Episode 119 - Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Fill Hot Pies

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is brought to you by Teat Lock, the revolutionary new utter locking system from Mitchell's.

If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck.

Farmers tell us that they face a new crisis.

Emboldened by their continuing positive portrayals in children's animations, foxes, deers, and all sorts of woodland creatures are sneaking onto your pastures, suckling your herd, and stealing milk straight from the teat.

But worry no more.

By collaborating with a team of Las Vegas casino safecrackers and sad dads who like to dress up as old-timey blacksmiths, we've created the perfect solution.

Teat lock.

Each teat lock securely seals a teat with a heavy iron lock and a huge brass key.

Simply store the keys by hanging them around the neck of your sturdiest employee.

Order now and get 10% off your first Teat Lock system by using the code LOCK That SHIT DOWN.

And for a limited time, use the code quail to get a charming little quail free.

Hello, and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, the number one podcast for those involved, or just interested, in the production of beef animals and dairy herds.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website, as well as the printed magazine.

Brought to you by Teatlock.

Now, this month we're talking beef pies.

Many of us will remember the revolution that came along with the invention of the Walkman, where once you could only listen to your records at home, now you could listen to them wherever you liked, maybe on a skateboard, on your way to throw bricks at what you think is an empty derelict house.

But as you hurl brick after brick, someone emerges from the gloom.

It isn't an empty house at all.

Uncle Brian?

Anyway, back in the 1400s, the invention of the beef pie had a similar effect.

Suddenly, meat was hand-held.

In fact, the beef pie was the first food recorded as being eaten outside of the home, if we discount the garland of hot beef sausages worn by a French bride on her wedding day, or the baked and salted bull's penises used by children as dolls on the streets of medieval Venice.

So, while the culture and history of Europe and beef pies are intrinsically linked, Americans are traditionally much more burger-pilled and prefer their unspeakable meat in a bun rather than under a layer of pastry.

Well, today's guest thinks that might be about to change.

This month I spoke to Jerry Nichols.

We actually spoke to Jerry last year when he was working as a vending machine repairman, but now he is the CEO of Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Fill Hot Pies, a hot beef pie vending machine company.

Hello, my name's Jerry.

I'm the proprietor of Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Fill Hot Pies.

It just trips off the tongue, doesn't it?

Yeah,

it's a mouthful, but that's what you want, don't you?

When you're buying a hot pie.

That's right, exactly.

You want a mouthful of it.

Jerry, it's so good to talk to you.

Thank you for coming back on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me back.

We got the press release through saying that you were hoping to promote your new business, Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Phil Hot Pies, and you went straight to the top of the pile because the pile.

Yeah, the pile.

I'm saying pie-l.

I'm sort of doing a

wordplay, as it were.

You're already ready to advertise.

Yeah, any sort of opportunity I get, you know, because, you know, I know that there's a phrase.

I don't know if you guys have this phrase across the pond, but in the States, we have this thing called selling like hot cakes.

Yeah, sure.

There's not a pie equivalent.

So I got to do whatever I can to just make sure that the word gets out.

Okay.

So you think that actually that's a barrier to your success that people think of hot cakes as selling fast, whereas actually it's hot pies you want to be selling fast.

Yeah, if there was like, I mean, it would just help me out.

You know, if there was a phrase for it.

It begs the question, doesn't it?

If you ever were given the opportunity to use a time machine

and they said you've got one hit on this you know would you go back and and warn them about pearl harbor or whatever it might be or would you start going back in time and start trying to seed the phrase selling like hot pies yeah um yeah you know that's interesting because i wonder if one guy yelling about pearl harbor would have stopped it you know i i think that it's like i would like to have i would like to have stopped any tragedy you know people like to say they want to go back in time and kill baby hitler i'll go a little further back.

Let's get Hitler's parents out of the equation.

Why don't we?

And then you don't have to kill a child.

I bet I don't have to kill a baby.

I don't have to have that on my conscience.

You know, I'd go back in time and I'm going to kill the parents as the parents of Hitler as babies.

Oh.

Because how could they do such a thing?

I don't know if it's their fault.

I mean, it's hard to say.

I'm really upset with them.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

I don't think they should have done that.

Are you saying that's what you would use your one hit on?

Because you you are, as I was saying, you're giving up your chance to try and seed the phrase selling like hot pies.

If there was some way of actually killing both those infants and seeding the phrase selling like hot pies in one, I don't know how you'd do that.

I mean, it'd take a lot of thought.

Look, if I'm time traveling, if I'm the one guy that's able to do this, it kind of seems like I have unlimited knowledge.

If I've solved the issue of the space-time continuum and I'm able to exist in a different time and different space.

No, hang on, Jerry.

Yeah.

No, hang on.

Sorry.

We're talking, this is very much a wizard.

This involves a wizard.

Oh, a wizard.

