Cook by Committee

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Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

To be a rebel, you need a voice, and usually a loud one.

Whether you use a megaphone or a printing press, making yourself heard is typically the first step in turning protest into revolution.

But Valentin Silvestrov found another way.

He rebelled with silence.

Valentin was born in Kiev in 1937 when Ukraine was firmly tucked behind the Iron Curtain.

He didn't set out to overthrow governments, he just loved music.

As a kid, he dreamed of being a concert pianist and composer, but as he grew up and found his own musical voice, it turned out that voice didn't exactly harmonize with the authorities' idea of approved art.

In the Soviet Union, creative freedom was, well, non-existent.

Painters, writers, and musicians were expected to produce work that celebrated the state.

Art had to be uplifting, patriotic, and safely traditional.

Anything too experimental, too Western, or too emotionally complicated was frowned upon.

Now, sometimes frowned upon meant censored, and sometimes it meant getting thrown behind bars, or worse, and that was a problem for Valentin.

By the 1960s, his music had become downright rebellious.

Inspired by modernist movements sweeping across Europe, Valentin's compositions were confrontational, startling, and full of unexpected turns.

One moment you might hear a gentle melody, the next, a crash of dissonant chords.

It wasn't uplifting or traditional, and it definitely wasn't Soviet-approved, so pretty soon the authorities took notice.

In 1969, he crossed the line by walking out of a public event in protest of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The state responded swiftly, expelling him from the composers' union.

They let him back in a few years later, thinking that he might have learned his lesson, but he still refused to temper his modernist music.

As a result, he was expelled again in 1974.

This time, Valentin took the rebuke personally.

Embarrassed and fearing harsher punishment, he withdrew from public life.

He still performed for friends and acquaintances, but he stopped doing shows for larger audiences.

To many who had followed his career, it looked like the Soviet state had won.

that the authorities had finally broken the avant-garde composer.

But in reality, something far more complicated and remarkable was happening.

During his self-imposed exile, Valentin's music went through a dramatic transformation.

Gone were the furious outbursts and modernist shocks.

In their place came something far more dangerous to an oppressive regime.

Restraint.

He began composing his silent songs, a cycle of pieces that leaned into fragility and subtlety, incorporating moments of tranquil silence.

The voice was still Valentin's, but he wasn't shouting anymore.

He was whispering.

And somehow, that whisper carried even further.

In a world where political slogans, speeches, and propaganda were constantly being weaponized, choosing to say less became its own form of protest.

The silent songs spread, gaining critical acclaim in the West.

The Soviets tried to limit their popularity in Valentin's home country, sometimes outright banning the pieces.

but they couldn't stop his rising fame.

His melancholic, nostalgic pieces resonated with the Ukrainian people, who themselves were grappling with sadness and regret.

And slowly, Valentin's music transformed again in a way that he never expected.

It became a voice for Ukraine.

Fast forward a few decades, Silvestrov continued composing, gradually gaining international recognition.

In 1991, as the Soviet Union dissolved, he took to the streets with his countrymen to celebrate Ukrainian independence.

It was an incredible victory for the country and the composer, but Valentin never fully escaped the specter of violence.

In 2022, at the age of 84, he found himself uprooted by conflict.

As Russian bombs began falling on Kiev, he fled his beloved homeland, becoming a refugee in Germany.

It's heartbreaking to think of someone who had already overcome so much being forced from his home again.

And yet, Valentin's response was not one of rage, but of reflection.

Today, as Ukraine endures unspeakable suffering, his music has taken on a new resonance.

His delicate, consoling compositions offer a kind of healing that loud slogans and anthems can't provide.

In a time of deafening violence, his music reminds us that silence can be its own kind of resistance.

Valentin Silvestrov never needed a megaphone to be a rebel.

He just needed a piano, a stubborn heart, and the radical belief that freedom and beauty are always worth defending, even when it seems like no one is listening.

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For decades, American cooks cooks knew that if their souffles fell flat or their muffins tasted musty, there was just one person to ask for advice.

It was a woman who everyone knew.

