When an Outside/In listener asked the team to weigh in on a debate between him and his wife, perhaps we should have hesitated. But it was too good to resist.

“We have eighteen-year-old twin boys, and sometimes they leave pizza out on the counter. She's convinced it's bad for your health — and I don't think so! Is pizza left overnight on the counter bad for you?” Anthony asked.

For some members of the team, the answer was vindicating. For others, it was unmooring.

Beyond settling this marital debate, in this Outside/Inbox roundup, the team offers our insights on animal perception of earthquakes, the apple supply chain, and finally answers the parasocial question that a surprising number of you have posed.

Featuring Don Schaffner, Martin Wikelski, and Thiago Campbell. Thanks to Anthony, Carolyn, Mande, and Charles for their questions.

We want your questions on food safety! You might hear them on the show. Send them to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a voicemail at 1-844-GO-OTTER.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

More on Martin Wikelski’s earthquake study, including pictures of the Angeli family farm (New York Times)

Icarus, a global project to track animal movement by satellite

Don Schaffner is a co-host of a couple food safety podcasts, including Risky Or Not? Here’s his study on dining hall pizza.

How about more on apples from Outside/In? Listen to our hard cider episode and the cold truth about the refrigeration supply chain with author Nicola Twilley.

SUPPORT

To share your questions and feedback with Outside/In, call the show’s hotline and leave us a voicemail. The number is 1-844-GO-OTTER. No question is too serious or too silly.

Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to join our Patreon and get ad-free episodes of the podcast.

Follow Outside/In on Instagram, TikTok, or join our private discussion group on Facebook.

CREDITS

Host: Nate Hegyi

Reported and mixed by Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and Nate Hegyi

Editing by Justine Paradis and Marina Henke

Our staff also includes Felix Poon and Jessica Hunt

Special thanks to Karina Gallardo and Carlos Lopez.

Taylor Quimby is NHPR’s Director of Podcasts

Music by Rymdklang Soundtracks, Bonkers Beat Club, and bomull

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio

download a transcript

Audio Transcript

Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.

Nate Hegyi: From NHPR, this is Outside/In, a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi, and we have got a lot of the team together today. Producers Justine Paradis –

Justine Paradis: Hello!

Nate Hegyi: – and Marina Henke!

Marina Henke: Hey, hey.

Nate Hegyi: So, Justine, Marina. I want to share a question here that landed in our mailbox. And this is not an ordinary listener question. This is a question that asks us to wade into an apparently long-standing marital debate. You guys ready?

Marina Henke: Uh, yeah!

Justine Paradis: No???

[team laughs]

Justine Paradis: Is this what this hotline is for?

Anthony: Hi, my name is Anthony. I'm in, I live in New Hampshire. Um, I have a long-running debate with my wife. We have 18-year-old twin boys, and sometimes they leave pizza out on the counter. And she's convinced it's bad for your health. And I don't think so! People are hiking with cheese. They probably have cheese in their backpack, hiking to Mount Everest.

Justine Paradis: Maybe?

Anthony: So my question is: is pizza left overnight on the counter bad for you? SIDE NOTE! My mom is from Sicily. I grew up with homemade pizza on the stove, on top of the stove, once it was done. It would stay there for days with cheese on it. So if you can answer this question, I'd be really happy. And thank you very much. Bye.

Justine Paradis: I think that was an all-timer in terms of delivery.

Nate Hegyi: SIDE NOTE!

Justine Paradis: Side note!

Nate Hegyi: I love that. I mean, what do you think though? Should we weigh in?

Marina Henke: I mean, I hesitate to argue with a Sicilian mother. I'm worried of our responsibility here.

Nate Hegyi: Absolutely.

Justine Paradis: I mean, not to quote Princess Bride, but…

Vizzini: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

Nate Hegyi: Do you all take cheese on backpacking trips?

Marina Henke: Yeah.

Justine Paradis: Yeah. Gouda. The wax wrapped Gouda.

Marina Henke: Oh, I take unwaxed bad cheese that, like, forms into the shape of my bag as I'm hiking.

Justine Paradis: Unwaxed!

Nate Hegyi: Absolutely. It gets all melty and gross.