Yeah, so this is a one-time thing where the wizard says you've got a one-time hit.

Yeah, well, okay, I got to say I'm a little suspect of the wizard because why hasn't the wizard done this yet?

If the wizard has the power,

why is it falling to me?

I'm just a guy with a pie business, and now I have to do this.

I just want to make it clear, this wizard is entirely hypothetical.

This whole scenario is, you know, you don't have to kill Hitler's parents.

It's just hypothetical.

I just wonder, I have to ask, if he hasn't done it yet, there's a reason he wants them around.

Jerry worked for over 15 years as a vending machine repairman.

And it was one incident while carrying out his duties that gave him the idea of the new hot pie vending machine

I remember it very well.

It was a dark and stormy night.

It was late, late night, and I needed to get home.

But I had one more job to do.

Jerry had been called out to repair an outdoor vending machine.

And as he reached into the back of the machine to pull a dead raccoon out of the vending chute, I got struck by lightning.

Wow.

All the lights start going crazy.

All the bags of chips and cookies and stuff start falling out of the spirals.

You know, it's going nuts.

I wake up, first of all, somebody saw me.

This happened to me.

And he told me that he saw my bones.

Oh, he saw your bones.

He saw all my bones.

The bystander had seen all of Jerry's bones.

So after this guy saw my bones, he kind of shook me up.

He kind of woke me up and was like, hey, are you okay?

Are you okay?

And I was like, do you smell that?

And he was like, what?

You're like burning hair and like skin?

I was like, no, no, no, no, no.

Something sweet.

And I go into the vending machine and only

one item in the vending machine had steam coming off of it.

And it was one of these damn Pop-Tarts

in the vending machine.

And I was like, what is a Pop-Tart?

But a handheld pie.

It's kind of like a flattened pie.

It's not as good, but it is kind of pie-adjacent.

We can all agree.

It's like a ravioli, kind of.

We'll agree to disagree about that, I think.

Because also, I don't know if you've ever been struck by lightning before.

No, I've not had that pleasure.

Really?

It just happens to me a lot.

Oh, really?

Oh, this isn't a one-off thing.

Because obviously, yeah, we knew you'd been struck once, but you've been struck a number of times.

Yeah, it's happened to me a bunch of times.

Oh, wow.

Like before and after this.

Okay.

Is this like a lifelong thing or just a recent thing?

Yeah, my whole life.

I was struck on the day I was born for crying out loud.

Whoa.

The doctor didn't have to spank me or nothing.

The doctor saw all my bones and he was like, that's one healthy baby.

He's got all his bones.

So they weren't worried then?

No.

My first words I said in the hospital that day.

Sorry, what do you mean?

You were struck by lightning the moment you were born and you then were immediately able to speak.

Yeah, I said, yeow!

The combination of the lightning strike and the hot Pop-Tart in the vending machine had given Jerry an idea.

And so thus, Jerry's wood-roasted, shelf-stable, deep-filled hot pies concept was born.

So I understand how, you know, smelling that lightning strike pop-tart made you think, oh, maybe I should do a vending machine that dispenses hot pies.

I get that.

But why beef?

What brought you to beef?

It'd be so easy to do

apple.

berry, lemon meringue.

Nobody's doing beef.

I kind of just got this idea, this crazy idea that was like, I could be like the beef pies

guy.

You know, I could, for those people who prefer savory over sweet, for those people who,

sorry, I'm just getting, I'm getting a little emotional.

For those people

who have a dream that goes against the grain of what

normal functioning society thinks is a good idea.

There's a beef pie for you.

I asked Jerry about the specifics of the hot pie machine.

Obviously, looking at the title of your business, Jerry's Wood Roasters.

Yes.

Shelf-stable deep-fill hot pies.

Is the contraption wood roasting the pies?

It is wood-roasting them.

It's like,

you know, like in like a pizza oven.

Okay.

I was like, I think for pies, it's better better with wood just like from what i tried i had i this was a couple of this is not version 1.0 this is like version like eight i took the ben franklin sort of approach i didn't fail i just found a bunch of ways that didn't work right and i guess you you you tied a key to a a kite is that what you're saying i did cool because look i have all i do all my best thinking when I get struck by lightning.

And so we do have a lot in common in that way, Ben Franklin and I.

Obviously, we're based in Britain over here, so our sort of understanding of American history probably isn't as acute as yours is.

Isn't Ben Franklin one of your boys, though?

Well,

is Ben Franklin the one that

Hamilton's about?

No, that's Hamilton.

Are you sure?

I think so.

I'm pretty sure.

The guy, you know, the guy who comes out and he goes, Alexander Hamilton.

That's Ben Franklin.

Is Ben Franklin in Hamilton?

