
[13:24] Speaker 1: growing up, because I was a little naive when I
[13:27] Speaker 1: saw chopsticks, I would just think about scooping up the
[13:30] Speaker 1: rice on top of them very awkwardly. And it wasn't
[13:34] Speaker 1: until I was a little bit older and had good
[13:35] Speaker 1: clumpy Chinese rice right and Japanese rice, I was like, oh,
[13:39] Speaker 1: it's very easy to eat with chopsticks.
[13:41] Speaker 3: Yeah. And you're just like, oh, okay, I've got it
[13:46] Speaker 3: because it sticks together. It's like a nice little morsel
[13:48] Speaker 3: of food and it sticks together just about the right size,
[13:52] Speaker 3: and it's totally different. So when you eat Chinese rice
[13:57] Speaker 3: or Japanese rice, or even Vietnamese rice, the stickier, then
[14:00] Speaker 3: you understand, Okay, you can use this as a as
[14:03] Speaker 3: you can use chopsticks for this, and the Chinese figured
[14:05] Speaker 3: this out as well, when rice became much more of
[14:09] Speaker 3: a staple of the Asian diet, and all of a sudden,
[14:12] Speaker 3: now you didn't need a spoon anymore because everybody's like
[14:15] Speaker 3: to heck with millet. Who wants gruel? Nobody? Yeah, So
[14:18] Speaker 3: they threw their spoons out the window, and then they
[14:22] Speaker 3: started just eating chopsticks for everything that you could use
[14:25] Speaker 3: it for everything. Now it's all you needed for your meal.
[14:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, And that all in one solution, I think was
[14:31] Speaker 1: that happened in China and Japan and Vietnam for sure,
[14:35] Speaker 1: and Korea I think was the one standout because I
[14:38] Speaker 1: believe in Korea the spoon and the chopstick still go
[14:42] Speaker 1: hand in hand.
[14:45] Speaker 3: Yeah. And this I believe it was Key Edward Wang
[14:48] Speaker 3: who maybe wrote this, but he basically said it. It
[14:51] Speaker 3: seems to be a conscious decision right in Korea, almost
[14:55] Speaker 3: as if they were being contrary or something like that.
[14:59] Speaker 2: Maybe they just wanted to their own thing.
[15:01] Speaker 3: Well, they eat a lot of very very hot stews
[15:04] Speaker 3: and soups. Have you ever had boot at Jigga?
[15:07] Speaker 2: I don't think so.
[15:09] Speaker 3: I'm not even sure I'm saying it correctly. Have you
[15:11] Speaker 3: ever been to eat like an h mart or like
[15:13] Speaker 3: an Asian food cord or something like that. Sure, if
[15:16] Speaker 3: you go to a cream place, they usually have I
[15:19] Speaker 3: think it's called bout a jig a. It's like hot
[15:21] Speaker 3: dog soup basically, Oh my lord, and it's like this
[15:24] Speaker 3: kind of I'm not even sure. I guess it's it's
[15:27] Speaker 3: like a chili paste broth with lots of great processed
[15:33] Speaker 3: meat in it, and like ramen and like holapanos. It's
[15:37] Speaker 3: just so good. But that thing comes to you boiling,
[15:41] Speaker 3: and you're supposed to like eat the chunky parts out
[15:44] Speaker 3: with a chopstick. But I guess it always comes with
[15:46] Speaker 3: a spoon too, so I think you're supposed to actually
[15:49] Speaker 3: eat the broth with the spoon rather than sip.
[15:52] Speaker 1: I tell you, one thing I do love is the
[15:54] Speaker 1: design of the and I'm calling it the Chinese spoon.
[15:58] Speaker 1: I don't know if it originated in China, but you
[16:00] Speaker 1: know the soup spoon I'm talking.
[16:01] Speaker 3: About, Yeah, like the one you use for miso souper man.
[16:04] Speaker 2: They're just the best.
[16:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, they do. They because you can get a really
[16:08] Speaker 3: big spoonful on there.
[16:10] Speaker 2: You know, it's ergonomic.
[16:11] Speaker 1: It just it's the it's the way to do it
[16:13] Speaker 1: unless you're just going to pick up the bowl and
[16:15] Speaker 1: drink it, which is great too.
[16:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, up with the miso soup spoon.
[16:18] Speaker 1: All right, let's take a break because I'm so hungry
[16:21] Speaker 1: after you said hot dog stew, wh stomachs growling, And
[16:26] Speaker 1: we'll come back and we'll talk more about chopsticks.
[16:49] Speaker 3: Copine shot.
[16:55] Speaker 2: Shot.
[17:01] Speaker 3: I don't remember what episode it was, Chuck, but do
[17:03] Speaker 3: you remember when our stomachs growled in sync with one another?
[17:06] Speaker 2: That was very recently?
[17:08] Speaker 3: It was? Yeah, you can still reminisce about recent Okay,
[17:12] Speaker 3: I say.
[17:14] Speaker 2: I'm nostalgic for that thing that happened last week.
[17:17] Speaker 1: Pretty much so apparently, and this I'm not sure how
[17:22] Speaker 1: accurate this is, but the four main kinds of chopsticks.
[17:28] Speaker 1: Apparently in China the chopsticks are a little bit longer
[17:34] Speaker 1: and a little more blunt on the ends.
[17:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, and they think that might be a nod to Confucius,
[17:39] Speaker 3: basically saying like, don't have knives at your table, don't
[17:42] Speaker 3: even have vaguely sharpened chopsticks.
[17:45] Speaker 2: Even like nothing stabby nothing.
[17:47] Speaker 3: Don't you don't want to be stabbed at your table?
[17:49] Speaker 1: I think in Japan they're a little sharper and a
[17:51] Speaker 1: little shorter, but you're still not supposed to be stabbing stuff.
[17:54] Speaker 2: No, don't stab that piece of tuna.
[17:59] Speaker 3: No, it's you can just tell if you've ever done
[18:02] Speaker 3: that while you're doing it, that you're violating some unnatural
[18:05] Speaker 3: law or something like that.
[18:06] Speaker 2: Feels wrong, doesn't it.
[18:07] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[18:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, let me see here in Korea, apparently they're are
[18:10] Speaker 1: shorter as well, and they are also blunt, but they
[18:14] Speaker 1: can be metallic.
