March 28, 2025 • 25 mins
It’s the official candy of Part-Time Genius, but there’s so much more to know about these delicious red-hot treats, from why NASA can’t work without them to what gives them their signature burn. Along the way Will and Mango discover the story of the enterprising young law student who invented them, and reveal the recipe that takes two weeks (!) to make.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Do you know that NASA Mission Control actually has its
own official candy?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And is I'm guessing the ice cream, like the astronaut
ice cream doesn't count? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You know? I think no one wants that stop, so
that's right, You're right, sadly. But apparently the big board
where you see all the scientists sitting at, like you know,
the one where they're watching to see if anyone's going
to call in with a problem, that's called the console
and the quote console candy of choice is the atomic
fireball nice you know, is also the official candy of
(00:45):
Part Time Genius. Now, NASA has embraced the candy for
a little longer than our show, And I just assumed
it made sense because it's science y and nerdy and
it kind of feels like, you know, the flames of
a blast off, But that actually isn't why. There was
apparently an an admin assistant named Karen who used to
make copies, and when she'd drop off papers to the
folks working in the Console and Mission Control, she'd drop
(01:07):
off an atomic fireball with the copies as kind of
this little treat, and the scientists found it really helpful
for that midnight to seven am shift when it kind
of added a little extra pep to their otherwise sleepy stuffs.
And that's how the atomic fireball became this permanent fixture
of NASA and Mission control. They actually began ordering boxes
(01:28):
of the candy to the office starting in nineteen eighty nine.
That is just one of nine spicy facts for all
of you about atomic fireballs. I can't wait to dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome a part time genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always, I've got my good friend
mangesh I ticket out here with me and on the
other side of the soundproof glass lining up a whole
bunch of different types of milk. He's got almond milk,
oat and milk two percent whole. Also got a little
soy milk over there. He was waiting to cool our
(02:18):
mouths off in case we eat too many fireballs for
this episode. That is our very thoughtful pal, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
He is just so considered. I am sorry that he
doesn't have any chocolate milk or any crazy straws. For us,
but I do like that he's taking the initiative, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Mega, So we've obviously been talking about atomic fireballs a
lot recently. So when we started the show, we had
a little debate about whether the official candy of Part
Time Genius was going to be Smarties or Nerds. I
was team Smarties, you were team Nerds, and it got
pretty heated, unfortunately, and we had to just sort of
put that conversation aside for a little bit, and then
(02:54):
just this year we decided to revisit the conversation. We've
both grown a lot as people, I think, and it
really helped us come together, and we both decided atomic
fireballs were the perfect choice. But I'm curious, do you
remember the first time you had an atomic fireball?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah? Kind of, like you know, there are all sorts
of candies that were so novel and of a specific
era for me right now and later as I really
associated with like one of my cousin's weddings from when
I was in third grade, I remember when kids started
selling airheads at school and then orhoids. But I think
it was at this summer camp when I was like
five or six and we were playing kickball and this
(03:33):
one kid just had this bag of candy from like
a corner store, and I put an atomic fireball in
my mouth and I just could not believe this was candy,
Like it was so hot and unbelievable, also sweet, and
it just blew my mind. And then I don't think
I saw them again for like years. They weren't really
a Halloween candy where I was, Like in my neighborhood
(03:54):
we had lemonheads at the store and other variations, like
there was an Alexander the grape candy that the same
time used to make, but not really atomic fireballs. But
that moment really stands out to me. What about you, Like,
I know you've had this somewhat recent renaissance with the candy.
When did that start?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, so the recent renaissance started, I'm trying to remember
because it had been years since i'd had I had
really gotten my fix of atomic fire balls, which I'd
also loved since I was a kid. I don't actually
remember how it happened, but when it happened, it was
all over, Like I was definitely going back to it.
And as we've talked about before, when I get hooked
on a candy, I go big and so, as you know,
(04:33):
we have this place that we know as the center
of excellence in our home where we store a lot
of my favorite candies that I end up ordering in bulk.
And there are no joke, hundreds of atomic fireballs sitting
in a bucket in there for me to stop buy
and grab some. But it won't be long before we
have to refill. They go faster than you think. But
we should talk about fireballs. Get to the whole history,
the whole everything here. So where do you want to start.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
How about with the makers of atomic fireballs, uh Farepan,
who gave the candy the somewhat frightening slogan burns so good.
It's one of my favorite candy companies. They also called
a candy quote a spicy hot ball of sweet, burning
cinnamony deliciousness. But what is amazing about these little red
(05:16):
balls of wonder is that none of that drives people away.
In fact, atomic Fireballs have been one of the most
popular candies in the country since their debut in the
nineteen fifties. Now, what's interesting to note is that the
candies really were of a time when the atom baumb
was on everyone's mind, and this slipped into kid culture
as well. So according to a book called Atomic Tunes quote,
(05:39):
children's toys in the nineteen forties through the nineteen sixties
were rife with atomic age themes, and this is something
I totally had forgotten. But there were board games like
Uranium Rush and Air Raid. Kids sucked on atomic fireball
candies while reading atomic comics like Atomic Man, Captain Adam
and Nukla. There were atomic disintegrating pistols, we hid Geiger counters,
(06:01):
and zero scale model train sets that transported nuclear weapons
and waste. There was a fallout Shelter paper doll cutout book.