I think the musical should be about him if so I kind of feel like with no disrespect because you could you could finish the you could finish the first act

with him getting struck by lightning yeah that'd be good it should just be better like it could be it could be the show is I think good I think Lynn did a great job but I think he made a big big mistake by not making the show about Ben Franklin and it being more about Ben Franklin than it being about Alexander Hamilton.

Yeah, because I feel like he's probably felt a bit too beholden to the title because he's called it Hamilton.

Yeah.

And he sat down, he's kind of sat down to write the script and he's written Hamilton at the top by Lynn Manuel Miranda.

And then he's like, oh, I better write this about Hamilton.

Yeah, kind of, kind of, wrote yourself into a corner there, Lynn.

I think he wrote himself into a cul-de-sac at minute one.

Yeah.

With the title.

It's a huge mistake, but it's easy to make when

you're a novice,

when you're somebody who hasn't done it a bunch of times.

I totally understand.

So, sorry, so just take it back to the contraption.

You've got a full sort of pizza oven inside a vending machine.

That must be a first.

It is a first, and it's very big.

It requires a lot of power

because, obviously, for safety reasons, you cannot have an open flame inside the machines, even though I tried that in the first few versions of it.

So, what we, the compromise was

it has the most heat lamps in anything that's ever been made.

Okay.

And it works.

It works great.

So it's kind of like a hotel breakfast buffet times a million.

Sort of, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, gosh, there is probably like close to a million bulbs in there, and they're really hot.

That's the important thing is that they're really, really hot.

It's, I mean, the thing is about them is that they're like building sized.

These machines.

Oh.

So are those going inside other buildings?

They can.

Because then

you can only fit it in what, like the Pentagon?

You can put it in the Pentagon.

We got one in there.

We got a nice government contract with the folks over at the Pentagon.

And so they're super excited about it.

They're walking the halls with their hot pies, and they're very, very excited.

I don't know if you've ever been to Carnegie Hall before.

So we have one on the stage there.

And that's been really, really great because...

We've been selling pies during the shows there.

Very disruptive, apparently.

I mean, this is maybe a good moment to bring us on to some of the criticisms that have been leveled at your business.

I've trawled the internet looking for comments and reviews, you know, the Google reviews, for example,

of these things.

I would like you just to respond to them and the concerns they raise, if that's okay.

The first one here says, I was severely burned by the incredibly hot internal gravy from one of these pies.

I went to the hospital and they told me that these are the sort of burns that you'd expect if you'd handled radioactive material like plutonium.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's interesting that that's a criticism because the word incredible is in there.

It sounds like they're talking about the contraption working because the whole thing is that they're to be served hot.

It's obviously not ideal that a customer would be burned, period, full stop.

I'll go ahead and say that.

I mean, especially if they're, if they're working, for example, in the Pentagon, which is a very high-level and important thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't want to be responsible for harming anybody, especially anybody that works at the Pentagon.

I have to sort of take that with like a

glass half-full sort of approach because I do think it is good that

I think I would put that almost on an ad.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I would just like use the beginning of it.

I'd put an ellipsis at the beginning and then have it say the pie was served incredibly hot, and then add an ellipsis and then put unknown Pentagon worker.

So you just have the words incredibly hot internal gravy.

Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty good.

Okay.

Why not?

I think it's not false advertising.

It is what the review says.

I'm going to put that on an ad.

Okay, well, here's another quote.

This is, again, from a Google review of one of your vending machines.

I bit into the hot pie, and the incredibly hot internal gravy fired out with ferocity directly into my eyes.

The heat was incredible, and my corn ears were instantly burned.

This was particularly bad news because I'm the captain of a ferry, and the ferry smashed into a harbour.

The only reason you haven't heard about this on the news is that literally everyone died.

And so there was no one alive to tell the tale.

Apart from me, I lived because I was struck by lightning at the moment of impact.

So there's a lot going on in that one.

So, obviously, my thoughts are with the

fallen.

That to me doesn't necessarily sound like it had anything to do with

the hot gravy.

And also, why is everybody so mad about the gravy being on the inside?

Well, I don't think they're mad about it.

I think

they're just describing the internal gravy.

That's where it needs to stay for them.

I think it's the way it shoots out into the eyes okay okay because i'm thinking i'm seeing i'm looking at this review too i think i'm keeping i've been into the hot pie

the heat was incredible because i am the captain that's pretty good that's a good review i'm keeping that and then it's like oh a captain a captain liked this that's pretty good okay fun review i've got here this says i was burned by a jerry's pie and i'd never felt anything like it and i used to work at cape canaveral and it was my job to stand next to the rockets as they took off.

That's that's pretty tough.

Maybe I would say ellipses,

Jerry's pie.

I've never felt anything like it.

And then my job is next to stand next to the rockets as they took off.

Because it's like, that's just like an interesting guy.

Well, it becomes then like a sort of endorsement by NASA almost.

Yeah, like I, this is my job, and I'm actually a really important guy.

I think this pie is pretty good.