MUSIC: Kavorka, Rymdklang Soundtrack

Nate Hegyi: Okay! Is Anthony right? Is it risky to leave pizza out on the counter and eat it the next day? The answer to that question and more is coming up. Because this is another edition of our Outside/Inbox round-up! This is when we dig through our mailbag to answer questions from our absolutely amazing listeners. And we’re gonna talk about farm animals, earthquakes, and one person’s almost galactic obsession with apples.

Justine Paradis: This is Outside Inbox earthquake pizza apple edition.

Nate Hegyi: Great theme!

Marina Henke: Let's go.

Nate Hegyi: We'll be right back.

MUSIC SWELL AND FADE

PRE-ROLL

Nate Hegyi: This is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi, and I am here with two of our producers today, Marina Henke and Justine Paradis, and we are going to go through our listener mailbox today. So, before the break, we heard our first question: the center of a long-standing debate between our listener, Anthony, and his wife.

Anthony: Is pizza left overnight on the counter bad for you?

Nate Hegyi: Okay. Okay. So first off, how do you guys treat pizza? Is it going right in the fridge or is it sitting out on the counter overnight?

Justine Paradis: So, I used to run a wood-fired pizza oven when I was in my early 20s, like a food truck.

Nate Hegyi: Mm. Yeah.

Justine Paradis: And I would often bring leftovers out and just like, leave it for my roommates where it would remain for hours! Definitely overnight at least.

Marina Henke: Do you mean like, the box is just left on the counter, pizza still in it?

Justine Paradis: This isn’t a part of your family tradition, Marina?

Marina Henke: 100% not. I had never heard this happening before.

Justine Paradis: Oh wow!

Marina Henke: I will let pizza, like linger on a table and that doesn't bother me. But once the day is done, once the sun sets, that pizza is going into a refrigerator.

Nate Hegyi: I am the exact same way. Like it can sit for a few hours, but that thing needs to be put in the refrigerator overnight. I think that's because, like when I was a kid, my dad was really stern about this.

Justine Paradis: Mm.

Nate Hegyi: Like he would tell me like, no, if I ate pizza that had been left out overnight, I would get really sick. And so I just don't do it now. But it turns out my dad was probably wrong.

Marina Henke: Oh!

Don Schaffner: Generally, pizza that has been left out overnight on the counter is fine to eat the next day.

Justine Paradis: Yes! [laughs]

Nate Hegyi: [laughs]

Marina Henke: Vindicated.

Nate Hegyi: So this is Don Schaffner. He's a food microbiologist at Rutgers University, where he ran a study analyzing two decades worth of data from pizzas left out at the university's dining hall.

Justine Paradis: Wait, what?

Nate Hegyi: Yeah, yeah. Two decades.

Justine Paradis: Just like that is such a rich petri dish. I feel like the university dining hall.

Nate Hegyi: Oh, yeah. I don't want to think about that petri dish. So, Don, he looked at bacterial growth and found that a pizza could sit at room temperature without posing any problems for eight hours. And that's being conservative. Now, to understand why we have to break down a pizza to its individual components. So first there's the crust.

Don Schaffner: So the crust is essentially bread. And of course we leave bread out at room temperature, right?

Nate Hegyi: Then we've got the tomato sauce which is somewhat acidic. And that's important here because acid slows the growth of bacteria.

Don Schaffner: So that acidic tomato sauce helps in terms of giving it some preservative power.

Justine Paradis: That makes sense.

Nate Hegyi: So we've got the crust. We've got tomato sauce. What is next y'all?

Marina Henke: Cheese!

Nate Hegyi: Exactly. So cheese may not have as low a pH as tomato sauce. But because of the fermentation process, cheese is also slightly acidic. And especially when it comes to like popular pizza cheeses like mozzarella, it is a food with what Don calls a relatively low water activity.

Don Schaffner: So water activity is a measure of the water in the food that's available to support the growth of microorganisms.

Nate Hegyi: So basically the lower the water activity, the less growth of bacteria. And like Justine knows, all pizzas get thrown into an oven, maybe a wood-fired oven. And this dries out the cheese even more, but it also kills any dangerous bacteria that may still have been hanging on.

Justine Paradis: So you're kind of like making it like ground zero at that point.

Nate Hegyi: Exactly. And of course, finally you have the toppings.

Don Schaffner: The meats that are on pizza are going to be already cooked. In the case of pepperoni, it's cured. Uh, most pepperonis are actually already shelf-stable.

