SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to Split the Corner. What can we get you?

SPEAKER_02 0:25

What's up, everybody? It's another Split the Corner podcast with Kaz and Kyle. Kyle, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

I'm great, buddy. I'm excited. I'm I don't think we've done this in what feels like forever, so I'm excited to to get going.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Well, and we got a little bit of a weird one today. Like that. Today is the National Dreams of Reason Feast Day. There's a lot of words there. That was a lot of words. So uh this one sparked my interest because it is listed as sort of a celebration of failed ideas, right? It it celebrates the odd ideas that never panned out. Spotlights scientific theories that proved wrong, futuristic ideas from science fiction that we haven't quite got to yet. So I do think it's a fun day. I do think there are plenty of things here to to acknowledge and sort of point at.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Do you want to know why they called it the Dreams of Reason Feast Day? I guess if they called it National You Failed Day, people would be less inclined to celebrate. National You Didn't Get the Ball Rolling Day. You didn't get the ball rolling. The ball is still here. It's a stationary ball. That's that's why they called it that. They can't call it national you're a complete and utter failure day because that's not very nice. They had to call it something whimsical so that people would be like, oh yeah, I'm on board. It has a little bit of whimsy. There's some whimsy.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

It has some Yeah, some silver lining to the cloud. If if we had a a horrible idea that we spent a year trying to create and put into existence that just kind of crashed and burned at every opportunity, when we finally put it to rest, we could have a dreams of reason feast.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

What kind of foods do you think that we should be celebrating this feast day with?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Just gonna ask you the same question. So is it foods that never panned out? So you have to find things like Zima and Pepsi Kona and and all these discontinued snackables from from bygone eras. New Coke. Yeah. Crystal Pepsi. Yeah. Well, but that's that's what we're doing, right? We're celebrating ideas that never panned out. Great start. Great start.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Fruit stripes gum.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

I think that's still around.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

It can't be. There's no way. Isn't that the one that you could eat the wrapper?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Oh, I don't remember all that. I know it was the one that had a lot of flavor for about three chews.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

I remember you were able to eat the wrapper. Like that was a big selling point. Especially when we were kids, they would be like, fruit stripes gum, you don't even have to unwrap it. And like you could just chew the wrapper with it. And I always remember it made it so much worse.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

All the other wrappers were made out of tin foil, right? Except for the little trident pieces that your grandma had.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

And why do grandmas always enjoy cinnamon gum? It seems like a grandmotherly thing, but you're like, let me get a piece of gum, grandma. And she pulls out this jalapeno level spicy cinnamon gum that you didn't want at seven years old. Tastes hot. Just tastes hot, grandma. I mean the opposite effect of what I wanted. Okay, hold on. Let's get in, let's get into this real good. Because from that explanation, the one that jumps out at me is the Jetsons and their super cool flying cars or flying automobiles or whatever they were called with the big glass dome. And the Jetsons made it seem like we were going to be flying around in all of these wonderful egg-shaped vehicles, and it never panned out, and I'm pretty bummed about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

It took me well into my adulthood to realize that the Jetsons are just polar opposites of the Flintstones, and that the Flintstones were essentially the honeymooners. If you go back and watch the Flintstones, like in your adult age, there's a Fred had a lot of issues. There's a lot of like middle-age men not happy with his station in life, Archie Bunker kind of issues that Fred Flintstone is dealing with. He's got a gambling problem. He's bowling all the time. He sees little green men that no one he's and and George Jetson is is kind of the exact opposite, right? He's the caring, loving father that's around when he needs to be around, even though he's always taking crap from his boss. Whereas Fred comes home, wants to know why their dinner hasn't been made yet, and then he goes to the lodge with his buddies. So I there's a weird dichotomy. Jetsons, I 100% agree with you. I I apologize for tangenting. I just I've always found that really interesting. Because we almost have it's funny you say the Jetsons, because my Roomba's name is Rosie. So we're almost there in terms of I I can you know tell my house cleaning robot to vacuum the living room and it'll it'll do it, but it doesn't come with the same sass.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Which is unfortunate because the only thing that I want from a house cleaning robot is sass. Well it's mostly sass. Yeah, like once in a while she pulls out a nugget of matronly wisdom. Well, what else? Okay, so the Jetsons, I mean, I think that's number one on my list. Were you when you were looking this up, did you find any anything else? Is there a road to go down there? Do they have are are people in general looking at one or another technology that didn't pan out?

