Flightless Bird: Electric Kettles

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander, accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now. one of the joys of living in America is getting used to all the things you do slightly differently. So far, in Flightless Bird, I've learnt about the importance of tipping, using a leaf blower, getting circumcised and enjoying baseball. All things that never entered my life back in New Zealand.

Yep.

Some listeners are going to be going, what are you talking about? I have an electric kettle. I'm American. I'm American. You're absolutely deranged.

Yeah.

I'm going to front foot this, and I'm going to dig my heels in.

Oh, great. Double down.

And say, we're recording this in Los Angeles, where the electric kettle, over the last sort of five years, has made a lot of inroads.

It has.

But, and I've done my research, the default in America, and I'm going to die on this hill, is that the stovetop still rules, and a lot of places have not embraced the electric kettle, and a lot of Americans would be more likely to boil their water in a microwave than in an electric kettle. Okay.

I'm glad you said that, because I am staring at an electric kettle right now. I have one in my home. My parents have one in Georgia.

But can we talk a little bit about why you do have an electric kettle?

Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Do you want to?

I'd love to hear you explain this a little bit.

So, we, we, we, let's go back, that's my let's go back sound, to a very early episode of this show.

We were just finding our feet, figuring out what it was.

That's right.

What topics are we doing?

And somehow we got on the subject of hot water, probably, and I love hot water.

It's great. You're sipping it now.

I am. And we got in an argument because I was against electric kettles.

You were?

Mm-hmm. I liked a stovetop back then.

You did. And I said, Monica, there's a better, faster, more efficient way. It's the electric kettle.

And I said, you are being such a man-.

Yeah, you poo-pooed me.

Right now.

You got annoyed at me.

Thinking, you know best, just like you're entitled-.

I was man-spraying my little head off at you. You are. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's all. you started hearing.

I went away.

I disappeared. And you stormed away. And you thought you reflected on that.

I did.

And you now have, there's one in the attic, there's one in your house, there's one at your parents' place.

I know.

And I think this kind of illustrates the point, where a lot of Americans just haven't made that step yet.

Yes. And my friend Callie, shout out, she has an electric kettle because she spent a lot of time in London. Mm-hmm. And when I went to her house, she had one. And I was like, ew.

Yeah.

But fuck is that kettle good.

It's so fast, right?

It is. And it's gorgeous. Mine is gorgeous.

Yeah. It's a good, sleek, black looking sort of thing, isn't it?

It's a heavy stem.

Oh, so sexy.

Does that mean, David's, made you less American since we've started this show?

Oh, my God. This is-.

This is like a reverse.

Yeah. This is actually the plan of the entire show. Ew. To make you less American and more Kiwi.

You're so manipulative.

You're going to start eventually getting a little Kiwi accent from listening to me drone on so much.

Never. Never. I don't do accents.

Oh. He's going to be sick, eh?

Start saying maths. I don't do accents. Never, Rob.

So look, when I had this conversation with you a long time ago- You did. I saw that you got the electric kettle and I thought, hey, let's research why things are like this in America. Because America is a very forward thinking place. They do like things like better and faster, so why are they kind of stuck in the dark ages?

Yeah, I am. This is fascinating. I'm going to put out a theory. Do you think we're more arrogant in some ways in that we think we would need to probably invent it? I don't know.

Your way is the best way.

Right. Kind of thing. What's wrong with this other way?

Yeah, confidence. Some would say arrogance. Yeah. It's a blurry line.

I'll take it as me. My thoughts. I was like, why would you buy a whole thing when it's so easy? It's so easy and it's free. We like free.

Yeah. What do you mean? it's free?

It's free to put water in a pot instead of buying a kettle.

But you've got to buy the pot.

The pot. You make spaghetti sauce. You make so many things in the pot.

You've already got it.

America's handing out these free pots.

You already have the pot for cooking.

You didn't get your pot when you moved here?

Oh, you're not American yet.

Comes with every apartment.

No, when you get your citizenship.

Oh, my God.

Wait, are you going to get your citizenship?

