Branded fruit: How produce got “Honeycrisp-ified"

8:45Carmen Wong:Yeah.

8:47Dan Pashman:All right. Well, in the meantime, allow us to share some context for the tomato we are on our hands and knees trying to find and eat. Because Tom and Pete, they are doing plant research in a very different world than the Rutgers scientists were 100 years ago.

9:03Carmen Wong:Yeah, some huge things have changed that are at least part of the explanation for why our produce aisle has exploded with more and more of these branded superstar fruits and veggies. Yeah, yeah.

9:13Dan Pashman:So let's quickly run through those changes. And I think we can argue that the first comes in 1970.

9:20Kenny Malone:As professional newsmen, we're called upon each day to do various assignments.

9:23Dan Pashman:Now, full disclosure, I couldn't actually find coverage of our first thing that changed food history. Instead, I found these Dallas reporters who said they were given a particularly hard assignment from their boss. With your permission, we will attempt this assignment.

9:38Kenny Malone:We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas.

9:42Dan Pashman:So, yeah, the event we're talking about did take place Christmas Eve 1970. And so, you know, while these guys were singing Wish You a Merry Christmas, somewhere in Washington, D.C., President Richard Nixon was signing into law the Plant Variety Protection Act.

9:58Carmen Wong:Which clearly wasn't that big of a deal at the time. But in reality, it was huge because before this, it was a lot harder to monetize a new hybrid crop grown plant. But now breeders could basically own the rights to all kinds of fruits and vegetables that they couldn't before. That's big change number one.

10:14Dan Pashman:Giant change number two happens 10 years later. And that's the news. Merry Christmas to all.

10:21Kenny Malone:All right.

10:26Dan Pashman:This one. OK, fair enough. This one did not actually happen on Christmas Eve. It was, however, December 12th, 1980. It was another undercovered new law.

10:35Carmen Wong:Yeah, the Bayh-Dole Act, named after Senators Birch Bayh and Bob Dole, which gave federally funded researchers the default right to own whatever they create with that federal funding.

10:45Dan Pashman:And public universities, you know, lots of federal funding. Now they could control and monetize their medical breakthroughs, their developments in computers and the new fruits and vegetables they created.

10:58Carmen Wong:Which brings us to what I think is probably the most important moment in the produce aisle brand explosion.

11:03Dan Pashman:Of course, that is the 1991 release of the Honeycrisp apple.

11:09Carmen Wong:Yeah, the Honeycrisp was kind of the first big breakout produce star that came out of these changes. It was developed at the University of Minnesota, and in 1991, they started licensing out Honeycrisp trees to growers for a one-time fee of around a dollar a tree. And they have now made north of$20 million from it. A couple decades later, the University of Washington did even better with their Cosmic Crisp apple. They've made more than$30 million. bucks.

11:32Dan Pashman:Yeah, the lesson clearly was that if universities funded the right agricultural breakthrough, that could become a major profit center for the school.

11:42Carmen Wong:Would you say that it's easier now to get support from the university for the kind of research you do because it has a potential to bring a return for the school? Well, I'm retired, so Pete can tell you the bad

11:55Kenny Malone:news. It certainly helps. You know, if it brings in money to support our work and our program, they're going to more likely to support it.

12:06Dan Pashman:Yeah. You know, the agricultural research game has dramatically changed as a system. For researchers like Pete and Tom, their incentives have maybe changed a little. They do get to share in the revenue from their invention, something like 35 percent. But Pete told us they're not getting rich inventing the Scarlet sunrise for Rutgers. In a lot of ways, they are still just like those old Rutgers plant nerds from 100 years ago, geeking out, tinkering, and just trying to help New Jersey farmers.

12:35Carmen Wong:That's right. So all that, that's the context for Pete and Tom and this fancy new tomato they decided to create at Rutgers.

12:42Dan Pashman:And that story? Well, Pete says that starts about 14 years ago.

12:47Kenny Malone:We grow tomatoes here for our open house. And I noticed in the field, there was one cherry tomato called Isis candy.

12:55Dan Pashman:A cherry tomato called the Isis candy. And it had some pretty good traits.

12:59Carmen Wong:It was sweet, which we know people like.

13:01Kenny Malone:And then it also had this cool color situation. So they have that, it's like a little red blush on a kind of yellow background. That's why we call it a bicolor. Bicolor, yeah.