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Flying cars seems to be the big kind of example that everyone's using in terms of what's the thing that we all thought we would have by now that we don't. We are the 99%. I'm pretty okay with it. I don't I there are so many logistical issues with flying cars that I'm not ready for. I don't understand how traffic is going to work. I don't understand how merging in traffic is going to work. Is it like an upmerge instead of just an are we merging in four-directional space now? Because we can't handle two-directional space. That's true. And if you have a car accident, do they just fall out of the sky? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

A fender bender turns into just an absolute death trap. You are not walking out of a nudged fender bender alive with flying cars. So maybe, maybe that's a good one to not have had. I feel like traffic deaths would have skyrocketed, pun intended. What about a police chase? See, now you're just getting into Star Wars territory. Well, yeah, or Fifth Element, or any of the other, any of the other sci-fi movies that said, hey, look, it's flying cars, but didn't really think about anytime you see flying cars in a movie or a TV show or something, though, they are all following the basic traffic patterns that we have now, just in space or in the sky.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Right. Back to the future. They have the exit off the sky highway that you kind of take the off-ramp and spiral down. Why don't they just call it a skyway? That feels like a missed opportunity. Definitely. But but you've been stuck in traffic on 95 and seen the jerk in the truck take to the shoulder and pass every what what happens when that guy can just go over people or under people?

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Or then there's just no rules. I feel like that cartoons and movies that have tackled this subject matter have been a little too quick to give human nature a positive spin. There's absolutely no way that if my car can go up, down, left, right, diagonal, any way I want it to, why would I follow traffic patterns?

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Maybe that's the plot of like Fast and the Furious 14 or whatever number they're on. That's the trouble with flying cars.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

The entire movie is in a government building where they're trying to hash this out because then Diesel's character has turned a leaf and got elected to public office. He's a comp controller or something.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

But in his spare time, he's he makes flying cars. All right, what about what about something smaller? What about what what if it doesn't fly fly in in the sense of like soaring like a bird? But maglev trains that just kind of hover above the track and are kept kind of in suspension through the magnetic forces. Same thing with what about hoverboards like Marty McFly?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

I couldn't do skateboards with wheels on them. I don't think that I would be super inclined to go hoverboarding. It's just it's a farther drop for me.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Maybe it's the wheels that cause the problem. Oh, there you go. Maybe without the wheels, it's super easy. And and again, maybe you're not skateboarding, right? Because the one he steals from the girl has the handlebars on it and then he breaks them off. So maybe it's just a hover scooter or a hover bike.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

At least until I get my my legs under me, as it were. I would try hover skates. Yeah, I feel like I'd have more control. If I can roller blade, I can probably hover blade. What about further back? Let's go let's go further back. I think right before we came on, we were talking a little bit, and you said something about alchemy, which is a really good one to celebrate today because you can't just turn whatever you want into gold.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Alchemy, for those of you that aren't up to speed, is the scientific pursuit of changing metal into gold. And it was pursued as a absolute science for a very, very long time that there had to be some way to combine metals that are currently in existence and then have the end product be gold. This is dumb.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Because gold, the only reason that gold uh holds any value is because we as a human species for generations, for thousands of years, have have said that this is the most valuable of all metals, is because we have just universally accepted that. What if it had been, you know, coal or just rocks? I mean, that's really all gold is is just rocks. But they're shiny.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Shiny counts for something historically, though. You're going way back to a time when shiny versus not shiny was pretty much one of the only choices that you had in rocks.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

I'm not very flashy. I'm a I'm a no-shine rock kind of guy.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Just rolling your rock card up and down the street like a sign that says now available and shiny. Have you seen the new rocks? They're so shiny. They're so shiny. All right, so here's the tangent. Speaking of on the rocks, how do you feel about these new technological bartenders? How do you feel both both the the full-on robot bartenders that they have bartending out in Vegas now and the little put a Keurig on your counter and it'll make you a margarita? How do you feel about these?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

I'm opposed to robot bartenders because as our love letter to the bartender episode clearly states, there is something about a bartender, a good bartender anyway, that is personality driven and experience driven because that bartender has made that experience for you better. I really don't see how a robot dressed up in a white tuxedo jacket, because in my head it's like a full-on animatronic dude. And he's he's got the five-star white jacket and bow tie and cufflinks and all that. Like I don't know. That just sounds it sounds unnecessary. I think that's the first word that comes to mind is unnecessary. But I don't know if you remember a few years ago, maybe 10, 12 years ago, there was this very short-lived fad where you could go to a bar and there was a tap at the bar or at the table, and you could push a button and put your glass underneath of it, and then it would pour you a beer. And I remember people freaking out about it. My bartender friends all lost their minds. Oh, we're gonna be out of a job and all this. It lasted 10 minutes. It lasted a cup of coffee, you know, because A, they're probably incredibly expensive, and I can't imagine that the work that goes into getting those hoses to all your tables would be worth the slight overhead you're going to do away with by hell by having a bartender. But a robot bartender is just, I don't think that'll last. That just seems like some sort of fad, and all of a sudden, you know, a month or two from now, everybody's gonna go, oh, that was neat, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Unfortunately, I do think there is a place for the like you said, the neatness of it. I don't think we're looking at a world where all of the bartenders will be replaced by robots, but I don't think it's unrealistic to acknowledge that A, if you can make all of these things at home with the press of a button, you're less likely to go out. And B maybe the robot bartender is the experience. There's there's sushi places in Philadelphia that have robot servers. You put your order in, and and then here comes the little robot food runner, comes right to your table and slides out, and you take your plates off, and the little robot goes back into the kitchen. Part of that is the gimmick. Right? I I do I do remember the the push button taps, there was a spot in Philly that had those too, but they had it in like a it was like a wall. And you would go up to the wall and you would you would swipe your fob or whatever that you had to have loaded, like a Dave and Busters, but then it would just spit beer into your cup. But again, if the if the tap was too foamy or the keg wasn't connected right, or the glass was dirty, or all of a sudden you've got half a glass of foam and you paid for a full beer. Right. But I do think places like Vegas, places like Disney, places like cruise ships, I I do think there's a market for that robot bartender that's gonna make every drink exactly the same because it comes out of a tube in their arm, and they're not gonna complain about working doubles and odd hours and shitty conditions, and and people are gonna go, let's go have a drink with the robot bartender. And maybe they only stay for one or two, but that's one or two bars on the ship that they that will no longer be staffed by people, and that's my concern.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

