Selects: Chopsticks > Forks

Summary

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Stuff You Should Know – "Selects: Chopsticks > Forks"

Date: July 4, 2026 (Original: March 17, 2020)
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck dive deep into the world of chopsticks—detailing their origins, spread across Asia, cultural significance, etiquette, environmental impact, and why they might just be better than forks. With their signature mixture of humor and curiosity, the hosts traverse everything from historic food habits to modern eco-dilemmas, sharing both little-known facts and personal anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Reflections & Introduction

• Context Setting (01:37):
  Chuck marks the timing of this original episode (March 17, 2020) as right at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, recalling the last time he ate out.
  Quote:

  “That was the last dinner out I had for a very long time...But this episode from March 17, 2020, right when it all shut down, is pretty great. It’s all about chopsticks. And it’s called Chopsticks Greater than Forks.” — Chuck (01:37)

2. What Are Chopsticks & Where Do They Come From?

• Chopsticks: Historical Roots (05:45):
  • Chopsticks date back about 7,000 years, originally used as cooking tools before their prominence as eating utensils.
  • Early use: Kitchen tool to avoid burning hands; practical origins—“way better to use a twig…like a pair of detached tweezers.” — Josh (07:29)
• Etymology (06:13):
  • Possibly from Pidgin English (“chop-chop” as in “quickly”).
  • Different names: Hashi (Japan), kuaizi (China), jeotgarak (Korea), đũa (Vietnam).

3. The Spoon Pre-eminence and the Rise of Chopsticks

• Stage 1: Spoons & Gruel (06:09):

  • Early staple foods like millet, being porridge-like, necessitated spoons.

• Stage 2: Wheat Revolution & Noodles (12:00):

  • Introduction of wheat led to noodles and dumplings, boosting the use of chopsticks. Quote:

  “For thousands of years, the go-to utensil…was a spoon, because they were eating gruel or porridge…and they hated life.” — Josh (12:00)

• Stage 3: The Sticky-Rice Surge (14:09):

  • Arrival of stickier, early-ripening Vietnamese rice allowed rice to be managed easily with chopsticks.

4. Regional Differences & Traditions

• Spread Across Asia (16:04):

  • China, Japan, and Vietnam shifted mostly to chopsticks, while Korea uniquely retained spoons alongside chopsticks.
  • Example: In Korea, hot stews like budae jjigae often require both utensils (16:45).

• Design Differences (20:48):

  • Chinese chopsticks: Longer, blunter.
  • Japanese: Sharper, shorter.
  • Korean: Shorter, often metallic (notably different, and sometimes blunt).

5. Environmental Impact of Disposables

• Staggering Stats (27:40):
  • China produces ~80 billion disposable chopsticks each year, consuming ~20 million mature trees annually. Quote:

  “China alone produces 80 billion disposable chopsticks every year…20 million 20-year-old trees to cover their annual rate of production.” — Chuck (28:09)

• Japan’s Role (29:29):
  • Japan invented disposable chopsticks (waribashi) in 1878; remain a major consumer (77% of exported disposables end up in Japan).
• Host Habits & Societal Norms (22:22, 23:08):
  • Despite reusable options, most people (including the hosts) do not bring their own chopsticks to restaurants.

6. How to Use Chopsticks

• The Technique (24:44):
  • “Both chopsticks are laying…one stays stationary (bottom), the other you move with your index and middle fingers.”
    Quote:

  “The bottom one is basically meant to be immobile and stationary…it’s the top one that you’re moving…if you get really good, you can, like, pick your friend up with it.” — Josh (25:39)

• Practical Tips:
  • Practice is crucial.
  • Keep the grip loose for better control.
  • Optionally, swap the stationary and active sticks halfway through a meal, just for equality (27:05).

7. Etiquette—Do’s and Definite Don’ts

• Strongest in Japan (35:35):
  • Many taboos are rooted in Buddhist funeral rites (e.g., sticking chopsticks upright in rice symbolizes death).
  • Don’t cross your chopsticks, pass food directly from chopstick to chopstick, or use them to point.
  • Don’t rub disposable chopsticks together (seen as an insult to the restaurant’s quality) (41:18).
• Funerary Connections (36:05, 37:17):
  • “A lot of the taboos...are based on funeral rites...” — Josh (36:05)
• Other No-Nos:
  • Don't spear food.
  • Don’t use mismatched chopsticks.
  • Don’t wash off chopsticks in your beverage.
  • Don’t use as hair accessories; Japanese hair sticks are called kanzashi, not chopsticks (41:22).
• Cultural Variations:
  • Raking food: Acceptable in China, not in Japan.
  • Sushi: Traditionally eaten by hand in Japan, but chopsticks are common today (43:27).

8. Fun Facts & Trivia

• Muscle Engagement (49:06):
  • Using chopsticks involves 50+ muscles and 30 joints in the hands, arms, shoulders, and wrists.
• Fears (51:26):
  • “Consecateleophobia” is the term for a rare but real fear of chopsticks. Quote:

  “There’s basically two categories of phobias...this one...qualifies in the bonkers category. Like there’s virtually nothing that chopsticks can do to hurt you.” — Josh (51:55)

• Chopsticks & Movie Popcorn (49:22):
  • A study found that eating popcorn with chopsticks increases enjoyment because of the novelty (50:24).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Japanese etiquette:

  “But when you read them, they could all be summed up as, just don’t be a dumb American.” — Chuck (05:02)

• On environmental irony:

  “Especially Japan is really well known for being meticulous with recycling and reducing waste...But they really love their disposable chopsticks and they just throw them away.” — Josh (30:44)

• Humor & Banter:

  “The thumb taint...the thumb chode...hand chode. Great band.” — Josh & Chuck (25:27-25:30)

• On practice:

  “I think reading [how to use chopsticks] and having it explained makes it way harder...Just watch someone and practice.” — Josh (24:53)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Birth of episode/context: 01:37
• Chopsticks vs. other utensils—origins: 05:45
• Etymology and regional names: 06:13
• Development as eating utensils: 07:29
• Food habits and chopstick adoption: 12:00–16:04
• Differences among Asian countries: 16:04–17:40
• Environmental impacts: 27:40
• How to use chopsticks: 24:44–27:15
• Etiquette and major don’ts: 35:35–48:45
• Fun facts and closing thoughts: 49:06–53:54

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Tone & Takeaway

In classic Stuff You Should Know fashion, Josh and Chuck keep things lighthearted yet informative, mixing curiosity, banter, and cultural respect. They weave together history, science, and humorous asides, making the deep dive into chopsticks both enlightening and accessible—whether you’re a chopstick novice, etiquette nerd, or lifelong dumpling lover.