Nate Hegyi: But things might get a little bit dicey if you shake it up like, say, swap out pepperoni for hamburger.

Marina Henke: It's my favorite pizza topping, actually.

Nate Hegyi: Really? Hamburger?

Marina Henke: It was classic growing up. Yep.

Nate Hegyi: So Midwest!

Marina Henke: [laughs]

Nate Hegyi: So the reason why switching up meats can be riskier is that some spore-forming bacteria on beef can survive in the oven. And if that were to happen, and then the pizza was left on a counter, the bacteria would start to multiply.

Marina Henke: Ew.

Nate Hegyi: But that is not that common. Don’s biggest concern was actually any veggie toppings. That's because veggies have a higher moisture content, and many of them aren't very acidic. But again, the cooking process would kill any bacteria. And unlike beef —

Don Schaffner: There’s probably not a lot of spore-forming pathogens on fresh vegetables.

Nate Hegyi: Now, we should say: technically, the USDA recommends throwing out any perishable food that's been left at room temperature for more than two hours. But Don says that's a broad recommendation that doesn't really take into account the individual characteristics of foods like pizza.

Don Schaffner: Am I saying that if you had a perfect storm scenario, you could not give someone food poisoning? No, but I would say, generally speaking, based on the characteristics of pizza and the way pizza is prepared, I'm going to say not risky to leave it on the counter overnight.

Nate Hegyi: So Justine was right.

Justine Paradis: It is kind of vindicating. When I was, um, running that wood-fired pizza oven, we were told by the health department that we couldn't like, roll out the dough and prep the pizza outside —

Marina Henke: Oh my gosh!

Justine Paradis: — because like during the two minutes when you're doing that, like a bird could poop on it or a leaf could blow in. And it was so over the top. We were like, it's going to an 800 degree oven.

Nate Hegyi: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I'm guessing that if a bird did take a poop on your pizza crust, you'd probably be like, I'm gonna throw that away.

Justine Paradis: Yeah, would I serve that to my customers? Would I not notice?!

Nate Hegyi: Maybe that's why you don't run a wood-fired pizza place anymore. You were serving bird poop pizza.

Marina Henke: Had to turn to journalism.

MUSIC: Kavorka, Rymdklang Soundtrack ending

Nate Hegyi: Alright. Next question.

Mande: Hey, Outside/Inbox, this is Mande calling from northern Illinois. And my question for you is: can animals really sense earthquakes before they're about to strike?

Nate Hegyi: Mmmm!

Marina Henke: That's a good one. I feel like that's something I've heard a lot and don't really know any actual science about it.

Nate Hegyi: Have you all been in an earthquake before?

Marina Henke: Uh, yeah.

Justine Paradis: Just the, like, really vague east coast ones.

Nate Hegyi: I've been in only one. That was an actual, like, rumbler. It was actually in Salt Lake City of all places. Uh, and I remember our dogs freaking out — waking up and being like, that's odd. And then all of a sudden the whole room shook and I was like, oh my God! And just like, panic attack. Yeah, it was wild. So I think they might be able to sense it.

Justine Paradis: That's fascinating anecdotal evidence here.

Nate Hegyi: Exactly.

Justine Paradis: But I actually have a little bit more than anecdotal evidence in my back pocket at this point — shall I?

Nate Hegyi: Please do.

Marina Henke: Do.

Justine Paradis: We know earthquakes are famously unpredictable, but humans have long observed warning signs. Nevertheless, in the natural world, like the Chinese noticed rats and snakes fleeing their burrows.

Marina Henke: Ah.

Justine Paradis: The ancient Greeks noticed like this weird fog rolling in before earthquakes.

Marina Henke: Wow.

Justine Paradis: And in Venezuela, locals would say:

Martin Wikelski: Just look to the chicken and the donkeys and the pigs. You know, when they go crazy, that earthquake is coming.

Nate Hegyi: Huh!

Justine Paradis: So I talked to Martin Wikelski, who's director of the Department of Migration at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and he explained that this is actually a pretty hard thing to study, because think about it: an earthquake is unpredictable.

Nate Hegyi: Right.

Justine Paradis: So to understand what animals do during an earthquake, you have to know what they were doing before and after. So you would have had to already be in the place the earthquake is going to happen, already recording the animals before the earthquake.

Marina Henke: Impossible!

Nate Hegyi: Yeah. Almost impossible.