I just don't feel like I would want to do it more than once. I feel like I'd go and and experience it and go, Oh, that was neat, you know. There was nothing to it, it's just a robot like neat. Okay, cool. I've been to Disney, I've been in the hall of presidence. Uh, whatever. I did it once, I'm good now. But I don't think you're ever gonna I I'm gonna agree with you and say I don't think you'll ever see robots take over the bartending profession and mass, because that's not the point of bartending. You know, you want you're gonna want that person to come to your bar. If you're the owner of the bar, you want them to come to the bar and you want them to stay at the bar and you want them to spend as much money as possible. If I go to a bar and there's a robot bartender and I say, Oh, look, he just shot a Manhattan out of his forefinger, like, oh, that was neat. Okay, next. I'm not gonna sit there for very long.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

The ultimate question for human nature: what if there's no line? What if the bar is four deep, but the robot bar? Nobody there.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Will he just pour me a beer?

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

All right, well then, you know, if it's four deep. See, because in my head, I'm not thinking about it as a busy night kind of thing. I'm thinking about it like I'm in Vegas and it's 3 a.m. and I just need a drink, and I walk into a lounge or whatever, and there's Chester, the robot bartender in all of his finery, and I can just sit down at the bar and he's gonna give me a drink. But then I gotta sit in that bar and drink that drink with the robot that's just kind of sitting there, not doing anything.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

I think that would be unsettling. The crowd could still have conversation. I don't know that we're at the point where you know Jeeves, the robot bartender, is going to be adding witty tidbits to the middle of it, but I want witty tidbits. So do I. So do I, but I also don't want to stand at a bar that's four deep.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

When was the last time you went to a place that was four deep? I don't drink at those places. I don't go to places that I know are gonna be overly crowded.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

I go to neighborhood spots. You could you could see a robot bartender in a casino. What about banquets? What about banquet facilities? You're gonna have a wedding, and instead of paying three people, you're just gonna get one robot bartender.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

How many people are at the wedding? One robot bartender isn't gonna be able to handle 200 people. How do you know?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

That's a fair point, but four arms, pours four drinks at a time, does the same work as a two bartender team.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Well then I think maybe it's got eight arms.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Maybe it's some sort of weird robot octopus bartender. We don't we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah, but then you're running into logistical problems. You're running into the issue where he can only pour a finite number of drinks. Because I don't think that we've reached the point at where the technology is caught up where we can just say, okay, look, here's 90 bottles. You can pour drinks with them. Like you're gonna have to use fine mechanics to pick up the bottle and pour the bottle and get the glassware and put the ice in it and all that stuff. I have to imagine that if it's a robot bartender in Vegas, that the glasses are put there automatically from some system or Or other of like a conveyor belt or something, and he just pours it from his fingers from a keg that some dude had to put in there.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

I would assume they can get as many drinks as you could get onto one of those fancy soda guns.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

That's what I'm saying. That's what at most, it's nine or ten. Ten drinks is a lot of drinks. But now we're only talking about cocktails. What about beers? And if I'm going to have 10 drinks, let's call it this robot can pour out of his fingers, then you're sacrificing X amount of fingers for cocktails and X amount of fingers for beers, and we're running back into the same problem.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Only because you're stuck on fingers. If we go back to the octopus and his tentacles, it's a completely different thing.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Robot bartenders can kick rocks. I want a salty, salt of the earth kind of person pouring me a beer and pouring me a shot and then telling me to kick rocks.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