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Bottom line:
Chopsticks aren’t just utensils—they’re windows into culture, history, and modern challenges. And as the hosts suggest:

“Just go eat some Asian food, because no matter where it’s from or what it is, it’s probably pretty good.” — Josh (53:41)

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Useful for: Anyone curious about everyday objects, Asian cuisines, cultural history, etiquette, or simply why eating popcorn with chopsticks might revolutionize your next movie night.

Transcript

[Host 1]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I turned off news altogether.

[Host 2]

I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

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[Host 1]

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[Host 3]

We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.

[News Announcer]

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[Host 2]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Chuck here we are moving forward through time in the year 2020, the year of COVID And I think we're at sort of ground zero here, everybody, because the date for this episode is March 17th. And I know that that was right around the time that things shut down because my birthday is March 15th and one of my very good friends birthday is March 12th. And every year we go out on a birthday dinner with our wives and family. And I remember being out might have been like the 16th or 17th of that year to dinner and us being like, should we be out, you guys? Like, they're starting to say things are getting weird and we're all washing our hands and saying the ABCs and stuff, but this feels like maybe the last dinner we're going to have for a while. And it was. That was the last dinner out I had for a very long time. But this episode from March 17, 2020, right when it all shut down, is pretty great. It's all about chopsticks. And it's called Chopsticks Greater than Forks.

[Host 2]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brock Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know all about. The song Chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder if you're gonna make a joke about that.

[Josh Clark]

Jerry beat me to it when she was like, what are we recording today? And I told her. She's like, the song. No, it's.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is that chopsticks? Aren't there two chopsticks?

[Josh Clark]

No, I'm just teasing. That's heart and soul.

[Ad Voice 2]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what I said from Big, that was Chopsticks, right?

[Josh Clark]

Totally. Yeah. Robert Loggia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Man, I should have continued trolling and said James Caan.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow. That is a very James Caan like role though, isn't it?

[Josh Clark]

Totally. I think he played that role in Bottle Rocket.

[Ad Voice 2]

In.

[Josh Clark]

Well, he was a crime boss in Bottle Rocket.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Sort of. Well, not sort of truly.

[Josh Clark]

We watched Misery the other day. It still holds up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, I remember seeing that for the first time in Athens when I was in college. So great. Kathy Bates can do no wrong.

[Josh Clark]

She did great. But if you watch James Kahn, he did really well, too. Like, sure. His whole kind of trepidatious manner toward her was really well done and not overdone at all. And, like, he did a great job as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he had to lay there in a bed for weeks and weeks and act.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sounds like a dream.

[Ad Voice 2]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And if he. If he balked at it, they would attach a catheter to him and make him pee in his own mouth as punishment. Little known fact about that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, so Chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We should point out here that in researching this chopsticks and customs and etiquette, if we covered all the countries and all that stuff that use chopsticks, we'd be here all day. So there's kind of a focus here on Japan for.

[Josh Clark]

Well, Japan, they seem to be a little. The most sensitive to transgressions with chopsticks. Out of all of the Asian cultures, I think perhaps they have the most rules against them at the very least.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But when you read them, they could all be summed up as, just don't be a dumb American.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or don't have any fun whatsoever with your chopsticks is another way to put it.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're like, what's wrong with making them antennas in a restaurant and going, meep, morp, meep.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I'm a walrus now, why can't I be a walrus? Right. But we are talking chopsticks, not the song. Sorry to disappoint you, everybody, but I saw that that Song is actually called Chopsticks because it was originally called the celebrated Chop Waltz. Okay. Written by a 16 year old schoolgirl from England.

[Chuck Bryant]

Seems about right.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. So, but we're talking about the utensils and like when you think chopsticks, obviously you think like Asia.

[News Announcer]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And you don't think that there was ever anything but chopsticks in the history of Asia. And while chopsticks are actually surprisingly old, I think they go back about 7,000 years. I also saw 5,000 years. I'm going with seven. I think they're actually about as ancient as that. They weren't like the go to utensils for Asia until this millennium.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The spoon was kind of the go to.

[Host 3]

Yeah.

[Ad Voice 1]

Who knew?

[Chuck Bryant]

The word chopstick they think may be pidgin English. Chinese. Pidgin English meaning chop, chop or quickly.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But you know, this is one of these etymologies. It's sort of tough to pin down, it looks like.

[Josh Clark]

But that's the English word for it. In all of the chopstick using cultures they have their own word. Like in Japan, it's hashimoto, it's kua izi in China.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nice.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not sure if I said that right at all. Jio garak in Korean. All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not as.

[Josh Clark]

Not as nice and doy dua in Vietnamese.

[Host 2]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sorry. Half of the world's population.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that you started strong in Japan though, because you feel pretty confident in your Japanese pronunciations. That's a good way to go.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. I have a great tutor.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So five to 7,000 years ago, they were used initially for cooking and we'll get more into the ins and outs of the history. But they were made from twigs probably. And it was much, much later, like you said, that they were table utensils.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it was all very much like practicality based.

[Ad Voice 3]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because initially they figured out pretty early on these, the Chinese, from 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. That's a really bad idea to stick your hand into a pot of boiling water to get something out of it. Say like a bone or a piece of meat or something like that. It's way better to use a twig and it's even better to use two twigs as if they were kind of a pair of detached tweezers. That's apparently where they initially started to come into use, was kind of during cooking and food preparation, not the actual eating process.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. There was a big population boom in China at one point. Some might say there continues to Be, some might say. And resources became a little more scarce. They started cutting their food up into little tiny pieces for reasons of, like, it helps it to cook faster.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder. I didn't see anything about this, but I wonder if that also just made it more shareable among a larger family.

