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welcome to the cotkey ride home for Tuesday, August 17th, 2021.

I'm Jackson Bird.

Today, inside the world of the quasi-secret WhatsApp Mango economy.

Plus, it turns out Saturn is kind of jiggly inside.

And the beginning of a season marked by the end of an era for

department stores. Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

Some people are going to incredible lengths to get their hands on mangoes, messaging a guy who goes by a fake name on WhatsApp,

showing up to a random cargo bay at an airport, and then shelling out hundreds of dollars for

several crates of mangoes that you might then distribute to others in various local WhatsApp

communities. What is going on? Why are people doing all of this for mangoes? Can't you just get some mangoes at a local grocery store or farmer's market? Technically, yes, but if you want the good stuff, the really good stuff, then no. As you might know from how few varieties of bananas are available in the United States, the world of fruits, imports, and exports is

exceedingly complex. As Ahmed Ali Akbar co-host of the excellent See Something Say

Something podcast explained in a recent long read and eater, while American mango consumption doubled

between 2000 and 2018, the love of mangoes in Pakistan goes back thousands of years.

And for good reason, their mangoes are apparently awesome. Way better than some of the varieties

common to American grocery stores, which are largely imported from Mexico, and chosen to be

the most shelf-stable and picture-perfect variety for our grocery stores.

Some of Pakistan's prime varieties, however, like the Anwar Rital and the Chanza, as Akbar

...