Ben-Nadav Hafri
Appearances
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
So armed with one of the all-time weirdest, most stacked casts in the history of film, a comparatively small budget of $3 million, a slot on an upstart cable network, and a script based on a 1940s screwball comedy that's been punched up by two of the writers behind a big 80s blockbuster, an Austrian former bodybuilder, fresh off his repeat performance as a time-traveling cyborg, prepared to direct his first Christmas film.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And everyone was about to find out whether or not he could. Christmas in Connecticut, the remake, began filming about two months before Christmas in Los Angeles.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Because Arnold Schwarzenegger had never before directed a feature film, though let the record show he had directed an episode of the TV show Tales from the Crypt, the production arranged for things to film more or less in the order they happen in the film. There's a lot less to keep track of continuity-wise that way. But this also posed a problem.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
One of the anxieties of adapting a great work of art is figuring out how to make it your own. The 1992 made-for-TV remake of Christmas in Connecticut does this immediately by introducing its male lead, a park ranger named Jefferson Jones, mid-workout routine in his mountain cabin.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
If you're looking for signs that this is not your grandmother's Christmas in Connecticut, the sight of Chris Christopherson as Jefferson Jones sweating after busting out some chin-ups on a beam in his cabin is your first warning. A man on the television offers some brisk exposition while he cools down.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
The phone rings. Another ranger is calling to tell Jones a kid has gotten lost in the blizzard. He has to go out and find him. This is the fabled action sequence Schwarzenegger had requested. They shot the blizzard on a soundstage. It's the moment Jefferson Jones becomes a hero, which is why he gets invited to be a guest of Elizabeth Blaine's for her Christmas special in Connecticut.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
It's got to look epic. It's got to have that Arnold Schwarzenegger feeling. Unfortunately, Terminator, this is not. Here's Jim Wilberger, director of production.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Schwarzenegger wanted Jeopardy, but this kind of looks like a snowball fight gone awry. Jones stumbles over a very small hill holding a child that looks like it might be a mannequin. He's groaning and yelling, but his lips aren't moving. So, tough start.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Luckily, though, a lot of the film is set inside Elizabeth Blaine's fake Connecticut house, where she's shooting a Christmas special in celebration of Jones. The bulk of production happened there, so the whole crew set up at a house in South Pasadena for the real work. This introduced Arnold to the second problem of directing, actor ego management and the issue of his trailer.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Diane Cannon was the star of the film, but she was maybe realizing that this production was all about the director. Schwarzenegger, though, was dealing with other problems. Namely, he had chosen one of the hardest genres for his first major directing foray. Screwball comedy is like dancing on the head of a pin. It thrives on chaos, but it has to be a kind of controlled chaos.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
With his big personality cast, low budget, short timeline, and hastily rewritten script, Schwarzenegger had an excess of chaos and a minimum of control. I mean, you have one somewhat disgruntled actress portraying fake Martha Stewart, and another who's a macho park ranger, but who for no apparent reason relays this backstory partway through the movie.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
This is, I'm pretty sure, the only time in the entire film Jefferson Jones' past as chair of the University of Chicago's comparative literature department is mentioned. And I love Chris Christopherson, but most of the rest of his performance veers between stiff and oddly sexually charged.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
So you've got two characters who really just barely hang together. And then you have to direct them in tightly choreographed, zany sequences that have got to feel plausible, yet also hilarious. For instance, the scene with the baby. Remember, in Christmas in Connecticut, Elizabeth is a total fraud.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
She doesn't know how to cook, it's not even her house in Connecticut, and she's got this fake staged family with her, including a fake baby. She had to keep up appearances for the sake of her column. In the original film, there's a lovely scene where she and Jefferson Jones give her fake baby a bath.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
She, a supposed domestic goddess, is meant to bathe her child, which she suspiciously has no clue how to do. He steps in and does it for her like a total pro. It's part of why she falls in love with him. And because it's so well executed in the original film, we believe they're falling in love in this totally implausible moment.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Now this also happens in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
What happens next is the greatest travesty in the history of bath time. It's as if you gave two aliens a baby and said, give this a bath, not realizing that on the planet they're from, not only are there no babies or baths, but actually there's not even water.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
What happens is they just drench the baby in shampoo, and then they barely wash any of it out. On the bath scale, it's two rubber duckies out of ten. But the premise of the scene is that Jefferson Jones is crushing it.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
It's like on SNL when the actors break and laugh. When Elizabeth's like, I'm not sure if we got all the soap out. And Jefferson's like, well, we didn't. That's the true reaction. And it must be improvised. But then they go back to the scripted version where Jones is doing a great job. Most of the people on set have some kind of moment like this.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Unlike Malcolm, I am a great lover of Christmas movies. Every year, as soon as Thanksgiving's over, I'm firing up The Bishop's Wife, Miracle on 34th Street, or It's a Wonderful Life. And then there's my favorite Christmas movie, a little less famous. The 1945 romantic comedy Christmas in Connecticut. I've watched it pretty much every year since I was little.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
So it was kind of hectic on set. And yet, I think you can hear in people's voices how much they love telling this story. Pretty much across the board, this was a happy memory for the people I spoke to. Not least of all because they never lost sight of just how improbable it all was.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
The forehead thing. You're not the first person to bring that up. Several people mentioned to me that Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorite put-down was to call someone a forehead. This actually made it into the movie, when Elizabeth Blaine and Jefferson Jones get pulled over by the cops mid-slay ride. The one where you can see the wheels? This happens.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
This is actually a big part of why I love this movie. It has a kind of free jazz improvisatory quality to it. It's oddly self-referential and also very sweet. It's like how you can hear in someone's voice when they're smiling. That's how this movie feels.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Because even at the risk of himself being labeled a forehead who couldn't direct the movie, Arnold Schwarzenegger was showing up every day and putting in his all. For the film buffs in the crew, it was a dream come true just to work with him, or with a legend like Tony Curtis.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
After 20 days of shooting, the film wrapped. They had a party at Arnold Schwarzenegger's restaurant. It was around Christmas time, and they all got sweatshirts with the name of the film on the front.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Later, Jim was kind enough to send me a photo of the sweatshirt. It said on the back, More snow, you forehead. There's my Schwarzenegger impression. With the film in the can, post-production and premiere is loomed. That's after the break.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Before we get to the premiere of Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1992 Christmas in Connecticut remake, I want to tell you about something that happened earlier this year.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Malcolm interviewed Mitch Albom live on stage at the 92nd Street Y. Albom is the best-selling author of some ungodly number of books, but he's probably most famous for Tuesdays with Maury. He and Malcolm were there to talk about his new novel about the Holocaust, The Little Liar. They were warming up with some Mitch backstory about his time as a musician in New York.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Barbara Stanwyck plays a magazine columnist who's famous for entertaining on her grand Connecticut farm. She's known as a great cook. It's the end of World War II, and her magazine's publisher has an idea for a great feature. She'll host a returning war hero for Christmas on her farm. There's just one problem. It's all a lie. She doesn't live in Connecticut.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
I was backstage at this event, peering out. I hadn't read Mitch's book. I was up to something else.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
At this point, the audience of people who had come that night to hear the author of Tuesdays with Maury discuss the Holocaust noticed the electric piano behind him.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Yes, it was my keyboard. And yes, I had planted it there.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
That would be Stanley M. Brooks, executive producer of Christmas in Connecticut. Stan and Mitch were roommates at Brandeis.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
She lives in a tiny apartment in New York, and she has no clue how to cook.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
They planned to play it over the credits. With a Mitch album closing track in hand, Christmas in Connecticut was almost ready to debut. Most made-for-TV movies you just put out on television, but not this one.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Janet Brownell, the screenwriter, was not having such a good night.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. TNT was running promos nonstop.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