[Josh Clark]

I could see that. That's a great point, too. Isn't it fascinating, though, the idea that a population boom led to widespread use of the chopstick.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's interesting. And then Confucius also was a vegetarian and noted knife hater. He has a quote about knives. The honorable and upright man keeps well away from both the slaughterhouse and the kitchen. And he allows no knives on his table. And I think that was a little more. Because a knife was equated with eating meat less than, like, it's a garbage tool.

[Josh Clark]

You don't need a knife to eat a plant, basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Some might argue you might want to cut a piece of broccoli, maybe, but

[Josh Clark]

you don't have to. I just summed up Confucius. That's the level of arrogance that I'm operating at now.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think some of the early. And, you know, it started in China, and then, you know, pretty soon Korea, Vietnam, Japan were all using them. But I think that Chinese chopsticks were joined at what they are now. What are they called now? If they're joined and you got to split them apart, where is it?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, warabashi. That's Japanese. That's the term for disposable chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, but I thought the Chinese chopsticks were originally joined like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, no, it was Japanese.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

There was this single piece of bamboo that was like split, kind of like giant tweezers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, yeah, I'm reading this now. I had a sometimes. I can't wait.

[Josh Clark]

You're just now reading this, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, no, I get sometimes, and it's the dumbest thing, but I get confused between former and latter.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's not that I get confused. I just have to go back and sort of picture it in my brain.

[Josh Clark]

It just takes an extra second, I think, for everybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

It's definitely not intuitive, so don't feel bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

I also thought this thing about food poisoning was interesting, was that in dynastic times in China, they would use. And I guess people that are a little more well healed would use silver chopsticks because they thought that if it came into contact with something that was poisonous, then the chopsticks would turn black and they would know not to eat it.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it just makes sense. When you're rich and wealthy, more people want to kill you, so it's better to have something that shows if somebody's trying to poison you, like your chopsticks turning a color, if you're being poisonous, cyanide or something like that. The problem is that doesn't actually work. And I don't know why they didn't just think that through from the get go, like, oh, well, let's get ourselves some cyanide and stick a silver chopstick in it and see what happens and see that it doesn't work. But apparently it does work in the presence of garlic or rotten eggs because they put out hydrogen sulfide, so it will turn silver a different color. So I don't know how garlic ever made itself into a staple of Chinese cooking, but there we have it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the other thing I thought was interesting and we should mention too, this came from a variety of places. Tegan Jones at Gizmodo, Lisa Brahman from Smithsonian Mag. Q. Edward Wang From Cambridge blog HuffPo, believe it or not got in the works and some other places. But I thought that Q. Edward Wang's history was really interesting because he mentions that wheat is kind of the first reason before rice, which really surprised me.

[Josh Clark]

It was very surprising. I think he knew all along that that was the big reveal.

[Host 2]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

You know. Yeah, but that's what gave chopsticks a shot in the arm. So first we have cutting food into smaller pieces to have it cook faster so you use less firewood. Right. Because there's a population boom. And then as wheat becomes kind of fashionable and widespread, you start to use chopsticks because you're making things like noodles and dumplings. And prior to this, millet was the go to grain. And millet's really small. It's much smaller than rice. And you certainly aren't going to turn it into like a noodle or a dumpling. You make a gruel out of it. And so for thousands of years, the go to utensil that people use to eat with in China was a spoon, because they were eating gruel or porridge or whatever, and they hated life. But when wheat came along and they started turning into noodles and dumplings, they said, oh yeah, remember those things that we use those twigs to cook with? What if we made a smaller version of those to eat with too? And that's where the chopstick got its first, like real boost in usage around Asia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, try to eat a big spoonful of noodles and just watch as they flop off and sling delicious sauce all over the place.

[Josh Clark]

There is literally nothing more frustrating than trying to eat noodles with a spoon in the entire world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, sure, you could chop them up into tiny little pieces so they rest in your spoon with some broth.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But who wants to do that? Like the person that cuts up their boschetti at the table into tiny bits is a six year old.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Or just thoroughly un American. True, one of the two. Maybe both, depending on how sophisticated the six year old is.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, the other thing I thought was interesting too from Mr. Wang's article was he talked about stew, which is gang in Chinese. They ate a lot of stew back then. And chopsticks would be very useful for picking up things like the more solid objects in the stew, like the vegetables.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So you've got wheat coming into vogue. You've got smaller pieces, vegetables, stew being eaten. Chopsticks are like, come on, we're going to do it. We've got to do this. We just need one more thing to get us over the hump and people are going to know us everywhere around the world. And that one thing was a particular kind of Vietnamese rice that ripens early, apparently. And it's a shorter grain or a medium grain, which means that it's easier to. It clumps more easily. It also has a lot of like starches to it. So it's just kind of clumpy, sticky rice. And here in the west, we're not really used to that kind of rice. So we're like, how are you going to use chopsticks to eat this stuff with?

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, try eating some Uncle Ben's with chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

You can't do it. It's like trying to eat noodles with a spoon.

[Guest 1]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or you would just do that move. And this is what I didn't understand when I was growing up because I was a little naive when I saw chopsticks, I would just think about scooping up the rice on top of them very awkwardly. And it wasn't until I was a little bit older and had good clumpy Chinese rice and Japanese rice, I was like, oh, it's very easy to eat with chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you're just like, okay, I've got it. Because it sticks together. It's like a nice little morsel of food and it sticks together just about the right size and it's totally different. So when you eat Chinese rice or Japanese rice or even Vietnamese rice, the stickier rice, then you understand, okay, you can use this as you can use chopsticks for this. And the Chinese figured this out as well when rice became much more of a staple of the Asian diet. And all of a sudden, now you didn't need a spoon anymore because everybody's like, to heck with millet. Who wants gruel? Nobody. So they threw their spoons out the window, and then they started just eating chopsticks for everything. You could use it for everything now it's all you needed for your meal.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that all in one solution, I think, was that happened in China and Japan and Vietnam for sure. And Korea, I think, was the one standout, because I believe in Korea, the spoon and the chopstick still go hand in hand.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And this. I believe it was Q. Edward Wang, who maybe wrote this, but he basically said it. It seems to be a conscious decision.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

In Korea, almost as if they were being contrary or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe they just want to do their own thing.