[18:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's one thing that we'll see because we're going
[18:19] Speaker 3: to talk about. As with everything in existence, there's some
[18:22] Speaker 3: horrid environmental impact with chopsticks as well. But the Japanese
[18:28] Speaker 3: are like, give us cheap, disposable wooden or bamboo chopsticks
[18:32] Speaker 3: and basically nothing else. Yeah, they're just crazy for it,
[18:36] Speaker 3: where some of the other Asian cultures are like, no,
[18:38] Speaker 3: we can use reusable ones, but the Japanese are like, no,
[18:42] Speaker 3: we want nothing but disposable, cheap chopsticks. That warebashi.
[18:46] Speaker 1: I assume that you and U Mei have your own
[18:50] Speaker 1: chopsticks at home. Oh yeah, and do you bring those
[18:54] Speaker 1: to restaurants?
[18:56] Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no never do we should? I everybody should, but.
[19:01] Speaker 1: I usually think when I'm there, I'm like, oh, man,
[19:03] Speaker 1: I should have brought my chopsticks.
[19:04] Speaker 3: Well, you know, I mean like, if you go to
[19:06] Speaker 3: any Asian store, they have like cute little it looks
[19:09] Speaker 3: almost like a pencil case, but it's you know, chopsticks inside,
[19:12] Speaker 3: and it's meant for you to carry them around with you.
[19:15] Speaker 3: But no one does that. You just don't. Even though
[19:18] Speaker 3: hopefully in ten years when we're all like, Okay, this
[19:21] Speaker 3: is out of control and this is really bad, everyone
[19:24] Speaker 3: will be doing that. You just don't do it. And yeah,
[19:26] Speaker 3: we have some that like I could just put in
[19:28] Speaker 3: my jeans pocket and walk around with if I wanted to,
[19:31] Speaker 3: but I don't do it.
[19:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, one does.
[19:33] Speaker 1: I take my straw now and I use it because
[19:37] Speaker 1: I now keep it in my purse. Your merse, my merse,
[19:41] Speaker 1: which goes everywhere with me. Yeah, so I need to
[19:43] Speaker 1: throw some chopsticks in there. Sure, And it's a good
[19:47] Speaker 1: feeling when you say no straw. I've got my own,
[19:49] Speaker 1: And I would love to be able to say no, no,
[19:51] Speaker 1: you keep those wooden chopsticks.
[19:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, take that straw and shove it where the sun
[19:56] Speaker 3: don't shine.
[19:58] Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aggressive about.
[20:01] Speaker 3: It's so funny depending on where you are in the
[20:03] Speaker 3: country though, Like if they bring you a straw and
[20:05] Speaker 3: you say no straw please, they look at you like
[20:08] Speaker 3: you're just a straight up democratic socialist hippie, you know,
[20:12] Speaker 3: like you're trying to undermine the government or something like that.
[20:16] Speaker 3: It's kind of hilarious.
[20:17] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[20:19] Speaker 1: Sure, But other places now are there's a couple of
[20:22] Speaker 1: places in my neighborhood who have postings on the wall
[20:26] Speaker 1: when you walk in talking about an impact of straws,
[20:30] Speaker 1: and that straws are upon request only.
[20:33] Speaker 3: Right, And if you've got a problem with that, you
[20:35] Speaker 3: can take a straw and shove it where the sun
[20:37] Speaker 3: notes shines.
[20:38] Speaker 1: Right, or you take that problem to the voting booth.
[20:40] Speaker 1: This fall right exactly. So are you prepared? Because I
[20:46] Speaker 1: have a feeling you do a better job than me
[20:47] Speaker 1: at this because you so often have great, convoluted ways
[20:51] Speaker 1: of describing visual things.
[20:54] Speaker 3: I'm going to do a great job describing it to
[20:56] Speaker 3: you because you can watch my hands. But I think
[20:58] Speaker 3: for everybody listening it's going to be very problematic.
[21:01] Speaker 2: All right, how do you use chopsticks?
[21:05] Speaker 3: All right, I'm gonna get you back for this one.
[21:07] Speaker 1: Chuck, So I did it intuitively, by the way, which
[21:10] Speaker 1: is what I suggest.
[21:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, I never read watch some I think reading it
[21:15] Speaker 3: and having to explain makes it way harder. I think
[21:18] Speaker 3: it's just one of those things you have to watch
[21:19] Speaker 3: somebody do in practice. I mean, it's just all practice.
[21:24] Speaker 3: But essentially, there's a couple of things to remember. Is
[21:27] Speaker 3: that both chopsticks are laying. Do you want do you
[21:31] Speaker 3: want to go step by step through it?
[21:32] Speaker 2: No? I think I want the Josh method.
[21:34] Speaker 3: Okay, well it's the same. It's the same method.
[21:37] Speaker 2: Or the Josh description.
[21:38] Speaker 3: Okay. So in the valley between your thumb and your forefinger, yeah, okay,
[21:44] Speaker 3: the webbing right there, that's where the chopsticks rest, the
[21:47] Speaker 3: thumb taint, the thumb tait that Jode your hand showed.
[21:52] Speaker 1: Oh my god, it really is.
[21:57] Speaker 2: Wow.
[21:58] Speaker 3: So the two chopsticks lay right there, Okay, one of them,
[22:04] Speaker 3: the bottom one is basically meant to be immobile and stationary.
[22:08] Speaker 3: It just basically stays there. And it's the top one
[22:11] Speaker 3: that you're you're you're moving. You're kind of holding with
[22:14] Speaker 3: your forefinger, your index finger and your middle finger. That's
[22:19] Speaker 3: that's what you're using to move this this top one
[22:22] Speaker 3: and so it's really the bottom one that stays basically stationary,
[22:24] Speaker 3: and the top one is the one that's moving and
[22:26] Speaker 3: you're just using it to kind of pick up and
[22:28] Speaker 3: tweeze food or rice or whatever with it. If you
[22:32] Speaker 3: get really good, you can like pick your friend up
[22:33] Speaker 3: with it, right, or catch a fly if you're just
[22:38] Speaker 3: sense a level that's right with chopsticks, for sure, But
[22:40] Speaker 3: that's essentially it. And the the you don't want to
[22:43] Speaker 3: hold it too tightly. If you're if you're gripping it
[22:45] Speaker 3: too tightly or your muscles are too tense, yeah, you're
[22:48] Speaker 3: not going to be able to to to to kind
[22:52] Speaker 3: of make that tweezer motion very easily, or you're certainly
[22:54] Speaker 3: not going to have much control. It's kind of paradoxical
[22:58] Speaker 3: that the looser you have your in to a certain degree,
[23:01] Speaker 3: the more control you have over the chopsticks and the
[23:04] Speaker 3: tension that you're directing toward the end of the chopstick.