I don't know if you caught that, but the film came out in April, one week before Easter. As one reviewer put it, quote, don't ask me why a Christmas movie is premiering in April. As his then-wife Maria Shriver reflected, he just does. He's a big one on don't think about it or talk about it. Do it.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Oliver North of Iran Contra fame. The film was a big hit in the Beltway. Suffice it to say, this made-for-television Christmas movie had an unusually big reception, but it also didn't really do much to establish Arnold Schwarzenegger as a director. The reviews were mixed.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Chaos ensues. It's a classic screwball comedy and a total delight. But the thing I really want to tell you about in this episode is what happened after I discovered, quite by accident, that there was a remake of this favorite Christmas movie of mine. An action-packed, star-studded, joke-filled, really very different version of the original. Made for TV.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
I realize I've had a lot of fun with this movie. And gun to my head, do I think it's good? No. But do I love it? Obviously, yes. Because it's so totally weird and overcommitted to its bit that it has a kind of joyfulness to it that honestly gets me in the Christmas spirit.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And at its core, like the best Christmas films, the story behind the movie is a story of love and friendship between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stan Brooks. Two men brought together by a love of making movies. After the film, Stan and Arnold stayed in touch. Stan even moved into Arnold Schwarzenegger's office building. Their kids played football together.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And even though they never made another movie together, their collaboration had one more act. Almost ten years to the day from when Christmas in Connecticut began shooting, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the governor of California. At the time, there was a lot of hand-wringing over an issue called runaway production.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Lots of states had started offering tax breaks to lure films into shooting somewhere other than California. It had become a real problem for Hollywood as an industry town. And this was one of the crises Schwarzenegger would have to face in his new role as governor. Now, the way people talked about his becoming governor was the same way they talked about his becoming a director.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
So it only makes sense that he wanted Stan Brooks in his administration.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Stan joined the California Film Commission. And over the next few years, he was a key part of the lobbying efforts to pass the tax credits that would make it easier to film in California.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
The first tax credits passed in 2009. They've been renewed ever since. So back to our original question. Why did Arnold Schwarzenegger direct this bizarre one-off Christmas film? I found my answer in a story Stan told me.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
or three a year if i'm in the future business i'm lucky if i make one every other year every three years i go i i'm happy with my life he goes well that's fantastic this story really hit home for me because i get what that's like to just love making something even a kind of improbably dense story about the making of the remake of a christmas movie
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
It's like Stan said, if you love making movies, or anything, it's just a gift to get to make more, even if they're maybe not the best. Especially if it's clear how much fun you had making whatever it is you're making. So, to close, let me just share one quote from the very last page of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. A passage about Scrooge after he's seen the light. Quote,
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. A kind of shocking twist, if you ask me. I mean, why would the Terminator take on Christmas in Connecticut? So I did what any good Christmas fiend would do. I talked to a dozen people about something that happened 30 years ago for way too many hours to get the real story.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Some people laughed to see the alteration in him. But he let them laugh, and little heeded them. For he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset. His own heart laughed. And that was quite enough for him.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Maybe Stan and Arnold didn't make It's a Wonderful Life, but it seems to me like their own hearts were laughing. So from all of us here at Revisionist History, happy holidays, you foreheads. See you in the new year. Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Nadeff-Haffrey, and Lucy Sullivan, with Nina Byrd-Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakerji.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Fact-checking on this episode by Sam Russick, a resident Schwarzenegger fan. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mastering by Jake Korsky. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, David Arnott, Linda Berman, Iris Grossman, and Scott Sassa. I'm Ben Nadeff-Haffrey.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And I discovered in the process what I have come to regard as the greatest Christmas tale of all time.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
That's Stan Brooks. In the early 1990s, he was an independent made-for-TV movie producer.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
TNT launched in 1988, at the start of the cable television revolution. Then as now, cable was expensive, but it was growing. The whole game was trying to raise awareness to get people to sign up. And with channels running 24-7, there was a lot of space to fill, which led to a boom in made-for-TV movies. Stan's first film on TNT was a big success, so he got another bite at the Apple.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Christmas movies always do well. And there was one Stan loved. Christmas in Connecticut.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
This is Janet Brownell, one of the all-time great bards of TV movies. Writer on Eloise at the Plaza, 12 Dates of Christmas, Days of Our Lives, and the uncredited rewrite of Tim Allen's The Santa Claus. All Brownell. She loved the original Christmas in Connecticut.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Janet wrote a draft of the script for Stan's remake.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
It's the middle of 1991. In Hollywood, Janet and Stan's low budget television movie remake isn't really the sort of thing to get people talking, but they're making progress. He's got the old school movie star Diane Cannon cast in the lead as the Martha Stewart character and an offer out to a director. And then one day, his phone rings. His assistant says it's a big Hollywood agent named Lou Pitt.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
To be clear, Arnold had just finished shooting James Cameron's epic Terminator 2.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Terminator 2 is the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a killer cyborg sent from the future to protect young John Connor from a different killer cyborg also sent from the future to kill him. As you can imagine, such a plot necessitates a lot of elaborate production work. It was moviemaking on a scale that was practically unheard of, especially in Los Angeles.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Arnold Schwarzenegger was 44 years old. He had two kids. Nobody is an action hero forever. Maybe it was time to explore some alternatives.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Stan gets the green light from the executives at TNT. There's some negotiating and they offer Schwarzenegger $100,000. And then one night, Stan's phone rings.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
He goes over for a meeting at Arnold's offices in Santa Monica.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
And all of a sudden, Janet Brownell, who wrote the original script for the remake, is looking at a very different movie.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Arnold wants them to get someone else to come in and punch up the script.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Commando, the 1985 action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which the critic from the LA Times referred to as a, quote, gory crowd pleaser and a glorified fireworks display.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Jeff Loeb, the friend who wrote Commando, gets hired to do the rewrite with his writing partner.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
I just have to say, everyone in this episode is going to do their own Schwarzenegger impression, which is good because even though we couldn't land an interview with him, I feel like he's here with us in spirit. Anyway, they settle in and start rewriting the film Commando style.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
They start burning through the script. A big job for any director is giving notes on the rewrites. Schwarzenegger was calling in help from his director friends, including legendary comedy director Ivan Reitman, the guy who did Ghostbusters. Everyone was working to realize Arnold's vision.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
This was beginning to look like a train nobody would step in front of. Back at TNT, the executives had a dim sense of what was going on.
Revisionist History
A Very Terminator Christmas
Meanwhile, they've cast the rest of the film. Joining Diane Cannon would be Hollywood screwball legend Tony Curtis, probably best known for playing opposite Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Along with him would be ex-country music star Chris Christopherson. Here's TNT's senior vice president of production at the time, Nick Lombardo.
Revisionist History
The Formula
She could not believe I didn't know the meaning of the word mirepoix. Do you know the meaning of the word mirepoix? Well, as I learned, it is a ratio for soup base. Two parts onion, one part carrot, one part celery, and four parts esoteric. You're welcome. And here I was, thinking these food geniuses could be fooled by my taste test. I headed over to Rachel's classroom, Bake Shop 9.
Revisionist History
The Formula
If anyone could pull this off, it was gonna be Rachel. We were making English muffins from two recipes she'd created. One, using the ingredients listed on the Thomas's package, including vinegar. Now, having that list is helpful, but the ingredients only tell you so much. Baking, like mirepoix, is all about ratios and process.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel was making a second batch with sourdough, which was her own spin. We were going to taste both, see which was closer to Thomas's, and then put it up against the real thing in the blind taste test.
Revisionist History
The Formula
It was amazing. I called the students over to see what they made of it.