And I think the home bartender is fine in the same way that you're probably buying canned cocktails or something from somewhere. If you really want a drink made well, or you really want someone that is professionally trained to get a little creative, then you know where to go. But the Cosmo coming out of that curricul is pretty much the same as the Cosmo coming out of the canned Cosmo cocktail that you bought in the grocery store. So I don't know that that's necessarily.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Starbucks has a line all the time, and every single person at that Starbucks more than likely has a Keurig or has a coffee pot or an at-home espresso maker, and they're still lining up for coffee, pal.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

I see that being almost the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

I that you that you bought it thinking that you know if if it keeps me from going out one Friday a month, then it's gonna pay for itself in six months, and it has changed nothing, and it's gathering dust in the corner of your cabinet. There you go. So while we were thinking about these sorts of inventions, it got me thinking about the world's fairs, right? Have we had a world's fair? Do you do you have any idea when the last world's fair was?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Off the top of my head, I want to say 60s. Oh, supposedly they're still going on. Really?

SPEAKER_02 24:59

And they're and they're planned to continue until 2031.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Where are they being held and why haven't I heard about them?

SPEAKER_02 25:07

They just seem to have sort of taken on different names. That's interesting, because I would really like to go to one because I that's that seems to be the place historically where you go to see the upcoming tech that is, you know, supposedly gonna catch on. They they debut the you know, the first time they ever did electric street lights, they did it at a world's fair.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

So that's what I knew about. But well, where are they having these these fairs and why is no one talking about them?

SPEAKER_02 25:38

So it looks like they've all been overseas since um 1992. There was one in Columbus, Ohio. There was supposed to be one in Chicago, but it got canceled. Other than that, they seem to bounce around the world. 84, there was one in New Orleans. 82, it was in Knoxville, Tennessee. Alright, but I want to talk about a real a real specific World's Fair. That uh honestly, this could be an entire topic for you know these fairs and expositions and all this stuff, but I I would like to speak very specifically about the 1893 World Fair. Uh the 1893 World Fair was held in Chicago, and I want to talk about this one because I think this was a very interesting World's Fair. It it brought a whole bunch of very pop culture-y things to the foreground all at the same time, right? And I'll and to my knowledge, the vast majority of them are still around and kicking. There wasn't a whole lot of let me show you a thing that isn't going to work. Uh, the the first ever demonstration of an electrified third rail. So, you know, subways become possible because of this. Um, specifically, the world fair was specifically known for a place that the average person could go and try food from all over the globe. And it was a great spot for people to go and launch their products. So the 1893 World Fair ties into this podcast for a couple reasons. I'm I'm gonna hit you with three of the things that are launched that don't pertain to us but give you kind of an idea of the direction that we're going, right? 1893 World's Fair, Juicy Fruit Gum makes its debut. Quaker oats oatmeal makes its debut. Shredded wheat as a concept makes its debut. And Paps Blue Ribbon shows up for the first time. Oh, PBR. PBR at the 1893 World's Fair.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Now PBR, like it was all made in the 1893, and then held in a warm warehouse somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Not a so this gave birth to one of the greatest bar pairings of all time, and it's something that we need to dive into. 1893 is not only the world fair that gave us PBR, it's the world fair that gave us the hot dog. Really? Frankfurter's, which were sausages from Frankfurt, Germany, and Wienerwursts, which were sausages from Vienna, both came to the 1893 World's Fair. And then from there, the history gets very strange. And you know, how does it end up with a bun? And why are the buns in eight packs and the hot dogs are in ten packs? And and it goes kind of off the rails. We're we're not a hundred percent sure why they're called hot dogs. We don't really know if it's because people thought there were dogs in it, or if because it looks like a doxend. Like there's just a million stories, and it feels like it wasn't that long ago that you shouldn't be able to just point at something and go, that one, that's the first one.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Well, it feels very specifically like something you'd just be like, hey, some dude did this on this day. The fact that it it's convoluted is very surprising to me.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

But if you were at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, now you had to have a Chicago dog, because at the time they were serving them with the pickles and the relish and the tomatoes and the onions and the whole nine yards that the Chicago dog comes first, which I think is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

But if you were at the 1893 World's Fair, you could have been one of the first people in history to have a beer and a hot dog. So it begs the question did they invent a sandwich?

SPEAKER_01 30:22

Oh, I knew you were gonna go there.