Okay, Jerry.

Well, thank you so much.

It's been so good to talk to you.

And best of luck with the vending machines.

Thanks for having me.

A big thanks to Jerry Nickel for that interview.

And if you'd like to try a Jerry's Wood-Roasted Shelf-Stable Deep Fill Hot Pie, then you can find his vending machines at the Pentagon, at Carnegie Hall, and from March onwards on the deck of all Chinese Navy aircraft carriers.

Good luck with it, Jerry.

More after this.

The Beef Beef and Dairy Network podcast is brought to you by Teat Lock, the revolutionary new utter locking system from Mitchell's.

If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck.

For centuries, farmers have had to protect their herds' teats from the hungry, wet mouths of local villagers.

This is usually meant relying on shotguns, pitchforks, and crossbows.

But at Mitchell's, we've developed a solution that leads to much less bloodshed.

Teat Lock, a heavy-duty iron lock designed specifically for your herds teats.

Teat Lock is available in three strengths, Iron Fortress, Bastion of the Damned, and our most secure solution, the Obsidian Dragons Keep.

Order now and get 10% off your first Teat Lock system by using the code lock that shit down.

And for a limited time, use the code Keep ThoseQuails Coming and get over 25 quails.

Hi, I'm Jerry from Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Fill Hot Pies.

I think you're gonna love my pies, but don't take my word for it.

Listen to some of these reviews.

Incredibly hot internal gravy.

I'm an unknown Pentagon worker.

I've been into the hot pie,

the heat was incredible because I am the captain.

Jerry's pie?

I've never felt anything like it.

I used to work at Cape Canaveral, and it was my job to stand next to the Rockets.

So there you have it.

Get to a Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Phil Hot Pies today.

They're selling like hot pies.

After speaking to Jerry, I wanted to get a medical angle on the burns that hot pies can cause.

And so, of course, I turned to friend of the show, TV's Dr.

Sam Archer.

Dr.

Sam is best known for his BBC2 show, The Doctor Will See You Now, and his Channel 5 show, RFK Junior Live.

He's a very busy doctor, but as always, he found time to speak with us.

Dr.

Sam, hello hello how's everything going good thank you it's lovely to have you back on the show as always you've been very busy of course um you've got a bc2 show you've got the channel 5 show rfk junior live oh i love doing that it's so much fun basically he sort of does a phone-in show and i'm sort of on hand just sort of to give extra advice uh where needed but um but he doesn't need it a lot of the time he's he's a very smart guy obviously people make fun of him he had a worm in his brain but um i just point out that that just means in his head there were two brains That's how clever he is.

Because yeah, he's got the normal human brain and then you've grafted onto that the intelligence, the significant intelligence, let's say, of a worm.

Exactly.

He's got mammalian intelligence and then a sort of invertebrate intelligence as well.

He's a thinker for the ages.

And it's really, it's enlightening spending time with him.

I'd not really thought about him that way.

Because also thinking about it, I think I'm right in saying that worms have got three hearts.

So he actually has four hearts in his body.

So it's not just brains, it's also that kind of emotional exaggeration.

And that's what we need from medical professionals.

We need some empathy and we need some kindness.

And when you're bringing four hearts to the table, you know that there's going to be empathy and kindness there.

So can you, for those who haven't seen it, can you just explain the format of RFK Junior Live?

Because this has been going on for a while.

This is a long time before he became the

in charge of health in the US, right?

Yes, exactly.

Basically, he fields calls from people with medical problems, medical questions, and he sort of just freewheels it really.

He doesn't have any formal medical training.

It's mainly a vibes-based thing where he will take their queries and sort of, yeah, see how he responds to them.

How often did you find that you were having to say, you know, that's all well and good, Robert, but that's horse shit.

Or, you know, what you've just said there's highly dangerous.

I'll be honest, a lot of what he said wasn't correct, but the vibe of the show isn't, you know, you're not correcting RFK, you're just letting him sort of freewheel.

Yeah, but is that a good idea though i think that medicine is really about just as many voices inputs and ideas suggestions as possible um and really just see which one works for you and by works for you i just mean sort of in your opinion rather than actual you know testing just sort of see how it feels so kind of no no such thing as a bad idea when it comes to medical treatment

no because if you think about it every human's different every body's different every body is different so i mean some bodies have got a a dead worm in their brain.

Well, exactly.

Exactly.

And that worm might well be, you know, giving some extra insight that is much needed.

Sorry if this sounds a bit too, you know, I guess the word would be woke nowadays, but everybody's different and we should respect that.

So, yeah, your body might respond to certain treatments differently to others.

And yeah, I hold space for you, I believe the young people say nowadays.

Because a video has been going around

on social media.

It's gone quite viral.

Many people have seen this.

Somebody actually comes onto the show, RFK Jr.

Live.

They're experiencing muscle weakness,

hair loss, a dry mouth,

a lack of libido, all these problems.