Revisionist History
The Formula
We ran a mini test where the kids tasted the fresh muffins against Thomas's, and I quickly learned that they did not think as highly of Thomas's English muffins as I did.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Do you think if it gets stale, there might be a chance we pull this off, that people can't tell?
Revisionist History
The Formula
The key was to let our muffins get stale so they matched Thomas's. Rachel had made a batch the day before, which she'd left out in the open for this purpose. For the test, we were going to cut the muffins into sixteenths and put them in egg cartons. That would give us enough samples for about 100 tests.
Revisionist History
The Formula
But as we cut up Rachel's muffins from the day before, it was clear that they were a little too crusty. We'd left them out uncovered, and they'd gotten very stale. We were both worried. And then Rachel found a bag of muffins under her desk.
Revisionist History
The Formula
It looked exactly like a Thomas's. And to me, it tasted exactly like a Thomas's. We began furiously slicing them up. This kind of last-minute dramatic switch of the plan is exactly... There's two minutes until the test starts. We finished right on schedule. We wheeled our samples out into the packed student cafeteria.
Revisionist History
The Formula
It was time to pit our formula against the greatest culinary minds in America. Cue the fight song. Hello, everybody. My goodness. At some point in your life, I hope you experience a moment so absurd, so profoundly unrecognizable, that you have an out-of-body experience.
Revisionist History
The Formula
For me, that moment was standing in the cafeteria at the CIA, addressing a crowd of culinary students in white uniforms and skull caps regarding the several hundred egg cartons I had filled with English muffins. So, in each of these cartons, there's a slice of English muffin. Two of them are the same, one of them is different. Using taste, I want you to tell me which number is different.
Revisionist History
The Formula
I had marked each muffin section with numbers like 302, 348, and 129. Blinding codes, so people wouldn't be biased by ABC or 123. In each test, you either had two Thomases and one Rachels, or two Rachels and one Thomases. I knew which numbers marked the odd muffin out. The goal was to see if they could tell. If they could, we'd failed. Which one do you think is different than the others?
Revisionist History
The Formula
That's different. $3.99 is different. It's $1.09. Pretty sure it's $1.42. $1.42 is what's different. Pretty quickly it became clear that we were on track for over 60% of people correctly guessing which muffin was not like the others. This was not working. We're getting smoked so far. We're getting absolutely destroyed. it looked like our entire plan was going to fail.
Revisionist History
The Formula
We took on Bimbo Bakery's legendary trade secret. And just like in Bimbo Bakery's vs. Chris Botticella, we were losing, and the secret was winning.
Revisionist History
The Formula
I want to leave the muffin test for a moment to tell you about a rabbit hole I fell down while researching this episode. I was trying to articulate why the idea that the nooks and crannies were a trade secret bothered me so much. So I began studying other trade secrets and secret recipes. One of the most famous is for a liqueur called chartreuse.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Chartreuse has been made by a French monastic order, the Carthusians, based on a mysterious recipe that was gifted to them in 1605. This recipe is a very closely guarded secret. Nooks and crannies for fancy cocktails. I learned that one of the Carthusian monks who'd been in charge of chartreuse production had left the order and now lived in New York City. So I wrote to him.
Revisionist History
The Formula
His name is Father Michael Halloran. I visited him at the parish offices of St. Monica's Church on the Upper East Side just a few days after Easter. What is known about the origin of that recipe?
Revisionist History
The Formula
I said, are you one of the seven who knows the recipe? And he nodded. And he was pretty mad at me. And he said, you're coming after my livelihood.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Originally, chartreuse was a health elixir. People took it for all kinds of ailments. Apoplexy, toothaches, palpitations, indigestion, fever. Eventually, the monks dropped the elixir claim and it just became a liqueur. But it still has this weird power. When I drink it, I tend to have strange dreams. It has a spicy, sweet complexity, and its color is this vivid, alluring green.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Father Michael told me he was the first American Carthusian ever. In the 1980s, he lived in France at the Grand Chartreuse Monastery in the unforgiving mountains of the French wilderness. The Carthusians are a famously silent order, and Father Michael was restless. So the monks put him in charge of Chartreuse. It's not easy to make.
Revisionist History
The Formula
There are 130 herbs that are treated in a number of different ways. The recipe is kept on sheets and sheets of old paper that now Father Michael had access to. But eventually, when he left the Carthusian order and came back to the United States with that recipe in his mind, the monks just let him walk away.
Revisionist History
The Formula
I'm curious what, if you could tell me about the process of leaving the Carthusian order and whether there was any sort of effort to make sure that you never share the recipe or how it was conveyed to you that you should not spread this.
Revisionist History
The Formula
The formula for chartreuse really is worth money. It's kept the Carthusians afloat for centuries, but when Father Michael left, they didn't threaten, punish, or sue him, or tell him not to join another order. Because the secret was a bond between them, not a tool for control.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Is there in your mind a hierarchy between a secret and a mystery? And how would you illustrate the difference, if there is one?
Revisionist History
The Formula
I realized that that's what bothered me about the idea that the nooks and crannies were some legendary trade secret. Not just that an English muffin is mostly flour and water while chartreuse has 130 ingredients, but that Thomas's English muffins have all the mystification of a monastic order and none of the mystery. It debases mystery and puts it in the service of corporate control.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Maybe that all sounds like a stretch to you. But it turned out Father Michael was closer to my story than even I had realized. I told him about our reverse engineering project at the Culinary Institute of America.
Revisionist History
The Formula
He used to live on the grounds of the Institute. You used to live there?
Revisionist History
The Formula
Did you catch that? Where I first tasted the mystical life. When we ran that first test in the CIA cafeteria, it failed. I felt like we'd let everyone down. In the end, about 61% of people could tell the difference between our muffin and Thomas'. The perfect result would have been 33%. But then, we ran one more test. The next is a paired preference test, which will tell us which they like better.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Our first test only told us if people knew the difference between our muffin and the real thing. It didn't tell us if the difference was good or bad. But now we were running a test called paired preference. We used up all those old vinegar-based muffins Rachel found in her bag, so we decided to use her sourdough recipe instead. Thomas's was number 142, and Rachel's was 598.
Revisionist History
The Formula
So no, we didn't perfectly reverse engineer the secret recipe and process for a Thomas's English muffin. Rachel and the students at the CIA spent a couple weeks reverse engineering an old secret recipe. And they made a muffin that had the exact same nooks and crannies. It just tasted way better. Some secrets.
Revisionist History
The Formula
When I started working on this story, I reached out to the defendant in the case, Chris Botticella, the baking executive Bimbo accused of trying to take the secret muffin recipe to a competitor. In all the many pieces I'd read on the case, I'd never seen a quote from him. For a long time, I couldn't reach him.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Then, a few weeks after I got back from the CIA, just as I was about to put this story to bed, I finally heard from him. After a few letters and emails, Chris and I spoke on the phone.
Revisionist History
The Formula
He told me how he'd gotten into baking, working as a kid at the same baking company his parents did when they immigrated from Italy. After we'd gone over some details of the case, I asked him how he felt about baking now.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Chris told me he actually thinks Bimbo is a good company to work for. He just wound up in a bad situation. Towards the end of our conversation, I asked him how he felt about that secret recipe at the center of the case. I was expecting he'd be reverent about the nooks and crannies, like Father Michael with the formula for chartreuse.
Revisionist History
The Formula
A muffin is a muffin. Hearing Chris say this a couple months ago would have saved me a lot of time.
Revisionist History
The Formula
can see it so it's not a secured formula formula that they keep secret you know in a bowl somewhere it's it's left on the floor it's really not anybody knows the formula bimbo bakeries hadn't replied to repeated requests for comment by the time we recorded this episode but by now i could believe this secret recipe was all nonsense But the best secrets bring us together.