SPEAKER_02 30:24

I just I knew we got ourselves in trouble. We I I I'll take full credit. I came out in our cheese steak episode and I said that the Philly cheesesteak might be the greatest sandwich ever invented. I and I think actually I said it with more confidence than that. I'm pretty sure I declared that it's I was gonna say you might have yelled it a little bit. Uh and I stand by that. But with the invention of the hot dog and the question of is a hot dog a sandwich, we have found a split the corner problem. Because if we oversimplify this, it doesn't answer the question, it only makes it worse.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Is a hot dog a sandwich? Yes. I think you may have stumbled upon quite possibly the single most controversial thing that we will ever discuss on this show. Because people get real fired up about this. Like, this is not a topic that you can just kind of lazily be like, oh, I don't know. You know, I really don't have an opinion. Like, yeah, you do. You absolutely have an opinion, and it is a hill that you will die on. The things that people will not budge on are religion, politics, and their stance on whether or not a hot dog is considered a sandwich. Those are the three things that people will never change their mind about.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

The three things we were told by our parents never to talk about at the bar.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Religion, politics, and the sandwichitude of hot dogs. All right, well, you know what? If we're gonna if we're gonna unwrap this present, then I think we both need to declare where we stand on this because it's uh it's a hot button issue, buddy. Is a hot dog a sandwich, Kaz?

SPEAKER_02 32:24

I have to say yes. Show your work. I have to say it's a sandwich, and it and it's it's proof based on extension. I have to also be able to believe that a grilled cheese is a sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Who said a grilled cheese wasn't a sandwich?

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Well, if a hot dog is is meat between bread, and that's the definition of a sandwich, then then cheese between bread also needs to be a sandwich. So then it has to just be stuff between bread.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

That's it. The bread is the uh is the caveat. The bread is the thing that makes a sandwich.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

So peanut butter and jelly also comes on bread. So there goes the meat, there goes the cheese, and it's still definitely a sandwich. Are peanut butter and jelly considered condiments?

SPEAKER_01 33:27

I would say yes. Yeah, I think I mean what's a c what's it what's the definition of a condiment? Something spreadable? I would have said dippable. Uh you can't really well. I mean, yeah, I guess you could dip into peanut butter depending on the apple slice, yeah, or pretzel rods or something. Yeah, a little bit a little bit of carrot if you're feeling healthy. All right. Well, listen, I'm going to go ahead and agree with you. I think a hot dog is a sandwich. I think we need to to put this to bed forever. And those of you who say that hot dogs are not sandwiches, how dare you fight me. Who do you think you are to tell me what a sandwich is?

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Debate us in the comments if you think that you have a hill to stand on that a hot dog is not a sandwich. If it's not a sandwich, what is it? That's my other question. That's a good question. If if it's not, if it's not a sandwich, then what the hell did I just eat?

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Well, I mean, to be fair, that is a question that a large percentage of people who have eaten hot dogs in their lives have asked themselves. Not necessarily of whether or not it's a sandwich, but what the hell is in a hot dog?

SPEAKER_02 34:47

What the hell did I just eat? Well, there's a all right, so there's a rumor in the history of the hot dog that supposedly the hot dog bun was invented because this guy was selling hot dogs or sausages. Which there is a difference. Supposedly, hot dogs are finer ground meat with a milder seasoning. That's a hot dog versus just a regular sausage. So supposedly, this dude is in St. Louis and he's rolling his hot dog cart down the street, and he keeps serving his sausages to people, just plopping them in their hands, like, here's my sausage, please receive it. And the people are complaining because the sausages are too hot. So he tried to give them gloves to eat the sausages, and the people kept stealing the gloves. So his wife was like, What if you give them bread? And that's the myth of how the hot dog bun was invented. There's a very similar myth that some dude in Coney Island was like, I could save a lot of money not serving it between two slices of white bread. What if I made a custom roll and then I can be a bajillionaire? So no one's really sure where all this shit came from, but I tell you what, they're making sandwiches. Because if it's not a sandwich, what what do you call it?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

It's not a plate of spaghetti. It's not a wrap.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

That's but that's a great point because I got stuck with with that on on the burger, right? A burger is a sandwich. Yes. What if it what if you get a burger, you know, those those healthy ones that come without a bun, that it's between two pieces of lettuce. You're trying too hard. That's not a sandwich anymore. Oh shit. It's not. It's sandwich-like. You've created something like a sandwich in the same way that impossible meat is like meat, but it's not.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

I hate that they called vegan bacon bacon. It's not bacon. I don't care if it tastes like bacon. It's not bacon. Vegan chicken is not chicken. I mean, look, if you want to eat that, more power to you. Who am I to tell you not to eat meat? But don't call it bacon. That's an insult to bacon. They should be forced to put it in quotations, at the very least. Oh, dude, that's a that see now that that solves that problem. But then it's discriminatory, but it's still not bacon.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