[Josh Clark]

Well, they eat a lot of very, very hot stews and soups. Have you ever had budae jjigae?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't think so.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not even sure I'm saying it correctly. Have you ever been to eat at H Mart or an Asian food court or something like that? Sure. If you go to a Korean place, they usually have. I think it's called buda jigga. It's like hot dog soup, basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, my Lord.

[Josh Clark]

And it's like this kind of. I'm not even sure. I guess it's a. It's like a chili paste broth with lots of great processed meat in it. And like, ramen and like jalapenos. It's just so good. But that thing comes to you boiling, and you're supposed to, like, eat the chunky parts out with a chopstick. But I guess it always comes with a spoon, too. So I think you're supposed to actually eat the broth with the spoon rather than sip.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, I tell you, one thing I do love is the design of the. And I'm calling it the Chinese spoon. I don't know if it originated in China, but you know the soup spoon I'm talking about?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like the one you use for miso soup.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, they're just the best.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they do, because you can get a really big spoonful on there, you

[Chuck Bryant]

know, and it's ergonomic. It just. It's the way to. It's the way to do it. Unless you're just gonna pick up the bowl and drink it, which is great, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Up with the miso soup spoon.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, let's take a break because I am so hungry after you said hot dog stew, my stomach's growling. And we'll come back and we'll talk more about chopsticks.

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[Host 1]

mobile.com I turned off news altogether.

[Host 2]

I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

[Ad Voice 1]

It's the rage bait.

[Host 1]

It feels like it's trying to divide people.

[Host 3]

We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little bit.

[News Announcer]

NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the Facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News Reporting for America.

[Ad Voice 3]

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[Host 2]

Yep.

[Ad Voice 3]

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[Ad Voice 1]

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[Josh Clark]

I don't remember what episode it was, Chuck, but do you remember when our our stomachs growled in sync with one another?

[Chuck Bryant]

That was very recently.

[Josh Clark]

It was. Yeah, you can still reminisce about recent stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

I say I'm nostalgic for that thing that happened last week. Pretty much so apparently. And this. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but the four main kinds of chopsticks, apparently in China, the chopsticks are a little bit longer and a little more blunt on the ends.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they think that might be a nod to Confucius basically saying, like, don't have knives at your table. Don't even have vaguely sharpened chopsticks even.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, nothing, stabby nothing.

[Josh Clark]

You don't want to be stabbed at your table.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think in Japan, they're a little sharper and a little shorter, but you're still not supposed to be stabbing stuff. No, don't stab that piece of tuna.

[Josh Clark]

No, you can just tell if you've ever done that while you're doing it, that you're violating some unnatural law or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Feels wrong, doesn't it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let me see Here in Korea, apparently they are shorter as well. And they are also blunt, but they can be metallic.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's one thing that we'll see, because we're going to talk about. As with everything in existence, there's some horrid environmental impact with chopsticks as well. But the Japanese are like, give us cheap, disposable wooden or bamboo chopsticks and basically nothing else. Yeah, they're just crazy for it. Whereas some of the other Asian cultures are like, no, we can use reusable ones. But the Japanese are like, no, we want nothing but disposable cheap chopsticks. That warabashi.

[Chuck Bryant]

I assume that you and Yumi have your own chopsticks at home.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And do you bring those to restaurants?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no, no, no. Never do. We should.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I never really should. But I usually think when I'm there, I'm like, oh, man, I should have brought my chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you know, I mean, like, if you go to any Asian store, they have, like, cute little. It looks almost like a pencil case, but it's, you know, chopsticks inside, and it's meant for you to carry them around with you. But no one does that. You just don't. Even though hopefully in 10 years when we're all like, okay, this is out of control and this is really bad. Everyone will be doing that. You just don't do it. And yeah, we have some that, like, I could just put in my jeans pocket and walk around with if I wanted to. But I don't do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

No one does. I take my straw now and I use it because I now keep it in my purse.

[Josh Clark]

Your merse.

[Chuck Bryant]

My Merse. Which goes everywhere with me. So I need to throw some chopsticks in there.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it's a good feeling when you say no straw. I've got my own and I would love to be able to say, no, no, you keep those wooden chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Take that straw and shove it where the sun don't shine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. Yeah, I'm not that aggressive about this.

[Josh Clark]

It's so funny. Depending on where you are in the country, though, like, if they bring you a straw and you say no straw, please, they look at you like you're just a straight up democratic socialist hippie. You know, like you're trying to undermine the government or something like that. It's kind of hilarious.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure. But other places now are. There's a couple of places in my neighborhood who have postings on the wall when you walk in talking about the impact of straws. And that straws are upon request only.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And if you got a problem with that, you can take a straw and shove it where the sun don't shine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Or you take that problem to the voting booth this fall.

[Josh Clark]

Right, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

So are you prepared? Because I have a feeling you do a better job than me at this because you. You so often have great convoluted ways of describing visual things.

[Josh Clark]

I'm going to do a great job describing it to you because you can watch my hands, but I think for everybody listening, it's going to be very problematic.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, how do you use chopsticks?

[Josh Clark]

All right, I'm going to get you back for this one, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I did it intuitively, by the way, which is what I suggest.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I never read a thing.

[Josh Clark]

Watch some. I think reading it and having it explain makes it way harder.

[Chuck Bryant]

I agree.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's just one of those things you have to watch somebody do in practice. I mean, it's just all practice. But essentially there's a couple things to remember, is that both chopsticks are laying. Do you want to go step by step through it?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I think I want the Josh method.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Well, it's the same. It's the same method or the Josh description. Okay, so in the valley between your thumb and your forefinger.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. The webbing right there, that's where the chopsticks rest. The thumb taint the thumb tape that showed your hand chode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, my God. Hand chode. Great band.