She smiled from grocery store shelves, spoke over the airwaves, and even published her own cookbook.

I'm talking, of course, about Betty Crocker.

But when Americans wrote, called, or emailed Betty, they were often getting responses from someone else entirely.

Because, you see, Betty Crocker, the face of American baking, never actually existed.

Betty's origins trace back to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1921.

Back then, at the bustling offices of the Washburn Crosby Company, the marketing department had a problem.

Washburn Crosby's main product was gold metal flour, and to promote it, they would run a contest in a magazine.

Readers could solve a puzzle in an ad and then send the answer in for a prize.

The issue was that people weren't just sending in completed puzzles.

They were asking questions.

And over the past few days, Washburn Crosby's all-male advertising department had received nearly 30,000 cooking queries.

Now, they had dealt with something like this before, but on a much smaller scale.

And at that time, they had simply asked female staff who baked for advice and then sent those answers off.

But the deluge of questions this time brought to light a concern that Samuel Gale, the head of advertising, had quietly been worrying about.

He believed the mostly female customers who were writing in wanted to hear from another woman, someone who they as a consumer would trust to give good advice.

Since baking was seen as a female activity at the time, he thought they wouldn't want tips in a letter signed by a man, even if the advice was actually coming from the female office staff.

So Samuel's idea?

To create, whole cloth, a fictional woman in charge of answering baking questions.

Her last name would be Crocker, after William G.

Crocker, the recently retired company director.

And her first name, well, something friendly, something wholesome, something like Betty.

After that, a Washburn Crosby secretary wrote out a signature for the new fake baker, and just like that, Betty Crocker was born.

And she was an instant hit.

By 1924, she had a radio show where a home economics expert named Marjorie Child Husted brought her to life.

In 1936, she finally got a face to go with the voice.

Washburn Crosby put together a composite of all the women at the company, the result being the first ever Betty Crocker official portrait.

Betty's influence was felt in homes across America, all through the 20th century.

During World War II, she published cookbooks and ran a special radio program teaching home cooks how to make do with rationed foods.

And she continued to educate new cooks, giving lessons over the radio and sponsoring cooking schools.

It's no wonder that in 1945, Fortune magazine named Betty Crocker the second best-known woman in America.

The first was, of course, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Betty even came to the small screen in 1949 when actress Adelaide Hawley played her on TV.

For the next 15 years, this real-life Betty would pop into TV shows on CBS and ABC to teach television characters and celebrities to bake with the best of them.

Besides teaching consumers, Betty quickly began to sell to them as well.

Now, while you might instantly recognize Betty with boxed cake mix or frosting, the first product bearing her name was actually a dried soup mix that launched in 1942.

Quickly after that came cake mix, cookies, and the other Betty Crocker products that we all know and love.

While Betty was never a real person, the researchers behind her advice were.

Over the years, a series of recipe developers, nutritionists, and housekeeping experts were the brains behind Betty.

And Washburn Crosby, which later became General Mills, was wholly dedicated to making sure Betty's advice and products worked perfectly for home cooks.

In 1946, General Mills created the Betty Crocker test kitchens at at their office in Minneapolis.

These were replicas of home kitchens complete with the ovens, tools, and other equipment that a typical customer might have in their home.

They used these kitchens to test out recipes and advice.

So if a Betty Crocker recipe said, bake for 25 minutes, you better believe someone tried it at 23, 24, and 26, just to be sure.

Although she's over 100 years old today, Betty Crocker's cooking advice is still as fresh as ever.

She has helped generations of home cooks coddle their eggs and creme their brulees.

Back in the 1920s, Washburn Crosby took a gamble hoping that people would like advice from a character and not a committee.

And today, it's still paying off.

Which just goes to show you, when it comes to cooking, there is no reward without a little whisk.

I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works.

I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com.

And until next time, stay curious.

This show is sponsored by American Public University, American Public University, where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, APU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Their preferred military rates keep tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

And with 24-7 mental health support, plus career coaching and other services, APU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Learn more at apu.apus.edu slash military.

That's apu.apus.edu slash military.

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