13:10Dan Pashman:Like mostly yellow. Then with this elegant, like streaky gradient into red. So it tasted great. It looked beautiful, but it had a problem.

13:20Kenny Malone:The Isis candy also cracks. The cherry was cracked a lot.

13:25Dan Pashman:Yeah, Dan, your beloved cherry tomatoes, cracking up tomatoes.

13:28Carmen Wong:Well, you know, that's why I never had an Isis candy, I suppose. I guess that's probably true. Look, that's a big problem for a tomato. No matter how good it tastes or looks, it's got to be transported, and it has to be able to stay fresh.

13:40Dan Pashman:Yes, but, you know, for Pete and Tom, the light bulb moment was, what if they took that bicolor Isis candy cherry and then crossed it, you know, bred it with a heartier red grape tomato?

13:53Kenny Malone:So in talking to Tom, we got together and wouldn't it be interesting if we could get some of the sweetness of Isis candy in there? So can we get some of the firmness of the red and combine those traits together and get something worthwhile for the market?

14:08Dan Pashman:Tom says that red-yellow bicolor mix, That could help their sweet grape tomatoes chance of success.

14:16Kenny Malone:We figured people could identify it in the marketplace and therefore connect the flavor with the appearance and there'd be repeat purchases of specifically this product.

14:28Carmen Wong:So in a sense, you made a very early branding decision.

14:31Dan Pashman:More or less, yeah, because we wanted it to be unique. Right. You know, Pete explained to us that the market has become flooded with red grape tomatoes. You know, some of those are good. Some are not. Some get packaged up and refrigerated for veggie trays, and that makes them taste bad. Don't refrigerate tomatoes, Kenny. Yes, this is your public service, I'm asking from Dan. You end up with a situation, though, where a consumer, Dan, might taste bad red grape tomatoes and decide that they hate all red grape tomatoes.

14:59Carmen Wong:Hate is a strong word, Kenny, but yeah, like maybe this is my issue. Maybe I just never tried a good one. It makes sense to me that if Tom and Pete are going to create a good grape tomato for New Jersey farmers to grow and sell, it would be helpful for it to look different from all those other ones to avoid confusion.

15:16Dan Pashman:So Tom and Pete, they get to work. Step one, you might remember this from your old Punnett Squares days in biology class. You cross pollinate the two tomato plants and then you have to wait like six months and you see what kinds of tomatoes grow.

15:29Kenny Malone:And they all kind of look the same because they're all half Isis candy and half Seminus.

15:35Dan Pashman:Seminus. He's talking about the specific red grape tomato they chose to use.

15:39Carmen Wong:Yeah. And when you're going through a process like this, it takes a long time. You don't fix the problem on the first generation of hybrid plant.

15:46Kenny Malone:It's the next generations after that. The traits start to sort out. So you have some that'll have like the red color and the good flavor.

15:55Carmen Wong:So they select the plants that are closer to what they want. Breed again. Repeat.

15:59Dan Pashman:This is a slow process. To grow a new generation of plants, you need a whole growing season. Now, Tom and Pete had access to a greenhouse, so they could squeeze two growing seasons in per year. But still, slow.

16:11Kenny Malone:So you get this big menagerie of different plants that you go through and look for what you want, which is this color with the flavor and plant architecture and resistance to insects and diseases and things. That's also taking it into consideration as you're going.

16:29Dan Pashman:Now, do you taste them also along the way? Oh, yeah. And if you taste one that's like the greatest tomato you've ever eaten, are you like, oh, spit the seeds out. We need to save these seeds. Like, what are you?

16:39Kenny Malone:Well, you don't really take it that seriously because, you know, the chances that you picked one fruit that, you know, that, oh, this is the one that's got all the crown jewels in it are pretty low.

16:50Dan Pashman:After 12 generations of growing, so six years of breeding and selecting, they felt like they had nailed it. A tomato that was sweet and colorful, like the Isis candy, but sized like the very popular and hardier grape tomato. It was time for the agricultural industrial complex to step in.

17:09Carmen Wong:Yeah, universities have teams built to handle staff inventions, new medicines, semiconductors. Like those, tomatoes need trademarking and other intellectual property protections. They also need marketing plans.

17:20Dan Pashman:In 2019, Tom and Pete reached out to Rutgers Office for Research to say they were ready to hand off their baby. How did you feel making that call?

