oh yeah
iconic tv commercials super soakers and
the perfect bite of your favorite sugary
snack
these are just a few things that made
being a kid awesome
and here are the untold stories behind
why and how they came to be
oh
yeah
milk good old-fashioned milk in your
cereal in your coffee in your glass
calcium
but the best use for milk dunkin cookies
i mean who doesn't love a cookie dipped
in milk but why
turns out it's because science says so
but before we get into it let's take a
quick look back in time
[Music]
it's 10 000 bce the agricultural
revolution occurs animals are
domesticated and animals are milked
great a lot of time goes by
hey guess what it's 1862.
louis pasteur modernizes milk safety the
term pasteurized is born get it
maybe no who cares moving on it's 1884.
milk is bottled up the milkman became a
thing yada yada yada 1994 got milk ads
swept the nation everyone's got a milk
mustache great
now that's over why the he double hockey
sticks do we dunk our cookies into milk
when you dip cookies into milk you
change a number of things about those
cookies that completely alters your
eating experience by alters matt means
oh wait let me introduce you to matt hi
my name is matt hardings and i am a
professor of chemistry and i teach a
class on cooking chemistry here at
american university
but back to it by alters matte means
when you dip cookies into milk not only
does the texture and flavor change but
the chemical composition does as well
which is what makes scientists go wild
chemists are fascinated in how taste
works and how all of the molecules that
you're experiencing when you're eating
food how they all work together and lead
to one thought in your brain
but how there are specific ways to
measure food chemistry things like an ms
nose that tries to break down food
aromas into their individual parts
the ms nose is a tool that helps
scientists understand how complex
molecules come together to make flavor
[Music]
so what does all this fancy technology
tell us when you dunk that cookie
you add a creaminess to your cookie and
that makes your your cookie taste
completely different
you will dampen some of the flavors that
are naturally sharp in a chocolate chip
cookie it will soak up liquids
so we can universally agree dunking
chocolate chip cookies into milk is the
best thing ever
speaking to my own experience i am not a
big dipper
wait what
i take a bite of my cookie and then have
a drink of milk you just had to be
different didn't you
still sounds delicious to me
i've been making this drink sound so
attractive and desirable for all these
years do you recognize me
i'm the kool-aid man oh
yeah
so i've had several people say it's hard
to picture that that voice is actually
coming
from you the human being oh
yeah
they like the voice because they don't
know who i am
when i first auditioned i think they
wanted to get the flavor of the kool-aid
man that was already on the air oh yeah
when i came instead of making it oh oh i
wanted to go down oh oh
oh
so he's gonna have a big deep voice so i
just thought like this guy wants to be a
oh yeah
cool and i tried to make the voice
you know just kind of roll around
gutterly in my throat oh yeah
i can remember those sessions after
three hours of them just saying okay do
it again do it again do it again try it
again how about lower more energy more
this more very wide bigger bigger bigger
louder louder i'd be saying like what am
i not doing that you're not getting but
you're telling me to use a lot of high
energy like david lee roth i said the
two don't mix david lead ross going oh
yeah doesn't mix with barry white going
oh yeah
so you have to find a happy balance oh
yeah
bottoms up
[Music]
there's this amazing picture of my
co-worker it's him reading a ninja
turtles book lying next to a super
soaker
when the super soaker came out it was a
game changer the slogan wetter is better
was essentially a mantra for kids during
summer break
so when i went to atlanta to interview
the guy responsible for all that i had
to show him the photo
that's funny
lonnie johnson invented the super soaker
back in 1982
but that is not his only invention
well i have over 100 patents
everything from the nerf gun to a
thermoelectric energy converter he also
worked on nasa's galileo mission to
jupiter and alongside the us military
the first super soaker actually i made
in my shop in my basement in the
evenings when i would come home from
work and at the time i was actually
working on the stealth department
program back when it was highly
classified and i actually couldn't even
tell my wife what i was working on
during the daytime it was that that top
secret the original name for the super
soaker was the drencher we ran into a
challenge uh regarding the name because
another
inventor claimed it so we changed the
name to super soaker just to avoid
having to to deal with that super soaker
is definitely a way better name
when he started lonnie wasn't trying to
create a toy for kids i was working on a
new type of heat pump that would use
water as a working fluid instead of
freon
and i was experimenting with some
nozzles that i machined
and i shot a stream of water across the
bathroom and i thought she's maybe i
should put this hard side stuff aside
and work on something fun like a water
gun
it still works and this brings me back
to a previous point lonnie johnson is a
super genius scientist
this is his lab
and this is what he's working on now
right now working on advanced maverick
technology my goal is to develop a
battery that will store about three
times the energy of a lithium-ion
battery in comparison the super soaker
might not seem as hard science
but it was still a really really
important invention
it's plastic it's most likely beige and
it sounds like this
[Music]
chances are if you grew up in the united
states you've played a recorder it was a
non-negotiable part of your elementary
school education and for that you can
thank this guy karl orff a passionate
german composer
[Music]
originally the recorder was handcrafted
wooden and made for the highest of
society even vivaldi and bach wrote
pieces for the recorder it doesn't rely
on a reed or strings just breath
it's in the flute family in the 1960s
the recorder started being produced out
of plastic cheap plastic
so how did it become the clumsy awkward
sound we all used to play
[Music]
that's where orph comes in he saw the
recorder as an easy way to get kids to
start playing music the logic was simple
the recorder relies on rhythm rather
than memorization if you can sing you
most likely can play it
orff had the best of intentions to
inspire the next generation of musicians
and even though they can sometimes be
annoying our hats are off to you sir for
changing the course of music education
for generations to come
[Music]
[Applause]
hello normally when you think of words
they fit into a language
but there's a relatively new class of
words that don't quite follow the rules
and it's called wasillago
[Music]
john kelly is a language writer i spend
a lot of my time writing about word
origins he's a linguistics expert and he
knows just about everything about the
phenomenon called juago
wasa ego literally means japan made
english it is a language process that
takes foreign words
usually english words and transmogrifies
them into something wholly new and novel
for japanese purposes
we see this with a word like karaoke
everybody knows and everybody loves
karaoke but it joins the japanese kara
which means empty and okay which is a
japanese rendering of orchestra so a
karaoke is an empty orchestra the most
popular example is the word pokemon the
creator of pokemon took two english
words pocket and monster he smashed them
together and got pokemon or take cosplay
a word that describes people dressing up
as fictional characters cosplay joins
costume and play and there's anime anime
is a fairly straightforward rendering of
the english animation wassi hugo is
important because language is always
changing and reinventing itself what new
words will pop up in the future only
time will tell
you