Oh yeah. So I was actually talking, we had a New Zealand dinner last night and one of us there, Aaron, him and Maddie, his partner, have just become US citizens.

Yeah.

And so I was thinking to myself, because I'm on what's called an O-1 visa. It lasts for three years. And every three years I have to pay a bunch of money, I've got to resubmit through a lawyer, and I just hope that I get it. And if I don't, I'm shipped off back to New Zealand, which would be very annoying. So after that, you go for the green card.

Okay. Oh, you have to have a green card for five years first? Oh, I don't think I realized that.

So that is something. I think I am going to go. I'm going to start the process.

Hopefully we're still doing this in five years, so we can do an episode on citizenship. That is fascinating.

Yeah, that'll be wild.

And that process is fascinating.

You essentially, talking to Aaron, you sort of just have to pledge your soul to the United States. And there's a line in there, and I might be misspeaking, but there's a line in there, I think, where you have to essentially say you rebuke your country.

You do. My dad... Well, not...

That's maybe the wrong word.

Yeah, it's not that. I kind of want to call him and ask, but there's... My dad is a citizen. And there is a thing where you, basically, you renounce your old citizenship.

Is it worth trying to call him?

Yeah, let me see.

Just in case?

Let me see.

I've talked to your mom before, but I haven't talked to your dad. I'm just pretty sure he's going to be so cute. Everyone's parents are cute.

He is cute. Hey, Monica. Hi, Dad. Dad, you're on the air, okay? But you're on Flightless Bird with David.

Oh, I'm not sure about other countries. In India, you have to surrender your passport, your original Indian passport.

For here, though. Oh, the Indians make you do that, not Americans. No. Oh, the Indians are mad. They're mad that you're abandoning them, and they say, give us your passport.

I don't think they're mad. It's just that some people in the past have kept both the passports and travel for convenience. Sometimes it has been an advantage to have an Indian passport in India.

Sure, now...

What they have done is, once they acquired U.S. citizenship, they still kept the Indian passport. So it's travel with Indian passport, but they went to India.

But, Dad, do you remember what they make you... do? they make you say anything? Do you remember? In America, during the ceremony...

Yeah.

Don't you have to, like, stand up and say, this country's the best country, and I'm so grateful to live here, and I'm never leaving, and it's great. I don't have to say any of that. Oh, wow. All right. Well, they should make you.

I don't know if he's a citizen.

We're not sure that you are actually a citizen. Now we're questioning. All right, well, that wasn't that helpful, Dad, but I do appreciate you picking up the phone. What were you looking for? What answer were you looking for?

A blood oath.

A blood oath saying...

That is what I think you have to... I believe you have to take an oath.

I don't recall that. Yeah, but not, you know, just that you're going to defend an oath to the United States.

Because you're a citizen.

You're in front of a court. I'm a judge.

That's what we're asking. What do you have to say? We'll have probably, Rob, look up what you have to say, because you don't remember. But that was because it was a long time ago. When did you get it again?

You did a very memorable experience for your dad. He's really cute.

God, he could care less about...

That would be my memory of it, probably, if it was that long ago.

Well, that's why we need to record it.

Absolutely. Can't wait.

You want to hear the oath?

Yes.

All right. I hereby declare on oath that I absolutely entirely renounce and... Oh, my God. Abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potent...

Oh, my God.

Potent state sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen. That I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. Jesus.

Oh, my God.

That I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law.

Oh, my God. That is horrible. They want people to know.

The day I bear arms is the day I become 100% American, right, and the show finishes?

Yeah. Literally, yes. Jeez. Oh, my God. My dad didn't remember any of that.

No, so what Aaron was saying, my buddy, was just how surreal it was standing up and doing that. It felt deeply odd, because I'm proud of being a New Zealander. Of course. You're proud of where you're from. And you should be.

That is so strange. I can't believe they make you do that.

But I guess it's like in court where you swear on the Bible. It's like this sort of weird tradition. Listen to the language Rob was using. Ridiculous.