In nineteen fifty one, the Bowman Gum Company created a
series of forty eight Red Menace trading cards, some of
which were titled Fleeing the Reds, Atomic Doom and war
Maker which was mause a donks card. And all of
(06:23):
this contact had sort of escaped me, Like for us,
the candy has just always been around. But at the
time I guess atomic fireballs were in some way kind
of the most pleasant and fun version of atomic culture
you could be interacting with. And now today they are
so popular that there was a recent scare about the
shortage of these atomic fireballs. But seeing as the company
behind them, for a pen, makes over fifteen million fireballs
(06:46):
a week, I think we're all gonna be okay.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I do want to just go ahead and apologize in
case I had anything to do with that shortage sence
I'm clearly hoarding them here. But all right, Well, because
we're talking hot stuff, I do think we need to
take a minute to talk about Wilbur Scoville, and I
think we've talked about Scoville before, is of course the
inventor of the Scoville scale, which you probably know measures
(07:09):
just how hot something is, and so you know, like
when you're at a Thai restaurant and you have to
wonder whether the five peppers next to the curry means
you're probably going to die after eating it. The Scoville
scale is like a scientific objective answer to that question.
So in terms of the scale, a bell pepper is
a zero. A banana pepper, you know, like you might
(07:30):
have on an Italian sub or something like that, that
notches up to five hundred, which sounds like a lot
until you realize the scale goes all the way up
to two million, six hundred and ninety three thousand with
pepper X that's the Guinness Book World record holder for
the hottest pepper on Earth.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I'm sure that's a pepper that might actually kill you.
But where does the atomic fireball rate on the Scovill Well.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
That's what's so cool here. So other spicy candy like
red hots, another Ferrera pan tree and something I also enjoy,
those don't even rate on the scale. Meanwhile, the atomic
fireball weighs in at thirty five hundred Scovil units, which
puts it above seracha and below the Serrano pepper and
a good bit below at bird's eye chili. So for you, mango,
(08:16):
that means it's hotter than nachos with jalapinos, but not
as hot as drunken noodles. So does that register there?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yes? I get it now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I can give seventeen more examples. But one more thing
about Wilbur Scoville. Before he invented the Scoville scale for
rating spiciness of food, he wrote a book on compounding
for pharmacies that went through many additions, and actually, amazingly,
it was that book that it was first reported in
print that milk is an antidote to spice so when
(08:44):
we chug those glasses of milk that Dylan's got laid
out here for us after setting our mouths on fire
for this episode, he is actually the one to thank.
So interesting stuff in there related to Scoville. But I'm curious,
what do you have next.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It's kind of perfect that you were talking about, because
my next fact is about why the atomic fireball is
so spicy. So I usually see fireballs in the same
category with red hots and hot tamales, and it turns
out atomic fireballs aren't just hotter versions of those candies,
because unlike those other red hot treats, atomic fireballs don't
(09:18):
really run on cinnamon. They actually have something else to
thank for their flaming hotness, and that's cap saysan, which
is why they actually rank on that Scoville scale. So
cap sasan is the chemical and peppers that makes it spicy,
and it's also used in medicines to treat pain and
swelling and cause numbing. It's in all of those peppers
on the Scoville scale as well. Generally speaking, the more
(09:40):
cap saysan you have, the higher the Scoville rating. Now,
the other candies I mentioned, red hots, hot tamales. They
get their hotness from something called cinnamaldehyde, which I know
it sounds like something I'm making up, but really it's
the chemical and cinnamon that makes things more cinnamony. It's
known for that tingly feeling on your tongue and it
works on the same recept that other similar spicy but
(10:02):
not chili hot flavors do. So, like think about things
like horsefraddish or withsabi. Definitely spicy, but it's a different
type of heat.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And so what about capsation, Like what part of your
tongue is that actually triggering?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So, according to the Brooklyn brainery, capsaicin gets picked up
on by something called TRPV one, and this is a
spiciness receptor, but it doesn't exactly detect the chemicals so
much as take the temperature, and when it senses that
things are getting super hot, it sounds this sort of
alarm in your brain. So when you're eating pizza that's
(10:35):
too hot, it's this receptor that's telling you quick, put
the slice down and glugs some soda. But it works
on capsasin too, and when you eat something with capsaicin
in it, the receptor tells your brain that it's something
like one hundred and ten degrees in your mouth. It's
like a five alarm fire.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know, I actually got curious about how they get
all that heat into this sugary sweet thing, because you know,
it's an interesting science there. And that gets us to
my next fact. So you know, the proverb a journey
of one thousand miles begins with a single step, right,
you love proverbs, proverbs, And actually it has no relation
to this episode. I just wanted to. I just like
(11:09):
to test you every once in a while. So that
was a pause for our proverb test of the day. Well,
now this is relevant here. So the same thing is
kind of true for the atomic fireball. That journey begins
with a single grain of sugar, literally, like they make
the candy using the hot panned process as it's non Now,
this hot doesn't refer to spice, but rather to the
(11:30):
fact that the pan the candy is cooked in stays
hot throughout a two week process. So this is a
long process. An atomic fireball starts with a single grain
of sugar and nearly equal amounts of flavor and syrup
that coat that single grain, and then once the coating
is complete, there's a little more sugar added, and again
nearly equal amounts of flavor and syrup and so on
(11:51):
and so on. And the process is actually pretty intense,
where the candy maker builds up layers in these concentric
spheres around that initial grain of sugar. It's also how
other suckers like lemon heads and things like that are made,
and it's what makes this consistent flavor as you work
your way through the candy over time. So now that
you know the process, guess how many layers are in
(12:13):
a single atomic fireball?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I feel like a kindly owl once tatas that takes
three licks to get to the center of a tipsy pop.