It's discriminatory against all the bacons out there that feel some sort of way because they're being misrepresented.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Yeah. Well, speaking of bacon. Okay, hold on. I've got it. Speaking of bacon, you claimed that the cheesesteak is the best sandwich ever. You didn't you declared it. You said it loudly, you said it proudly. And I would be hard pressed to tell you that you're wrong if it wasn't for one particular sandwich that I'm thinking of. For my money, the greatest sandwich of all time is the BLT. It covers all of your bases. You've got the sweet, a little tang in your mayo, you got the tomato, you got the crunch with the lettuce, it's got freaking bacon on it. And you can serve it betwixt literally any two slices of bread you want. I like to have a BLT on an everything bagel. My wife enjoys her BLTs with a little bit of green peppers on it. It's the perfect sandwich.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Do you have a Mount Rushmore of sandwiches? We we're now when if we're doing something like a Mount Rushmore of sandwiches, we've got to allow for all of the little idiosyncratic details, right? This is what I was saying earlier. If we oversimplify it, then everything becomes the same thing. Right? If we say that a sandwich is meat, cheese bread, or meatbread, or cheese bread, or just bread bread. So we've we've broken it. So we have to be able to say that a meatball sandwich and a sausage sandwich are are different. Obviously. Okay, we can't just say that, like, oh well, any, you know, a chicken parm sandwich is also meat and sauce on a roll. That's all the same. All right, so forget our our standard capacity for oversimplifying things. Do you have a sandwich rushmore?

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Well, I think the BLT goes on there. I think that's my George Washington. That's the most prominent space on my Mount Rushmore. It's just listen, it's the perfect sandwich. It's the best of every world that you could possibly want. And as I discussed earlier, you can have it in a variety of different ways. There is no wrong way to have a BLT as far as your bread choice is concerned. I'd like it on ciabatta. I'd like it on facaccia. I like it on a bagel. I'll eat it on white toast. I don't care.

SPEAKER_02 40:22

Would you eat it on a train? Would you eat it in the rain? Alright, so if you're putting the BLT on the on the mount.

SPEAKER_01 40:35

The BLT goes on the mount, Rushmore.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

I'm going to disagree, but only because So you want to be wrong. I'm going to raise you a club sandwich. I'm going to put the club in in the same spot that you're putting the BLT. Still get the bacon, still get the lettuce, still get the tomato, but I get a little bit of turkey and I get a second level. And some ham. Yeah, I'm taking the club sandwich just as a as a style on my rushmore.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Okay. What about ease of distribution into your mouth? Because they cut those things into triangles, and everything falls out of it. A club sandwich, the ease of eating a club sandwich doesn't exist. It's a more difficult sandwich to eat. And yeah, you get a little turkey, you get a little ham, that's fine, but really the star of the show is the bacon. I love me a good club sandwich. If I'm wearing a t-shirt that I don't mind getting mayo and turkey on. However, the bacon is still the star of the show. If you got a club sandwich and they were like, sorry, we're out of bacon, you can still have the sandwich, but you can't get any bacon on it. Are you getting that sandwich still? Because I'm going a different direction.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Same, but I look at it the opposite way. If I'm pulling all of the ingredients out of the fridge and I also have turkey, I'm putting it on the BLT. So for me, the BLT is is the sandwich that you make when you don't have chicken or don't have turkey or don't have whatever else you're putting on. I acknowledge bacon's ability to be the primary meat in the sandwich. However, for me, it usually serves a secondary role. It can't be both. It's more of an understudy type thing, right? If there's if there's no turkey, then we can fill in with extra bacon. Yeah, but if you okay, if you went to the role of turkey tonight will also be played by bacon.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

If if I paid money for a show and I expected to see BLT, if I expected that bacon to be on stage and they're like tonight, the roll of bacon will be played by turkey, I'm getting my money back.

SPEAKER_02 43:06

Well, that's not a BLT, that's just a turkey sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

But the bacon's still the star.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

It shares the stage. All right, we're moving on. All right, who's in what's in spot two?

SPEAKER_01 43:18

I put a lot of thought into this in the last 45 seconds while I was berating you for calling bacon an ancillary character in its own probe. Secondary, not ancillary. Tomatoes are ancillary. I actually did not start enjoying tomatoes until I was like 25. So whenever my mom would make me BLTs when I was a kid, it was just a BL. And then I had a BLT with a tomato on it once, and it completely revolutionized my way of thinking about not only sandwiches, not only that sandwich in particular, but I saw the world differently. I woke up the next day and things were brighter. Thin sliced or thick sliced? Uh thin. As thin as humanly possible. If I had my preference, I I would say a thinner tomato. Because then the like the thicker the tomato, the more tomato juice you're getting everywhere. And then the tomato tries to be the star of the show. And buddy, you're ancillary at best.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Yeah, we could write you out next season and we wouldn't even notice. We got avocado waiting in the wings over here.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Young up and comer. Looking, he just came off a daytime Emmy. Looking to make the jump to prime time.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

All right. So my second spot. My second spot goes to the cheesesteak. I'm right there with you. 100%. And again, we're doing no particular order here.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Um did say second spot though. My Georgia's.