Also, it's not really fair because my dad has an accent and he doesn't know what any of those words mean. I don't. Exactly. Same. So they're just making people repeat a thing they don't even know.

Are you a dad going through that?

I can't. I'm so glad I wasn't there. He didn't invite me.

Okay. Let's learn about electric kettles.

Okay.

Do you hear all that clanging and banging of cupboards? That's me in anyone's home in America looking for the electric kettle. And I never find it. It's an issue that's been plaguing my life since I came to America. The land of opportunity.

I'm good. How are you?

I've called up my friend Alvy. When I first got stranded in America, she kindly let me stay in a spare room while I found somewhere to live. Teaching me about classic American movies like Casablanca.

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

Now, now.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Alvy put a roof over my head, and I was incredibly grateful for it. But there was a problem. There was no electric kettle. I had to take matters into my own hands. And I don't know if you recall this, but at one point I bought an electric kettle.

Oh, I remember it. It's still here, jangling around.

I'm curious what your reaction was to that. Because I just noticed that you didn't use it very often.

I had a lot of reactions to it. My first reaction was like, oh no, I didn't have the essential thing that David needs. He had to buy one. That's terrible.

As you can tell, Alvy's a really caring host. But I did have a key question I needed answering. Why do you like the stovetop more than an electric kettle? I don't understand it.

Well, I don't either. I like that. the stovetop doesn't take up any counter space.

Ah, because it sits on the stove. Okay.

And I've also heard some people, who also probably didn't grow up with electric kettles, as I did not. I've heard that some people have gotten into trouble in their places because they get an electric kettle and put it under the cupboards on their counter. And then the steam goes up and creates warping or mould, or God knows what, underneath the cabinets.

I wasn't buying this argument. Back in New Zealand, we still have enough remaining counter space surrounding our electric kettles. And our cabinets are not warped or covered in mould. I'd need to dig deeper into this mystery. The mystery of why America is stuck in the past, boiling its water over an open flame.

So, 2016, January. 2,500 feet on a mountaintop in Shizuoka Prefecture, 25 miles from Mount Fuji. Sitting with a man who has been growing tea now three or four generations. We're sitting in his 400-year-old Japanese house with sliding doors, a little burner in the floor. And so he gives me his cup of tea.

This is Bruce Richardson, and he loves tea. I needed a tea expert because tea experts are very focused on two things. Tea, and the hot water they use to brew it.

Now, a lot of Americans make really bad green tea because they put boiling water on it. They don't realize that you can't put boiling water on green tea. It just ruins it. I call it stewing rather than brewing.

You could be forgiven for thinking that kettles are all about boiling water. But, as I was about to find out, it's much more nuanced than that. Bruce is the founder of Elmwood Inn Fine Teas in Kentucky. Author of The New Tea Companion and contributing editor of Tea Time Magazine. He's also the head honcho of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum.

Tea had lost its romance. Tea had been replaced by the teabag machines that were making really swill. It was all based on the cheapest tea. you could put into a few million bags a day. These huge operations around the country.

Thanks to people like Bruce, tea is now a $10 billion industry in the U.S. And that brings us to the electric kettle.

That's a big thing. we discovered in this American tea renaissance. Is that each family of tea, at least, deserves its unique water temperature. I have this conversation weekly with someone who comes in and says, can I put my teapot on the stove? And I'll say, no.

To Bruce, the microwave is an insult to his craft. When Bruce says apparatus, he's referring to one thing. And one thing alone.

In our home, we have an electric kettle that is glass. And I can see what's happening with the water. So I always tell my students, if you're going to be a person of tea, you and your water must become one. And so you must be able to see what's happening with the agitation of the water.

Why is the electric kettle not a mainstay here in the U.S.? Which is a country which is very forward thinking about a lot of things.

It is. It's because we just have not had that tradition ingrained in us since the beginning of the electrical age. Before that, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, we knew how to do that. But it was putting water over a fire in the fireplace. But we never quite caught up with the invention of electricity.