[Josh Clark]

It really is. Wow. So the two chopsticks lay right there. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

One of them, the bottom one, is basically meant to be immobile and stationary. It just Basically stays there. And it's the top one that you're moving. You're kind of holding with your forefinger, your index finger, and your middle finger. That's what you're using to move this top one. And so it's really the bottom one that stays basically stationary. And the top one is the one that's moving, and you're just using it to kind of twist, pick up, and tweeze food or rice or whatever with it. If you get really good, you can, like, pick your friend up with it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Or catch a fly if you're sensei level with chopsticks, for sure. But that's essentially it. And you don't want to hold it too tightly. If you're gripping it too tightly or your muscles are too tense, you're not going to be able to kind of make that tweezer motion very easily, or you're certainly not going to have much control. So it's kind of paradoxical that the looser you have your hand, to a certain degree, the more control you have over the chopsticks and the tension that you're directing toward the end of the chopstick. So keep your hand loose but in control. And just make sure you remember that the bottom one that's kind of resting all the way along your thumb, it's basically stationary. And the top one is the one you're directing with your index finger and middle finger.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I recommend halfway through your meal, switch those two out, because that bottom one is just along for the ride.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it needs to do a little work. You know what I mean?

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

So just switch them out and make that one the topper and give it, you know, make it do a little sweat. Sweating.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's a pretty good chunk.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do a little sweat.

[Josh Clark]

I think we deserve a Peabody Award for describing how to use chopsticks. No visuals.

[Chuck Bryant]

You did talk about the environmental impact a little bit, but it is a real problem. I mean, you see these tiny little things, and you think, what's the big W? Like, a tree can probably make a gazillion chopsticks. So they need like, maybe 10 trees in China to make all the chopsticks they need.

[Josh Clark]

Do you. Do you remember that? Just one thing. Do you remember that cartoon might have been a Simpsons or something like that, where they chop down a tree and they show them processing one single tree into just an individual toothpick. No, that's pretty sure had to be the Simpsons, you know, but imagine if they're like, no, we make one chopstick out of just a single tree.

[Chuck Bryant]

I didn't think about toothpicks, man. How many toothpicks can you get out of a tree?

[Josh Clark]

I don't even know their problem. They're on the horizon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. But when you think about the fact that China alone produces 80 billion disposable chopsticks every year, then you get a little bit more of a sense of exactly how many of these trees. And it says here there was. I'm trying to find out what year this is. It was fairly recently, but they've had like parliamentary meetings and stuff about this in China and they estimated that it takes about 20 million 20 year old trees to cover their annual rate of production.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, A guy named Bai Huajin. Pretty sure I said his last name correctly. Yeah, he's like a representative from the Jilin Forestry Industry Group and he really like rocked everybody at a parliamentary meeting where he basically said, hey, do you remember that old figure that everybody has been touting for years that we actually use 57 billion chopsticks a year? Produce 57 billion chopsticks a year. He said, that's way off. It's actually 80 billion. And like you just said we need 20 million 20 year old trees to meet that a year.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And people said, wow, that's kind of a problem. And so around the world. So of that 80 billion, I think China, half of them stays in China. Of the other half.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I wondered about that.

[Josh Clark]

77% goes to Japan and Japan was actually the one that started all this. They came up with disposable chopsticks, Warabashi, all the way back in 1878 and have just been crazy for them ever since. Like you can go to like a pretty high end restaurant in Japan and they're going to have wooden chopsticks that you pull apart. Chopsticks. Yeah, that you would pull apart. There are also plenty of restaurants in Japan that have reusable usable ones and they're much more elegant or whatever. But it's not like you wouldn't just walk in and be like, what is this? Disposable chopsticks. Are you kidding? Because they're just such a part of Japanese culture. So they use 77% of the other half. Korea uses 21% and then 2% comes to the United States. Is that all I have to catch that? That was 2011 figures, which is the latest I could find.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that I would think China and Japan, it would just seem like they would, like everyone would have their own and it would be a Very prideful thing to take care of your chopsticks and to have something cool looking. It just kind of surprises me that they're so down with the disposable.

[Josh Clark]

It surprises a lot of people. Especially Japan is really well known for being meticulous with recycling and reducing waste and stuff like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

It doesn't fit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's just this one thing. They really love their disposable chopsticks and they just throw them away. They're not being recycled or composted. Composted or anything like that. They're just being thrown in the trash. So some, what I read is that some restaurants will offer, you know, tea for free if you bring your own chopsticks or maybe like a get that

[Chuck Bryant]

tea for free anyway.

[Josh Clark]

But yeah, basically. But there's not like a lot of. There's not a huge amount of movement in Japan where China and this is. I think I read this in like a, like a New York Times green blog or something like that. China's made some, some moves like taxing disposable, adding an extra tax to disposable chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think more regulation basically overall, I

[Josh Clark]

think which is really saying something, you know, I mean there's like apparently a whole sub industry to the disposable chopsticks industry that is small enough that it escapes a lot of oversight and they can be really problematic. Like there can be a lot of chemicals in these chopsticks. They're just like an all around basic nightmare and it's just such low hanging fruit. All everybody has to do is just have their own chopsticks. But just people just won't do it. And I'm guilty too. Like I said, I mean we have reusable ones at home, but we don't take them out of the house ever.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, plus the paper used to encase the said chopsticks. That's a lot of paper too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

And what do you do with that stuff? You just rip it open and burn it at the table.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, Yep, it's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we take another break?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Host 2]

All right.

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll take another break and talk a little bit about etiquette right after this because we're all doing it wrong to a certain degree.

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[News Announcer]

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[Josh Clark]

Okay, Miss Manners, lay it on him.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's Dr. And Mrs. Manners.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. PhD, Esquire.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this is mainly Japan that we're concentrating on with the etiquette. And like you said, I think they take it a little More seriously than some other Asian countries. Because it turns out that chopsticks can and have had an important part in burial rights.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And funeral rites, Buddhist funeral rights, like

[Josh Clark]

a lot of the taboos, I guess you'd call them over. Chopsticks in Japan and in other Asian countries too, are kind of based on like, whoa, that's kind of something we do with funeral rites. And so that reminds us of that Japan is not crazy about being reminded of death or mortality or pain.