Revisionist History
The Formula
They bind us like a monastic order. They don't trap us. I suspect that even if someone got into that monastery and stole the full recipe for chartreuse, people would still rather get a bottle of it from the monks themselves. Because the secret means something coming from them, tied, as it is, to an even greater mystery.
Revisionist History
The Formula
That's why Bimbo's still pretending these are Samuel Thomas' English muffins a century after his death. But these Thomas' nooks and crannies? Now they're just a bit of marketing. A myth that somehow became a legal standard. Anyways, the best way to protect your nooks and crannies isn't a trade secret. It's opening your muffins with a fork. A knife just ruins the whole thing.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Special thanks to Chelsea Burgess, Jonathan Frishtick, Susan Reed, William Woys Weaver, Corey Theodore at the Anti-Conquest Baking Company, Becky Cooper for introducing me to chartreuse, Julia Conrad, Robin Dando, and Jonathan A. Zierfoss for helping us with our triangle test methodology, and all the students at the CIA. Happy graduation. I'm Ben Mattafafry.
Revisionist History
The Formula
And here it is. The Muffin House. Yes. 337 West 20th Street, built as a foundry circa 1850, Samuel Bath Thomas converted the ovens for his English muffin bakery in the early 20th century. I'm reading from a plaque in front of the house where the inventor of Thomas's English muffins once baked. It's in Chelsea, just a couple blocks from the offices of Pushkin Industries.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Nineteen years ago, the owner of the first floor apartment was taking out a radiator. He lifted up some of the floorboards and discovered a door. It was the remnants of Samuel Bath Thomas' oven. I was hoping somebody could show it to me. I rang the doorbell. No answer. Clearly, Bimbo Bakeries had gotten here first. This was a recurring problem.
Revisionist History
The Formula
I tried to hire some culinary researchers to help reverse engineer the trademark nooks and crannies recipe, but Bimbo was a client. After all, they are one of the largest baking conglomerates in the world. I rang a bunch of doorbells that no one answered. I sent a lot of emails that went unreturned.
Revisionist History
The Formula
But a few brave bakers were willing to talk to me, at least about the nooks and crannies in general. For their own protection, we're not identifying them by name.
Revisionist History
The Formula
The vibe I was getting was mild interest laced with a healthy dose of, are you okay?
Revisionist History
The Formula
Lots of good information on what makes a muffin an English muffin, but little enthusiasm for my quest to make one exactly like Thomas'. For me, this was way bigger than muffins alone. I'd learned that companies can use trade secrets as a way to control their employees. The muffin trade secret had put a man named Chris Botticella out of a job.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Bimbo Bakeries, his employer, claimed there was some deep mystery to how Thomas' English muffins were manufactured, and this, it seemed to me, had given them all too much power. My plan was to test a reverse-engineered muffin against Thomas's to see if anyone could tell the difference. If not, that would end the mystical power of their secret. but I lacked the necessary skills to do this alone.
Revisionist History
The Formula
One baker asked me for several thousand dollars to do the job. That's not crazy, seeing as the secret recipe brings in almost half a billion a year for bimbo. But for a complicated set of reasons involving journalistic ethics and poverty, it was a non-starter. I needed a true believer. I needed a zealot. I needed a superstar.
Revisionist History
The Formula
It's 5.16 a.m. I just had a dream where I was in an Airbnb with someone who was affiliated with Bimbo Bakeries who knew I was trying to reverse engineer the muffin recipe. He's this bald guy with a mustache. I want to say he was wearing a cardigan. We were playing pool in this Airbnb. And he said, how much flour and how much water do you think we start with?
Revisionist History
The Formula
This is a clip from a 2014 episode of the short-lived cooking channel show, Donut Showdown. If you've never seen Donut Showdown, congratulations.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Three contestants compete in a variety of donut baking challenges for a $10,000 prize. This episode featured a former architect, a pastry chef with a background in molecular gastronomy, who says things like, I am the overlord of pastry.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel Wyman has a baker's warmth about her. Angular red hair, a little like Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog. She's a total badass. She's got a tattoo on her arm that says, flour, water, yeast, salt. Of course, she makes it to the final showdown. It's Rachel versus the overlord of pastry.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel lands on avocado whipped cream on a tres leches donut with the sangria filling. The food scientist is going with a nacho-flavored donut. To my mind, these both sound disgusting. But in the midst of it all, Rachel is having a beautiful mind moment with her flower.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel gets emotional. I get emotional. Because what I see before me, at last, is a baker who just might be crazy enough to take on the secret recipe for Thomas' English muffin. I look her up. She teaches baking and pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America, the most prestigious culinary school in the country. The CIA.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel checked in with the CIA. Green light. She and I were going to reverse engineer Thomas' nooks and crannies. The trade secret of the muffin involves the process, recipe, and machines. But any major baking company knows how to make bread at scale. It's the principles behind the nooks and crannies that were the key thing. We began to have regular debriefing calls.
Revisionist History
The Formula
But making things crappier turned out to be a bit of a challenge for Rachel.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Rachel and her students kept tinkering for about a week. Every so often, she'd send me photos. Their muffins went from a flat surface on the interior to these big, uneven lunar craters. I was starting to think that maybe this really was a secret, uncrackable recipe. But then, Rachel sent me a photo of two muffins riddled with these small, deep, perfect nooks and crannies.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Because if you tell me that, it'll tell me if you're even close to knowing how we do this.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Other than the color, I couldn't tell a difference between the class's nooks and crannies and Thomas's. It was time for me to come up to the CIA at Hyde Park to meet her in person, finalize the recipe, and then put it to a blind taste test to see if she'd actually pulled it off.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Like all the great American culinary schools, the Culinary Institute of America is in a fight to the death with federal law enforcement. acronym versus acronym, the CIA versus the Central Intelligence Agency. You would think that at some point in its nearly 75 years of existence, the president of the Culinary Institute of America would have said, you know what?
Revisionist History
The Formula
Our acronym has become a distraction. It's the American Culinary Institute now. You can have it, spooks. Take the bugs out of my office. Stop following me home. But no, the Culinary Institute of America is not changing its name for anyone. I took the train up in April. The campus sits along the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York, on the grounds of an old Jesuit novitiate.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Gracious brick buildings, photos of famous alumni on the wall, Anthony Bourdain. It's a kind of culinary temple. Little chapels, vaulted ceilings, stained glass. The doors to the main hall have a crest with three griffins and the school's motto. Sibus vitae est. Food is life.
Revisionist History
The Formula
I'm getting a tour from baking business student Hannah Dawkins. She was graduating in a semester and was filling me in on campus lore. Do you have a strong position?
Revisionist History
The Formula
We were walking through a library, one floor of which is all recipe books, organized according to a system I had never before encountered. Nutrition, gastronomy, kitchen equipment. As we walked through campus, I noticed all the pedestrian crossing signs had a cartoon person in a chef's hat, a toque, which, true to life, was what everyone wore, or the teachers at least.
Revisionist History
The Formula
The students all had these small skull caps on. You know you've chosen a great profession when only at the highest rank do you get to wear the silliest hat. We entered the baking building.
Revisionist History
The Formula
It was becoming clear to me that this is the greatest college in America.
Revisionist History
The Formula
The plan was to use CIA students as guinea pigs in our muffin test. Could they tell the difference between the reverse engineered muffin and the real Thomas's? Except, as Hannah toured me around campus, I was slowly realizing that this particular audience of testers might be a little too smart.