But this is obviously atomic, so maybe like thirty layers.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
You're almost a third of the way there. It's one hundred,
one hundred layers like sugar and spiciness over that original
single piece of sugar. There's a lot of science that
goes into the making of this deliciousness.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That is incredible. I feel like I can have to
count the layers as I eat one the next time.
But why don't we talk about the invention of the
atomic fireball, which was first created back in nineteen fifty four.
Something must have been in the air for spicy candy
at the time because another cinnamon retreat, the Hot Tamale,
first debuted four years earlier in nineteen fifty. And what's
(13:01):
wild is that the creators of these two spicy candies,
they almost have lives that mimic one another. So let's
actually start with the Hot Tamale. Bob Bourne had just
come back from fighting in the US Navy in World
War Two. He actually had been accepted into medical school,
but the family business needed a little bit of attention.
His father, Sam Boorne, was this former rabbinical student from
(13:23):
Ukraine who had started just born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which
most people know for making peeps, But another candy they
are famous for is the Mike and Ike. Now, Mike
and Ikes had a problem at the time. Apparently a
bunch of misshapen candies would come off the line that
never could make their way into the candy box. But
Bob Bourne actually came up with solution. So what if
(13:46):
you took all these misshapen Mike and Ikes, added cinnamon
syrup to mask their original flavor, and then packaged them
together as their own thing. And that is how the
Hot Tamali got it start. It was kind of like
this fix for a mis steak, almost the way baby
carrots started out as a snack that was made from
a stack of misshapen carrots that was going to be
(14:08):
thrown away. That's kind of what hot Tomalas were. And
they were such a success that Bob actually set aside
his bed school to focus on the family business and
he ran Just.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Born Candies for nearly four decades.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Now, like I was saying, Bob and Nello Ferrara end
up having these parallel lives. The Ferrara Pan company was
also a family business. Salvator Ferrara immigrated from Naples, Italy
in nineteen hundred and by nineteen oh eight he'd made
his way to Chicago, where he opened this bakery in
little Italy. But it wasn't the big goods that kept
people coming back. It was the Jordan amends he was making,
(14:42):
which are those pastel colored candy treats made by coating
the nut and layers of sugar. And that's when he
started a company focused on making what they did best, candy. Now,
Ferrara Pan had actually been making red Hot since nineteen
thirty two, so they weren't new to the hot candy trend,
but Sal's son, nell is the one who took it
to the next level. Nello, like Bob Bourne, served in
(15:04):
World War Two. He was in the army and he
had a degree from DePaul Law School, and he was
actually about to start his life as a lawyer. He
was even admitted to the bar, but then he got
the candy bug and nineteen fifty four he had this
idea for the atomic fireball and there was really no
looking back after he put that out.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I mean, is that true? Was it obvious right away
that he was better sticking to candy than starting off
on this law career.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I mean, what's amazing is that the atomic fireball really
took off immediately, Like within the first weeks they were
selling fifty thousand pieces a week. That's just enormous hit
for the candy business. And he's the one who later
invents the lemonhead and then all the other flavors that
are kind of similarly made. And for the lemonheads, he
used real coatings of citric acid between layers of sugar
(15:50):
to get that super puckery taste, so it kind of
mimics that process. You were talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
All right, well, mango, I've been waiting on this one
here because it's not too often that you get to
talk about consumer advocacy see Ralph Nader and atomic fireballs
all at the same time. So I am pleased to
have this opportunity to share my next fact.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
This sounds really special. So let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
You're ready, Okay, here we go. So Ralph Nator has
sometimes been known as the nation's nag and has spent
much of his life as a political activist, and in fact,
he's a huge part of the reason that we have
seat belts in cars today. But at one time he
was also focused on getting Americans to consume less sugar.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's so funny. I always think about him and cars
and like Pinto and stuff like that, but I didn't
realize he was focused on sugar.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yep, No, that's exactly right. And he disparaged sugar whenever
he could. And this really stuck in Nello for ours
craw So, according to an interview his son sal gave
with NPR, Nello challenged Natter to quote a teeth fight.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
What's a teeth fight?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You don't know a teeth fighters? I think it's just
comparing teeth. I don't know at the time he wrote
Natter's saying quote, I eat candy every day and I
have all my teeth. That's such an amazing way to brag.
But I guess he thought he was pretty convincing, and
apparently not convincing enough though, because Nello Ferar went further.
He decided to prove the strength of his teeth by
(17:13):
lifting a one hundred pound bag of sugar with his teeth.
I love the idea that he thinks this just like
proves his points somehow.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And I love that like Ralph Nader is like, Nope,
he's right, you won the nice teeth. I'd be so
afraid of like chipping my tooth or like cracking mine
like a hundred pounds of sugar is no joke. We
have got to pause for some commercials, but we've got
more atomic fireball facts right after the break. Please don't
go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about atomic fireballs,
and man, our mouths are on fire with facts, of course,
So mengo, where do you want to go next?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
How about burning men? Okay, So, in addition to Part
Time Genius and NASA it turns out that Burning Men
is also known for sending out atomic fireballs with their tickets.