And they tell RFK about that.

And then RFK says, okay, well, this is very simple.

You simply need to drink this.

And he gets out a blender and he makes what he calls a formaldehyde smoothie.

Yep.

Which is a mixture of formaldehyde, pineapple juice.

For the vitamin C, obviously.

And some oat milk.

Blends that up,

gives it to the patient, and they just immediately die.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the camera sort of pans across to you as if to say, Dr.

Sam, what have you let happen here?

Uh-huh.

And you're on your phone.

Well, I mean, once again, you're playing, and people are speculating, looking at the way you're moving your hands,

you're playing Fruit Ninja, which, I mean, just shows that people don't know what on earth they're talking about.

Because, you know, if you look at the maker phone, you'd know that you can't play Fruit Ninja on that kind of phone.

And while I can't remember exactly what was happening at that time, because to be fair, that's the kind of thing that happens a lot on the show, I suspect it was snake, which is a great paradigm for health.

You know, eat the apples, grow bigger.

I mean,

that's the first, basically, day one of medical school.

Yeah, but if that snake, in the course of eating apples, gets some kind of, you know, what sounds like a kind of...

maybe a hormone imbalance that would cause those kind of things, the dry mouth, the lack of hair, the lack of libido, don't feed it formaldehyde.

Well, luckily, the snake is quite a basic organism made of pixels.

And as such, I don't think it is capable of sort of having that complexity of medical issues.

But I don't know.

I haven't completed it.

I do know if it touches itself, it dies.

Thank goodness that's not true of humans.

So let's talk about what we're here to talk about.

I've been speaking to Jerry, the CEO of Jerry's Wood Roasted Shelf Stable Deep Fill Hot Pies.

I'm not sure if you're across this.

He's rolling out hot pie vending machines across the USA.

Of course, the dark side of this is that people are, of course, getting burns from the very hot internal gravy from the pies.

Now, obviously, pies are an important part of British culture and a lot of world culture.

So we're not here to do down pies.

But I do want to talk to you about what are the potential dangers when it comes to hot pies and how common are the injuries caused by hot pies all too common sadly it's it's pure agony and i've actually launched a campaign about the dangers of hot pies because apparently a lot of americans don't know that you know savory pies can be hot i think this is the thing that people aren't grasping necessarily you know in britain we have hundreds of years of of eating handheld hot pies yes of course there are still injuries but

We have a sort of deep ancestral knowledge of how to eat one without it all spurting up into your eyes.

With this this now coming to America, this is a population that don't have that deep memory of

pie eating.

And that's going to cause problems.

Is that what your campaign is about?

That is, yes.

If you think about Americana, traditional Americana, there's an image that comes to mind, which is a woman has baked a usually non-savory, usually a sweet pie.

Maybe an apple pie.

An apple pie.

There's the phrase American as apple pie.

Exactly.

Exactly.

We're on the same page.

And so she takes that apple pie

out of the oven and places it on the windowsill to cool.

Of course.

And that pie is then stolen by Yogi Bear.

By Yogi Bear.

So what basically the campaign is sort of saying to people, don't expect all pies to be cool.

And the slogan we came up with was, no sill,

no Yogi Bear, no cool.

Granted, that proved far too obtuse for anyone to sort of grasp.

Not that catchy, I'm going to say, Dr.

Sam.

Not that catchy.

And also, without the sort of preface I just gave you about, you know, the woman taking the pie out and everything else,

it was baffling.

I mean, yeah, combine that with the fact that we, you know, the Hanna-Barbera state of furious that we're using Yogi Bear as

an image for our campaign anyway.

I'll be honest, the whole thing has become a bit of a quagmire of confusing messaging.

Well, also, there's the Anders confusion, which is the thing you're ultimately trying to talk about is meat pies is not even fruit pies.

Exactly.

You're using fruit pies as a kind of stepping stone to get there.

Explaining this won't always happen.

There won't always be, the pie won't always be cool, be placed on the windowsill.

Because I'm finding it quite confusing myself, and I'm I know all about meat pies.

I'll be honest, I

we'd spent the money on the billboards before we knew what the message would be.

We needed to go to print in like half an hour, and I'll be honest, I panicked and I sort of got lost in a lot of different concepts, a lot of different images.

Sorry,

what was the slogan again?

No sill,

no yogi bear, like no cool.

Yeah, that's that's really awful.

That's a bad one.

No one understood it.

No one gets what I've basically, what we should have said was beware hot pies.

Three words, very clear, very easy to understand.

As it is, I'm getting writs from Hannah Barbera's estate.

They're angry at me.

Warning hot pies would have been so much easier.

Yeah, because I'm trying to recall your

slogan now.

And you told it to me probably less than 10 seconds ago.

And I can't record it.

I can't remember it.

It's rubbish.

Yes.