[Chuck Bryant]

Same here.

[Josh Clark]

All that stuff is very unlucky. Like the number four is unlucky. Because the word for four, I think she also sounds very much like the word for death.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. I think I remember that. So they don't have four elevator floors, Is that right?

[Josh Clark]

I don't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or am I making that up?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know if they do or not, but let's just go with that. They don't because it sounds pretty great.

[Chuck Bryant]

So etiquette level one is how this is presented. There's a couple of levels here as far as, like, you really shouldn't do these things, but if you really want to ramp it up, you shouldn't do these things as well.

[Josh Clark]

I felt these were kind of willy nilly, didn't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I mean, this is one person's opinion.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the things that you really shouldn't do are the following. Do not. If you, like, get up to go to the bathroom, don't stick your chopsticks sitting upright in your bowl of rice.

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that has to do with the household Buddhist altar, because it is a bowl of rice is offered as to a dead person's spirit. And this apparently is from Buddhist. Buddhist. Buddhist funeral rites as well. Because there's a photograph of a bowl of rice. And to stick chopsticks in the middle of that would be verboten.

[Josh Clark]

I think they'll have, like a photograph of the deceased and they give them a bowl of uncooked rice and they stick the chopsticks up in that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay. I read that.

[Josh Clark]

Completely reminiscent of that. So it's got that death thing going on.

[Chuck Bryant]

The death angle.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And then the other thing I saw about that too is that it also is reminiscent of a bowl of sand with incense sticking out of it that you would also put on a Buddhist shrine to the deceased. So they're like, way too reminiscent of death for that to be.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, okay, that makes sense.

[Josh Clark]

Now there's another one that's very similar. Don't leave your chopsticks crossed, like resting on your bowl or on your plate. Just don't cross your chopsticks. It's impolite. Basically for the exact same reason as sticking them out of the bowl.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And I think that one is one you see, like on Food Instagram, food posts a lot from Whitey saying, you know, like, cross the chopsticks because it looks cool or whatever.

[Josh Clark]

Look at how cool this looks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Not cool, apparently. We talked about spearing. The advice here is to treat them as if they are actually connected, even though they're not. It's a good way to remember it.

[Josh Clark]

Like, pretend connected.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And remember, this is like. I think that goes back to, like, Confucius where it's like, don't have a knife at your table. Don't use your chopsticks to spear food.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Apparently it's bad luck. Or not bad luck. Well, maybe bad luck to use two different chopsticks. Yeah, they should have the same mommy and daddy.

[Josh Clark]

This person said that it's just unsightly and that it's also reminiscent of funeral rites. That one. I couldn't figure that one out. Yeah, there's another funeral one, too. A lot of funeral rites involve chopsticks. Passing food from chopstick to chopstick. Like, if you're like, hey, you gotta try a bite of this.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's just hard for you.

[Josh Clark]

Hold it up. But it's kind of. It's a little bit showy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

If you can do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Look at us.

[Josh Clark]

But when you. You know, if somebody grabs it with their chopstick, that's how they pass bones from cremations. Funeral rites, too. And they're like, nope. That reminds us of that as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there are some of these that are just like, I can't believe people do this. Do not wash your chopsticks off in your beverage.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did someone do that?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. Apparently somebody has. The other thing about this is. So the fact that they have restrictions on this, social restrictions, means that people have done it before. But they also go so far as, like, most of these things all have, like, individual words. That's how, like, aggro the Japanese are about this kind of etiquette. They have words for that. Like, washing your chopsticks off. And your drink is not just called washing your chopsticks off in your drink.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There's a name for it. Let me see here. Do not treat them as toys. And we talked earlier about putting them in your mouth. Like they're fangs or walrus tusks or antennas or drumsticks. Just not a good look. Here's another one that is. This is sort of one that I think happens a lot is you might see women, American women, maybe do their hair and put chopsticks in them. When you see that in Japan, those are not chopsticks. It might look like chopsticks, but they're actually called kanzashi.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It'd be kind of like sticking a fork in your hair. If you're walking around Japan looking like that, they'd be like, why do you have that fork in your hair? It looks a little off, but. Yeah, like, they look just like those things. But there's a separate thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

What did you call them?

[Chuck Bryant]

Kanzashi.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Nice. That's a beautiful word.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I didn't make that up.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Another one is you'll very frequently see people do this, and I've done it too. And it's apparently acceptable under certain circumstances. But when you break your warabashi, your disposable, cheap chopsticks apart at the end, if there's splinters or there's like a piece of wood sticking out, you can rub them together. I always kind of soften the. The wood or get the splinters off. But you're not supposed to do that. It's just like a matter of course. Because you're basically insulting the restaurant. You're saying, like, these are so cheap, these chopsticks, that you're providing your guests.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That, like, I've got to rub them together. And you definitely don't want to, like, make eye contact with the owner while you're rubbing it together. Like, this is what I think of your establishment. And people do that all the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

I do it.

[Josh Clark]

It's almost, like, habitual.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's habitual for me. And I started doing it when I first started using chopsticks because I saw the person I was with did it, and I was like, I guess that's what you do. You get those little splinters off. And now it's a total habit. And my whole thing there, I don't think that one's a really big one. Like, especially in America, it happens so much. I don't think anyone, a restaurant owner, is, like, super insulted by seeing this.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Yeah. Especially in America.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they are super cheap and they do splinter, right?

[Josh Clark]

Well, in that case, yes. Like, that proprietor has brought it on himself or herself for providing everybody with such cheap chopsticks that they're splintery.

[Chuck Bryant]

I will always remember this now, I'll tell you that.

[Host 3]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And this is so I agree with you. I think that this is probably not that big of an insult, especially in America. It probably falls in line with like how you're not supposed to put your wasabi in the soy sauce or something like that. Well, if you want to just do it. If you want to be remarkably polite, then you wouldn't do any of these things. Some are way worse than others. And I think that one probably falls into the lesser category, even though it's under this advanced thing. This is why I was saying this seems willy nilly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we also covered some of this in our sushi episode because if I'm not mistaken, don't you eat sushi with your fingers? Or am I wrong?