Revisionist History
The Formula
Acidulent? Who says acidulent? Even the school's fight song was inscrutable.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
A lot of states are banning non-competes now, which is one of the reasons a company might come to Louis Del Giudice, IP expert, to help identify and protect their secrets. Could you make that bit in a secret room? Can you have a black vault in the office? Could there be a secret codebook?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Trade secrets are the only intellectual property protection that can last forever. And because of that permanence and the way we're geared to think about secrets already, they have a kind of mystical aura. In our secular, disenchanted world, they are the closest thing we have to magic. The most famous ones are the recipes. Coca-Cola's secret formula. KFC's 11 spices.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
The exact way to create Wrigley's gum. But actually, a whole lot of things can be trade secrets. Software code, financial information. You may know a trade secret and not even totally realize it. But a good way to recognize one is the nooks and crannies test. This feels like a good transition to me to Bimbo Bakeries versus Botticella.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Can you tell me how you came across the case and how you teach it?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Bimbo Bakeries vs. Botticella. It seemed like every lawyer I talked to knew about the case. It wasn't a precedent so much as a legend. A piece of lore. A fairytale warning about the Oompa Loompa who took the everlasting gobstopper out of Willy Wonka's factory and tried to sell it to a competitor. Like any good fairy tale, it's a good teaching tool because the moral's clear.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Except, then I realized, the lessons of this case aren't clear at all. If somehow you missed the 2017 edition of the Pennsylvania Super Lawyers magazine, I would encourage you to look it up. Specifically an article titled, I Can Do That, about a Pennsylvania super lawyer named Elizabeth Ainsley. Liz Ainsley is fearless. She was head of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania's fraud team.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
As Super Lawyers magazine puts it, quote, Ainsley has represented whistleblowers in several major cases, defended and prosecuted high-profile RICO cases against law firms and pharmaceutical companies, defended a major national bank in a lender liability trial, and successfully defended the New York Times in a federal defamation trial. End quote. Legend.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
And yet, in that whole article, they don't mention a call she got sometime in January 2010 regarding a secret recipe for English muffins.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
It does have that kind of like Proustian association thing. Like it tastes like, I remember this taste. Yes. When I have this, it does take me back. Like I am seeing my family's kitchen where we would eat breakfast in like the big spread. Yeah.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris Botticella, as I have mentioned, was in trouble. Bimbo Bakeries has just found out that one of seven employees who knew the secret recipe for their newly acquired and extremely valuable Thomas's English muffins was going to work for a competitor. Grupo Bimbo is one of the largest bakeries in the world. Grupo Bimbo bows to nobody.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
So within days of Chris's termination, before he starts his new job at Hostess, attorneys for Bimbo file an injunction in a Pennsylvania court, which is technically where Thomas's is based, but mainly it's a way better place for them to argue the case than California. I would like to read to you from the factual allegations section of what they filed.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Items 1 through 10 cover the basics of the case. And then they get to the secrets. BBU and its predecessors have gone to great lengths to keep secret the recipe and process for making Thomas's English muffins for over 75 years. Thomas's English muffins are a unique product famous for their distinctive nooks and crannies characteristics.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
As a result of his employment, Botticella learned trade secrets relating to the production of the Thomas's English muffins, including not only its recipe, but also the equipment necessary for production, necessary moisture level, and the way the product is baked, which all contribute to its distinctive characteristics.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
With the knowledge described in paragraph 13, Botticella could produce an English muffin that might look a bit different, but that would nevertheless possess the distinctive taste, texture, and flavor character that distinguish the Thomas's English muffins. And that have been the foundation of the product's success. End quote. If you're Chris, this is bad.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Because you have to remember, the judge is coming to this cold. Louis Del Giudice, partner Troutman Pepper Locke, muffin trade secret enthusiast.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
An immediately recognizable trade secret. Absolutely you can't let someone take the secret behind the greatest breakfast product of all time. The judge grants Bimbo's wish. Chris can't join Hostess till the case is heard. Meanwhile, Grupo Bimbo has hired a computer forensics expert who starts looking through Chris's laptop.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
When confronted with this information, Chris told the court he was practicing for his new job. The court is like, are you serious?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris conceded that it was complicated. But there are mitigating factors here. First, the rush of it all, and the fact that he'd just met Liz, his lawyer. Then, too, he'd signed a document with Hostess saying that he wouldn't share any confidential bimbo information. He said he'd stuck around because he wanted to get his year-end bonus and finish two projects he was working on.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
This is the classic version of the case. Black and white. Bimbo catches muffin thief, accuses executive of stealing all sorts of trade secrets. Except his lawyer Liz says, if you look at those documents, there's no evidence of that.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Liz says, sure, in those documents there's financial information, cost-saving strategies, etc. Confidential stuff, but that's in a different category than the ancient muffin trade secrets.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Bimbo leads with the nooks and crannies in the muffins. But in all the fine print of their complaint, nary a nook nor a cranny. And yet Liz thinks that's really what this was all about.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
What anyone on the outside of the case knows is the result. Chris got crushed. If you search this case online, you'll see an example made of it on all sorts of law firm websites. You'll find it in an introductory textbook for intellectual property law. But in none of those will you hear whether Bimbo Bakeries was truly able to hold its most legendary secret up under scrutiny.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Because the case never went to trial. It was meant to go to trial, but Liz told me there wasn't money for a trial. The judge ruled in favor of Bimbo. Hostess told the New York Times, we have a business to run. We have to move on. Liz appealed the case and lost. The ruling stood. Now, I'll grant you that Chris was not an ideal defendant, but this case had real consequences for his life.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
And for that reason, it is nearly a half a billion dollar a year in sales product. It is the sine qua non of bread products, baked goods. Yeah. The champ. Undisputed.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Bimbo didn't respond to a request for comment by the time we recorded this episode. I tried for months to reach Chris Botticella. Finally, I found an address, and I wrote him a letter. He wrote me an email in which he described traveling to the hearing across the country, even though he lived in California, scrambling to pay for the appeal and going bankrupt.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
He writes, quote, You will never understand the impact that this had on my personal and professional life. What first grabbed me about this story was the idea that the nooks and crannies of a Thomas's English muffin had some supercharged legal power. But by this point, after reporting the story, I realized what this had meant, at least to Chris.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
And when I talked to Louis and Jeannie about the future of trade secrecy, I saw a world of trade secrets opening up before me, at once futuristic and medieval, where every company had mystical codebooks full of secret recipes, a nook and cranny for every employee. Nooks and crannies is a shorthand for trade secret. But the actual trade secret of the nooks and crannies never came before a jury.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
I had learned that this controversy was, to my mind, unresolved. So we at Revisionist History decided to resolve it. We are trying to free the muffin. So we're reverse engineering the muffin recipe.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Yeah, can we make this exact English muffin? Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Matt of Haffrey, with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Byrne-Lawrence. This episode was edited by Julia Barton. Special thanks to Jake Flanagan, Jordan Mannequin, Greta Cohn, and Sarah Nix. Fact-checking on this episode by Kate Furby. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mixing and mastering by Echo Mountain.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Ben Matt of Haffrey.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Here's Ben. I once hired a lawyer who dreams about suing people. He told me this on a call once. I asked for proof. And he showed me a video of himself asleep, very clearly muttering, I'll sue you. And something to the effect of, you're going to jail. There were some swears in there too. My first thought was, this man is the best lawyer I'll ever have. Second thought, I better pay him quickly.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
We were going over an employment contract. We got to the part about intellectual property, and I thought the degree to which an employer could punish you if you ever divulged one of their trade secrets seemed a little crazy. To which my lawyer replied, well, it's nooks and crannies. And even recognizing I was paying by the second, I was like, what did you just say?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
It like hits the back of your palate. There's like a funk to it. You know what I mean?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
The key to English muffin supremacy comes down to the balance of nooks, which catch and pool the melted butter, and the thin, crisp walls of the crannies. But somehow, nooks and crannies are now lawyer shorthand for trade secret. Why?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