And of course there's a whole heat, fire and fun
component that sort of overlaps between the candy and the
Desert festival. But there's also another reason that they mail
(18:28):
out candy with the tickets, and this comes from this
guy named Nimbus, who was the former head of ticketing.
He says, quote, as the event was growing, so were
our operations, and some unexpected challenges were introduced. Among them,
ticket deliveries were being mishandled by the postal service, and
so they're trying to figure out how to like improve
their ticketing system and they get this advice from a
(18:50):
local postbuster. He advises two things. One manually highlight the
label with the green highlighter to call out that it
was a signature confirmation. And two, include something small more
than half an inch thick to make the package uneven,
so that it has to be hands sorted and couldn't
be machine sorted. And so that's basically how the atomic
fireball gets stuffed into these packages. Years later, they were
(19:13):
told that they didn't have to include the fireballs to
get the tickets handled with care, but by that time
it was already a tradition. And Nimbus actually has these
two other funny stories about the fireballs. One was that
there was actually a year where there was a shortage
and apparently fans were both really confused and also livid
that they received lemonheads and other treats instead of fireballs,
(19:34):
and as this puts it, he was just happy that
they didn't go with dumb dums, which had been their
backup choice.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
That's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And also for years, apparently the guy who did the
fulfillment used to have to store about thirty thousand fireballs
in his office every year, and what they didn't know
at the time was that he hated the smell of cinnamon.
So this poor guy just had to endure it without
complaining as part of the job.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
But is wild, I will say, I mean, I know,
I'd much rather have a fireball than a lemonhead or
a dumb dumb, but you know, if somebody sent me one,
I'd still eat it. I'm not going to say no
to a dumb dumb, especially when it's the mystery flavor.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You know, screw it, I'm not going to burning menus.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
No, exactly, Yeah, forget it. They're sending me a dumb
dumb All right, Well, let's get back to the hot
candies again here. And I was actually curious why anyone
wanted to make a candy that was hotter than a
jalapano in the first place, and why did that happen
when it did, like in the nineteen fifties. Well, it
turns out that until that time, Halloween had no particular
connection to candy. But the fifties were the time of
(20:36):
the baby boom, and an American particular, the great expansion
of suburbs. Trick or treating took off with waves of
kids and suburbs, you know, perfect to walk around in
these neighborhoods as ghosts and witches, scaring their neighbors and
handing over candies. So with the rise of trick or
treating came the incentive to find a candy that would,
you know, be spooky or scary. So enter the atomic fireball.
(20:59):
It was a double whammy. First, with those thirty five
hundred Scovil points, it was frighteningly hot. Like we had
talked about. The hot Tamali and the red Hot were
already on the scene, but they couldn't make you tear
up quite like the fireball.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, for my last fact, I want to talk about
why we love atomic fireball so much, even when they
make our mouths burn. And that's not an attack because,
as we mentioned earlier, their tagline is burned so good.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
But why can't we lay off these candies? I'm curious
about that. So the truth is we like the pain.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Psychologists called this benign masochism, and it isn't just with candy. Like,
think about watching the scariest movie you can just so
you can scream your head off at a jump scare,
or riding a roller coaster with a hair raising drop,
or even watching Toy Story four. Right, you know you're
going to cry your eyes out. But sometimes it feels
good to have these kind of bad feelings. But it
(21:51):
can only feel good because you know there isn't really
a threat. And actually this is a funny aside, but
apparently the candies inventors Nello Ferrara thought that the nat
high from the spiciness of the candies could make a
great alternative to drugs. So in nineteen fifty four he
wrote to a journalist saying, quote, we have many letters
from university campuses, such as quote, you can get a
(22:12):
better blast out of atomic fireballs than from a puff
of marijuana. Now, we make no claims of preventing the
use of marijuana, but I am personally quite confident that
many young people went the fireball route who might have
gone the marijuana route.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I love that. I love that quote. And you know what,
I'm going to go ahead and say it. I actually
do fireballs and don't do drugs, and so you know
what I think this is Maybe.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
They're right, well, that trend of spicy candies that atomic
fireballs kicked off is one that is definitely not going
to stop. Today. There are a few new candies made
with boot Jlakia, which is also better known as the
ghost pepper, including some jellybeans. These candies have a Scoville
rating of nearly one million, making atomic fireballs kind of
(22:57):
look like a G rated movie by comparison. And as
much as I love spice, that just sounds unpleasant to me.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
But you know what doesn't sound unpleasant to me? Watching
a tooth fight between Ralph Nader and the creator of
the tomic fireball, and just picturing that heavyweight a bout
makes me smile really wide. So I'm going to give
you today's trophy.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh wow. That means a lot to get to talk
about fireballs and to win the trophy. But I also
appreciate just being able to sit here and talk about
super hot and delightfully painful candy and sometimes super painful
candy as well. But from Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and also
Lizzie Jacobs, who wrote for today's episode and likes to
live life at the very bottom of the Scovill chart.
(23:40):
That's it for this week's Part Time Genius. Now, if
you like our show, please reach out. We love hearing
from you on our insta at part Time Genius, and
you never know when we're going to reach out with
mail or another giant batch of fireballs to our listeners,
So keep riding in. But in the meantime, thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongash
Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is Executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
(24:32):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Do you know that NASA Mission Control actually has its
own official candy?