[23:08] Speaker 3: So keep your hand loose but in control, and just
[23:12] Speaker 3: make sure you remember that the bottom one that's kind
[23:14] Speaker 3: of resting all the way along your thumb the free zone.
[23:16] Speaker 3: It's basically stationary, and the top one is the one
[23:19] Speaker 3: you're directing with your index finger and middle finger.
[23:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, I recommend halfway through your meal, switch those two
[23:25] Speaker 1: out because that bottom one is just along for the ride. Yeah,
[23:29] Speaker 1: and it needs to do a little work, you know
[23:30] Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, So just switch them out and
[23:33] Speaker 1: make that one the topper and give it, you know,
[23:37] Speaker 1: make it do a little sweat sweating.
[23:39] Speaker 3: I think that's pretty good. Chunk do a little sweat.
[23:42] Speaker 3: I think we deserve a Peabody Award for describing how
[23:45] Speaker 3: to use chopsticks. No visuals.
[23:48] Speaker 1: You did talk about the environmental impact a little bit,
[23:51] Speaker 1: but it is a real problem. I mean you see
[23:53] Speaker 1: these tiny little things and you think, what's the big whoop?
[23:56] Speaker 1: Like a tree can probably make a gazillion chopsticks, so
[24:00] Speaker 1: they need, like true, maybe ten trees in China to
[24:03] Speaker 1: make all the chopsticks they need.
[24:05] Speaker 3: Do you remember that just one thing? Do you remember
[24:07] Speaker 3: that cartoon It might have been a Simpsons or something
[24:10] Speaker 3: like that, where they chop down a tree and they
[24:12] Speaker 3: show them processing one single tree into just an individual toothpick. No,
[24:18] Speaker 3: that's pretty sure it had to be the Simpsons, you know,
[24:21] Speaker 3: But imagine if they're like, no, we make one chopstick
[24:24] Speaker 3: out of just a single tree.
[24:25] Speaker 1: I didn't think about toothpicks. Man, How many toothpicks can
[24:28] Speaker 1: you get out of a tree?
[24:29] Speaker 3: I don't even know they're problem. They're on the horizon, right.
[24:33] Speaker 1: But when you think about the fact that China alone
[24:37] Speaker 1: produces eighty billion disposable chopsticks every year, then you get
[24:42] Speaker 1: a little bit more of a sense of exactly how
[24:44] Speaker 1: many of these trees? And it says here there was
[24:49] Speaker 1: I'm trying to find out what year this is. It
[24:51] Speaker 1: was fairly recently, but they've had like parliamentary meetings and
[24:54] Speaker 1: stuff about this in China and they estimated that it
[24:58] Speaker 1: takes about twenty million million twenty year old trees to
[25:02] Speaker 1: cover their annual rate of production.
[25:04] Speaker 3: Yeah. A guy named by Waxen pretty sure I said
[25:08] Speaker 3: his last name correct. Yeah, he's like a representative from
[25:12] Speaker 3: the ji Lean Forestry Industry group and he really like
[25:15] Speaker 3: rocked everybody at a parliamentary meeting where he basically said, hey,
[25:20] Speaker 3: do you remember that old figure that everybody has been
[25:22] Speaker 3: touting for years that we actually use fifty seven billion
[25:27] Speaker 3: chopsticks a year produce fifty seven billion chopsticks a year.
[25:32] Speaker 3: He said, that's way off. It's actually eighty billion, and
[25:35] Speaker 3: like you just said, we need twenty million twenty year
[25:38] Speaker 3: old trees to meet that a year. Yeah, and people said, wow,
[25:42] Speaker 3: that's kind of a problem. And so around the world, Like,
[25:46] Speaker 3: so of that eighty billion, I think China, half of
[25:50] Speaker 3: them stays in China. Of the other half, yeah, I
[25:52] Speaker 3: wondered about that, seventy seven percent goes to Japan. And
[25:56] Speaker 3: Japan was actually the one that started all this. They
[25:59] Speaker 3: can't I'm up with disposable chopsticks ware Bashi all the
[26:03] Speaker 3: way back in eighteen seventy eight and have just been
[26:05] Speaker 3: crazy for him ever since. Yeah, Like you can go
[26:07] Speaker 3: to like a pretty high end restaurant in Japan and
[26:10] Speaker 3: they're going to have wooden chopsticks that you pull are chopsticks, yeah,
[26:14] Speaker 3: that you would pull apart. There are also plenty of
[26:17] Speaker 3: restaurants in Japan that have reusable ones, and they're much
[26:20] Speaker 3: more elegant or whatever. But it's not like you wouldn't
[26:23] Speaker 3: just walk in and be like, what is this disposable chopsticks?
[26:26] Speaker 3: Are you kidding? Because they're just such a part of
[26:28] Speaker 3: Japanese culture. So they use seventy seven percent of the
[26:31] Speaker 3: other half. Korea uses twenty one percent, and then two
[26:34] Speaker 3: percent comes to the United States. Yeah, is that all
[26:37] Speaker 3: I have to catch that? That was twenty eleven figures,
[26:40] Speaker 3: which is the latest I could find.
[26:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that.
[26:45] Speaker 1: I would think China and Japan, it would just seem
[26:47] Speaker 1: like they would like everyone would have their own and
[26:50] Speaker 1: it would be a very like prideful thing to take
[26:52] Speaker 1: care of your chopsticks and to have something cool looking. Yeah,
[26:55] Speaker 1: it just kind of surprises me that they're so down
[26:57] Speaker 1: with the disposable.
[26:59] Speaker 3: It surprises a lot of people. Especially Japan is like
[27:01] Speaker 3: really well known for being meticulous with recycling and reducing
[27:07] Speaker 3: waste and stuff like that. Yeah, it's just this one thing.
[27:10] Speaker 3: They really love their disposable chopsticks, and they just throw
[27:15] Speaker 3: them away. They're not being recycled or composted or anything
[27:17] Speaker 3: like that. They're just being thrown in the trash. So
[27:20] Speaker 3: some what I read is that some restaurants will offer,
[27:25] Speaker 3: you know, tea for free if you bring your own chopsticks,
[27:29] Speaker 3: or maybe like a disc tea anyway. That. But yeah, basically,
[27:34] Speaker 3: but there's not like a lot of there's not a
[27:37] Speaker 3: huge amount of movement in Japan where China and this is.
