SciFri Extra: After 20 Years, The ‘Cosmic Crisp’ Has Landed

Science Friday

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

Science, Life Sciences, Wnyc, Natural Sciences, Friday

4.4 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This fall, there’s a new apple all around town. After 20 years of development, the Cosmic Crisp has landed. Today, we're bringing you an episode of another podcast called The Sporkful. They’re a James Beard Award-winning show that uses food as a lens to talk about science, history, race, culture, and the ideal way to layer the components of a PB&J. This episode is all about the Cosmic Crisp, how scientists developed it, and how it got that dazzling name. Guests: Helen Zaltzman is the host of The Allusionist podcast. Dan Charles is a food and agriculture reporter at NPR. Kate Evans is a horticulturist and the leader of the pome fruit breeding program at Washington State University. Kathryn Grandy is Chief Marketing Officer for Proprietary Variety Management. Footnotes & Further Reading: For more episodes, subscribe to The Sporkful podcast. Credits: The Sporkful is produced by Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Jared O'Connell and Harry Huggins.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, it's that time of the year again. Apple season. You know, I'm usually more of a green
0:05.6	apple guy, but this year there's a new apple in town. I haven't had it yet, but it was in development
0:11.9	for 20 years. And it's got to have a great name to live up to all that hype. And it does. It's called
0:18.9	the Cosmic Crisp. You can just hear it, right? So we've got a special guest
0:24.3	episode for you from our friends at the Sporkful. Oh, you haven't heard about the Sporkful.
0:29.6	The Sporkful is a James Beard award-winning podcast that uses food as a lens to explore science, history,
0:37.1	race, culture, and the ideal way to layer
0:40.1	a PBNJ. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. And this episode is all about the cosmic
0:47.8	crisp, how scientists developed it and how it got that flashy name. So, here it is,
0:54.7	the Sparkful, here it is. The Sparkful.
0:56.0	Take a bite.
0:58.9	So basically, like, first you make the apples have sex, then you have to raise the kids.
1:03.7	Right.
1:04.3	And then you've got to choose which kid you want to keep, and all the rest of them you just get rid of.
1:08.6	So that's when it becomes a little kind of, you know, you want to dissociate it from humans at that point. 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. You know, when you go to the grocery store, you see strawberries, blueberries,
1:28.1	oranges. Most of the time, it's one kind of each, right? Yeah, maybe there are like two types of
1:32.8	oranges. They're red and green grapes. But apples? Apples are different. Red delicious, golden
1:39.6	delicious, Granny Smith, Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp. The list goes on and on. So many apples. When I was a kid,
1:47.5	we didn't have Honeycrisp. That's how old I am. So where did that come from? How are new apples
1:52.9	developed? And what's wrong with the old ones? That's what we're going to learn about today,
1:57.7	because this fall, there's a new apple coming. It's been 20 years in the making,
2:02.7	and its launch will be the biggest in Apple history. It had a limited release last year, but in
	...

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