Justine Paradis: But a few years ago, Martin got lucky in a research sense.

Martin Wikelski: There was an opportunity in Italy where there was an earthquake. It was devastating, but it hadn't really killed people.

Marina Henke: Okay.

Justine Paradis: So they went there. They got to work. The team set up at a local farm, and they were planning to study the aftershocks to record the behavior of the animals there. And just like, get a response.

Nate Hegyi: Smart.

Justine Paradis: But then a new earthquake happened to strike very close to the farm. So they just by chance happened to be there, already observing before, during, and after the quake.

Marina Henke: Yeah. Truly a once in a lifetime moment, probably.

Justine Paradis: Right. So, the cows at this farm were first to react.

Martin Wikelski: But they were not getting hyperactive. They were freezing. So total quiet in a cow stable that made the dogs go crazy because this is something that never happens.

Nate Hegyi: Mm.

Justine Paradis: And then it was a domino effect throughout the barnyard. All that barking made the sheep go wild, and then the chickens freaked out. And then it got back to the cows.

Martin Wikelski: And then finally the cows went mad. And then everybody was completely, outrageously crazy for 45 minutes.

Nate Hegyi: 45 minutes?!

Justine Paradis: Although to be clear, this would start happening hours before an earthquake struck. But what were the animals sensing to cause this chaos?

Marina Henke: Yeah.

Justine Paradis: Here is the hypothesis.

Martin Wikelski: We think it comes from the static, basically from the ions that are going into the air from the future hypocenter.

Justine Paradis: And the hypocenter is like the place deep in the earth where the pressure is happening, where the earthquake originates.

Martin Wikelski: There are these enormous pressures on rocks, and that means that material, rock material is going into the air, sort of subliming.

Marina Henke: Subliming.

Justine Paradis: Don't you love how he put that?

Nate Hegyi: That's so interesting to me because, you know, we are also animals and I would imagine that we must sense something as well.

Justine Paradis: Totally! And there's a couple of things that Martin mentioned. One is, you know, think about a thunderstorm. We do feel something. It’s like static in the air. Basically, like, the hairs on your arm are standing up, you know?

Marina Henke: Yeah, I grew up in the Midwest and in tornado season, we would all, like, remark at the swimming pool. We would get out of the water and we'd be like, ooh, we gotta go.

Nate Hegyi: Uh-huh! Yep. I remember that exact feeling, just like a chill, you know?

Justine Paradis: I know, and it feels weird for us, like think about it, animals have a lot more hair.

Martin Wikelski: A body of an animal that is completely full with hair. If you have a static going around that, it must feel completely weird.

Justine Paradis: They're evolved to detect things that are unusual. They're hyper-tuned to the unknown.

Nate Hegyi: Yeah.

Justine Paradis: They're not necessarily hyper-tuned to like an earthquake is coming, but they're like, something is really weird. So, there's other research out there too, like in the lead-up to an earthquake in the Peruvian Andes, scientists tracking animal activity with wildlife cameras observed a significant drop in animal activity approaching the earthquake, notably rodents. Um, and, you know, with thinking about this goal of this research, supporting advance warning systems that eventually might be able to, you know, help us know — according to Martin, that is a possibility.

Martin Wikelski: It is at an early stage. Um, but that is the future. Absolutely.

Nate Hegyi: Yeah. I was going to say if animals are able to feel this change, um, in ions, like, then we should be able to create the technology that that feels it too.

Justine Paradis: Very, you know, specific worldview that technology would be able to figure this out. Maybe!

Marina Henke: I just like the idea of taking advantage of our anxious dogs and letting them help us know something terrible is coming.

Justine Paradis: I mean, Martin's doing kind of a combination of this, where there are people who are putting trackers on dogs and cats all over the world and other animals all over the world, and trying to like aggregate that material. This project is called Icarus, to kind of get information both about like migration, animal disease, behavior, and then also maybe answer questions about like, oh, is an earthquake coming in this area?

Marina Henke: Well, we've got someone on this call with three dogs. And so I think that's a good candidate to get some trackers on them. What do you think, Nate? How would your dogs, how would your dogs do?

Nate Hegyi: Oh, they'd probably just bark at everything all the time. Earthquake? No. Cat. Okay. What is that? Earthquake? No. Kid walked past the house.

Justine Paradis: But you did notice that one time! You know?