17:31Kenny Malone:Well, just thank God we got somewhere. Well, I think that's really one of the most gratifying parts of being an inventor, including a plant breeder, is to have an idea that seems kind of harebrained because we're looking at this ISIS candy back in 2011 and thinking, well, that's unique, but boy, it has an awful lot of problems. So yeah, it's a great feeling to see that the principles that you learned in plant breeding and apply the skills, that they actually do work.

18:03Carmen Wong:Ultimately, it was the Rutgers business folks who named Pete and Tom's tomato. The Scarlet Sunrise. Color of sunrise, scarlet like Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights. Amazing. But also, after the break, how many new kinds of tomatoes do we need, Dan?

18:18Dan Pashman:Too many?

18:19Carmen Wong:Too many fancy tomatoes? Well, Kenny, we talked to an expert who can help us with our supermarket saturation questions.

18:24Dan Pashman:And, yes, we, most importantly, grape tomato skeptic Dan, finally gets his first taste of the Scarlet Sunrise.

18:37Kenny Malone:This message comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash Bank Guy for details. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. Fall is right around the corner. That means the midterms. Hey, it's Miles Parks from the NPR Politics Podcast. Now is the perfect time to calibrate your news diet for the fall. Follow our show for short daily episodes that will help you stay ahead of the most important midterm storylines that you need to follow. Find the NPR Politics podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:16Kenny Malone:History is intriguing, but unlike the present, it can feel far off. On NPR's ThruLine, we bring it back to life. And put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now. Find NPR's ThruLine wherever you get your podcasts.

19:40Kenny Malone:Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. As we mourn the loss of the great Dolly Parton, it feels good to listen back to her reflecting on her life and to hear some of her Dolly-isms. I always say that it's a good thing I was a woman

19:55Dan Pashman:because if I'd have been a man, I would have been a drag queen just because I'm so damn gaudy.

19:59Kenny Malone:We've dropped the Dolly Fresh Air interview on the NPR app and wherever you listen to podcasts.

20:05Carmen Wong:Okay, so we've seen an explosion of branded fruits and veggies, and we've talked about how the incentives that universities have to create new products have changed over the years.

20:13Dan Pashman:But it is more than just that. And to understand what else has changed, we called up Miguel Gomez of Cornell University.

20:21Kenny Malone:I am an economist specializing on specialty crops supply chains from genetics to consumers in fresh produce in particular.

20:29Dan Pashman:Do you have a favorite vegetable or fruit?

20:31Kenny Malone:Artichokes.

20:33Carmen Wong:Hey! Oh, that's a curveball. Are you buying fresh artichokes and then like peeling them and taking them apart by hand?

20:40Kenny Malone:Absolutely. And putting them to steam and then doing them with butter

20:44Carmen Wong:and then eat them. I don't know. Artichokes are an awful lot of work for me. But anyway, first order of business, a gut check with the professor. We aren't imagining that our grocery store has exploded with all this superstar branded produce, right? You are absolutely right.

20:59Kenny Malone:If you look at any fresh produce category, there is a race for differentiation in the fresh product category. The market is going toward this crazy amount of new options in each product category.

21:19Dan Pashman:Yes, we're right, Dan, of course. But, okay, why is this happening? Well, part of the story has to do with growers trying to escape this classic economic pitfall known as the commodity trap.

21:34Carmen Wong:Yeah, so like if you grow soybeans for human consumption, for example, you're growing a commodity crop. To an everyday consumer, a soybean is a soybean. And so the only way for you to compete with the other soybean growers is by selling your soybeans at a lower price. And that sets up this race to the bottom. And it's a really tough way to make a living. Sure.

21:53Dan Pashman:But to escape that trap, you need to find a way to differentiate your product, make your thing special somehow. And then, ideally, you can charge more for it.

22:04Carmen Wong:And Miguel told us there are a number of ways to differentiate. On one end of the spectrum, take a boring old commodity vegetable and be really clever about how you package it. Here is my favorite one. Love Beets. Love Beets is like a brand of the vegetable beets.

22:20Kenny Malone:Something that is as a commodity as you can find that are beets. Love Beets.

22:25Dan Pashman:Yeah, the Love Beets company sells beets. They are packaged. They're well-branded. They're often pickled or splashed with balsamic. So, you know, slightly more than just like raw commodity beets. But also, they are still just beets, to be clear.