[27:40] Speaker 3: I think I read this in like a like a
[27:41] Speaker 3: New York Times green blog or something like that. China's
[27:45] Speaker 3: made some some moves like like taxing disposable adding an
[27:50] Speaker 3: extra tax to disposable chopsticks. I think.
[27:54] Speaker 2: More regulation basically overall, I think.
[27:57] Speaker 3: Which is really saying something, you know. I mean, there's
[28:01] Speaker 3: like apparently a whole sub industry to the disposable chopsticks
[28:06] Speaker 3: industry that is small enough that it escapes a lot
[28:09] Speaker 3: of oversight, and they can be really problematically. There can
[28:12] Speaker 3: be a lot of chemicals in these chopsticks. They're just
[28:15] Speaker 3: like an all around basic nightmare and it's just such
[28:19] Speaker 3: low hanging through all and everybody has to do is
[28:21] Speaker 3: just have their own chopsticks. But just people just won't
[28:25] Speaker 3: do it. And I'm guilty too, like I said, I mean,
[28:27] Speaker 3: we have reusable ones at home, but we don't take
[28:29] Speaker 3: them out of the house ever.
[28:31] Speaker 2: Yeah. Plus the paper used to encase the said chopsticks.
[28:36] Speaker 2: That's a lot of paper.
[28:37] Speaker 3: Too, Yeah it is.
[28:38] Speaker 2: And what do you do with that stuff? You just
[28:40] Speaker 2: rip it open and burn it at the table.
[28:42] Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true.
[28:45] Speaker 2: Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, We'll take
[28:51] Speaker 2: another break.
[28:51] Speaker 1: And talk a little bit about etiquette right after this,
[28:54] Speaker 1: because we're all doing it wrong to a certain degree.
[29:20] Speaker 2: Scott shot.
[29:23] Speaker 3: Shot Okay, miss Manners, lay it on.
[29:34] Speaker 2: That's doctor, Missus Manners.
[29:36] Speaker 3: That's right, PhD esquire.
[29:38] Speaker 1: So this is mainly Japan that we're concentrating on with
[29:43] Speaker 1: the etiquette, and like you said, I think they take
[29:44] Speaker 1: it a little more seriously than some other Asian countries
[29:49] Speaker 1: because it turns out that chopsticks can and have had
[29:54] Speaker 1: an important part in burial rights yea and funeral rights.
[30:00] Speaker 3: Funeral rights, like a lot of the taboos I guess
[30:04] Speaker 3: you'd call them over chopsticks in Japan and in other
[30:08] Speaker 3: Asian countries too, are kind of based on like well,
[30:11] Speaker 3: that's that's kind of something we do with funeral rights.
[30:14] Speaker 3: And so that reminds us of that Japan is not
[30:17] Speaker 3: crazy about being reminded of death or mortality or pain.
[30:21] Speaker 3: All that stuff is very unlucky, Like the number four
[30:25] Speaker 3: is unlucky because the word for four I think she
[30:29] Speaker 3: also sounds very much like the word for death right.
[30:32] Speaker 2: I think I remember that that. So they don't have
[30:34] Speaker 2: four elevator floors, is that right?
[30:37] Speaker 3: I don't better if they do or not, but let's
[30:39] Speaker 3: just go with that they don't because it sounds pretty great.
[30:43] Speaker 1: So etiquette level one is how is how this is presented.
[30:48] Speaker 1: There's a couple of levels here as far as like,
[30:50] Speaker 1: you really shouldn't do these things, but if you really
[30:53] Speaker 1: want to ramp it up, you shouldn't do these things
[30:55] Speaker 1: as well. I felt these were kind of willy nilly,
[30:57] Speaker 1: didn't you. Well, I mean, this is one person to
[30:59] Speaker 1: pay right. But the things that you really shouldn't do
[31:03] Speaker 1: are the following. Do not if you like, get up
[31:08] Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom, don't stick your chopsticks sitting
[31:11] Speaker 1: upright in your bowl of rice. No, And that has
[31:15] Speaker 1: to do with the household Buddhist altar, because it is
[31:20] Speaker 1: a bowl of rice is offered as to a dead
[31:23] Speaker 1: person's spirit. And this apparently is from a Budhist Buddhist
[31:30] Speaker 1: Buddhist funeral rights as well, because there's a photograph of
[31:34] Speaker 1: a bowl of rice and to stick chopsticks in the
[31:38] Speaker 1: middle of that would be for boten.
[31:42] Speaker 3: I think it's they'll have like a photograph of the
[31:44] Speaker 3: deceased and they give them a bowl of uncooked rice,
[31:47] Speaker 3: so they and they stick the chopsticks up in that oh, okay,
[31:50] Speaker 3: I rather, so it's reminiscent of that that okay, So
[31:55] Speaker 3: so it's got that death thing going on, the death angle. Yeah.
[31:59] Speaker 3: And then the other thing I saw about that too
[32:01] Speaker 3: is that they it also is reminiscent of like a
[32:04] Speaker 3: bowl of sand with incense sticking out of it that
[32:07] Speaker 3: you would also put on a Buddhist shrine to the deceased.
[32:10] Speaker 3: So they're like way too reminiscent of death for that
[32:14] Speaker 3: to be Okay, Okay, that makes sense. Now there's another
[32:17] Speaker 3: one that's very similar. Don't leave your chopsticks crossed, like
[32:20] Speaker 3: resting on your bowl or on your plate. Just don't
[32:22] Speaker 3: cross your chopsticks. It's impolite, basically for the exact same
[32:26] Speaker 3: reason as sticking them out of the bowl.
[32:28] Speaker 2: Right.
[32:29] Speaker 1: And I think that one is when you see, like
[32:31] Speaker 1: on food Instagram food posts a lot from Whitey saying,
[32:36] Speaker 1: you know, like across the chopsticks because it looks.
[32:38] Speaker 2: Cool or whatever.
[32:38] Speaker 3: Look at how cool this looks?
[32:40] Speaker 2: Not cool? Apparently we talked about spearing.
[32:45] Speaker 1: The advice here is to treat them as if they
[32:47] Speaker 1: are actually connected, even though they're not.
[32:50] Speaker 3: It's a good way to remember it, like pretend connected.