So, so hang on, what was it?

No sill?

No sill, as in windowsill, but that's once again, the context strip makes it very confusing.

No sill, no yogi bear,

and then no cool, as in, so.

And then the image of Yogi Bear, and what's he doing in the image?

He's stealing the, so in the, in the image, he's stealing a fruit pie.

He's from a,

yes, from a windowsill.

And as he's running away, he's cooling it.

Yeah, but what's that got to do with meat pies?

Because the whole point is that the pie is is meant to cool.

Because Americans, they like a cool fruit pie.

In the UK, we like a hot, savory pie.

And where are these billboards going up?

Is this in the US?

Don't

basically.

So I didn't think about how we were going to budget this.

So they're going up.

They'll eventually be on every billboard.

I didn't actually

think this through.

In the US, certainly coastally, we're talking

we're talking 90% coverage so this must have cost a lot of money

like so the only way I've found out of this financial hole is basically get

my friend RFK Jr.

basically in the heart of the you know the the US government and he's been able to transfer some funds and basically waive a lot of the pricing so um

otherwise

I think this would be the most expensive advertising campaign ever launched.

You know, we're talking forget Coca-Cola, forget Nike,

forget the campaign for when the film The Mask was released.

Oh, I remember that.

Every bus.

Every single bus you got on for like two years.

The driver would be wearing that promotional green mask.

Exactly.

Let's talk about the UK because obviously, you know, we've got this pie culture.

We're brought up knowing how to eat a meat pie in such a way that the gravy doesn't hit the eyes.

And it's quite, you know, it happens, of course, but at much lower levels than what we're going to see to a sort of uninitiated population in the US.

But is it possible that we could become complacent here in the UK thinking, we're fine, we don't need to worry about this?

Or is this something that we do need to keep thinking about?

Well, it's a bit of an arms race, isn't it?

Because you see more and more part, it's more and more pies trying to get a hotter and hotter interior.

That seems to be the trend at the minute is people go,

it's not about the quality of the pie, the quality of the ingredients.

It's about how hot can you get the gravy inside the crust.

And that's dangerous.

And I've been warning people for years about that.

You know, I've been saying it's not about the heat of the gravy, it's about the quality of the meat.

People don't think about the chunks.

This is what worries me.

I was in conversation for a long time with the British Food Council about a sticker that you could put on all of your food that would contain something hot.

And that it was a picture of

Mutley from Wacky Races.

Because I don't know if you remember when mutley would laugh he'd sort of go

like that that's right yeah yeah because he had um it sounded like he had i think i'd you know i'm not a doctor but maybe copd or emphysema or something quite possibly i mean i i wouldn't i don't want to diagnose uh remotely because uh that's bad bad practice but um also he's a dog that yeah exactly so that's a vet that's a vet's job yes yeah

i didn't study for uh two years at medical school to uh be diagnosing animals and so basically we we i suggested these stickers that you you put on because while that also sounds like emphysema, it's also the sound that someone might make when they're eating a hot pie.

They might go,

like, oh, I see, yeah, okay.

And so, to warn people, um, in the end, they went with them

warning hot pie on those ones, or hot, you know,

hot would be the main one, and and and that seems to have worked, but still, you know, I don't think people are prepared.

I think people are going into a pie going, you know, it's hot, whatever.

Well, as you say, it's the arms race, isn't it?

Because people are going hotter and hotter, and they're finding ways of making that internal gravy so hot.

Yeah.

You know, some of them using a small nuclear reactor to heat up the internal

gravy.

Oh my God, the fish and pies that you can get.

There's a small amount of, is it uranium or plutonium that's inside it?

That activates.

Yeah, tiny amount.

They drop it in.

Have you seen that footage, by the way,

of the supermarket where, sadly, the pie wasn't sealed well enough and the actual core has sunk through the entire building.

It went through the shelves, through the floor, through the basement,

then supposedly went straight down to the Earth's core, exploded.

Right.

And apparently, that's what caused COVID.

Was it RFK Jr.

who told you that?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And he would know because I think he had COVID four times.

I mean, think about it.

If the worm had COVID, he had COVID eight times.

Probably no one on earth a better expert on COVID than him.

What we've tried to do is we've tried to make,

it's a dual strategy we're using, which is to make hot pies more appealing to young people while also warning them of the dangers.

On every hot pie, you'll have one of those warning stickers like they have on American rap albums that say explicit content.

Yeah.

And they look quite cool.

People think they're sort of a bit edgy, but it also warns them of the dangers inside.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's kind of like buying a Lint Biscuit album.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And yeah, you say to young people now, like, this is basically a Lint Biscuit album.

They'll look at you and they'll know exactly what you're talking about, which is very helpful.

Oh, I mean, completely.

I mean, my

two stepchildren, I give them a lot of limp biscuit stuff, merch albums, that kind of stuff.