SPEAKER_02 44:46

I'm just kind of working my way across the rushmore, right? Second, second face hole in the mountain, which doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah, I gotta go cheesesteak. Yeah, I'm with you on that one, buddy. And you know, we did talk in the Norton amount about cheesesteaks in another episode. And if you haven't heard that episode, you should go back and listen to it.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Yeah, we're not gonna double dip on that. Go go check out the cheesesteak episode. It's worth it.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Well, speaking of dipping, I think that's where I'm going for my third one. I think it would be the French dip. Or if you are a gun-toting, flag waving American, the Freedom Dip.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

The Freedom Dip served with freedom fries.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Holy crap, man.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

The French dip is a great sandwich. It's a wonderful sandwich that is basically the bastard cousin of a cheesesteak. But you know, that Auz.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

I'm here for it. That's what really sets it apart, too, right? Is that the dippability of the whole thing, even if it's not particularly dippable, you're supposed to.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Oh, yeah, you're getting a whole lot of that that roast beef is staying in that bowl of Auz, falling into the cup. Yeah, but then you get that fork, you slide it back on there, and like the last bite, oh man, I could go for a freedom dip right now.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Uh see, I'm I'm struggling here because I do feel like I do feel like a spot needs to be given to the burger.

SPEAKER_01 46:33

Before we go on to the burger, let me ask you one last French dip question. With or without horseradish?

SPEAKER_02 46:43

With. Something along those lines. And they're kind. Um, same with my roast pork sandwich, which is also hard to not put on this list. Is you know nice South Philly roast pork, dripping in gravy, sharp provolone and some spinach. No, no broccoli rob. Keep that broccoli rob. I don't understand broccoli rob. Who thought that was a good idea? Broccoli Rob? Yeah, dude. I I can't for the life of me. It is horrible. The marketing campaign to take the worst part of broccoli and make it the whole thing. Like someone said, what if it was all STEM? And people went, huh. Why didn't we do it the other way? Everybody knows the best part of the broccoli are the little florets, right? The little tops. Why didn't we make broccoli that was all tops? Why did we make all bottoms?

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Who would why that marketing meeting, he would have been like, all right. It's gonna be all stems. And everybody in the room went, okay. He goes, let me sweeten the deal a little bit. It's going to be the single most bitter thing you ever put in your mouth. And they all went, Okay. And he said, That's it. It's just bitter broccoli.

SPEAKER_02 48:13

It's always either too crunchy or mushy. And it tastes like the inside of a Dr. Scholes that has been used. So so roast pork sandwiches come with spinach. Get them, get them with spinach. Live the real life. That that's my French dip comparison, but I've we only got I only got two spots left, and I've the I'm chasing a couple dragons here that I don't know that we're gonna get to. What about the Cuban? I have a phenomenal affinity for a Cuban sandwich with the ham and the pork and the Swiss and the pickles and the mustard and the and the bread, and it's all panini pressed together and nice and crispy. I I love a good Cuban sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 49:03

Sounds to me like you're throwing that in Abe Lincoln's spot.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

You know, that's a good call. I might kick the club off the list. I'm I'm more likely on a menu. If I'm looking at a menu and and and the menu has a Cuban and a club, I'm more likely to get the Cuban.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

See, I'm more likely to get the club in that instance, but it's only because I forgot about the Cuban. I could probably count on one hand the amount of Cubans I've eaten in my entire life. And it's not because I don't like them, it's just that I forget about them. And sometimes I get in confused with a Rubin, and I don't like Rubens.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

I like Rachel's with the turkey and the coleslaw and the dress. Yeah, I like a good Rachel. Yeah, absolutely. I don't like a Rubin.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

I'm with you on that. Because the Rubens, what? Sauerkraut and corned beef, corned beef, yeah. You know I own a panini press. I don't think I've used it in a year and a half, but I have one. So the next time that we're hanging out, we're making some freaking Cubans, dude.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Making some paninis. Hell yeah. We did Cubans on a camping trip uh recently where we made them in those uh what are they called? The the mountain pie pans. Oh yeah. Sounds really good. They came out fantastically, like on an open flame? Yeah, over a campfire, just kind of stuck it right in, flipped it over. Yeah, they worked really well. I was I was a big fan. Alright, wait, so we have we have one more rushmore spot each.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Well, before before we go on, I think we need to go back a few minutes to what constitutes a sandwich. Because is a rap a sandwich or is it a completely different entity?