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And is I'm guessing the ice cream, like the astronaut
ice cream doesn't count? Is that right?
Speaker 1 (00:23):
You know? I think no one wants that stop, so
that's right, You're right, sadly. But apparently the big board
where you see all the scientists sitting at, like you know,
the one where they're watching to see if anyone's going
to call in with a problem, that's called the console
and the quote console candy of choice is the atomic
fireball nice you know, is also the official candy of
(00:45):
Part Time Genius. Now, NASA has embraced the candy for
a little longer than our show, And I just assumed
it made sense because it's science y and nerdy and
it kind of feels like, you know, the flames of
a blast off, But that actually isn't why. There was
apparently an an admin assistant named Karen who used to
make copies, and when she'd drop off papers to the
folks working in the Console and Mission Control, she'd drop
(01:07):
off an atomic fireball with the copies as kind of
this little treat, and the scientists found it really helpful
for that midnight to seven am shift when it kind
of added a little extra pep to their otherwise sleepy stuffs.
And that's how the atomic fireball became this permanent fixture
of NASA and Mission control. They actually began ordering boxes
(01:28):
of the candy to the office starting in nineteen eighty nine.
That is just one of nine spicy facts for all
of you about atomic fireballs. I can't wait to dig in.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome a part time genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always, I've got my good friend
mangesh I ticket out here with me and on the
other side of the soundproof glass lining up a whole
bunch of different types of milk. He's got almond milk,
oat and milk two percent whole. Also got a little
soy milk over there. He was waiting to cool our
(02:18):
mouths off in case we eat too many fireballs for
this episode. That is our very thoughtful pal, Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
He is just so considered. I am sorry that he
doesn't have any chocolate milk or any crazy straws. For us,
but I do like that he's taking the initiative, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Mega, So we've obviously been talking about atomic fireballs a
lot recently. So when we started the show, we had
a little debate about whether the official candy of Part
Time Genius was going to be Smarties or Nerds. I
was team Smarties, you were team Nerds, and it got
pretty heated, unfortunately, and we had to just sort of
put that conversation aside for a little bit, and then
(02:54):
just this year we decided to revisit the conversation. We've
both grown a lot as people, I think, and it
really helped us come together, and we both decided atomic
fireballs were the perfect choice. But I'm curious, do you
remember the first time you had an atomic fireball?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah? Kind of, like you know, there are all sorts
of candies that were so novel and of a specific
era for me right now and later as I really
associated with like one of my cousin's weddings from when
I was in third grade, I remember when kids started
selling airheads at school and then orhoids. But I think
it was at this summer camp when I was like
five or six and we were playing kickball and this
(03:33):
one kid just had this bag of candy from like
a corner store, and I put an atomic fireball in
my mouth and I just could not believe this was candy,
Like it was so hot and unbelievable, also sweet, and
it just blew my mind. And then I don't think
I saw them again for like years. They weren't really
a Halloween candy where I was, Like in my neighborhood
(03:54):
we had lemonheads at the store and other variations, like
there was an Alexander the grape candy that the same
time used to make, but not really atomic fireballs. But
that moment really stands out to me. What about you, Like,
I know you've had this somewhat recent renaissance with the candy.
When did that start?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, so the recent renaissance started, I'm trying to remember
because it had been years since i'd had I had
really gotten my fix of atomic fire balls, which I'd
also loved since I was a kid. I don't actually
remember how it happened, but when it happened, it was
all over, Like I was definitely going back to it.
And as we've talked about before, when I get hooked
on a candy, I go big and so, as you know,
(04:33):
we have this place that we know as the center
of excellence in our home where we store a lot
of my favorite candies that I end up ordering in bulk.
And there are no joke, hundreds of atomic fireballs sitting
in a bucket in there for me to stop buy
and grab some. But it won't be long before we
have to refill. They go faster than you think. But
we should talk about fireballs. Get to the whole history,
the whole everything here. So where do you want to start.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
How about with the makers of atomic fireballs, uh Farepan,
who gave the candy the somewhat frightening slogan burns so good.
It's one of my favorite candy companies. They also called
a candy quote a spicy hot ball of sweet, burning
cinnamony deliciousness. But what is amazing about these little red
(05:16):
balls of wonder is that none of that drives people away.
In fact, atomic Fireballs have been one of the most
popular candies in the country since their debut in the
nineteen fifties. Now, what's interesting to note is that the
candies really were of a time when the atom baumb
was on everyone's mind, and this slipped into kid culture
as well. So according to a book called Atomic Tunes quote,
(05:39):
children's toys in the nineteen forties through the nineteen sixties
were rife with atomic age themes, and this is something
I totally had forgotten. But there were board games like
Uranium Rush and Air Raid. Kids sucked on atomic fireball
candies while reading atomic comics like Atomic Man, Captain Adam
and Nukla. There were atomic disintegrating pistols, we hid Geiger counters,
(06:01):
and zero scale model train sets that transported nuclear weapons
and waste. There was a fallout Shelter paper doll cutout book.