If you're an American, maybe Russell Hobbs doesn't mean that much to you. But they're a juggernaut of electric kettle innovation. Now, there had been electric kettles around since the 1890s. But they were pretty rubbish. Bad at turning themselves off.

All the major appliance makers in America realised a few years ago that there was a market now for a good tea kettle. The Americans were catching up. And so now there are a multitude of kettles that will shut off at a certain temperature, or you can set them at a different temperature.

Thinking back to my friend Alvie, I do remember catching her using my electric kettle a few times. Maybe it was catching on. She'd begun to see the light. My main problem I have with a stovetop is that it takes so long to boil. Whereas an electric kettle, boom, two minutes, you're out.

That's true. I did appreciate the speediness. I do really regret my decision to buy a stovetop fallow. I wish I'd gotten an electric one.

When I first heard her say stovetop fallow, I thought she was personifying her kettle, calling it a fallow, as in, look at this cute little fallow, this cute little kettle. But it turns out fallow is a brand of kettle here in America. And fallow is making a big push for electric kettles here.

Maybe you can be sponsored by fallow and they'll give you an electric gooseneck temperature telling kettle.

While I'd love fallow's millions, journalistic integrity would not allow me to be sponsored by a brand that I was talking about on the show. No free electric kettles for me. But I did want to talk to them.

You are currently enduring a back issue.

Yeah, I am.

But I feel like your mattress has been helping a little bit.

Yeah, the mattress is the one. I got a firm mattress because I need my spine to be supported, which is exactly what every doctor has told me I need to be on. So the Helix Sleep will be the place for me.

Luckily you didn't have like a softy, old, weird mattress.

No, to be honest, I think I messed up my back in Oklahoma. I was in an Airbnb and it was the softest, shittiest mattress I've ever been on. It was like falling into cotton wool or something. And I think that, mixed with the sitting on this tiny plane. Yeah.

This is why you need a good mattress.

No, no, literally it is. The Helix lineup offers 20 different unique mattresses, including the award-winning Luxe Collection, which is what I have. They've also apparently got a newly released Helix Elite Collection, which is a mattress designed for big and tall sleepers. And they even have a mattress just for kids. You take a sleep quiz online, answer a few questions.

Yeah, and you have recently been to therapy.

I have.

And how is it going?

It's going good. I'm finding it a journey. It's a good journey, but it's just a whole different way of thinking about things.

Today, you said something that you've never said before, which was very vulnerable and introspective, and I'm definitely crediting that to therapy.

Yeah, no, no, it's literally what we talked about. It's like a safe space where you have no one judging you and you have someone that actually knows what they're talking about, who can guide you through things.

That's great.

If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's all online. It's designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. I really like it because there's a good online interface. you can use, messaging, a therapist, setting stuff up, changing appointments.

David, you might have journalistic integrity, but I don't. I do already have. All of our kettles are Fellow.

So that kettle that you just boiled, that is?

Fellow.

Yeah, that's so funny.

But I thought it was called Stag, but I was confused.

Is Stag another brand?

No, that's the name of the kettle within the Fellow line.

Okay.

Yeah.

Right.

The Fellow Stag.

It's so pretty.

No, well, so I kept hearing all through this about Fellow, which is obvious. It is a brand, and we're not getting money from it yet.

So it's just like kind of curious. I mean, I don't want to rule it out.

They're the nicest kettles.

Well, yeah. So that's where I went next to. in the dock. is I tracked down the boss of Fellow.

Mr. Fellow.

Mr. Fellow. People, in my experience, are boiling it on a stovetop, which to me seems kind of crazy. Is that sort of an accurate portrayal of how America has traditionally been doing things?

I think you are accurately describing most Americans. And I think, like you, I am also quite puzzled. We've worked really hard over the last nine years to change that.

I'm talking to Jake Miller, the founder of Fellow. He's the Fellow that started Fellow. Now, to be clear, Jake is not a tea man. He's a coffee man, a point of division we'll get back to later. I wanted to talk to Jake because when he started making kettles nearly a decade ago, he never intended to make electric kettles.