In 1876, a baker named Samuel Bath Thomas left England for the United States. Little's known about his life before he lands in New York, but he arrived with a recipe in his pocket for what typically would be called Welsh muffins or crumpets. He cooked them on a griddle so they'd be crisp on the outside and doughy yet pockmarked in the inside in a way few other breads were.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Thomas's nooks and crannies took New York by storm. Demand skyrocketed. He opened another bakery. Then it became a corporation. Eventually, the words Nooks and Crannies became a registered trademark of Thomas's English muffins. You will note if you look at the bakery shelves at your local grocery store that other English muffin brands live in fear of this fact.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Dave's Killer Bread boasts of butter-catching flavor craters. Trader Joe's has pockets and crevices. Bay's has raised the white flag and left the field entirely with a claim about packaging, now resealable. Because all of them know better than to cross the entity that now owns Thomas'. Grupo Bimbo.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Bimbo is everywhere. They've taken over half the bread brands you've heard of and 50% of the rest. They've swept through the U.S., acquiring one bakery after another.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
No one stands in the way of Grupo Bimbo. And in 2009, at the height of their powers, they acquired the holy grail of baked goods, the Nooks and Crannies.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
The secret recipe for nooks and crannies brought in about half a billion dollars in annual revenue to Grupo Bimbo. But then, according to Bimbo, someone tried to steal it. Can you just tell me the basic facts of the case? Well, in this case, I guess we can go through it.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
I'm speaking with Louis Del Giudice, partner at the major law firm Troutman Pepperlock, in a conference room high above Manhattan. This is where my lawyer sent me when I asked about cranny law. Louis is an expert in intellectual property. He says a lot of people come to him to determine if they have their own trade secrets.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
And he tells them, sit down, my friends, and let me teach you the lessons of the muffin.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Actually, it's fewer than 10, but we'll get to that. Trade secrets are one of the pillars of IP protection in the United States, along with patents, trademarks, and copyright. But unlike the others, a trade secret never expires. And the muffin case is one of the best examples of a trade secret's power and how to protect it. Louie was not involved in the case directly, but he studied it at length.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
In any telling, he begins by introducing the defendant, a former Grupo Bimbo employee named Chris Botticella.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
It's 2010, the year after Grupo Bimbo acquired Thomas'. According to documents presented in court, the information required to produce a Thomas' English muffin is known by only seven people at the company. It's kept in secret code books that only a few people have access to. Botticella, as a senior executive, is one of those people.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
He oversees a facility in Placentia, California, where the muffins are made. He's been in the industry since he was 16 and has risen through the ranks through sheer skill until finally he's reached the pinnacle. Bimbo Bakery's executive of almost a decade. But lately, Chris has been unhappy.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris gets a job offer at Hostess, famed owner of Twinkies, one of Bimbo's only competitors, but just barely. Hostess had just gone through bankruptcy. Hostess was a possible target for Bimbo acquisition, but then Bimbo would have owned almost every baked good on the planet, and at that point, where's the fun?
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris probably knew that Grupo Bimbo wasn't gonna be thrilled about the Hostess of it all, but he wants to get his year-end bonus, so he doesn't leave right away.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris signs with Hostess in October. His start date is January. The weeks tick by. Chris finally announces he's leaving Bimbo, but he doesn't say he's going to a new job. Given his long tenure, his colleagues probably assume he's retiring. According to court documents, he asked about how to enroll in health coverage.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Does Hostess have an English muffin? Not yet. Fuck. HR calls Chris.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Chris is walked out of the building. He has no idea what's coming for him. Least of all, that he's about to be swallowed up by the nooks and crannies.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
We're going to return to the nooks and crannies, I promise. But first, we have to talk about Willy Wonka.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Jeannie C. Frommer is a vice dean at the New York University Law School. She's also the Walter J. Durenberg Professor of Intellectual Property Law and a scholar of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
For those in need of a refresher, in the book, Wonka's factory has started back up, but nobody understands how. Nobody ever goes in. Nobody ever comes out. This is why it's so exciting when Charlie gets the golden ticket to go see the inside of the factory. Nobody sees the inside of the factory.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
He may be in violation of some employment law, but it's... Totally. Jeannie's insight about the Oompa Loompas became the seed of not one, but two brilliant articles she wrote, using Willy Wonka as the skeleton key for understanding trade secrecy. Her major revelation? Willy Wonka's paranoia, the spying and extreme secrecy, was totally justified. It was essentially based on a true story.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Trade secrecy is the part of the law where life begins to resemble Willy Wonka.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
People love secrets from a very early age. It's why Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic children's story. It's not just the candy. It's the secrets. The world is already full of things you can't understand when you're little. And now someone's going to share the most special true knowledge behind it all. But secrets are also dangerous. If I tell you a secret, it means I trust you.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
It binds us together. But it also alters the balance of power between us. You know something I don't want other people to know. That puts me at risk. So I need you to know it's a secret. I tell you, don't tell anyone. Before I whisper in your ear, I put up a sign on my bedroom door saying, top secret, keep out. Trade secrecy works on playground rules.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
Now imagine I'm a major corporation in the real world. I'm infinitely more powerful than you. I'm Willy Wonka, and you are an Oompa Loompa. I tell you a secret, maybe one you don't even want to know, and then I say, by the way, I have eyes everywhere, and if you breathe a word of this secret to anyone, or even look as if you might breathe a word, I will destroy you. This is the crux of it.
Revisionist History
Nooks & Crannies
At their best, trade secrets protect valuable intellectual property from being stolen. But at their worst, they're a powerful tool for a company that wants to turn an employee into an Oompa Loompa. It used to be the easiest way to turn a human being into an Oompa Loompa was a non-compete clause. But Janie says that's going away.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
They ran through their data on all the calls that they had responded to priority one, lights and sirens, and they reassessed whether those really needed to be lights and sirens.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
So with all this data, Beyer and his team changed how the calls were coded.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Let that sink in. Ambulance lights and sirens in Berrien County were sounding half as often as they had before. Now, even I was wondering, could you really know that this switch wasn't putting anyone at risk? Well, eventually, they followed up on the people the ambulances had picked up in the field to see how the hospital coded the patients as they came in.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
So if you went to someone as a priority two, not that urgent, and they showed up to the hospital as a priority one, that would mean that you'd made a mistake. How much more often was that happening under the new coding system than the old? It was the same number. Wow. There was basically no difference. As in, he halved the number of lights and sirens responses in Berrien County.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
He reduced the risk of accidents as a result. And it cost the people of Berrien County nothing.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Unbeknownst to Beyer, word had gotten out to the people who call ambulances. Big problem.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
At the time, though, Beyer was blissfully unaware any of this was happening. Other jobs were keeping him very busy. But then one morning, he got a call. I had done a 6 p.m.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Beyer's stunned, and then he begins to lay out the case against Sirens in a very Dr. Beyer way.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Beyer explained his move maybe a little inefficiently by using the equation for velocity. Distance divided by time changed to solve for time, or t. It amounted to this. If you're trying to get time down and you can't reduce the distance between you and a patient by putting more ambulances on the street because it's expensive, the easiest way to get it done is to increase your velocity.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
which means running your lights and sirens. But the problem is we now know that running lights and sirens significantly increases the risk of an accident. So maybe you don't want to do that either. Then the thing to do is to take a second look at T. Does time really need to come down by the small increment that we now know lights and sirens is going to reduce it? Not for most things.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Walk me through what we're looking at here. I'm talking with my wife, Julia Conrad, who happens to share an apartment with me on quite a noisy street in Brooklyn.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Things worked out for Bayer in the end. But I'm interested in that initial freakout, because it reveals a basic assumption people make, myself included. Everything is urgent, so we accept this social loophole where you can break all known traffic laws, provided you possess a device that emits the loudest, shrillest sound imaginable. What kind of world is this?