Nate Hegyi: Yeah.

Marina Henke: That's true.

Nate Hegyi: Yeah, that was that one time. They were acting weird.

MUSIC: maskros, bomull

Justine Paradis: Did you notice a difference in sound in the way they responded to the earthquake versus how they respond to other things, like a cat outside or something?

Nate Hegyi: Justine. It was six in the morning. I was zonked out. I was probably just being like, shut up, just go to bed. What’s happening?!

Justine Paradis: I guess they're a little bit like the dog that cried wolf.

Nate Hegyi: 1,000,000%. They are the dog that cried wolf.

MUSIC SWELL

Nate Hegyi: Alright, we are going to take a break in a minute — but first: we need your help! We actually loved answering that first pizza question so much that we've decided to expand the idea. We are now planning an entire episode answering food safety questions. Like, is it risky to eat a ham sandwich if it hangs out in your backpack on an all day hike? Is there truth to the five second rule? I think there is. And just how safe is our food system? And we would love to include as many listener questions as possible on this topic. So please call in! Send us your questions. You might hear them on the show. You can leave us a voicemail on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER. Or you can email us. We love voice memos. Send them to outsidein@nhpr.org. All that's going to be in the show notes as well. Alright, with that, Outside/In is going to be right back after a break.

BREAK

Nate Hegyi: From NHPR, this is Outside/In, a show where curiosity and the natural world collide. I am Nate Hegyi, here with our producers, Justine Paradis and Marina Henke. So for our next question, we have been getting a bunch of different versions of this one over the past year or so. And so we thought we would finally address it.

Justine Paradis: At long last.

Nate Hegyi: This one came from Carolyn calling from New York.

Carolyn: Um, feel free to not answer this if it's too weird. Um, it's sort of a Mandela Effect... I feel like Justine's last name pronunciation has changed. I remember it being pronounced Justine Paradise for a really long time, and now it's pronounced Justine Paradis. And I just want to know, am I crazy?

Justine Paradis: What if I was like, yeah, it's always been Paradis…?

Nate Hegyi: Yeah. I don't know what this, I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Marina Henke: I don’t know what you're talking about Carolyn. We have never gotten more emails about anything in Outside/In’s history than this change.

Justine Paradis: I know.

Nate Hegyi: It's like almost every episode we get at least one email about it.

Justine Paradis: Honestly, I've gotten multiple apologies from people at work about this being like, I've always been mispronouncing your name. I'm so sorry. And I was like, oh no, like I should – I know that stomach drop horror feeling. I feel bad about that.

Marina Henke: Tell us, Justine.

Justine Paradis: Yeah, I'll tell it. Well, first of all, she mentioned Mandela Effect. Do you know what this is?

Nate Hegyi: Yes.

Marina Henke: Yeah.

Nate Hegyi: It's essentially a phenomenon where a lot of different people misremember something in weirdly the same way… and it’s like, wait… did that actually happen? Like, I think it’s named for Nelson Mandela?

Justine Paradis: Yeah, when Nelson Mandela went to prison, somehow it was like this collective hallucination that people thought he actually died — so for a long time, it was a thing, apparently, people were like, “wait, Nelson Mandela is still alive? I thought he died years ago.” And so many people thought that, that it became the Mandela effect.

Marina Henke: That’s so nuts.

Justine Paradis: There's, the Berenstain Bears thing is another example.

Nate Hegyi: Yes.

Justine Paradis: Like, everyone remembers “Berenstein Bears.” And then you go back and look at the books and it's spelled differently than you remember.

Marina Henke: Wait, how's it spelled?

Justine Paradis: The last part — the last syllable is what I think of. It’s S-T-A-I-N, it’s spelled STAIN. And I thought it was BerenSTEIN.

Marina Henke: Wait no that is NOT how I remember it.

Justine Paradis: I know!

Nate Hegyi: I also thought it was like BEARenstein Bears, like an actual bear, rawr.

Marina Henke: Let this be the Mandela effect happening live.

Justine Paradis: So the idea is like there was some glitch in the universe, actually. Like that was the reality.

Marina Henke: I see.