The gap that we saw wasn't like, oh, man, Americans aren't using electric kettles. Let's start an electric kettle company. We said, hey, let's design really great, beautifully functional products for coffee lovers. And one of those products, the tool that a coffee lover needs, is a pour over kettle. So our second product was this stovetop pour over kettle.

Then Jake had a realization, a burst of genius, a come to God moment.

Stovetop kettles kind of suck. These things take 13,, 14, 15 minutes to boil. Once they do boil, like the one that we designed, because it's a stovetop kettle, didn't have a whistle. You'd have to remember that it was on your stove 15 minutes after you put it on the stove. I can't tell you the number of times we got customers who wrote in and said, hey, really sorry, I burnt my kettle.

And their electric kettle was born. And a fancy one too, where you can heat your water up to a very specific temperature. This was a far cry from his all-American upbringing.

Growing up in America, I used to heat my water up in a microwave. And I think most of my friends and family did the same, right? You'd put some Tupperware in the microwave, bring water to boil and then pour it over oatmeal.

I think back to Bruce, who, if he was dead, which he's not, would be turning in his grave right now.

Don't ever use the word microwave with me in the tea ritual.

While Alvy had her theory about bench space and mould, Jake had another idea about why the electric kettle has been struggling to fully take over the United States.

I think it is probably one of the reasons we've been a bit slower as Americans to adopt the electric kettle. But the United States runs on 100 to 127 volts of power. Countries like Australia and the UK, they're blessed with 220 to 240 volts, right? So what that means is that electric kettle is just going to heat up a lot faster. Flip a switch and it's going to get to boil much quicker than it would in the US.

Curious, I tracked down another expert for this episode, Tony Ghibli, who wasn't so sure about this theory. Tony is another tea man, author of The Philosophy of Tea, A User's Guide.

A lot of people talk about the voltage in the States, the voltage being lower than the countries where electric kettles are prevalent. But I just, I don't buy that. Yeah, sure, the voltage is going to get you a quicker boil. Somebody said that it was like a minute and a half less to do it in the UK than it would be in the US due to the voltage difference. But I just, I don't buy that argument.

Why, then? Why is the electric kettle not found in every American home? Maybe, just maybe, it's America resisting the Britishness of it all. Because I've got a pet theory that this resistance to the electric kettle predates the electric kettle. All the way back to December 16th, 1773..

Shall we say the lid came off the kettle at that point.

Because the British government did not like all that tea at the bottom of the ocean, they literally saw it as treason. Teason, if you like. And the whole chaotic escapade snowballs into the American Revolution. And if it hadn't happened, what would things be looking like?

Well, we'd be flying a Union Jack, probably, I don't know. Like all the other colonies in the empire, I mean, they eventually would have broken away, but it would have taken a lot longer.

With all that in mind, I wonder if America, holding off a full embrace of the electric kettle, is it saying no to the popular British invention of the electric tea kettle, a piece of technology which first appeared in 1893 in Leeds, a city in West Yorkshire. But according to Jacob Fallow Kettles, 130 years on, America is slowly starting to change its mind. The tide is changing, thanks to America's cultural ambassadors.

And then all of a sudden we start seeing the Kardashian sisters post pictures on Instagram of the Stagg electric kettle. And we're like, oh my God, right? You've got Travis Barker and Hayley Bieber. So it's been this really fun journey for us.

With support like that, maybe there is hope for the electric kettle here in the USA. Maybe soon every American Airbnb will come with a jug, and the USA won't have to waste all that gas to boil its water. Maybe America will end up leading the way, making up for lost time. Jake says they have recently launched a pro version of their electric kettle that allows you to turn your kettle on in advance over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Not just an electric kettle, but an online kettle.

And with the ability to schedule your kettle, the voltage difference between the US and the UK becomes less important, right? So now Americans don't have to wait an extra three minutes for it to reach boiling. They can schedule it in advance. Think of the impact this will have on the American GDP. Just the economy as a whole, with three more minutes for 350 million people every single day.

