How Not to Shake Hands

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LUKE BURBANK, host:

It's THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Alison Stewart over there.

ALISON STEWART, host:

Hello.

BURBANK: Question for THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT faithful listeners: How do you actually pronounce X-O-F? Would that be xof? Xof? I don't know.

Anyway, this is the part of the show where we take Fox News, their slogan, and we turn it around. We make it backwards, you know. We say you decide, and we report.

This is the part where our staff that brings you the most clicked on, the most forwarded, the most printed news stories out there in the world. We call it The Most.

(Soundbite of music)

STEWART: Dan Pashman, our producer, is up first. And it's about food. Imagine that, Dan bringing us a story about food.

DAN PASHMAN: It is so rare. What - if Ilya's on the Upper Midwest beat, I'll be on the food beat.

ILYA MARRITZ: I am today.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PASHMAN: This is most e-mailed from today's New York Times Science Section, Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists. It's sort of about the merging of food science with high-end chefs. Just a few years ago, these kinds of things would have been really verboten in the high-end kitchens of the country. But more and more chefs are starting to experiment with different additives and ingredients that are not chemicals, they're naturally occurring or derived from natural things that give food different abilities. You can do different things with food.

And one of the interesting discoveries in this merger of science - searing meat does not seal in juices as previously thought, but high heat does induce chemical reactions among the proteins that make the meat tastier. But what I found most exciting about this article, if you add a little bit of xantham gum to mayonnaise, you can make fried mayonnaise.

STEWART: That is so wrong.

RACHEL MARTIN: There is like a whole group of people in this country who don't need to know that.

PASHMAN: You know where they - if you watched "Iron Chef" - if you watched "Iron Chef" on the Food Network, they have been doing that a lot where they've had these guys are coming what these like chemicals and beakers of weird stuff to combine with the food. And, I guess it makes the food taste okay, but it sure looks gross when they're preparing it.

BURBANK: For the record, though, they are not - these are not things that are - these ingredients were not devised in a lab. These are things taken from natural substances. Some of them have come from seaweed.

STEWART: Right, seaweeds.

PASHMAN: Hydrocolloids, they're called. They bind things together. Flower or cornstarch can be another kind of hydrocolloids. So…

BURBANK: Look, whatever leads you to frying mayonnaise is wrong.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BURBANK: It's a sin against God. And I'm here to tell you that.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: All right, Ilya, you claim you are on the Upper Midwest beat.

MARRITZ: I am. I have a story for you today from the Chicago Tribune. Is that the Upper - I think it might be Upper - it's the upper part of Illinois. This is the headline: "Consumers Feeling the Helium Squeeze." Apparently, the price of helium - I haven't been to a toy store, so I didn't know this. The price of helium has basically more than doubled in the past five years.

The author of this article talked to one toy store owner who said it was $40 to fill a tank with helium five years ago. Now, it's $88. This is causing all kinds of stress in toy stores, as I guess you've experienced.

STEWART: Yeah, my local Party City has a six-helium balloon limit.

MARRITZ: You can only get…

STEWART: You can only get six…

Unidentified Man: …six helium balloons.

STEWART: …six helium balloons. And let me tell you, there's a lot who are not happy moms of little Justin and Eva…

MARRITZ: This could be like a birthday equalizer, though, you know.

BURBANK: Right, right.

MARRITZ: Like every kid's only going to only have six. So maybe it's like the school uniform of the '90s.

STEWART: Okay.

BURBANK: What about the boy with the red balloon? Wait, he's made up.

STEWART: Where does helium come from? This is our favorite part of the story.

BURBANK: This is the best part of the story.

MARRITZ: Oh, well, this is not from the Upper Midwest. Actually, the world's number one source of helium is the U.S. government, which keeps a helium reserve in the Texas panhandle.

BURBANK: What?

STEWART: There's something about the ground in Texas near, I think like Amarillo, near Oklahoma…

MARRITZ: That's right.

STEWART: …that is rich in helium.

MARRITZ: It's very hard to extract, however. So this reserve is kind of where most of the world's helium is.

STEWART: And it's non-renewable.

MARRITZ: Yes.

STEWART: I love this story.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BURBANK: Wait, are we running out of helium?

STEWART: The great helium shortage of 2007.

BURBANK: Oh, my gosh. Al Gore, get on it, bro-hem. All right, Ilya, thank you.

Alison, you've got a little something for us.

STEWART: Oh, I'm going to go now? Okay. I was going to let Rachel go. I like Rachel's.

MARTIN: You want me?

STEWART: Yeah.

MARTIN: Okay. I'm going to tell you about this famous, this very beautiful lady called Gisele Bundchen. She's like the most famous supermodel in the world, apparently, now. She's from Brazil and now she says the dollar has tanked so badly that she wants to be paid in Euros. I mean, that's a pretty bad indicator for the little old U.S. dollar, which is really - last week, it fell to its lowest point against the Euro since the Euro debuted in 1999, trading at a dollar 44 was the dollar last week.

And so, basically what happens is she got this big contract with Procter and Gamble for Pantene hair products, and the company's based in Cincinnati. And they want to pay her dollars, and she said, no, no, no, no, no. I would like Euros, please.

BURBANK: But see, I don't get that story because if it's the same amount…

STEWART: Maybe she's hoping Americans are really dumb.

MARTIN: Euros - but when you take a euro, it goes for when you're traveling. So if you're an international woman of mystery…

BURBANK: I know. But I mean, she could have just - they could just cut the check to her bank in dollars, and she could have extracted it in Euros. Unless she's actually getting more money to see…

STEWART: But then you can buy as many Euros with those dollars.

PASHMAN: But I think she's looking to the future, Luke. If she's thinking that a few years down the road, if Euros continue to surpass the dollar, then that money will be worth more in a couple of years.

BURBANK: I guess.

MARRITZ: Sounds just like a big hassle to me.

BURBANK: She's a smart lady, though. She dates Tom Brady now and used to date Leo DiCaprio, so she knows what's up.

STEWART: That doesn't make her smart. That makes her good-looking. That's what I think.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARRITZ: Those aren't the same thing?

STEWART: Hey, Trisha, you want to wrap it up?

TRISHA MCKINNEY: Sure thing. I have a one of the most viewed stories from Yahoo News. It's Queen Elizabeth has been named one of the 50 most glamorous women by Vogue magazine. Queen Elizabeth, yes, Queen Elizabeth of England.

STEWART: Did she beat out Gisele?

BURBANK: Has not dated Tom Brady or Leo DiCaprio.

MCKINNEY: That we know about.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MCKINNEY: This is Vogue magazine's definitive list of today's glamorous women, and she's on there along with Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell and Helen Mirren, who played the queen. Maybe she made the list because she wore Queen Elizabeth's outfits. I don't know. But, Vogue declared the queen to be, quote, "as glamorous in her brooches and headscarves at Balmoral as she is wearing the crown jewels."

MARTIN: I think they're laying the groundwork for some exclusive interview. I mean, really.

BURBANK: Yeah. Watch this space, because if they - you're right, Rachel.

MARTIN: Seriously.

BURBANK: If they get some big interview with her, it will make sense.

MARTIN: You know what? I think they were just really angling to get at the BPP. That's just my feeling.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: And you have to be glamorous?

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: And they did. They ended up on The Most.

Hey, Trish, everybody, thanks a lot, you can find these stories at the BPP at specials on our Web site npr.org/bryantpark.

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