Revisionist History
Running Hot
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't have sirens at all, but it seems to me that they're not only too loud and crazy sounding, but like we use them way more often than is necessary because we're unwilling to let go of them. But of course, Berrien County is just one place. Approximately 20,000 EMS calls a year. And paramedics are just one branch of the emergency service.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I was left with two big questions to answer next. Where did we get the idea that sirens are so necessary? And exactly how unnecessary are they? A Good Place to Look is the same place we fell in love with EMS once upon a time. We'll be right back.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Jeff Jarvis, the Chief Medical Officer for the Metropolitan Area EMS Authority in Fort Worth, Texas. an emergency medical service that serves over a million people in Fort Worth and 14 surrounding cities. He's been a paramedic since the 1980s. He served around New York City and Austin. So 18-year-old Jeff, who's made his decision to begin to be a paramedic.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
So let me ask you, let me ask you a question. In the 1970s, did you ever watch the television show Emergency? Oh, of course. And did that have an effect on your becoming a paramedic? It did. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. In 1972, NBC began airing a television show called Emergency. That's got an exclamation point at the end, by the way.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
The theme song is the music they'd play in My Version of Hell. The show is about Johnny and Roy, two young paramedics working out of Fire Station 51 in Los Angeles. Except they're not paramedics in the beginning.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Julia and I live opposite this grocery store that's all local, small batch, whatnot. So instead of getting just one delivery a day, they get, like, 15. Sometimes from trucks bearing, I assume, one sprig of artisanal basil. Next door, there's a noisy playground, and crucially, a fire station. A really active fire station.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
The series begins in a world where there basically aren't any paramedics, which was our world 53 years ago. 53 years. In 1971, there were a slim 12 paramedic units in the entire country. And it was kind of a Wild West situation. Details varied from place to place, but in some areas, it was illegal to give someone medical care if you weren't a doctor or a nurse.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
So about 50% of ambulances were just hearses, driven out of funeral homes by morticians whose sole purpose was to get patients to doctors as quickly as possible. And if that failed... back to the funeral home you go. This is actually how it worked.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
Emergency was a show dreamed up in partnership with the father of modern EMS, a guy named James Page, who worked at one of the first firehouses with a paramedic unit in Los Angeles. And the show was literally meant to make the case for paramedics. Every Saturday night, nationwide, on NBC, 30 million viewers at a time, not a few of whom became paramedics.
Revisionist History
Running Hot
I learned about emergency in a brilliant essay by UCLA emeritus law professor Paul Bergman, where he traces the profound influence the show had not just on paramedics, but on lawmakers too, by dramatizing just how urgent every single 911 call is.
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This is from the first episode, right after a maintenance man gets electrocuted and eventually dies. The doctor and nurse, who, by the way, are of course romantically involved, are talking.
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It's a doubleheader pilot. And both episodes are full of these situations that dramatize the resistance to paramedics, which was very real. But the show argues that we need paramedics. And why do we need them? Because there are so many accidents where if only someone had been there in time, we could have saved them.
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Bergman, the law professor, talked to the legends of EMS. And he heard all these emergency references. Doug threw California hearings on the Paramedic Act, and he found emergency references. Letters from senators. Emergency references. In the early years of the show, 46 states legalized paramedicine. To be clear, this was a movement that was already in process.
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What happens is the grocery store trucks block traffic, which means the fire trucks can't get out. And so, sirens. All the time. This, for me, as a writer, podcaster, and light sleeper, is a problem. So I decided to do some research. I made a spreadsheet. We counted from 9 a.m. till 10 at night, and we heard a siren 24 times. 24 times! And this is reliable data. Julia is a data scientist.
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But emergency was a big part of establishing the cultural expectations for what those units would look like. And it looked like lights and sirens to every call. Because every call was all about time.
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This is from the second part of the pilot episode, when the skeptical doctor has come around.
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He's looking directly into the camera. Right at those 30 million viewers.
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Sirens are all over the show. You may recall that the literal theme song of Emergency features sirens. And I think a lot of this time siren obsession is due to the fact that early EMS departments were part of fire departments. And a fire is a very specific kind of emergency. If you don't contain it, it spreads. So every fire is an urgent situation.
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And according to FEMA, anecdotally, firefighters use their sirens way more often than the police. But these days, even the fire service in most places seems to be based on an outdated sense of its mission. As of 2023, less than 4% of all 911 calls firefighters responded to were for fires. Most were for EMS and rescue.
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So, then it looks like the argument about siren reform broadly applies to firefighters too. The U.S. Fire Administration actually cited a bunch of studies about reducing siren usage just last year. Sirens are dangerous. They save time, but not that much. And things are often less urgent than they appear.
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Jeff Jarvis did a massive study on lights and sirens using something called the ESO dataset, a national collection of emergency calls with unbelievably granular data attached.
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So this is crucial. Paramedics are responding with lights and sirens to around 86% of calls, when only 7% of them are resulting in a vaguely potentially life-saving intervention. So why were they urgent? That means that in the United States, we're using lights and sirens somewhere between 80% and 90% more often than we need to.
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The question I have that I can imagine people who are skeptical might ask is, well, how much do you really know from the call? Can you tell?
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She works for the New York City government, and she has held my spreadsheet to the highest of standards.
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So I want to play for you again a very specific moment from the pilot episode of Emergency, from the speech that Doctor gave to the legislature about why we need EMS.
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But those other things have come along. More doctors. Advances in the ways we take 911 calls. Better and more emergency rooms. Better and more emergency medicine. Better and more paramedics. To use Bayer's formula, we have reduced distance. Paramedic units are all over the place now in a way they just weren't in the world of emergency.
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But it seems to me like in our minds and on TV, it's as if nothing has changed since the 1970s. Emergency was the most significant early example of an entire genre of TV show that dramatized the emergency services. Before there was Cops or Rescue 911, there was Emergency. And here's the trick. All of those TV shows are based on the narrative conventions that Emergency pioneered.
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A world in which the TV show had not yet done its work and help was always too far away and always came with lights and sirens blaring because that's what firefighters did. And these shows are everywhere. Rescue Me, Sky Med, Live Rescue, Helicopter Heroes, Island Medics, Air Ambulance ER, a show that was literally called Sirens, which is what they'll play on TV in hell for me.
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They even make this stuff for kids. This is what Paw Patrol is. Start them young.
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So Jarvis, like Beyer, reduced the use of lights and sirens. He cut them by about a third. Did their response time increase? Yes. By a median of six seconds. And in the vast majority of cases, by less.
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I don't need this. I can get enough of this in my job. I don't need it from you. I will confess that the spreadsheet consisting of mauve, baby blue, puke green, a cheery yellow, and several pleasingly varied shades of red isn't even complete because it does not count the times we heard the siren in the middle of the night when there is no one on the road.
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And I realize this is purely in the realm of hypothesis, but it seems to me commonsensical that were lights and sirens reserved for truly emergency use, you would see a more potent reaction to them. And likely then it could plausibly decrease response times.
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I like that hat. That's a very stylish hat you're wearing. So here it is. Lights and sirens are a tool that currently seem to be way overused. And that overuse has real consequences. Most of all, for our burnt out, overstretched first responders who go to work to save lives and wind up responding to everything as if it's a crisis, wearing themselves out and losing their hearing in the process.