In my mind, with statistics like that on hand, Jake should be looking beyond kettles. He should be looking to the next presidency. Make America boil again. Doesn't quite work, but you get the idea. Sorry, my writing's a little bit lame.

Is that the word you're choosing to use? Poetic?

And obviously this man's trying to sell his kettle empire to me. But it is kind of fun, the idea of scheduling it in advance. And that gets around any issues with voltage, where it might not be boiling as fast as in the UK or New, Zealand, where our voltage is higher and bigger and better.

Oh, wow. Fighting words.

I mean, he loves tea. He's invited me this year. So this year is the 250th anniversary of the rebellious Americans threw all that tea off the ships to the bottom of the ocean. And they're going to do a reenactment.

Oh, my God.

And so I'm quite keen to get along to that. It's happening on December 16th, so I've got it in my diary. But essentially throwing... What? I've got a diary.

Oh, do they call that... Is it a calendar?

Oh, was that a funny thing to say? Yeah, a diary, a calendar.

Diary is like what a little girl uses to write.

Or a boy.

I'm always in my diary.

Are you writing, like, your thoughts?

Oh, no. It's dangerous getting your thoughts down on paper.

Somebody might steal it and read it. Release it. That you want to fuck a beaver.

I just think it's amazing that throwing that tea into the ocean... I'm not American, so I think every American probably knows about the Boston Tea Party. I had no idea. So it led to the American Revolution. That's frigging, incredible.

It is.

What do you think so far about, like, how are you feeling? We've had voltage issues, cultural issues.

The cultural issues is what I'm going to put my money on.

To me, it's just tea snobbery, though. Americans don't have a lot of tea. Because I got an electric kettle when I got into tea. Because I knew you had to steep it at certain temperatures. Like green teas at 180 degrees, black teas at 212..

Here we go.

Wow. Actually, that does make sense. Because we're so much more of a coffee culture.

Okay, so that's what I get to in the third part. Oh, there's a third part. Oh, this goes on and on.

Oh, my God. Wow.

And in this, I look at the great coffee versus tea debate, which is what it's sounding like. a lot of this is kind of boiling down to.

Oh, poetic.

There was something else I'd become distracted over. while making this episode about the electric kettle. I talked to Bruce, who is a tea man. His happy place was having a cup of tea 3,000 feet above sea level.

And I look at him with my eyes and we communicate. This is the best cup of green tea I've ever had.

And I'd talk to Jake, who was a coffee man.

We make beautifully functional products to help people brew great coffee at home.

Both Bruce and Jake swore on the electric kettle, but both had differing opinions on what that hot water was best poured upon. Jake said coffee. You can probably guess what Bruce said. I'm curious about the world of coffee versus the world of tea and whether they are in competition with each other in America or whether they are very separate worlds.

We call that the dark side. I moved a lot of people from coffee to tea, and I call it moving from the dark to the light. So coffee will give you a big spike, and pretty soon you need another to keep you with that big energy. jolt. Tea has maybe a third of the amount of caffeine in it.

With this in mind, I decided to talk to another expert about tea dragging its heels behind coffee. You heard from Tony briefly earlier, weighing in about the voltage issue.

My name is Tony Gebley. I've been studying tea for about 15 years now. I've written two books on tea. One's called Tea, a User's Guide. It's really nerdy.

Tony is also a tea man, and he's also fascinated why, despite the so-called American tea renaissance, tea is still the loser here in America.

Statistically speaking, America's not a hot tea drinking country. It's just not. Coffee is still king here. And even when it comes to tea, 85% of tea consumed is either cold or ready to drink, meaning it comes in a bottle. So we're very, very not sophisticated when it comes to tea and tea culture.

That's not the case in the United States. Because maybe America doesn't have the time.

A lot of people will say, and maybe there's some truth to it, that we're always in a hurry here. We don't have time for rituals, right? The Americans are just always on the run. I feel that, right? And that's why you have terrible things, like people using a Keurig machine to prepare coffee and tea.