In nineteen fifty one, the Bowman Gum Company created a
series of forty eight Red Menace trading cards, some of
which were titled Fleeing the Reds, Atomic Doom and war
Maker which was mause a donks card. And all of
(06:23):
this contact had sort of escaped me, Like for us,
the candy has just always been around. But at the
time I guess atomic fireballs were in some way kind
of the most pleasant and fun version of atomic culture
you could be interacting with. And now today they are
so popular that there was a recent scare about the
shortage of these atomic fireballs. But seeing as the company
behind them, for a pen, makes over fifteen million fireballs
(06:46):
a week, I think we're all gonna be okay.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I do want to just go ahead and apologize in
case I had anything to do with that shortage sence
I'm clearly hoarding them here. But all right, Well, because
we're talking hot stuff, I do think we need to
take a minute to talk about Wilbur Scoville, and I
think we've talked about Scoville before, is of course the
inventor of the Scoville scale, which you probably know measures
(07:09):
just how hot something is, and so you know, like
when you're at a Thai restaurant and you have to
wonder whether the five peppers next to the curry means
you're probably going to die after eating it. The Scoville
scale is like a scientific objective answer to that question.
So in terms of the scale, a bell pepper is
a zero. A banana pepper, you know, like you might
(07:30):
have on an Italian sub or something like that, that
notches up to five hundred, which sounds like a lot
until you realize the scale goes all the way up
to two million, six hundred and ninety three thousand with
pepper X that's the Guinness Book World record holder for
the hottest pepper on Earth.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
I'm sure that's a pepper that might actually kill you.
But where does the atomic fireball rate on the Scovill Well.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
That's what's so cool here. So other spicy candy like
red hots, another Ferrera pan tree and something I also enjoy,
those don't even rate on the scale. Meanwhile, the atomic
fireball weighs in at thirty five hundred Scovil units, which
puts it above seracha and below the Serrano pepper and
a good bit below at bird's eye chili. So for you, mango,
(08:16):
that means it's hotter than nachos with jalapinos, but not
as hot as drunken noodles. So does that register there?
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yes? I get it now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I can give seventeen more examples. But one more thing
about Wilbur Scoville. Before he invented the Scoville scale for
rating spiciness of food, he wrote a book on compounding
for pharmacies that went through many additions, and actually, amazingly,
it was that book that it was first reported in
print that milk is an antidote to spice so when
(08:44):
we chug those glasses of milk that Dylan's got laid
out here for us after setting our mouths on fire
for this episode, he is actually the one to thank.
So interesting stuff in there related to Scoville. But I'm curious,
what do you have next.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
It's kind of perfect that you were talking about, because
my next fact is about why the atomic fireball is
so spicy. So I usually see fireballs in the same
category with red hots and hot tamales, and it turns
out atomic fireballs aren't just hotter versions of those candies,
because unlike those other red hot treats, atomic fireballs don't
(09:18):
really run on cinnamon. They actually have something else to
thank for their flaming hotness, and that's cap saysan, which
is why they actually rank on that Scoville scale. So
cap sasan is the chemical and peppers that makes it spicy,
and it's also used in medicines to treat pain and
swelling and cause numbing. It's in all of those peppers
on the Scoville scale as well. Generally speaking, the more
(09:40):
cap saysan you have, the higher the Scoville rating. Now,
the other candies I mentioned, red hots, hot tamales. They
get their hotness from something called cinnamaldehyde, which I know
it sounds like something I'm making up, but really it's
the chemical and cinnamon that makes things more cinnamony. It's
known for that tingly feeling on your tongue and it
works on the same recept that other similar spicy but
(10:02):
not chili hot flavors do. So, like think about things
like horsefraddish or withsabi. Definitely spicy, but it's a different
type of heat.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
And so what about capsation, Like what part of your
tongue is that actually triggering?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
So, according to the Brooklyn brainery, capsaicin gets picked up
on by something called TRPV one, and this is a
spiciness receptor, but it doesn't exactly detect the chemicals so
much as take the temperature, and when it senses that
things are getting super hot, it sounds this sort of
alarm in your brain. So when you're eating pizza that's
(10:35):
too hot, it's this receptor that's telling you quick, put
the slice down and glugs some soda. But it works
on capsasin too, and when you eat something with capsaicin
in it, the receptor tells your brain that it's something
like one hundred and ten degrees in your mouth. It's
like a five alarm fire.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You know, I actually got curious about how they get
all that heat into this sugary sweet thing, because you know,
it's an interesting science there. And that gets us to
my next fact. So you know, the proverb a journey
of one thousand miles begins with a single step, right,
you love proverbs, proverbs, And actually it has no relation
to this episode. I just wanted to. I just like
(11:09):
to test you every once in a while. So that
was a pause for our proverb test of the day. Well,
now this is relevant here. So the same thing is
kind of true for the atomic fireball. That journey begins
with a single grain of sugar, literally, like they make
the candy using the hot panned process as it's non Now,
this hot doesn't refer to spice, but rather to the
(11:30):
fact that the pan the candy is cooked in stays
hot throughout a two week process. So this is a
long process. An atomic fireball starts with a single grain
of sugar and nearly equal amounts of flavor and syrup
that coat that single grain, and then once the coating
is complete, there's a little more sugar added, and again
nearly equal amounts of flavor and syrup and so on
(11:51):
and so on. And the process is actually pretty intense,
where the candy maker builds up layers in these concentric
spheres around that initial grain of sugar. It's also how
other suckers like lemon heads and things like that are made,
and it's what makes this consistent flavor as you work
your way through the candy over time. So now that
you know the process, guess how many layers are in
(12:13):
a single atomic fireball?