[Josh Clark]

Don't you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Don't you eat with your fingers or do you not?

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't. I love showing off how great I am at chopsticks. I use them every turn.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got some skills.

[Josh Clark]

Every time I can. Yeah. I eat millet gruel with chopsticks. That's how good I am.

[Host 2]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or you. I've seen you just flip up a shrimp and catch it in the other one. What a show off. It's pretty great because you have chopsticks. You have four. You have two in each hand.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, basically.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you do a little sideshow there. It's really impressive.

[Josh Clark]

Edward Scissorhands.

[Chuck Bryant]

Josh Chopstick finger.

[Josh Clark]

But no, you're supposed to eat sushi, specifically nigiri, with your hand. That's how it was originally done, if I remember correctly from our sushi episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But yeah, we use chopsticks these days.

[Chuck Bryant]

Here's another. No, no. Is do not use chopstick as a rake. Like don't lift up a bowl of rice and just sort of rake rice into your mouth.

[Josh Clark]

So that's Japan I saw in China. That's perfectly acceptable to normal. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It gets dicey with. It's not the same everywhere, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Here's the thing. I don't know if we said this before. So in Thailand, they don't use chopsticks almost as a rule. In Vietnam, Korea, Japan, China, they're totally ubiquitous. Almost the only thing you're going to find that you eat with. And so that means that like even a bowl of soup, like miso soup, you're supposed to use your chopsticks for that. Like the little chunks of tofu. Yeah, it took me a second. You use your chopsticks to eat those out of the bowl and then you slurp the rest or sip the rest Depending. But with rice, you would hold the bowl up kind of close to your face, but not like up in your face, just under your chin and out a little bit. And then you eat the rice with your chopsticks from there, lifting the rice up to your mouth, not shoveling it into your mouth from the bowl.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And I saw with soups and things also is if you really want to ramp up the etiquette, you should try and drip into the bowl.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, right. When you, like when you are picking up the tofu, you want to kind of shake the tofu off so it doesn't drip on you or on the table.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

If you really want to excel at etiquette, you would just not eat anything. You just sit there quietly with your chopsticks side by side, still in their wrapper, just smiling politely at everyone.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like, it didn't break any rules. And I'm really hungry.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a couple of more here. Don't point with your chopsticks.

[Josh Clark]

That's tough not to do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you point?

[Josh Clark]

I don't point at people, you know, or anything like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

But you're like, hey, can you pass

[Josh Clark]

me that thing right there?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you just sort of give a little nod like, hey, that's that pot sticker over there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because they're fun to hold and point with and like, do stuff with. I just. I don't know, maybe I'm still. It's still novel enough to me that I have to remind myself not to point or Yumi has to remind me not to point with the chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or when you're talking and you're expressing things with your hands and you're using your chopsticks, or if you want to just do a little maestro routine.

[Josh Clark]

Right. You know, that's looked down upon. Or if you. If you're using your hands for something else, you don't stick your chopsticks in your mouth and just hold them in there while you're like, moving plates around or something like that. You set them down. And here's the other thing, too. If you go to a very nice restaurant in Japan or in the States, and it just happens to be a Japanese restaurant. How about that? Really prolong this thought. They're gonna give you a chopstick rest. Oh, sure. Your chopsticks on. So they're kind of lifted off of the table. The end that you put in your mouth. If you don't have that, you can take that paper wrapper and roll it up and make your Own chopstick rest.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Cause you're setting your chopsticks down on a table. That could be, you know, have germs.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And speaking of germs, also, Chuck, you never, ever use the chopsticks that you're eating with to serve yourself from a communal plate or bowl, that's for sure. They should give you like a spoon or something like that to spoon it onto your plate. And then you use your chopsticks, because that's just germy and disease y. And apparently there's a supplement to that where if they don't give you a serving spoon, people flip their chopsticks over and use the thicker end to shovel the food onto the plate, which is not necessarily any more hygienic because that's where your hands have been rather than your mouth. But that's the more socially acceptable thing to do than just using the business end of your chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know why that's so funny to me. But the ends, though, I mean, if you're using them right, you're choked up a little bit, so they're not really being touched by your hands, you know.

[Josh Clark]

True.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, you don't stick the ends in your palm.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. It's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

You choke up on it like a baseball bat.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. They say in Korea, apparently, that the further down though you hold the chopsticks, the longer it's going to be before you get married.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. I mean, we could talk about some of these kind of fun facts.

[Josh Clark]

Fine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let me see here. One is, if you are given an uneven pair, you will miss a boat or a plane. And this came from Malaysia. I'm not sure if that's ubiquitous all over Asia.

[Josh Clark]

I think it's Chinese.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

What else here? This is kind of fun. If you use chopsticks, it involves over 50 muscles in the fingers and 30 joints. Well, overall, in the fingers, arms, shoulders, and wrists.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

It is. I mean, how many use for a fork? Like two, maybe? Give me a break. I saw a couple of things. One is that there was a study that found that eating popcorn with chopsticks makes eating popcorn much more enjoyable than eating it without chopsticks with your fingers instead. And they even controlled for the amount of extra time it takes to eat popcorn with chopsticks. It's not just that you're eating slower, so you're relishing it more. Because they had a control group using their fingers eat at a very slow pace, too. And apparently they think it's Just the fact that you're doing something differently makes you appreciate the thing that you're doing or that you're eating that much more. Like, if you pour water out of, like, a separate, you know, water bottle, like at a restaurant, how they have, like, the little chilled water bottles they'll bring over. Look at each would taste better than water that you just poured out of the tap, even if it was the exact same water, because it's being conveyed differently.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's also how you would get popcorn to last through the opening previews of a movie.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cause you're not just shoveling it into your mouth like I do.

[Josh Clark]

It's so bizarre, man. I do the same thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've tried to do the, like, couple of kernels at a time. And, you know, I do that for the first few, and then before you know it, I've just got handfuls that I'm pushing into my mouth.