22:40Kenny Malone:They are excellent quality. They are nicely packaged. The size is uniform. They are not huge. Are those beets proprietary?

22:49Carmen Wong:No.

22:50Kenny Malone:The genetics are not proprietary.

22:52Dan Pashman:Right. There's no special patented genetics here. Love Beets is just carefully selecting beets, often dressing them up, branding them really well. And as a result, they have taken a commodity vegetable and can charge more.

23:04Carmen Wong:They figured out a way to put lipstick on a beet. So that's one side of how you differentiate the commodity crop. Good branding. Miguel says on the other side, there's intellectual property. Create a vegetable or fruit that is actually genetically different and better, and then you get legal protection for that plant.

23:21Dan Pashman:That is, of course, the route the Scarlet Sunrise tomato folks have taken. But we were curious, is there perhaps a limit to all this new produce creation? Like, especially when we think of the poster children for all of this, the apples.

23:39Carmen Wong:So we talked about how influential the Honeycrisp was, and there's so many kinds of apples now. How close are we to market saturation with all these varieties of apples?

23:51Kenny Malone:That's difficult. We don't have hard data to show that. But in my humble opinion, I think we are past that threshold.

24:03Dan Pashman:Yeah. Miguel says people don't seem to be eating like more apples in total. So if you were to invent a new apple, you're just going to be jockeying for space in that already crowded Apple display. And, you know, if you are a new inventor and you try to jump in there, it's just going to be harder to get a consumer to try your new fancy apple.

24:23Kenny Malone:You know, there is what we call the cost of searching for consumers. You know, when you have too many options, it becomes a burden to consumers to choose.

24:34Carmen Wong:I tried to buy almond butter a few weeks ago, and I almost had a panic attack in the aisle. Yeah, exactly.

24:41Dan Pashman:I'm not allergic to almond butter.

24:42Carmen Wong:I'm allergic to the number of almonds butter. Yes, exactly. However, Miguel thinks the tomato space at the grocery store has plenty of room for new varieties.

24:53Dan Pashman:Also, you know, Miguel thinks that the producer-growers trying to get out of the commodity trap is only part of the explanation for all of this. Because, you know, producers can push fancy varieties all they want. He's more interested in the demand side of all this.

25:08Kenny Malone:I am convinced that at the end of the day, the foods that you see in restaurants, in the store, are in response to what consumers want. And I think that the consumer is the bigger driver of this change at the end. Yeah.

25:23Dan Pashman:So I think when we think of the commodities trap, we think of this as a producer push. But you feel like with a lot of these pieces of produce, this is coming from some fancification of our palates, our demands. Like there's space for food podcasts like Dan's now because we're all learning how to eat and we're learning how to differentiate. Absolutely. Yes. Of course, there is also a feedback loop between supply and demand here. Growers can only escape the commodity trap if we are willing to buy into whatever they're selling, a fancier thing at a higher price. And if we are willing to buy in, then more growers can try and escape the commodity trap and on and on and on.

26:07Dan Pashman:Are these guys, I really, it's true, I can't tell if they're green.

26:10Kenny Malone:I'm not seeing much, you know, again, we plant them late so that we ripen up for our open house.

26:16Dan Pashman:Meanwhile, back at the old Rutgers Experimental Farm, we've been searching for a solid 30 minutes and still haven't found an actual proper ripey scarlet sunrise in the field. Luckily, though, Tom has a backup plan.

26:28Kenny Malone:Yeah, so you guys can have these. They came out of my home garden. Oh, wow. All right. And I planted them a little bit earlier.

26:35Carmen Wong:Tom is holding one of those little green pint baskets full of these gorgeous little yellow tomatoes with that telltale blush of red. These are the scarlet sunrise.

26:44Kenny Malone:These are actually a breeding line. They were from Scarlet Sunrise. It's a derivative. Cousin of Scarlet.

26:52Carmen Wong:Like what we're tasting out there.

26:53Kenny Malone:Yeah, so the flavor and the fruit type.

26:55Dan Pashman:Yeah, all right, fine, fine. Technically, these are descendants of the Scarlet Sunrise. And I guess once there's a trademark in legal plant protection, distinctions like cousin of breeding line may matter technically. But for our purposes, Tom is presenting us with actually ripe Scarlet Sunrise tomatoes.