Justine Paradis: But now we're a bad reality — or a different reality. But no, no, no one has been pronouncing my name except in the sense that everyone has, including me. Because basically, somewhere in my family lineage, someone, my family is French-Canadian. Someone decided to pronounce it in an anglicized way. And last year, I don't know, I was about to have a baby, and I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I wanted my baby to start her life with the original pronunciation. So it's like the French way, basically. And unless she decides in 30 years to change it back. Um, this is what we're doing for now.

Nate Hegyi: That's great.

Justine Paradis: I guess it's extremely common. And I feel like a little bit bashful, but I also, you know, YOLO.

Marina Henke: But also YOLO.

MUSIC: Add It Up (Blah Blah), Bonkers Beat Club

Justine Paradis: All right. Answering the hard hitting, important questions. This is public service.

Marina Henke: The people wanted to know.

MUSIC SWELL AND FADE

Nate Hegyi: Alright, we ready for our next question?

Marina Henke: Yeah!

Charles: Hi, Outside/In. This is Charles Denaski from La Verne, California. I like apples, apples [stumbles]. Jesus Christ.

Justine Paradis: Try again, Charles!

Marina Henke: We've all been there.

Background voice: Take two.

Justine Paradis: Take two.

Charles: Take two. I like apples. And by, I mean I like apples. I like apples a lot. Like we buy three 2-pound bags of apples a week. I eat a lot of Cosmic Crisp apples. And I was curious, what are the chances that I eat an apple from the same tree, I guess often or in my lifetime? Or — just curious about the possibility of that. Thank you. Bye.

Marina Henke: I love this question.

Nate Hegyi: I love, just, his delivery. “I like apples.” I just, ugh!

Justine Paradis: Do you guys have anything like that? Where someone's like, ‘oh yeah, I like that too.’ And you're like, ‘no, you don't understand. I like this more than you like it.’

Marina Henke: Yeah, mine's barbecue sauce. I like it a lot.

Nate Hegyi: Nice. I was gonna say mine's decidedly less healthy than apples.

Marina Henke: Yeah.

Nate Hegyi: Mine would be like fried chicken. It's like you don't understand. Fried chicken and me, we have a very contentious relationship. It's not healthy. It's not good. I love it. Okay. So. So, Marina, you answered this one.

Marina Henke: Yeah, I did, I was psyched, and honestly, the answers are everything I wanted. So I will say, the first time I listened to this question, I thought, I am going to try to figure out where Charles is buying his apples from. Right? Like, is he buying them from Walmart, from the farmers market, from a local, you know, organic grocery store? But I went back and I listened to the tape and he actually, he specifies what kind of apple variety he buys.

Charles: I eat a lot of Cosmic Crisp apples.

Marina Henke: So, Justine, Nate, do either of you know the state where Cosmic Crisp apples are grown?

Nate Hegyi: Washington. Right?

Marina Henke: Washington State. So, yes, it is the only state where Cosmic Crisp apples are grown, which means that even if Charles wanted to go and pick two apples from a local orchard in La Verne, California, he could not. This meant something very clear. I had to talk to someone in Washington.

Thiago Campbell: Yeah. So, first off, I just want to say great choice picking Cosmic Crisp.

Nate Hegyi: This has got to be somebody from the Cosmic Crisp, uh, company or whoever makes them. Right?

Justine Paradis: This is Big Cosmic Crisp talking.

Nate Hegyi: Yup.

Marina Henke: I'll say, it's just a huge Cosmic Crisp lover. This is Thiago Campbell. He is an educator on Washington State University's Tree Fruit Extension Program. And to cut to the chase, Thiago's answer to Charles's question is this: It is unlikely, but not impossible. However, not provable.

Justine Paradis: You could never prove if you had an apple from the same tree.

Marina Henke: Exactly.

Nate Hegyi: Interesting.

Marina Henke: So the reason why it's actually going to require us to sort of look at how a Cosmic Crisp apple goes from an orchard to the produce aisle.

Thiago Campbell: All the apples in the state and in the U.S. are harvested by hand at the moment. So that's harvested from a person, put into their picking bag, and then that is placed into bins.

Justine Paradis: All of them harvested by hand. I would not have guessed that. I would have guessed we were mechanistic in this way at some, at some scale.

Nate Hegyi: I'm not so surprised because I've ridden my bike through Washington State.

Justine Paradis: Mmm.

Nate Hegyi: And I remember I was in like the apple orchard area of the state, and there was just people out at five in the morning just picking apples.

Justine Paradis: Shout out to farm workers. Holy crap.