Speaker 1 (12:16):
I feel like a kindly owl once tatas that takes
three licks to get to the center of a tipsy pop.
But this is obviously atomic, so maybe like thirty layers.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
You're almost a third of the way there. It's one hundred,
one hundred layers like sugar and spiciness over that original
single piece of sugar. There's a lot of science that
goes into the making of this deliciousness.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That is incredible. I feel like I can have to
count the layers as I eat one the next time.
But why don't we talk about the invention of the
atomic fireball, which was first created back in nineteen fifty four.
Something must have been in the air for spicy candy
at the time because another cinnamon retreat, the Hot Tamale,
first debuted four years earlier in nineteen fifty. And what's
(13:01):
wild is that the creators of these two spicy candies,
they almost have lives that mimic one another. So let's
actually start with the Hot Tamale. Bob Bourne had just
come back from fighting in the US Navy in World
War Two. He actually had been accepted into medical school,
but the family business needed a little bit of attention.
His father, Sam Boorne, was this former rabbinical student from
(13:23):
Ukraine who had started just born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which
most people know for making peeps, But another candy they
are famous for is the Mike and Ike. Now, Mike
and Ikes had a problem at the time. Apparently a
bunch of misshapen candies would come off the line that
never could make their way into the candy box. But
Bob Bourne actually came up with solution. So what if
(13:46):
you took all these misshapen Mike and Ikes, added cinnamon
syrup to mask their original flavor, and then packaged them
together as their own thing. And that is how the
Hot Tamali got it start. It was kind of like
this fix for a mis steak, almost the way baby
carrots started out as a snack that was made from
a stack of misshapen carrots that was going to be
(14:08):
thrown away. That's kind of what hot Tomalas were. And
they were such a success that Bob actually set aside
his bed school to focus on the family business and
he ran Just.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Born Candies for nearly four decades.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Now, like I was saying, Bob and Nello Ferrara end
up having these parallel lives. The Ferrara Pan company was
also a family business. Salvator Ferrara immigrated from Naples, Italy
in nineteen hundred and by nineteen oh eight he'd made
his way to Chicago, where he opened this bakery in
little Italy. But it wasn't the big goods that kept
people coming back. It was the Jordan amends he was making,
(14:42):
which are those pastel colored candy treats made by coating
the nut and layers of sugar. And that's when he
started a company focused on making what they did best, candy. Now,
Ferrara Pan had actually been making red Hot since nineteen
thirty two, so they weren't new to the hot candy trend,
but Sal's son, nell is the one who took it
to the next level. Nello, like Bob Bourne, served in
(15:04):
World War Two. He was in the army and he
had a degree from DePaul Law School, and he was
actually about to start his life as a lawyer. He
was even admitted to the bar, but then he got
the candy bug and nineteen fifty four he had this
idea for the atomic fireball and there was really no
looking back after he put that out.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I mean, is that true? Was it obvious right away
that he was better sticking to candy than starting off
on this law career.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I mean, what's amazing is that the atomic fireball really
took off immediately, Like within the first weeks they were
selling fifty thousand pieces a week. That's just enormous hit
for the candy business. And he's the one who later
invents the lemonhead and then all the other flavors that
are kind of similarly made. And for the lemonheads, he
used real coatings of citric acid between layers of sugar
(15:50):
to get that super puckery taste, so it kind of
mimics that process. You were talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
All right, well, mango, I've been waiting on this one
here because it's not too often that you get to
talk about consumer advocacy see Ralph Nader and atomic fireballs
all at the same time. So I am pleased to
have this opportunity to share my next fact.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
This sounds really special. So let's hear it.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
You're ready, Okay, here we go. So Ralph Nator has
sometimes been known as the nation's nag and has spent
much of his life as a political activist, and in fact,
he's a huge part of the reason that we have
seat belts in cars today. But at one time he
was also focused on getting Americans to consume less sugar.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
That's so funny. I always think about him and cars
and like Pinto and stuff like that, but I didn't
realize he was focused on sugar.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yep, No, that's exactly right. And he disparaged sugar whenever
he could. And this really stuck in Nello for ours
craw So, according to an interview his son sal gave
with NPR, Nello challenged Natter to quote a teeth fight.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
What's a teeth fight?
Speaker 2 (16:50):
You don't know a teeth fighters? I think it's just
comparing teeth. I don't know at the time he wrote
Natter's saying quote, I eat candy every day and I
have all my teeth. That's such an amazing way to brag.
But I guess he thought he was pretty convincing, and
apparently not convincing enough though, because Nello Ferar went further.
He decided to prove the strength of his teeth by
(17:13):
lifting a one hundred pound bag of sugar with his teeth.
I love the idea that he thinks this just like
proves his points somehow.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And I love that like Ralph Nader is like, Nope,
he's right, you won the nice teeth. I'd be so
afraid of like chipping my tooth or like cracking mine
like a hundred pounds of sugar is no joke. We
have got to pause for some commercials, but we've got
more atomic fireball facts right after the break. Please don't
go anywhere.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're talking about atomic fireballs,
and man, our mouths are on fire with facts, of course,
So mengo, where do you want to go next?
Speaker 1 (18:07):
How about burning men? Okay, So, in addition to Part
Time Genius and NASA it turns out that Burning Men
is also known for sending out atomic fireballs with their tickets.