[32:52] Speaker 3: That's right, yeah, and remember this is like that. I
[32:55] Speaker 3: think that goes back to like Confucius, where it's like,
[33:00] Speaker 3: don't don't have a knife at your table, don't use
[33:02] Speaker 3: your chopsticks a spear food.
[33:04] Speaker 1: That's right. Apparently it's bad luck or not bad luck. Well,
[33:09] Speaker 1: maybe bad luck to use two different chopsticks. Yeah, they
[33:15] Speaker 1: should have the same mommy and daddy. This person said
[33:17] Speaker 1: that it's just unsightly and that it's also reminiscent funeral rights.
[33:21] Speaker 3: That one I couldn't. I couldn't figure that one out. Yeah,
[33:24] Speaker 3: there's there's another funeral one too. A lot of funeral
[33:28] Speaker 3: rights involved chopsticks, passing food from chopstick to chopstick. Like
[33:32] Speaker 3: if you're like, hey, you got to try a bite
[33:33] Speaker 3: of this, that's just hard to hold it up. It's
[33:37] Speaker 3: it's but it's kind of it's a little bit showy. Yeah,
[33:40] Speaker 3: if you can do it, look at us. But but
[33:43] Speaker 3: when you you know, if somebody grabs it with their chopstick,
[33:45] Speaker 3: that's how they pass bones from cremations during funeral rights too,
[33:49] Speaker 3: And they're like, nope, that reminds us of that as well.
[33:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are some of these that are just
[33:53] Speaker 1: like I can't believe people do this. Do not wash
[33:55] Speaker 1: your chopsticks off in your beverage. Yeah, that's gross.
[33:58] Speaker 3: If someone do that, I don't know. Apparently somebody has
[34:01] Speaker 3: the other thing about this is so the fact that
[34:03] Speaker 3: they have restrictions on this social restrictions means that people
[34:07] Speaker 3: have done it before. But they also go so far
[34:10] Speaker 3: as like most of these things all have like individual words.
[34:13] Speaker 3: That's how like agro the Japanese are about this, this
[34:17] Speaker 3: kind of etiquette. Yeah, they have words for that, Like
[34:20] Speaker 3: washing your chopsticks off in your drink is not just
[34:22] Speaker 3: called washing your chopsticks off in.
[34:24] Speaker 2: Your Yeah, there's a name for it. Let me see here.
[34:29] Speaker 2: Do not treat them as toys.
[34:30] Speaker 1: And we talked earlier about putting them in your mouth
[34:33] Speaker 1: like their fangs or walrus tusks or antennas or drumsticks.
[34:38] Speaker 2: Just not a good look.
[34:39] Speaker 3: Right.
[34:40] Speaker 1: Here's another one that is this is a sort of
[34:44] Speaker 1: one that I think happens a lot. Is you might
[34:47] Speaker 1: see women American women maybe do their hair and put
[34:50] Speaker 1: chopsticks in them. Those when you see that in Japan,
[34:54] Speaker 1: those are not chopsticks, right. It might look like chopsticks,
[34:58] Speaker 1: but they're actually called kenza.
[35:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, it'd be kind of like sticking a fork in
[35:03] Speaker 3: your hair. If you're walking around Japan looking like that,
[35:05] Speaker 3: they'd be like, why do you why do you have
[35:07] Speaker 3: that fork in your hair? Yeah, it looks a little off,
[35:10] Speaker 3: but yeah, like they look just like those things, but
[35:13] Speaker 3: there's a separate thing, that's right. What did you call them?
[35:17] Speaker 2: Kanzashi? Yeah?
[35:19] Speaker 3: Nice, that's a beautiful w mean, I didn't make that up, right,
[35:22] Speaker 3: I know. Another one is you'll very frequently see people
[35:27] Speaker 3: do this, and I've done it too, and it's apparently
[35:30] Speaker 3: acceptable under certain circumstances. But when you break your warabashi,
[35:35] Speaker 3: your disposable cheap chopsticks apart at the end, if there's
[35:39] Speaker 3: splinters or there's like a piece of wood sticking out,
[35:42] Speaker 3: you can rub them together. It's kind of soften the
[35:46] Speaker 3: wood or get the splinters off. But you're not supposed
[35:49] Speaker 3: to do that as just like a matter of course,
[35:51] Speaker 3: because you're basically insulting the restaurant. You're saying, like, these
[35:54] Speaker 3: are so cheap, these chopsticks that you're providing your gas. Yeah,
[35:59] Speaker 3: that like I've got to rub them together, and you
[36:02] Speaker 3: definitely don't want to like make eye contact with the
[36:04] Speaker 3: owner while you're rubbing it together. You're like, this is
[36:07] Speaker 3: what I think of your establishment. And people do that
[36:11] Speaker 3: all the time.
[36:12] Speaker 2: I do it.
[36:12] Speaker 3: It's almost like habitual.
[36:13] Speaker 2: It's habitual for me.
[36:14] Speaker 1: And I started doing it when I first started using
[36:16] Speaker 1: chopsticks because I saw the person I was with did it,
[36:19] Speaker 1: and I was like, I guess that's what you do.
[36:21] Speaker 1: You get those little splinters off, right, And now it's
[36:23] Speaker 1: a total habit and my whole thing there. I don't
[36:27] Speaker 1: think that one's a really big one, like, especially in America,
[36:31] Speaker 1: it happens so much. I don't think anyone a restaurant
[36:33] Speaker 1: owner is like super insulted by seeing this. Sure, yeah,
[36:36] Speaker 1: especially in America, but they are super cheap and they
[36:39] Speaker 1: do splinter right.
[36:41] Speaker 3: Well. In that case, yes, like that that proprietor has
[36:45] Speaker 3: brought it on himself for herself for providing everybody with
[36:47] Speaker 3: such cheap chopsticks that they're splintering.
[36:50] Speaker 2: I will always remember this now, I'll tell you that.
[36:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is so I agree with you. I
[36:55] Speaker 3: think that this is probably not that big of an
[36:57] Speaker 3: insul especially in America. It's probably falls in line with
[37:00] Speaker 3: like how you're not supposed to like put your with
[37:03] Speaker 3: sabi put in the soy sauce or something like that. Well,
[37:06] Speaker 3: if you want to just do it, you know, if
[37:09] Speaker 3: you want to be remarkably polite, then you wouldn't do
[37:11] Speaker 3: any of these things. Some are way worse than others,
[37:15] Speaker 3: and I think that one probably falls into the lesser category,
[37:19] Speaker 3: even though it's under this advancing. This is why I
[37:21] Speaker 3: was saying this seems willy nilly.