Nate Hegyi: Seriously, yeah.

Marina Henke: Hardest job there is. So, like Thiago said, once these apples are handpicked they’re put into a bin. These bins, I don't want you to imagine them though as like these little bins that maybe you put like, I don't know, books into or something. They are huge. They hold 900 pounds of apples.

Nate Hegyi: Wow.

Marina Henke: It’s like a bathtub.

Thiago Campbell: It's pretty big. Like you can sit probably at least five people in there.

Marina Henke: So the size of this like bathtub-sized bin, it means that already at this point in the process, apples are entering bins with apples from several different trees, lowering Charles's chance by the minute. The bins are then trucked to a packing house, where they arrive with apples from dozens of other orchards.

Thiago Campbell: And then they're either stored in refrigerated air or they're stored under controlled atmosphere, which is just simply bringing down the oxygen and the carbon dioxide concentration in the room so that those fruit can be stored for longer times.

Marina Henke: I will say though, as they are sitting and as they are getting older, yet still fine to eat, for the most part, they are not moving around with apples from a ton of different trees. They are still in their bin with apples from the orchard that they came from. But when an order comes in —

Thiago Campbell: They're put onto a packing line where they're washed, cleaned, they're waxed or left unwaxed.

Marina Henke: So this is the moment that is important for the unlikelihood of this question. Apples are mixed from all of these different bins into the same pile of apples, for lack of a better descriptor. Multiple apples are washed together. They're then spread out on a big conveyor belt, and they are dropped into the bags that, you know, you or I are picking up at the store. And so at this point, for the most part, packing houses, they actually are trying to keep all bins from an orchard together for traceability purposes. So let's say they needed to know where an apple came from. I did find out, though, that occasionally that is actually not true. If you're packing apples by grade or by size, you might actually be mixing up apples from many different orchards. But, in general, these are bags of apples from the same orchards with thousands of trees in them. So what does all this mean for Charles — right, you all?

Justine Paradis: Right?

Marina Henke: So, if during the bagging process, a packing house keeps all the bins of an orchard together, and then if these bags are all bought and then sold to the same distribution center and then to the same grocery store, there is technically a chance that a consumer could wind up eating an apple from the same tree.

Justine Paradis: Right, it's never zero.

Marina Henke: And I will say it's especially not zero if you are eating a ton of apples in the same week when an order comes in, which is what Charles is doing because he's buying so many apples in a week.

Justine Paradis: So, you’re saying there’s a chance.

Nate Hegyi: [laughs]

Marina Henke: I will add that if we are looking at like within the year of Charles eating these apples, it is way less likely in at least the more practical side of answering this question. And that is because grocery stores, they're not buying their apples from one orchard. They're buying them from these distribution centers that are getting apples from all over the state of Washington.

Thiago Campbell: It's unlikely with the amount of trees we have and the amount of fruit that we produce.

Justine Paradis: Apple trees, though, you know, you can't get the same apple tree variety from seed — like apples don't work like that. They're all grafted, like all Cosmic Crisps are grafted from, I think, the same tree.

Nate Hegyi: Yeah. So there — so really there's only one Cosmic tree.

Marina Henke: So, maybe every apple Charles eats comes from the same tree.

Nate Hegyi: Is from the same tree.

Justine Paradis: Technically. Spiritually.

Marina Henke: All right, we got a spiritual answer and we got a practical answer. Charles, you can take your pick.

MUSIC: Nemes, Bomull

Nate Hegyi: That is it for Outside/In. But before we go.

Anthony: SIDE NOTE!

Nate Hegyi: if you're interested in listening to ad-free episodes of Outside In and supporting the show at the same time, you are in luck. We have got a Patreon where you can get access to our ad-free feed and more perks. Link in — guess where? — the show notes.

This episode was produced and reported by Justine Paradis, Marina Henke, and me, your host, Nate Hegyi.

It was edited by Marina Henke and Justine Paradis. Taylor Quimby is NHPR’s Director of Podcasts. Our staff also includes Felix Poon and Jessica Hunt.

Special thanks to Karina Gallardo and Carlos Lopez.

Music came from Rymdklang Soundtracks, Bonkers Beat Club, and bomull.

And if you are still listening, remember: we want your food safety questions! Our email is outsidein@nhpr.org.

Outside/In is a production of NHPR.