27:10Carmen Wong:Now, before we try this tomato, we asked Tom and Pete to each pop one. We wanted to see what people who taste and evaluate hundreds of tomatoes each year are looking for. All right.

27:25Kenny Malone:Oh, that was a little bit low in acidity, but high in sugar, good texture. You know, I would give that a favorable score, maybe four out of five, something like that. Yeah, it's got a good pop in the mouth, and it's got a good combination of sugar and acid. So if it doesn't have any acid, it's bland. Right. It's just sickly sweet.

27:51Dan Pashman:I love them.

27:52Carmen Wong:They are so scientific tasting tomatoes. They are earning their designation as plant nerds. Yes. But it was so interesting to watch this because this is the process of developing a new tomato. In some ways, it's super scientific. In some ways, it's just like two guys in a field eating tomatoes. You like this, bud? Yeah, I like this. Right, right. This one's good. Do it like this. And it's like that over and over. Crossbreed. Taste the results. Discuss. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

28:17Dan Pashman:But, you know, okay, great. They are tasting dispassionately, objectively. By this point, the only taste test that matters to me is whether or not this Scarlet Sunrise tomato could convert notorious grape tomato hater Dan Pashman.

28:31Carmen Wong:I prefer the term grape tomato skeptic, but anyway, there was only one way to find out. We each grab a Scarlet Sunrise and pop them in. All right, all right. Oh, my gosh. That's really good. That is a full, coarse tomato meal right there.

28:49Dan Pashman:The pop.

28:50Carmen Wong:There's a lot in a little package. Yeah. And I told you, Kenny, that I was skeptical of grape tomatoes. Yes. And the reason why I have often not liked grape tomatoes is I feel like they're too hard. you want to balance between the sort of the firmness and the soft juiciness of the pulp you don't want it to be mushy but you also don't want it to be hard as a rock this i think solves that this is not too hard it's it's got a bit of a meatiness that's very pleasant which a good tomato should have it's a little bit meaty but it still sort of yields to the bite it's soft and tender and it's got that sweetness and acidity that's why he does a food podcast

29:26Dan Pashman:you know dan i have to say when you mentioned this story idea this like honey crispification of our produce. I had noticed that suddenly it was feeling like I was walking through the produce aisle and was like being assaulted by colorful hipster Instagram ads or something. But I don't know. I mean, I do like a lot of this fancy produce. I'm not eager to go back to a world of only red delicious apples. Oh my God, heaven forbid. Yes. I guess I'm benefiting from it, but certainly the universities and companies that actually own the IP to this stuff are also benefiting. But I guess it is also true that there are Tom's and Pete's behind some of these like very slick, plasticky, commercially looking inventions.

30:07Dan Pashman:And in those cases, in that case, at least, they are trying to give growers of New Jersey for Tom and Pete a way out of the old commodities trap.

30:16Carmen Wong:Currently, Scarlet Sunrise is more of a specialty tomato being sold by a small seed company. As it exists now, it may never have big mass commercial distribution because the current iteration is pretty expensive to grow.

30:27Dan Pashman:But honestly, Tom and Pete's goal of helping New Jersey farmers here, this ended up going well beyond just inventing another tasty tomato for them to sell.

30:37Carmen Wong:Yeah, that's right, Kenny, because during this whole development process, they made a different discovery that could really change things for tomato growers far beyond New Jersey.

30:45Dan Pashman:Yeah, as they worked on the Scarlet Sunrise, they noticed that one of their experimental tomato plants was really small, like half the size of a normal plant, but was still yielding a similar quality of tomato fruit. As soon as we saw that, Pete saw the one that you see out in the field now, as soon as you see that, you get excited because, you know, you know that that plant is just going to be much cheaper to grow. And what surprised us was that as excited as we were to find and eat and talk about the Scarlet Sunrise, Tom and Pete were clearly way more excited about this.

31:24Carmen Wong:Yeah, because the cost of growing grape tomatoes is one of the biggest deterrents. It requires a lot of picking by hand, a lot of labor. The standard tall plants have tomatoes from top to bottom that ripen at different rates. So you get to send pickers through your field several times over weeks.

31:37Dan Pashman:The more compact plants have a shorter ripening window, so fewer trips through the fields, plus more compact plants means you just save money on ties and stakes and stuff.

31:47Carmen Wong:Tom actually estimates this could save growers somewhere between 25 and 50 percent.