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In 2015, 1,500 firemen sued that company, Federal Signal, the one that makes the iconic fire siren, for causing mass loss of hearing. A lawyer opposing them said, and I quote, What's their solution? If you don't have sirens, people would get mowed down in the streets. The siren works exactly the way it should. End quote. I could not disagree more. And you know who else disagrees? That's right.
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I found him. Okay. I am approaching Davy's house. Which is coincidentally...
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uh directly behind my house i was just walking down my street one day when an ambulance rushed by and i saw this dopey yellow lab stiffen and howl i'd know that howl anywhere i rushed over and i was like hey i've got a question about your dog and his owner was very obliging his name is joe the dog's name davey and a while later i came by their house for an interview
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I'm curious if you could tell me about... when you realized that you had a sort of eccentric dog. Oh.
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Maybe you didn't realize this, but emergency vehicles will sometimes run their lights and sirens even if there's seemingly no one around. Sirens can run anywhere from 110 decibels to over 130. That is ear-damagingly loud.
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Their owners must be thrilled. Jen is a psychologist. Joe is a composer for film and television. So together, they're experts on mammalian behavior and sound. So I'm inclined to believe their analysis of Davey's views on the siren subject. He's not in distress, which means he's not going to be the poster child for my anti-siren campaign. But I hadn't given up yet.
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Do you share this view of Davey's how origins or what's... So there's another theory.
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Jen and Joe are very neighborly people. I'm glad to know them now. Even if their dog is a huge disappointment to my anti-siren crusade, seeing as he really loves sirens. But it makes sense. It goes back to that evolutionary theory Malcolm was talking about at the top of the episode. The idea of the spandrel, and the things in our bodies and our worlds that we think we're selected for.
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but actually are just there and maybe not doing us a whole lot of good. Davey's howl isn't quite a spandrel, if we're being pedantic. It's more like a vestige. He thinks he's living with a pack of dogs in the wild, but he's not. He's a house dog who lives in Brooklyn. A block away from a busy grocery store. A playground. A frustrated podcaster. A New York City government employee.
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The classic fire siren sound, like what you hear in your head if you imagine a fire truck right now, is called the Federal Q2B, and it's a whopping 123 decibels at 100 feet away. There's an actual corporation that makes the siren, Federal Signal. Fans post videos about the siren online. Here's what it sounds like. Maybe turn your volume down.
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Revisionist History is produced by me, Ben Nadeff-Haffrey, Nina Byrd-Lawrence, and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen Shakerji. Original scoring and theme by Luis Guerra. Additional scoring by Jake Gorski. Jacob Smith is our executive producer. Engineering by Marcelo de Oliveira.
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I relied on quite a few studies in researching this, and I put a link to the bibliography in the show notes, should you want any references for starting your own local movement. Special thanks also to Douglas Kupas, whose work helped launch the field of siren reform studies, Mike Tagemann, Helen K. Rosenthal, Stephen Solomon, and Paul Bergman. I'm Ben Manifafri.
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The really alarming music you're hearing right now was composed by Davies owner Joe Saba for the trailer of the Michael Bay film Ambulance.
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According to a helpful chart from Yale University, 123 decibels is just two decibels lower than the point at which, quote, pain begins. This would all be fine, except I kind of need my ears for my job. And this is why I began the log. The log has fields for all relevant data. Date, time, branch of emergency service, location in the house from which we have heard the siren.
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There's also a field for reporter, Ben slash Julia, and another for notes. And then what is the final column?
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This is the only field that matters. You see, there's a dog in my neighborhood who howls almost every time the siren goes off. And he sounds like this. A dog who, by the standards of people on my blog, is practically famous. Have you heard a dog who howls every time the sirens go off?
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do something about it it starts really low and guttural i thought it was like a werewolf or something i decided to take a two-pronged approach to my siren problem plan a i had to see if i could prove that the sirens in my neighborhood were dangerously unnecessarily loud and plan b i needed a sympathetic face for my cause Nobody really cares about podcasters, but everybody cares about dogs.
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And I had to assume that that dog was howling along with the siren because he was, like me, in serious pain. So, find the dog, stop the siren. It'd be that simple. Except the dog was not immediately forthcoming. So I pushed ahead with plan A, noise research, which led me straight to Dr. Arlene Bronzaft.
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Dr. Bronzaft is an 89-year-old environmental psychologist who has been called the noise queen of New York City. She's done major noise studies, worked for five mayors. She grew up in Brooklyn and lives in a lovely, tidy apartment on the Upper East Side. Someone was jackhammering the street outside the building. And yet, you couldn't hear a thing. Double glazed windows. Of course.
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She took me to her noise room. Noise room sounds possibly like the opposite of what I mean.
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Bronzeaft started her work during the golden age of noise control, the 1970s, when the EPA began regulating noise. Her early work demonstrated that noise isn't just annoying, it can get in the way of kids learning in school. And she just kept going from there.
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That all checked out for me. Of course the sirens are too loud, but it can take a while for the research to make its way into policy. Now we have research linking even small changes in overall noise to significantly increased risk of heart disease. To say nothing of stress, poor sleep and its associated ailments, and crucially, the effect of noise on exasperated podcasters.
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I left that meeting full of hope. There's no doubt that sirens are dangerously loud. I just needed to find the data to back this up and figure out a new solution, like Arlene said. I went straight to the library and started digging around. But the more I saw about how clear it is already that these sirens are crazy, the less I believed that that data was going to make any difference in the world.
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And then, I found a different set of data. Not something about noise, but something that undermined the very foundation of the siren's existence. We'll be right back. Berrien County, Michigan sits on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan. It's not too far from Kalamazoo. Quaint lakefront towns, golf courses, quiet. Unless you work as a paramedic.
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Jonathan Beyer, former EMT and now medical director for the Berrien County Health Department.
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Beyer was a Boy Scout. Scrupulous. The reason he was speaking to me is because in his capacity as the EMS Medical Director of the Berrien County Medical Control Authority, he is responsible for the ambulances of Berrien County. And that means he's thought a lot about the noises that those ambulances make. And he's arrived at a very controversial position.
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No evidence that lights and sirens helps anybody? This, even to me, an inveterate complainer about sirens, was a huge surprise.
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A lot of EMS across the country has a similar kind of tiered intake system, a way to rank every incoming 911 call based not on its importance, but on its time sensitivity. In Berrien County, they would tag a call with priority one or two, depending on what the issue was.
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So you only have a certain number of ambulances, but if a full half of your calls are coming in as urgent, how do you fix the problem? How do you get all those ambulances where they need to be? Well, an easy way is to get more places faster, which theoretically you can do very easily if you're exempt from all typical traffic laws, precisely why we have sirens.
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Specifically, it increases your chance of an accident by over 50%, which is crazy. This is according to a peer-reviewed 2019 study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The risk is even higher when transporting a patient than when initially responding, but either way, the chance of an accident is a lot higher when you're using lights and sirens than if you're not.
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Also, these are very often bad accidents. Ambulances are heavy, not a risk worth taking if you're just responding to a toothache.
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So there's the accidents risk, but also, and this is really surprising, using lights and sirens doesn't actually save that much time on your route to the patient. For decades now, studies have shown that lights and sirens seem to save on average between 42 seconds and three minutes and 48 seconds.
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It's about one and a half minutes of savings if you're in a city and a little over three and a half minutes if you're in the country on average.
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I mean, that's huge. Yeah, that is huge. But heart attacks are actually one of the few exceptions, not the rule. And yet they are the exception on which the rule is largely based. So all of these factors led Bayer to do something big. He restructured the tiers.