[Josh Clark]

Right, right. That's how you have to do it. You have to use the palm of your hand to really shove the entire fistful in there. You can't just use your little fingertips. It doesn't work. You'll choke on them.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I don't know if it's sort of a subliminal desire for me not to be distracted during the movie, but in the ideal world, I would just sit there and munch a couple of pieces at a time for two hours.

[Josh Clark]

Like, just chew them a million times.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. Just eat a couple of kernels at a time and just really elongate the whole experience.

[Josh Clark]

Put those chopsticks in your merse and take those to the theater.

[Chuck Bryant]

People would be like, look at that guy.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, though, you have to be careful, though. Yes, they would. You have to be careful, though, who you brandish those chopsticks around because. So you put this together. Kudos for that. One of the facts you came up with is that there's something called consecutive consecateleophobia, I think I said, which is literally a fear of chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there's a fear for everything, but.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. But I was reading a blog post on it and some. Maybe psychnet, I think, and they were saying, like, there's basically two categories of phobias. Ones that are semi rational. They use the example of a fear of sharks. Right. Well, if you did run into a shark, there's a chance you could be killed by that shark. So it's not just totally bonkers to be afraid of sharks, but a phobia of sharks. Is an irrational fear. Like maybe if you live in Kansas, you got no reason to have a fear of sharks. This one, they said this basically qualifies in the bonkers category. Like there's virtually nothing that chopsticks can do to hurt you. So to be irrationally afraid of chopsticks, where you feel like heart pounding anxiety, is a genuine dyed in the wool phobia. But some people do apparently experience this, although it's super rare.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[Josh Clark]

But you'll avoid entire types of restaurants because you can't be around chopsticks. And you'll get anxious just thinking about being around chopsticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Boy, that's so sad, because Asian food makes up a large portion of my diet.

[Josh Clark]

Well, luckily for you, you don't have consecutophobia.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I mean, when I think about sushi, I think about pho, I think about ramen, I think about good old fashioned Szechuan Chinese food. Oh yeah, think about Korean. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I could eat that all the time.

[Josh Clark]

Dude, you've got to get some Buddha jigga. I'll take you to go get some.

[Kel Penn]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

You're gonna. You're gonna love it. So good.

[Chuck Bryant]

I can't wait.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

45 minutes on chopsticks, baby.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not bad.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about chopsticks, go get yourself some that you can reuse and eat conscientiously with them. And don't forget all the manners. But just go eat some Asian food, because no matter where it's from or what it is, it's probably pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

Since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna call this two for two. Hey guys. I wrote a few years ago about Alan Alda and thought I'd share a Sammy Davis Jr. Story. Oh, wow. And this is from Andrew Limberg in Pittsburgh. And he got his Alan Aldo when read. And when I told him this was coming on, he wrote back, two for two, baby.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. Yeah, there's people out there who are like 0 for 10.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, I'm so sorry.

[Josh Clark]

I assume it's not like we're keeping track of people like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no, I have a spreadsheet.

[Josh Clark]

Turn the screws on.

[Guest 1]

Oh, you do? Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That's mean.

[Chuck Bryant]

He says so in the 80s, Sammy had been cleaned out by his ex wife and was selling barbecue sauce. He was in Pittsburgh to promote it, and my friend Larry, who had a local TV show at the time, got A chance to interview him. When they arrived at the hotel, they were told they would get 20 minutes with Sammy. But when they talked to Sammy's manager, he said only 10 minutes. So instead of having time to set up a two shot interview, and for people that don't know the lingo, that means both people are in the same camera frame.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They kept the camera on Sammy and Larry would then go back and add his footage later. So he would, I guess, re ask the questions with a ghost Sammy just to edit it together. At the end of the interview, they needed one, just one two shot of the two of them together so they could edit it realistically. And Sammy's manager said, nope. And Larry looked at Sammy almost begging because they needed the two shot. Sammy took a long drag of his cigarette and said, get your two shot, babe. The manager then said, oh well, I guess I'm the a hole. To which Sammy said, as a matter of fact, babe, you are an A hole. So this is how the story goes, apparently. And then Andrew says he's been listening since 08 and went to that live show in Pittsburgh. Please come back.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he says he has a podcast now called the Pittsburgh Oddcast.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he said we average about 1500 listens an episode, which is pretty darn good, Andrew.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it is. Nice work, Andrew.

[Chuck Bryant]

For a self styled show, that's not bad at all.

[Josh Clark]

Especially a local one too. Pittsburgh Oddcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So Pittsburghians, if you're from the Berg.

[Kel Penn]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Check out the Pittsburgh Oddcast. And Andrew.

[Josh Clark]

Or even if you're interested in it,

[Chuck Bryant]

sure, you might live in Philadelphia and just be a burghead.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. Well, that was a pretty great one. Thank you very much. Two for two. That's pretty impressive, Andrew. And if you want to get Chuck to do any Sammy Davis Jr. Impressions, write in with your own Sammy Davis Jr. Story and see how it goes. And you, you can put that in an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Host 2]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite.

[Kel Penn]

Hey everyone, it's Kel Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to earsay the audible and iheart audiobook club on the iheartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Kel Penn]

What?

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Yes, with all new episodes of Tyler Perry's divorce sisters you've always liked, a little drama, plus a whole new world of movies like gladiator 2.

[Josh Clark]

Now I will control an Empire original

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[Guest 1]

Welcome to the history books.

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New home, same family. Your BET favorites are now on Paramount Plus. Subscribe now.

[Host 1]

Okay. Laundry stinks. Literally. I mean, you could just keep buying new underwear. Not that I've ever done that. Or maybe sort your clothes into piles based on how re wearable or filthy they are. Or just use Arm and Hammer Deep Clean. It's made for real life stinks and stains. So even if you don't do laundry, the quote right way Deep Clean will knock it out. I mean it is from the number one liquid detergent brand that tackles more loads than any other. Come clean with Arm and Hammer Deep Clean number one claim based on total wash loads sold. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.