And of course there's a whole heat, fire and fun
component that sort of overlaps between the candy and the
Desert festival. But there's also another reason that they mail
(18:28):
out candy with the tickets, and this comes from this
guy named Nimbus, who was the former head of ticketing.
He says, quote, as the event was growing, so were
our operations, and some unexpected challenges were introduced. Among them,
ticket deliveries were being mishandled by the postal service, and
so they're trying to figure out how to like improve
their ticketing system and they get this advice from a
(18:50):
local postbuster. He advises two things. One manually highlight the
label with the green highlighter to call out that it
was a signature confirmation. And two, include something small more
than half an inch thick to make the package uneven,
so that it has to be hands sorted and couldn't
be machine sorted. And so that's basically how the atomic
fireball gets stuffed into these packages. Years later, they were
(19:13):
told that they didn't have to include the fireballs to
get the tickets handled with care, but by that time
it was already a tradition. And Nimbus actually has these
two other funny stories about the fireballs. One was that
there was actually a year where there was a shortage
and apparently fans were both really confused and also livid
that they received lemonheads and other treats instead of fireballs,
(19:34):
and as this puts it, he was just happy that
they didn't go with dumb dums, which had been their
backup choice.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
That's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And also for years, apparently the guy who did the
fulfillment used to have to store about thirty thousand fireballs
in his office every year, and what they didn't know
at the time was that he hated the smell of cinnamon.
So this poor guy just had to endure it without
complaining as part of the job.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
But is wild, I will say, I mean, I know,
I'd much rather have a fireball than a lemonhead or
a dumb dumb, but you know, if somebody sent me one,
I'd still eat it. I'm not going to say no
to a dumb dumb, especially when it's the mystery flavor.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
You know, screw it, I'm not going to burning menus.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
No, exactly, Yeah, forget it. They're sending me a dumb
dumb All right, Well, let's get back to the hot
candies again here. And I was actually curious why anyone
wanted to make a candy that was hotter than a
jalapano in the first place, and why did that happen
when it did, like in the nineteen fifties. Well, it
turns out that until that time, Halloween had no particular
connection to candy. But the fifties were the time of
(20:36):
the baby boom, and an American particular, the great expansion
of suburbs. Trick or treating took off with waves of
kids and suburbs, you know, perfect to walk around in
these neighborhoods as ghosts and witches, scaring their neighbors and
handing over candies. So with the rise of trick or
treating came the incentive to find a candy that would,
you know, be spooky or scary. So enter the atomic fireball.
(20:59):
It was a double whammy. First, with those thirty five
hundred Scovil points, it was frighteningly hot. Like we had
talked about. The hot Tamali and the red Hot were
already on the scene, but they couldn't make you tear
up quite like the fireball.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, for my last fact, I want to talk about
why we love atomic fireball so much, even when they
make our mouths burn. And that's not an attack because,
as we mentioned earlier, their tagline is burned so good.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
But why can't we lay off these candies? I'm curious
about that. So the truth is we like the pain.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Psychologists called this benign masochism, and it isn't just with candy. Like,
think about watching the scariest movie you can just so
you can scream your head off at a jump scare,
or riding a roller coaster with a hair raising drop,
or even watching Toy Story four. Right, you know you're
going to cry your eyes out. But sometimes it feels
good to have these kind of bad feelings. But it
(21:51):
can only feel good because you know there isn't really
a threat. And actually this is a funny aside, but
apparently the candies inventors Nello Ferrara thought that the nat
high from the spiciness of the candies could make a
great alternative to drugs. So in nineteen fifty four he
wrote to a journalist saying, quote, we have many letters
from university campuses, such as quote, you can get a
(22:12):
better blast out of atomic fireballs than from a puff
of marijuana. Now, we make no claims of preventing the
use of marijuana, but I am personally quite confident that
many young people went the fireball route who might have
gone the marijuana route.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I love that. I love that quote. And you know what,
I'm going to go ahead and say it. I actually
do fireballs and don't do drugs, and so you know
what I think this is Maybe.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
They're right, well, that trend of spicy candies that atomic
fireballs kicked off is one that is definitely not going
to stop. Today. There are a few new candies made
with boot Jlakia, which is also better known as the
ghost pepper, including some jellybeans. These candies have a Scoville
rating of nearly one million, making atomic fireballs kind of
(22:57):
look like a G rated movie by comparison. And as
much as I love spice, that just sounds unpleasant to me.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
But you know what doesn't sound unpleasant to me? Watching
a tooth fight between Ralph Nader and the creator of
the tomic fireball, and just picturing that heavyweight a bout
makes me smile really wide. So I'm going to give
you today's trophy.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Oh wow. That means a lot to get to talk
about fireballs and to win the trophy. But I also
appreciate just being able to sit here and talk about
super hot and delightfully painful candy and sometimes super painful
candy as well. But from Dylan, Gabe, Mary, and also
Lizzie Jacobs, who wrote for today's episode and likes to
live life at the very bottom of the Scovill chart.
(23:40):
That's it for this week's Part Time Genius. Now, if
you like our show, please reach out. We love hearing
from you on our insta at part Time Genius, and
you never know when we're going to reach out with
mail or another giant batch of fireballs to our listeners,
So keep riding in. But in the meantime, thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongash
Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is Executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
(24:32):
media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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