9 Saucy, Savory Facts About Pasta
Part-Time Genius
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Whether you love fusilli or spaghetti (actually, turns out many of you don’t love spaghetti), today’s episode will whet your appetite… for pasta facts. Join Will and Mango as they discover the rarest noodles on earth, a daring macaroni-powered prison break, and the visionary chef who paved the way for red sauce. Plus: Listeners weigh in on the best pasta shapes of all time.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:18.5 | You're listening to Part-Time Genius, |
| 0:23.4 | the production of Collidoscope and IHeart Radio. |
| 0:28.4 | Guess what, Mango? |
| 0:29.6 | What's that, Will? |
| 0:32.8 | You know I love numbers, so I'm going to start out with a big number here. |
| 0:36.9 | Did you know that there are over 350 different pasta shapes, Mango? |
| 0:54.2 | I did not. You didn't know that, which means there are over 350 different pasta shapes, Mango? I did not. Which means there are over 350 different pasta shape names. That's really what I'm getting at here, each with its own backstory. So you want to hear one of my favorites? Obviously, I want to hear your favorite. That's good, because this would have been a very short episode if you're like, no, not really, not really in the mood for one of those, this today. |
| 1:00.8 | Not to carbs. Yeah, not carbs today. All right, so this story is all about kava tapi, which is that long, loose spiral. And it turns out it was originally called Chelentani after an Italian pop star. |
| 1:07.1 | So tell me, what does a pop star have to do with pasta? So Chelentani was originally created by the company Borilla, but it was a mistake. |
| 1:15.4 | It happened because of a problem with the pasta dyes that they were using. |
| 1:18.8 | So those are the molds that you feed the dough through to give the final product in shape. |
| 1:23.5 | And so in the 1960s, Barilla had some dyes that were supposed to have these very straight lines, |
| 1:29.1 | but accidentally ended up with curvy ones. |
| 1:31.6 | So workers fed the dough through, and out came this new corkscrew shape. |
| 1:36.7 | Now, because the shape was springy, it reminded people of the company of the singer Andriano, Chalentano, |
| 1:42.2 | who was known for his high-energy bouncy dancing. |
| 1:45.9 | So Borilla trademarked the name Chelentani, and they are selling it under that name today. |
| 1:51.5 | And the shape became so popular that other companies wanted to get in on this game, but they |
| 1:55.5 | actually couldn't use Barilla's trademark, so they called it Kavatapi, which comes from the |
| 2:00.7 | Italian word for corkscrew. But actually, here's a, so they called it Kavatapi, which comes from the Italian word for |
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