Of course, the counter to all this is if Americans love saving so much time, why didn't they all just have an electric kettle? But back to tea versus coffee. Tony follows my logic a little, saying that perhaps America's embrace of coffee goes back to that time a bunch of people in Boston committed treason by throwing a bunch of tea into the ocean.

And there are some folks that say that that's what got us off on the wrong foot with tea. Tea's always been second to coffee since all that happened. I have no idea. There's no way to prove that. But yeah, it's definitely a huge event in our history.

Maybe the reason tea still plays second fiddle to coffee in America is a mystery. Just like the question of why it's been slow to adopt the electric kettle.

The steam goes up and creates warping or mold, or God knows what, underneath the cabinets.

The United States runs on 100 to 127 volts of power.

I like that. the stovetop doesn't take up any counter space.

We never quite caught up with the invention of electricity.

Countries like Australia and the UK, they're blessed with 220 to 240 volts.

But I just, I don't, I don't buy that.

And maybe that mystery's. okay. We need mysteries. And maybe stovetop kettle versus electric kettle. Coffee versus tea.

I don't want to sound like a snob. I'm not a snob. They teach their own. Everybody has their own busy schedule to contend with and different mechanisms to get themselves up in the morning. But what I've been trying to do is get people to understand that tea could be a high-end thing, that could be treated like wine.

Well, in our home, we have an electric kettle that is glass. And I can see what's happening with the water. When you know what 155°C water looks like, well, then you can make matcha. If you know what 165°C water looks like, then you can make green tea. If you know what 200°C water looks like, you can make oolong tea.

You know who he reminds me of? Rob. In about 40 years.

Oh, that's your future, Rob. I can only hope. I rolled at him.

You know, Bruce Richardson did sound like a complete tea snob. He'll openly admit that. But he did give me a lot of his time just to talk me through his love of tea.

No, he was great. And I think it's nice to have a passion. What's your favorite tea? You have a favorite brand. Maybe they'll sponsor us, because I don't have journalistic integrity.

I mean, Smith Tea Makers.

I like Smith Tea as well.

They're up in Portland.

I like bubble milk tea full of sugar.

God.

Yum, yum. Bruce actually went on a big rage against it. He's like, it's not tea. There's too much sugar in it. He hated it.

If you go up to a Smith Tea Maker in Portland, you can do like tea flights. So they'll do like white, green and black. And you can kind of taste. Or you can do like only a black flight.

Yum.

The other interesting thing is obviously Starbucks is pushing coffee. Yes. You can get tea there as well, but it's not. I'll be curious actually now, like how well it sells.

Yeah. I mean, they have now their own, like the Tazo teas.

Yeah. So they're getting more into tea. And there's the coffee bean and tea leaf. Is that a chain?

That's a chain in L.A.

So that seems like tea-ish.

I think it's mainly coffee. But he opened up a new question of when did coffee become big in the United States?

Yeah, when did that hit up?

And I think, honestly, I think it has to do with Starbucks. Yeah. I think that timing probably correlates more. And I bet before that there were a lot more tea drinkers.

Just pushed it out to the whole of the United States.

Well, people had coffee pots, I guess. I guess when the invention of the coffee pot.

Right.

Folgers.

As a side note, at the moment I'm working on a episode about America's obsession with ice. I know. And I was talking. I'm skeptical. You're rolling your eyes.

Well.

Okay, we'll wait until the ice episode. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm getting excited. A little tease of what's to come. Exciting.

What does that mean? Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Good job. That was better than teasing.

Like many of these episodes, I kind of come out of the end sort of feeling more deranged than when I went in. I feel like I'm learning when I'm sort of writing the documentary. And then, as I talk about it with you two, it just gets more and more difficult to understand what the hell is going on.

You realize, you know nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. But isn't that what they say? The older you get, the more you know.

The more you know, the less you know.

You know nothing, Jon Snow. I think that's what they say, too.

Oh, really?

That rhymed. If you add it to the end. We made a limerick just now. A song. A, John Jingle.

All right.

More American or less? Honestly, I think it's a wash.

That was fun. That was art informative, but fun.

Thank you. That's what I like to present to the world. All right. Bye. Bye.