[37:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, and that we also covered some of this in
[37:25] Speaker 1: our sushi episode, because if I'm not mistaken, don't you
[37:30] Speaker 1: eat sushi.
[37:30] Speaker 2: With your fingers? Or am I wrong?
[37:31] Speaker 3: Don't you?
[37:34] Speaker 2: Don't you eat with your fingers? Or do you not?
[37:36] Speaker 3: No? I don't. I love showing off how great I
[37:39] Speaker 3: am at chopsticks. I use them at every turn still
[37:42] Speaker 3: every time I can't. Yeah, I eat millet gruel with chopsticks.
[37:45] Speaker 3: That's how good I am.
[37:46] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[37:47] Speaker 1: Or you I've seen you just flip up a shrimp
[37:51] Speaker 1: and catch it in the other one.
[37:53] Speaker 2: What a show off.
[37:54] Speaker 3: It's pretty great.
[37:55] Speaker 2: Because you have chopsticks.
[37:56] Speaker 1: You have four, you have two in each hand, yes, basically,
[37:59] Speaker 1: and you do a little side show there.
[38:00] Speaker 2: It's really impressive.
[38:02] Speaker 3: Edward scissorhands, Josh chopstick finger But no you're supposed to
[38:07] Speaker 3: eat sushi. It's specifically nagiri right right with your hand.
[38:12] Speaker 3: That's how it was originally done. If I remember correctly
[38:14] Speaker 3: from our sushi episode, I think so. Yeah, But yeah,
[38:17] Speaker 3: we use chopsticks these days.
[38:19] Speaker 1: Here's another no no is do not use chopstick as
[38:22] Speaker 1: a rake, Like, don't lift up a bowl of rice
[38:25] Speaker 1: and just sort of rake rice into your mouth.
[38:27] Speaker 3: So that's Japan. I saw in China that's perfectly accepted,
[38:30] Speaker 3: really normal.
[38:30] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, yeah, it gets dicey with it's not the
[38:34] Speaker 1: samement everywhere, you know.
[38:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, here's the thing. I don't know if we said
[38:37] Speaker 3: this before. So in Thailand they don't use chopsticks almost
[38:40] Speaker 3: as a rule. In Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and China, they're
[38:44] Speaker 3: they're totally ubiquitous, almost the only thing you're gonna find
[38:47] Speaker 3: that you eat with. And so that means that like
[38:51] Speaker 3: even a bowl of soup like miso soup, you're supposed
[38:53] Speaker 3: to use your chopsticks for that. Like the little chunks
[38:57] Speaker 3: of tofu. Yeah, it took me a second. You use
[39:04] Speaker 3: your your chopsticks to eat those out of the bowl
[39:06] Speaker 3: and then you slurp the rest or sip the rest depending,
[39:11] Speaker 3: but with bryce you would hold the bowl up kind
[39:13] Speaker 3: of close to your face, but not like up in
[39:15] Speaker 3: your face, just under your chin and out a little bit.
[39:19] Speaker 3: And then you, you know, eat the rice with your
[39:22] Speaker 3: chopsticks from there, lifting the rice up to your mouth,
[39:25] Speaker 3: not shoveling it into your mouth from the bowl.
[39:27] Speaker 1: Right, And I saw with soups and things. Also is
[39:31] Speaker 1: if you really want to ramp up the etiquette, you
[39:32] Speaker 1: should try and drip into the bowl.
[39:36] Speaker 3: Oh right, when you like, when you are picking up
[39:38] Speaker 3: the tofu, you want to kind of shake the tofu
[39:41] Speaker 3: off so it doesn't drip on you are on the table. Yes,
[39:44] Speaker 3: if you really want to excel etiquette, you would just
[39:47] Speaker 3: not eat anything. You just sit there quietly with your
[39:49] Speaker 3: chopsticks side by side, still in their wrapper, just smiling
[39:54] Speaker 3: politely at everyone like it didn't.
[39:55] Speaker 2: Break any rules. And I'm really hungry.
[39:57] Speaker 3: That's right.
[39:59] Speaker 2: There's a couple more here. Don't point with your chopsticks.
[40:02] Speaker 3: It's tough not to do, do you point. I don't
[40:06] Speaker 3: point at people you know or anything like that. Can
[40:09] Speaker 3: you pass me that thing right there? Yeah?
[40:10] Speaker 1: And you just sort of give a little nod like hey,
[40:12] Speaker 1: that that pot sticker over there.
[40:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're fun to hold and point with and
[40:17] Speaker 3: like do stuff with. I just I don't know, maybe
[40:20] Speaker 3: I'm still it's still novel enough to me that I
[40:23] Speaker 3: have to remind myself not to point, or you me
[40:26] Speaker 3: has to remind me not to point with the chopsticks.
[40:29] Speaker 1: Or when you're talking and you're expressing things with your
[40:32] Speaker 1: hands and you're using your chopsticks, or if you want
[40:36] Speaker 1: to just do a little Maestro routine, right, you know.
[40:39] Speaker 3: Let's look down upon or if you're using your hands
[40:43] Speaker 3: for something else, you don't stick your chopsticks in your
[40:45] Speaker 3: mouth and just hold them in there while you're like
[40:47] Speaker 3: moving plates around or something like that. You set them down.
[40:50] Speaker 3: And here's the other thing too. If you go to
[40:52] Speaker 3: a very nice restaurant in Japan or in the States
[40:57] Speaker 3: and it just happens to be a Japanese restaurant, about
[41:00] Speaker 3: that really prolonged this thought. They're going to give you
[41:04] Speaker 3: a chopstick rest Oh, short your chopsticks on, so they're
[41:08] Speaker 3: kind of lifted off of the table the end that
[41:11] Speaker 3: you put in your mouth. If you don't have that,
[41:13] Speaker 3: you can take that paper wrapper and roll it up
[41:15] Speaker 3: and make your own chopstick rest, that's.
[41:17] Speaker 1: Right, because you're setting your chopsticks down on a table
[41:22] Speaker 1: that could be you know, have germs.
