This episode contains explicit language.

Do you know what one of the best kept trade secrets is and everybody thinks Coke?

And I'm like, well, Thomas's English muffins, which we've all grown up on, there's only 10 people in the world that know how to make a Thomas's English muffin.

And people go, what?

This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies. It's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show,

we obsess about food to learn more about people. Let me tell you, if you didn't know already,

I love Mia Thomas's English muffin. I love the nooks and crannies, how they get toasty,

and they create these crags and crevices that hold extra butter and add more texture.

And it turns out the famous nooks and crannies are not just a unique selling point for Thomas's.

They're trademarked.

And as we're here today, they were once at the center of one of the most important legal cases that you've probably never heard of.

There's just a tiny group of people who know the secret behind Thomas's English muffins.

When one of those folks took a job at a competitor, all hell broke loose.

I should say this story comes from our friends at Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell's

excellent podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood.

In this episode, Revisionist History's senior producer, Ben Nathaf Halfrey, examines the beloved Thomas's English muffin. Now, this is part one of the story. Head to the Revisionist History's senior producer, Ben Nadef Haferi, examines the beloved Thomas's

English muffin. Now, this is part one of the story. Head to the revisionist history feed to

hear part two in which Ben attempts to reverse engineer the coveted Thomas' recipe. Okay,

here's Malcolm Gladwell. Hold on, let's take a little bite here.

One morning, not long ago, my colleague Ben Nadafafafri and I huddled in a small backroom at Pushkin Industries to solve a mystery.

It like hits the back of your palate. There's like a funk to it. You know what I mean?

Through the glass wall of the room, we could see our fellow Pushkinites working on various prosaic podcasts and audiobooks. While we, alone, wrestled with an eternal question involving toasted bread.

...