And they're so evangelical about Lint Biscuit.

They literally give that stuff away

as soon as I've bought it for them.

And I'm delighted to say that Fred Durst is actually really involved in the campaign as well.

Great.

Yeah.

Because yeah, I mean, if Jen Alpha will listen to anyone,

it's a trusted voice.

It's Fred Durst.

Fred Durst.

You think about the kind of people that Jen Alpha look up to and will listen to.

It's a small number of people, isn't it?

It's your Olivia Rodrigo's, your Sabrina Carpenter's, yeah.

I mean,

I mean, obviously a bit more Chapel Gohan than Chapel Roan, but, you know, Fred Durst is definitely on that list.

Everyone knows him.

They've welcomed him into their hearts.

And like I say, a lot of the leaflets I've been sending out, I have no text on them at all.

Just a picture of Fred Durst.

They get it.

Yeah.

I mean, I once paid thousands of pounds to fly my stepkids over to the US for a personal meet and greet with Fred Durst.

And they actually wouldn't do it.

And they were saying, I don't want to go.

And I think what it was was they didn't want to meet their hero.

You know, and I understand that.

And thank goodness goodness he agreed to be in the television advert for us.

Oh, he's got a TV ad.

Yes.

Yeah.

Very excited.

Once again, that's going to be rolled out soon.

I'm delighted to say we've actually got Fred Dus to re-record his

famous song, My Way, but replace the lyrics to Piway.

Oh,

okay.

So the Limbiscuit song, because that...

Yeah, I'm trying to think how that goes.

Yeah.

It's My Way, My Way, or the High Way is what he'd say.

So now he'd say, it's Piway, Piway, or the Piway?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's how it goes.

That's pretty confusing.

I mean, I'm not, again, I'm not sure if the message comes through that strong.

I mean, it's clearly about pies, but it's like, what does he actually mean by that?

When he says, it's piway.

Okay, let's just break this down.

He says, it's piway.

Okay,

it's piway, piway, or the piway.

Okay.

The first one when he says it's piway, that doesn't mean anything.

Yes.

But then he reiterates that.

It's piway.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

It's Piway.

He says it first.

That doesn't mean anything.

Okay.

Then he reiterates that.

Then he reiterates it.

It's Piway again.

You're not consolidating anything if there's nothing there to begin with.

So it's Piway, Piway.

Or,

okay, interesting.

Or it's either Piway.

It's either Piway, which I don't, it doesn't mean anything to me.

Or it's this thing that's coming.

And then he says Piway again.

With the definite article.

It's MyWay.

It's Piway, Piway, or the Piway.

Oh, the Piway.

You're right.

The Piway.

So I'm sorry, I'm really trying to grapple with this.

I'm breaking it down.

So Piway,

it starts with it's Piway.

Okay, that doesn't mean anything.

We'll agree to differ on that, but carry on.

Okay.

He reiterates Piway or the

Piway.

Piway.

Each time he says Piway, Piway still doesn't mean anything.

With pies.

With the hot pies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if I'm being really, really, really

generous here,

I can see that it in some way promotes pies.

Because if you're saying it's pie way,

if I'm trying to get some meaning out of this, I'm trying to drag meaning out of this word.

Oh, okay, right.

Well, I've realised where you're falling down here.

You haven't seen the images which accompany this for the

Super Bowl advert that we've got coming out.

Okay, no, okay, good.

So it's Piway, Piway, or the Piway.

Yeah.

Overlaid

is an image of Dick Dastardly.

The Hanna-Barbera character.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so

is Dick Darcy like lip-syncing the words so that like Fred Durst is...

We couldn't work out how to say it.

It's just a picture of Dick Darcy.

Okay, so the effect will be, I'm seeing Dick Darcy, I'm hearing it's Piway, Piway, or the Piway.

Yep.

Okay.

With an image of Dick Darcidley.

Yeah.

Okay.

So do you think that the image of Dick Darsardly is adding meaning to the phrase it's piway?

Let's just break it down.

Yes.

Okay, so when I hear it's piway,

as I said, if I was being really generous, the only sort of glimpse of meaning I can I can think of, and I'm sort of building this myself,

is that pi way would be like a way of life.

A way of living that

centered around revolves around pie.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's piway.

Sounds like you're getting it.

Yeah, but then he says,

if that's what I meant to get from it, he then says, it's Piway.

Piway, okay, I know what Piway is now.

That's what I'm imagining.

Or, okay, okay, there's an alternative.

Yeah.

The Piway.

The Piway.

That's the same, though, isn't it?

Well,

but then, once again, are you factoring in the image?

Dick Dastardly.

So

how's he helping with the meaning?

He's dastardly.

I mean, he's in his name, isn't it?

So it's like, it's Piway, lovely, eating a lovely pie, reiterating it's Piway, or yeah,

there's Dick Darcy.