[41:25] Speaker 3: Right, and speaking of germs, also, chuck. You never ever
[41:29] Speaker 3: use the chopsticks that you're eating with to serve yourself
[41:33] Speaker 3: from a communal plate or bowl, that's for sure. They
[41:37] Speaker 3: should give you like a spoon or something like that
[41:40] Speaker 3: to spoon it onto your plate, and then you use
[41:41] Speaker 3: your chopsticks because that's just germy and diseasy. And apparently
[41:47] Speaker 3: there's a a like a supplement to that where if
[41:51] Speaker 3: they don't give you a serving spoon, people flip their
[41:54] Speaker 3: chopsticks over and use the thicker end to shovel the
[41:57] Speaker 3: food onto the plate, which is not necessary anymore hygienic
[42:01] Speaker 3: because that's where your hands have been rather than your mouth.
[42:04] Speaker 3: But that's the more socially acceptable thing to do than
[42:07] Speaker 3: just using the business end of your chopsticks.
[42:14] Speaker 2: I don't know why that's so funny to me.
[42:17] Speaker 1: But the ends though, I mean, if you're using them right,
[42:21] Speaker 1: you're choked up a little bit, so they're not really
[42:23] Speaker 1: being touched by your hands, you know, true, Like you
[42:27] Speaker 1: don't stick the ends in your palm, that's right, it's
[42:30] Speaker 1: true you choke up on it like a baseball bat.
[42:33] Speaker 3: Yeah. They say in Korea apparently that the further down
[42:36] Speaker 3: though you hold the chopsticks, the longer it's going to
[42:39] Speaker 3: be before you get married.
[42:41] Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean we could talk about some of
[42:42] Speaker 1: these kind of fun fun facts.
[42:45] Speaker 2: Fine, let me see here.
[42:46] Speaker 1: One is, if you are given an uneven pair, you
[42:51] Speaker 1: will miss a boat or a plane.
[42:53] Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
[42:54] Speaker 1: And this is came from Malaysia. I'm not sure if
[42:56] Speaker 1: that's ubiquitous all over Asia.
[42:58] Speaker 3: I think it's Chinese.
[43:00] Speaker 2: Okay, I think what else here? This is kind of fun.
[43:04] Speaker 1: If you use chopsticks, it involves over fifty muscles in
[43:09] Speaker 1: the fingers and thirty joints in the well overall in
[43:14] Speaker 1: the fingers, arms, shoulders, and wrists.
[43:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty cool it is. I mean, how many you
[43:19] Speaker 3: use for a fork? Like two? Maybe give me a break.
[43:24] Speaker 3: I saw a couple of things. One is that there
[43:29] Speaker 3: was a study that found that eating popcorn with chopsticks
[43:32] Speaker 3: makes eating popcorn much more enjoyable than eating it without
[43:37] Speaker 3: chopsticks with your fingers instead. And they even controlled for
[43:41] Speaker 3: the amount of extra time it takes to eat popcorn
[43:44] Speaker 3: with chopsticks. It's not just that you're eating slower so
[43:46] Speaker 3: you're relishing it more. Because they had a control group
[43:49] Speaker 3: using their fingers eat at a very slow pace too,
[43:52] Speaker 3: And apparently they think it's just the fact that you're
[43:54] Speaker 3: doing something differently makes you appreciate the thing that you're
[43:57] Speaker 3: doing or that you're eating that much more. Like if
[44:01] Speaker 3: you pour water out of like a separate, you know,
[44:05] Speaker 3: water bottle, like at a restaurant, how they have like
[44:07] Speaker 3: the little chilled water bottles they'll bring over. Look at
[44:11] Speaker 3: taste with taste better than water that you just pour
[44:15] Speaker 3: it out of the tap, even if it was the
[44:17] Speaker 3: exact same water, because it's being conveyed differently.
[44:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's also how you would get popcorn to
[44:23] Speaker 1: last through the opening previews of a movie. That's right,
[44:27] Speaker 1: because you're not just shoveling it in your mouth like
[44:29] Speaker 1: I do. It's so bizarre, man, I do the same thing.
[44:32] Speaker 1: I've tried to do, the like couple of kernels at
[44:35] Speaker 1: a time, and you know, I do that for the
[44:38] Speaker 1: first few and then before you know it, I've just
[44:41] Speaker 1: got handfuls that I'm pushing into my.
[44:43] Speaker 3: Mouth, right right, That's how you have to do it.
[44:46] Speaker 3: You have to use the palm of your hand to
[44:47] Speaker 3: really shove the entire fistful in there. You can't just
[44:51] Speaker 3: use your little fingertips. It doesn't work. You'll choke on them.
[44:54] Speaker 1: And I don't know if it's an sort of a
[44:58] Speaker 1: subliminal desire for mean not to be distracted during the movie,
[45:03] Speaker 1: But the ideal, in the ideal world, I would just
[45:06] Speaker 1: sit there and bunch a couple of pieces at a
[45:08] Speaker 1: time for two hours.
[45:11] Speaker 3: Like just chew them a million times.
[45:12] Speaker 2: No, no, no, just.
[45:13] Speaker 1: Eat a couple of kernels at a time and just
[45:15] Speaker 1: really elongate the whole experience.
[45:18] Speaker 3: Take put those chopsticks in your merse and take those
[45:21] Speaker 3: to the theater.
[45:22] Speaker 2: People would be like, look at that guy.
[45:25] Speaker 3: Hey, though you have to be careful though, yes, they yes,
[45:27] Speaker 3: they would. You have to be careful though who you
[45:31] Speaker 3: brandish those chopsticks around, because so you put this together.
[45:35] Speaker 3: Kudos for that. One of the facts you came up
[45:38] Speaker 3: with is that there's something called consecutive layophobia consecutive lay
[45:44] Speaker 3: a phobia, I think I said, which is literally a
[45:47] Speaker 3: fear of chopsticks.
[45:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a fear for everything.
[45:51] Speaker 3: But but yes, but I was reading a blog post
[45:54] Speaker 3: on it and some maybe psych net i think, and
[45:57] Speaker 3: they were saying, like, there's basically two categories of phobias,
[46:01] Speaker 3: ones that are semi rational. They use the example of
[46:05] Speaker 3: a fear of sharks. Well, if you did run into
[46:08] Speaker 3: a shark, there's a chance you could be killed by
[46:10] Speaker 3: that shark. So it's not just totally bonkers to be
[46:13] Speaker 3: afraid of sharks, but the a phobia of sharks is
[46:16] Speaker 3: an irrational fear, Like maybe if you live in Kansas,
[46:19] Speaker 3: you got no reason to have a fear of sharks.