31:52Dan Pashman:Yeah, they're excited because this is the kind of innovation that doesn't just help farmers a little. It could completely change the economics of tomato growing for those farmers.

32:02Kenny Malone:I think this is something that can have a much bigger impact worldwide. It could, like I said, I want to overstate it right now, but we haven't seen anything like this on the market.

32:15Carmen Wong:What I hear you saying is that this tomato could change the world. Like I said, I don't want to overstate it. Who knows, Kenny? Maybe someday you and I will tell our grandkids that we met the men who won the Nobel Peace Prize for tomatoes.

32:29Dan Pashman:Why isn't there a Nobel Peace Prize for tomatoes specifically?

32:33Carmen Wong:By the time we're grandfathers, maybe there will be. Yeah.

32:45Dan Pashman:Dan Pashman, what a joy to work with you. Do you want to just share with folks what you've got going on over at The Sporkful?

32:50Carmen Wong:Yeah, Kenny, we've got a couple recent episodes people can check out. One was about a woman attempting to pass the hardest beer test in the world. That is one of my favorite episodes you guys have. That's excellent. Not just did it involve beer. We also did one recently about a rare condition called Prader-Willi syndrome that causes extreme insatiable hunger. We talked to a family dealing with this. They have to lock food away. There's a lot more to it. We got a lot of response to this episode, so I hope folks will check it out.

33:14Dan Pashman:All right. That's wherever you find your podcasts, The Sporkful. And if you enjoyed what you heard today, we have an extended version of our interview with agricultural economist Miguel Gomez. We talked to him about the heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables. We, Dan, you and I, try to speculate what the next superstar product category could be. Is it avocados? Is it mangoes? Where's it coming? And, you know, can all of us get rich if we guess it? Probably not. So that's going to be over on the NPR Plus feed. If you're already a subscriber, you'll see that episode show up this Monday. And if you're not, it's not too late.

33:48Dan Pashman:You can subscribe. It's one of the best ways to help us and show your support. And may I mention that those NPR Plusers, they do get 20 % off at the NPR shop, where you can now buy the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch. We've been documenting this project. It is a game secretly inspired by Nobel Prize winning economics. It's a party game. It is best played with four, five, six people. And we would encourage you, if you're willing, to host a game night. And I guess it is very helpful if you take pictures at that game night and then post those on social media. You can tag us. We are at Planet Money.

34:24Dan Pashman:You can tag Exploding Kittens. They are at Game of Kittens on Instagram, at least. And they tell us that this kind of thing is super, super helpful to just show the fun, show people having fun or show yourselves duping your best friend with a terrible deal because, you know, asymmetric information. That's what the game is about. Yeah, that would be a huge help. Today's episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Keith Romer, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Sina Lofredo and Jimmy Keely. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark. A special thanks this week to, I don't know, you want to thank anybody, Dan?

34:58Dan Pashman:You, Kenny. I want to thank you. Oh, Dan, thanks. You know, I will say, so only that one specific kind of tomato can be the Scarlet Sunrise. And so all these other cousins and descendants, they hadn't named those plants yet, right, Dan? That's right. That's right. People have ideas. Send them our way. Lord knows we had a few and pitched them all to Tom and Pete. Scarlet, I assume, has to be in the name because of the Rutgers affiliation. We do like that, yeah. I think probably Spawn of Scarlet Sunrise is too long. How about Scarlet Dawn?

35:28Carmen Wong:Ooh, there you go. I like that. Dusk? Scarlet Dusk? That sounds a little dark. I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Dan Pashman. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

35:40Dan Pashman:How about Two Scarlet, Two Sunrise? Like Fast and the Furious movie conventions.

35:45Kenny Malone:We can go all day.

35:46Dan Pashman:It's fine.

35:47Kenny Malone:Well, I think if you guys can send your... We'll forward all your suggestions. This message comes from Schwab. With the new Schwab Teen Investor Account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com.

36:12Dan Pashman:Testosterone. Maybe you've been hearing more about it. That low T can be dangerous. That higher levels could help you work out better, live longer.

36:20Kenny Malone:Those are really compelling and like strong marketing messages, but they aren't actually what the evidence supports. It's not some drug to promise peak

36:27Carmen Wong:performance or this longevity.

36:29Dan Pashman:What the science really says about testosterone on Shortwave. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.