Oh, so hang on, is Dick Darcy only appearing for the final word?

Oh, I see where the confusion's happening.

Sorry, yes.

Um, okay, sorry, okay.

So it's Fred Durst first, he's saying it's Piway.

No, no, no, first is uh Moanna,

Disney's Moanna, yeah, okay.

She appears, and I hear it's Piway, Piway, then that image of Moanna changes to Dick Darcy, Yes.

And I hear

or the Piway.

Or the Piway.

For some extra context, if it helps, the image of Moana has like a checkerboard effect behind it because I thought I was downloading a PNG

and it was actually just a square image, which is annoying.

Oh, so you thought that was a transparent background, but yeah, exactly.

I thought it's sort of the edges of Moana would be a bit cleaner and everything, but it didn't look that way in the end.

So Dick Dastardly represents dastardliness.

Yes.

Okay, so you're

obviously

excitement, adventure, going beyond your horizons, i.e.

hamburgers.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, okay.

So, okay.

Yeah.

So when I see Moana, I think, okay, the Piway means

as you say, exploring my horizons, figuratively speaking, going to another island or leaving the island to find new things.

And I'm being told that's Paiway.

That is.

So big things.

I'm exploring.

I'm exploring my burgeoning sense of adulthood.

Yeah.

Becoming an adult.

Eating pies.

Okay.

Eating pies.

Yes.

Yes.

Or the pie way, which is like a version of that.

Yeah, where it's gone, it's bad.

Right.

It's dick dastardly.

Okay, so what is the message?

Eat pies.

Yeah.

But also.

Be careful.

Yeah, there is an edge to it, which is that the gravy will shoot up into your eyes and burn your cornea.

I mean, okay.

Throughout this discussion, I'm now realising that I think a lot of my approach to

messaging is quite cryptic.

It's quite um it's quite hieroglyphics.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's using pictures instead of words.

Yes, but often, I mean, often you sort of need a lot of context for those pictures.

The pictures aren't sort of the first thing you think of when you see those pictures.

You sort of need quite a lot of explanation.

And also, you need to be quite well versed in the Hanna-Barbera universe.

Yeah.

Which probably, in terms of its kind of cultural cutthroat, is probably waning, you'd have to say.

I mean, yeah, I mean, you try and turn their lawyers that, but yeah, definitely.

So, I mean, if this conversation has done anything,

it's been a warning from me.

Forget parties, it's a warning from me just about

how I go about sort of messaging, public health messaging, which is obviously very important.

I've just realized that we've got

a healthy eating campaign coming up soon.

I've probably

I probably should have another look at that one because

I just don't think people associate Top Topcat with

healthy eating anymore.

And

I should probably have another look at that, actually.

Well, he does eat a lot of fish.

That was my thinking.

I mean, it's fish heads.

Fish heads out of a bin.

Yeah,

is that healthy eating?

I don't think so.

I think I've overthought it again.

Yeah.

You are absolutely shit at this.

Okay, I've got to sort that one out.

I'll ask RFK Jr.

if he's got any ideas.

Well, thank you, Dr.

Sam.

And I'm sure we'll speak to you again.

And best of luck luck with the lawsuit with Hanna-Barbera.

Thank you so much.

They are not as fun as the cartoons would suggest so I really appreciate that.

A big thanks to Dr.

Sam Archer for that interview.

And remember if you find yourself with hot gravy from a pie in your eyes, apply yogurt, drop to your knees and roll.

So that's all we've got time for this month.

But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website now, where you'll find all the usual stuff, as well as our off-topic section, where this month we find out how fast Enya can run.

So until next time,

beef out.

Thanks to Matt Upadaka, Tom Neenan, and Linnea Sage.

Walking About is the podcast about walking.

It's a walkumentary series where I, Alan McLeod, and a fun, friendly guest go for a walkabout.

You'll learn about interesting people and places and have the kind of conversations you can only have on foot.

We've got guests like Lauren Lapkis.

I figured something out about this map.

Like how to read it.

Betsy Sedaro.

I had no key.

That's awesome and nuts.

John Gabris.

This is like great first date for like broke 20 something, you know?

And more.

Check out Walkin' About with Alan McLeod on Maximum Fun.

Hey, everybody, I'm Jeremy.

I'm Oscar.

I'm Dimitri.

And we are the Euroevangelists.

We're a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most important music competition in the world.

Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's pop culture happy hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest.

But what do we talk about in the offseason?

The rest of Eurovision, duh.

There are nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.

We've got thousands of amazing songs, inspiring competitors, and so much drama to discuss.

And let me tell you, the drama is juicy.

Plus, all the gorillas and bread-bacon grandmas that make Eurovision so special.

Check out Euro Evangelists available everywhere you get podcasts, and you could be a Euro Evangelist too.

Ooh, I want to be one.

You already are.

It's that easy.

Okay, cool.

Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.