[46:22] Speaker 3: This one, they said, this basically qualifies in the bonkers category,
[46:27] Speaker 3: Like there's virtually nothing that chopsticks can do to hurt you,
[46:31] Speaker 3: So to be irrationally afraid of chopsticks where you feel
[46:35] Speaker 3: like heart pounding anxiety is a genuine died in the
[46:39] Speaker 3: whole phobia. But some people do apparently experience this, although
[46:42] Speaker 3: it's super rare. Yeah, that's interesting, But you'll like avoid
[46:46] Speaker 3: entire types of restaurants because you can't be around chopsticks
[46:50] Speaker 3: and you'll get anxious just thinking about being around chopsticks.
[46:53] Speaker 1: Oh, that's so sad because Asian food makes up a
[46:57] Speaker 1: large portion of my diet.
[46:59] Speaker 3: Well, luckily for you, you don't have consecutiaophobia. No.
[47:04] Speaker 1: I mean when I think about sushi, I think about
[47:07] Speaker 1: fa right, I think about ramen. I think about good
[47:11] Speaker 1: old fashioned Sechuan Chinese food. Oh yeah, think about Korean.
[47:19] Speaker 1: And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could
[47:20] Speaker 1: eat that. I could eat that all the time.
[47:23] Speaker 3: Dude, you've got to get some boot at jig. I'll
[47:26] Speaker 3: take you to go get some. All right, you're gonna
[47:27] Speaker 3: you're gonna love it so good.
[47:29] Speaker 2: I can't wait.
[47:31] Speaker 3: You got anything else?
[47:32] Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
[47:33] Speaker 3: Forty five minutes on chopsticks, baby, not bad. If you
[47:37] Speaker 3: want to know more about chopsticks, go get yourself some
[47:40] Speaker 3: that you can reuse and eat conscientiously with them. And
[47:43] Speaker 3: don't forget all of the manners. But just go eat
[47:45] Speaker 3: some Asian food because no matter where it's farm or
[47:48] Speaker 3: what it is, it's probably pretty good.
[47:50] Speaker 2: Agreed.
[47:51] Speaker 3: Since I said that it's time for listener mayl.
[47:56] Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this two for two. Hey, guys, I
[47:58] Speaker 1: read a few years ago about Alan. Thought i'd share
[48:01] Speaker 1: a Sammy Davis junior story. Oh wow, And this is
[48:04] Speaker 1: from Andrew Limberg in Pittsburgh, and he got his Alan
[48:08] Speaker 1: aldowin red and when I told him this was coming on,
[48:11] Speaker 1: he wrote back, two for two baby, nice.
[48:14] Speaker 3: Yeah, there's people out there who are like, oh for ten.
[48:17] Speaker 2: I know. I'm so sorry.
[48:18] Speaker 3: I assume it's not like we're keeping track of people
[48:21] Speaker 3: like that.
[48:22] Speaker 2: Oh no, I have a screadsheet. Oh you do, Yeah,
[48:25] Speaker 2: that's me, he says.
[48:27] Speaker 1: So in the eighties, Sammy would had been cleaned out
[48:29] Speaker 1: by his ex wife and was selling barbecue sauce. He
[48:33] Speaker 1: was in Pittsburgh to promote it, and my friend Larry,
[48:35] Speaker 1: who had a local TV show at the time, got
[48:37] Speaker 1: a chance to interview him. When they arrived at the hotel,
[48:39] Speaker 1: they were told they would get twenty minutes with Sammy,
[48:42] Speaker 1: but when they talked to Sammy's manager, he said only
[48:44] Speaker 1: ten minutes. So, instead of having time to set up
[48:47] Speaker 1: a two shot interview, and for people that don't know
[48:50] Speaker 1: the lingo, that means both people are in the same
[48:53] Speaker 1: camera frame. Okay, they kept the camera on Sammy and
[48:57] Speaker 1: Larry would then go back in at his footage later
[49:00] Speaker 1: so he would, I guess, re ask the questions with
[49:03] Speaker 1: a ghost Sammy just to edit it together. At the
[49:07] Speaker 1: end of the interview, they needed one, just one two
[49:09] Speaker 1: shot of the two of them together so they could
[49:12] Speaker 1: edits it realistically, and Sammy's manager said nope, and Larry
[49:16] Speaker 1: looked at Sammy almost begging because they needed the two shot.
[49:20] Speaker 1: Sammy took a long drag of a cigarette and said,
[49:23] Speaker 1: get your two shot, babe. The manager then said, oh, well,
[49:28] Speaker 1: I guess I'm the a hole, to which Sammy said,
[49:30] Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, Babe, you are an a hole.
[49:36] Speaker 2: So this is how the story goes, apparently.
[49:38] Speaker 1: And Then Andrew says he's been listening since eight and
[49:40] Speaker 1: went to that live show on Pittsburgh.
[49:42] Speaker 2: Please come back, Yeah.
[49:44] Speaker 1: And he says he is a podcast now called the
[49:47] Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Oddcast.
[49:49] Speaker 2: Nice and he said, we.
[49:50] Speaker 1: Average about fifteen hundred listens an episode, which is pretty
[49:55] Speaker 1: darn good.
[49:55] Speaker 3: Andrew, Yeah, it is nice work.
[49:57] Speaker 2: And for a self styled show, that's not bad at all.
[49:59] Speaker 3: Especially a local one too. Pittsburgh podcast.
[50:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, so Pittsburgh ins.
[50:03] Speaker 1: If you're from the Burgh, yeah, check out the Pittsburgh Podcast,
[50:07] Speaker 1: and Andrew.
[50:08] Speaker 3: Or even if you're interested in it, sure, Pittsburgh.
[50:11] Speaker 2: You might live in Philadelphia and just be a burghead exactly.
[50:18] Speaker 3: Well, that was a pretty great one, Thank you very
[50:20] Speaker 3: much too. For two, that's pretty impressive, Andrew. And if
[50:24] Speaker 3: you want to get Chuck to do any Sammy Davis
[50:26] Speaker 3: Junior impressions, write in with your own Sammy Davis Junior
[50:29] Speaker 3: story and see how it goes. And you can put
[50:32] Speaker 3: that in an email, wrap it up, spank it on
[50:35] Speaker 3: the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at
[50:37] Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com.
[50:41] Speaker 2: You Know, Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
[50:45] Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
[50:48] Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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