SPEAKER_02 51:02

A rap is a different entity for the same reason that a gyro is a different entity, and that's all made possible by the fact that a taco is a different entity, and a burrito is a different entity, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

All right, cool. See, look, these are the things that we need to separate. Hey, answering the tough questions here. Absolutely. Hot takes here on a Tuesday on Split the Corner. But if that's the case, then I think my final Rushmore spot is going to go to a traditional Italian hoagie with the oil, a little vinegar, a little mayo. Put some banana peppers on that bad boy. Yeah, man. Again, I understand that it's it it kind of contradicts my whole thing about it's messy and hard to eat. But like if I'm ordering a good traditional Italian hoagie, I'm I'm probably wearing a t-shirt that I don't care about.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

I think I also have to kind of pull a traditional card, and I I think I have to go with like a traditional chicken sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

I was gonna go buffalo chicken sandwich.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

Just you know, I I I want to give a shout out to the to the burger for honorable mention here, because we didn't put burgers on our list. Um, and I do appreciate a good burger versatility, right? You do whatever you want to a burger. Uh, but uh the greatest sandwich I've ever had in my life was a chicken panini that I got at a little restaurant in a little plaza in Rome. And I've been chasing that sandwich for 15 years, and I've never had anything that was as clean and fresh and hot and handmade and delicious as that sandwich. And I'm sure the fact that I was sitting in some tiny little Roman piazza makes it you know part of the reason I'll never get that again, but I can't look past how good that sandwich was when I'm making a list like this.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

What was on it?

SPEAKER_02 53:19

It was just chicken, fresh mozzarella cheese, some sort of spread, and fresh lettuce. Was it pesto? No, it was like a mayonnaise, it was like a zesty or probably some sort of aioli. I love a good pesto. Me too, especially on a panini.

SPEAKER_01 53:37

Yeah. See, I think that the burger not making either one of our rushmores is interesting because I mean I don't eat a ton of burgers, honestly. It's a it's a once-in-a-while treat for me. But I think because it is, like you said, very versatile, you can throw whatever you want on it, but at the same time, it's the same thing. Like a burger is a burger, it's a burger. Whereas a cheesesteak is not a cheesesteak, is not a cheesesteak, you know? The burger has the versatility to put barbecue sauce on it, whatever you want. But like when you're going for a steak sandwich or you're getting a BLT or you're getting a French dip, like you kind of just want it to be that. Just I I like burgers, man, but I'd think I'd rather have something a little bit more adventurous.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

It might be too versatile. It's too versatile. Because when I because when I think of like the best burgers I've ever had, there's a lot of burgers there. There's, you know, turkey burgers with brie cheese and roasted pears, and then there's like the the burger that you get off the grill when you've been swimming for five hours as a child, and that burger just tastes like life, and it's well done, and it's smothered in ketchup on a on a wonder bread roll, and it's still the greatest burger you've ever had. So like burgers are shout out to the concept, but again, I think it's too versatile. I think there are too many different types of burger.

SPEAKER_01 55:29

Like we could do our own list. Yeah, that might be that might be another maybe when we're in the summer.

SPEAKER_02 55:37

Yeah, burger type.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

Doing some more grilling. Like, let's talk about burgers. But I think for this, okay. So what's let's wrap it up with your give me your final official Mal Rushmore.

SPEAKER_02 55:49

All right, so I'm going Cuban, I'm going cheesesteak, regular chicken sandwich, just sort of, you know, chicken sandwich. Did we not? We didn't get to four. We only did three. I've got four. Alright, did I have a fourth one? I'm like legit stuck. Alright, so here are my four. We're gonna go Cuban, we're gonna go cheese steak, I'm gonna go roast pork sandwich, and then I'm gonna go chicken sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 56:23

All four very solid choices. My Mount Rushmore officially the BLT. The steak sandwich, because I'm not a big cheese guy. The French dip. Without the provolone. And the Italian hoagie.

SPEAKER_02 56:43

Wait, what's the difference between your French dip and your steak sandwich if you don't put cheese on either? Just that you dip one in juice?

SPEAKER_01 56:50

And one of them has caramelized onions.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:54

Yeah. Similar, but different. I think that we have stumbled across a topic that is going to echo through eternity as one that no one will ever be able to. Because we didn't even say peanut butter and jelly. Like peanut butter and jelly didn't make either one of our lists, and it's a phenomenal sandwich. But I'm I'm locking my four in.

SPEAKER_02 57:21

Same. I'm glad that we don't have to come up with an official split the corner sandwich list.

SPEAKER_01 57:26

We only we only overlapped once.

unknown 57:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

And the the cheese debate would just we've had that debate before. I we can't go back break the internet again because I can't put a sandwich on my greatest sandwich list that doesn't have cheese on.

SPEAKER_01 57:43

We can't keep dipping into that well. I don't like cheese. Everyone get over it. So for a quick summary, dipping into that whiz. Oh god, it's disgusting. To sum up this entire episode, the Jetsons lied to us. Alchemy is dumb. The World's Fair continues to go on, even though no one knew that. And the hot dog is a sandwich. Please feel free to reach out. Tell us why our sandwich choices were wrong. Tell us why vegan bacon has every right to be called bacon even though it doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 58:25

Don't tell us that.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

Yeah, don't tell us that. We know we're right. Thanks for listening. As always, the next round is on us. Cheers, guys.