[gentle music] (host) Why do we eat and what does the Great Depression have to do with it?

There are a few classic duos that always seem to go together in our minds.

Peanut butter and jelly, leaky pens and pocket protectors, and popcorn and movies.

But why do we associate one snack over others when it comes to taking in the latest moving picture?

Although it's compact, easy to eat, and delicious, there are plenty of other portable foods that fit the bill, so, how did the Great Depression and nose-diving profits align binge eating with old school binge watching?

And how many "corny" puns can I fit to one episode?

That's one.

First pun.

So to get this episode off and popping-- pun number two-- we have to first ask ourselves: What's the early history of popcorn?

Popcorn comes from a particular variety of maize that has a tough outer shell, which makes it tricky to eat if you're fond of your two front teeth and not fond of choking hazards.

This type of corn, unlike its softer and slightly more versatile cousins, really isn't good to eat raw or roasted, but does make a good food option when it's heated, causing the hard outer layer on the surface to pop, revealing the crunchy fluffy white insides.

Popcorn started to be domesticated as early as 5,000 BCE by indigenous populations in South America before showing up in the U.S. Southwest around 2,500 years ago.

But despite it's popularity in other regions, these tough as nail kernels didn't start making major waves on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. until the 19th century, primarily because of the difficulty to cultivate it in that region.

And in its early waves of popularity, folks weren't just into popcorn because it serves as a delicious vehicle for butter, but also for the act of popping itself.

That's right-- people used to like to watch popcorn pop as entertainment, which for most of us today would rank right up there with watching paint dry, unless it's Jiffy Pop, which is actually kind of thrilling.

Okay, so we know popcorn emerged thousands of years ago and got popularized in the U.S. in the mid 19th century, but we next have to ask ourselves: Why did movie theaters and popcorn become linked?

Well, the answer here has a lot to do with the rise of talkies and a little bit to do with farm subsidies, both of which helped to keep businesses afloat during everyone's most uplifting time period, The Great Depression.

When Henry Davis opened the first Nickelodeon Theater in Pittsburgh in 1905, the brand-new short films were screened alongside live performances and vaudeville acts.

And with live performances happening inside of their walls, early movie theater moguls fashioned their businesses off of live theaters.

This meant that when movie theaters first began to spring up, they had luxurious insides with fancy carpets and nice seats, which they didn't want ground down with snack food dust or grubbed up with grease-stained digits.

Also, silent films used subtitles, which required a literate audience base if you were going to truly enjoy them.

So theaters were trying to attract well-educated hoity-toity audiences with fat pockets.

And like live performances, silent films didn't really offer enough ambient noise to cover the sound of wrappers crinkling in unison, which made theater owners even more reluctant to sell snacks.

So flash forward to the Great Depression, which has the mood even baked into the name.

And with the advent of the first talking pictures after 1927, movie theaters were beginning to expand their clientele to folks who didn't need to read the subtitles.

Movies became an inexpensive form of escapism, but folks also wanted to chow down on cheap eats at the same time.

Enter popcorn, the rise of which is detailed in food historian Andrew Smith's book, "Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America."

With its strong and enticing aroma, its cheap cost and its portability, since you don't need a full kitchen to make it, independent vendors started to sell popcorn outside of movie theaters for people who would sneak it inside.

But pockets fat with contraband corn wasn't exactly what theater owners had in mind to sustain their fledgling art form.

When the sales from tickets alone weren't enough to sustain their failing theaters in the 1930s, owners began to lease space either in their lobbies or on the street right in front to vendors with their own popcorn carts because their theaters at that point weren't equipped with kitchens.

But after discovering the huge markup that could be made on popcorn by buying tons of unpopped kernels on the cheapity cheap and selling the finished puffed-up version at inflated rates, theaters finally muscled out the middlemen and decided to get into the popcorn game for themselves by selling concessions right in the lobby at the stand operated by the theater owners.

This in turn helped to buoy the sinking industry with more success than when people tried to buoy the Titanic-- the boat, not the film.

But keeping movie theaters in the black during the Great Depression, surprisingly, wasn't the last time that popcorn made the news.

In fact, popcorn's renewed interest in the headlines around 2012 to 2014 is weirdly connected to another piece of history that has to do with the Great Depression, because theaters weren't the only failing businesses hit hard by the economic downturn.

In the 1930s, to keep some poor farmers from literally losing the farm, the federal government began providing subsidies for certain domestic products that appear in a ton of our food today.

FDR and Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933.

Subsidies could take the form of paying farmers not to plant and overproduce unnecessary crops or giving different financial benefits to help them sell the crops that they did produce.

This included wheat, beef, milk, and--ding, ding, ding-- corn, although the types of corn included at that time were not of the popping variety.

And the subsidies have lasted long after the Great Depression ended, continuing to this day and becoming a staple of contention with legislators.

And popcorn, distinct from other kinds of corn, became one of the more hotly contested members of the subsidy umbrella after being tacked onto the proposed renewal in 2012 with some members of Congress opposing the inclusion as political pork.

Note to self: start a business that sells bacon-flavored popcorn.

But the controversial addition got the pass in 2014, meaning that your favorite microwave and movie-time treat now has some federal support.

Since the 1990s, there's even been a Popcorn Board, which is funded by private popcorn manufacturers and collaborates with the USDA.

And according to the USDA website, the Popcorn Board "helps maintain and expand existing markets and develop new markets for popcorn and popcorn products."

Can someone say "dream job," and are they hiring?

So, how does it all add up?

Well, popcorn's rise to the top of the movie-theater food pyramid has almost nothing to do with a natural association between movies and corn and everything to do with cheap supplies, food subsidies, and the Great Depression.

And even though popcorn isn't the healthiest snack for your waistline or your cholesterol levels once it's loaded down with salt and butter, it may be helping you to avoid the seductive clutches of advertising.

According to a study of 96 moviegoers conducted by researchers at the Cologne Institute and published in the "Journal of Consumer Psychology," audience members who received popcorn were less likely to absorb or remember the ads played before a movie.

Whereas those who were just given a sugar cube and no snacks were much more likely to absorb the ads.

I'm not sure if this has to do with popcorn directly or with the fact that they fed half of the audience a treat that's usually only enjoyed by spooked horses, but snacking before the show may help you to stay away from the brainwashing mass marketing.

So, what do you think?

Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.