
Every other Friday, we reach into our deep freezer and reheat an episode to serve up to you. We're calling these our Reheats. If you have a show you want reheated, send us an email or voice memo at hello@sporkful.com, and include your name, your location, which episode, and why.
What did dinosaur eggs taste like? In what shape would Jane Austen likely have had her dessert served to her? What does one of the world's leading paleontologists think of the paleo diet? How do you get maggots out of boiled sheep in the Gobi Dessert? How do you make ice cream on an uninhabited island in Madagascar in the summer? And how many ancient Aztecs would have had better teeth if they'd learned to eat corn by listening to The Sporkful? Dan gets answers to these questions and many more when he interviews the curators of a special food exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History entitled, "Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture."
This episode originally aired on February 10, 2013, and was produced by Dan Pashman. The Sporkful team now includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, and Jared O'Connell. Publishing by Shantel Holder.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- “Brand New Day” by by Jack Ventimiglia
- “Soul Good” by Lance Conrad
Photos courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History / © AMNH/D. Finnin.
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View Transcript
Dan Pashman: Hey everyone, it’s Dan here with another Friday Reheat for you. And all this month we are digging deep into the darkest recesses of our deep freezer to pull out super-old episode all in honor of our fifteenth anniversary, which we are celebrating this month. And today we're gonna pull one out that is near and dear to my heart. I guess maybe in part because I grew up in the New York area so I grew up going to the Museum of Natural History as a kid. Of course you always look forward to seeing the dinosaurs and the dinosaur skeletons and the giant whale hanging from the ceiling. I mean so much stuff there is just iconic. So it was so exciting for me back in 2013 when they did a food exhibit at the American Musem of Natural History. And I got to go there and meet the two curators and tour the exhibit and do a whole episode about it. Now sadly, Dr. Eleanor Sterling, one of the curators of the exhibit who I spoke with in this episode, passed away last year. She had an incredibly interesting life and career, which you’ll hear a bit about in the episode, but I encourage you to look her up and read more about Dr. Eleanor Sterling. Alright, enjoy the show.
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Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. And we're about to challenge your assumptions about consumption and drop a sporkful of knowledge on you because we're obsessively compulsive about eating more awesomely, and because if history’s taught us anything, it's that the hosts of food shows need a lot of catchphrases.
Dan Pashman: Let's go ahead and jump right into today's topic for mastication and rumination, which is: Eating throughout history.
Dan Pashman: The American Museum of Natural History here in New York City is currently doing an exhibit called “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture.” It is a really fun, very interesting exhibit. The traces, the role of food really throughout history and throughout so many different cultures. And there are multimedia components. There's an area where you can sort of stand over a screen and have a POV look at. As if you are cooking one of four different meals from all over the world. Uh, there are areas where you can smell different scents from around the world. And there's a real working kitchen. And I was lucky enough to interview the two curators at the exhibit. We walked through. We had a lot of fun but also got a lot of very interesting and useful information about eating throughout history. So let's go to the tape. Here I am at the Museum of Natural History.
Dan Pashman: So here with me first is Dr. Eleanor Sterling, co-curator of “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture,” and the director of the Museum's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation. Hi, Dr. Sterling.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Hello.
Dan Pashman: May I call you Eleanor?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Sure thing.
Dan Pashman: All right, thanks. And then we also have here Dr. Mark Norell. He is co-curator of “Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture,” and chair of the Museum's Division of Paleontology. Hi, Dr. Norell.
Dr. Mark Norell: Hi.
Dan Pashman: And can I call you Mark?
Dr. Mark Norell: Of course.
Dan Pashman: As chair of the Museum's Division of Paleontology, does that mean you oversee the dinosaur bones?
Dr. Mark Norell: Yes.
Dan Pashman: I would think that whenever you walk into a new group of people and you tell them that's what you do, you probably… It's probably hard for you to escape the room after a certain period of time, is that fair to say?
Dr. Mark Norell: It's a burden.
[LAUGHS]
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: It depends on the room.
Dan Pashman: Have you heard about the paleo diet, and what do you think of it as a paleontologist?
Dr. Mark Norell: Uh, I've heard of it, but, you know, I tend to just eat what I think is good for me.
Dan Pashman: Because I have a friend who was on that diet and then he threw a football in his arm, broke in half.
Dr. Mark Norell: I don't think you can relate one instance to anything.
Dan Pashman: It may have been a pre-existing condition. But in general, what do you think of the idea of eating the way people did in that era?
Dr. Mark Norell: To me, eating is all about, like, what tastes good. I try to eat very healthily, but also I want to eat what tastes good. So, I'm not going to sit there and eat a bunch of like, you know, green stuff and like hardly cooked tough meat on a table just because somebody did it 10,000 years ago.
Dan Pashman: Right. There is such a thing as progress, I suppose.
Dr. Mark Norell: Exactly.
Dan Pashman: Should we walk a little bit?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Sure.
Dan Pashman: Alright. So, Mark, what's your favorite part of the exhibit here?
Dr. Mark Norell: Uh, I don't know. My favorite part is probably the end because I really enjoy the aspect of the way that, you know, culture and food come together. I mean, I'm here because I like to eat. Okay. Eleanor wants to save the world. I like to eat, so that's sort of this unholy thing that we're in.
Dan Pashman: And Eleanor, I should tell my listeners, you are a vegetarian.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: That is one of my features, yeah.
Dan Pashman: I'm sure there's other things about you we'll find out over the course of this interview.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: I would hope so.
Dan Pashman: Let's go into the kitchen. One of the great things about this exhibit is that there's an actual working kitchen here, which I think is very exciting. Oh my goodness, what are they making here? This looks like chocolate.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: I hope it looks like chocolate. It is chocolate.
Dr. Mark Norell: Yeah, have one.
Dan Pashman: I will. Um, so, Mark, you, uh, well, you guys have both been around the world for your work, and I'm sure eaten in some pretty, uh, exotic and in some situations difficult circumstances, in the middle of the Gobi Desert, or in the middle of Latin America or Africa. I mean, are there sort of some universal rules of the road that you can share for eating in adverse circumstances?
Dr. Mark Norell: Yeah. Eat what the locals eat and you're less likely to get sick.
Dan Pashman: Eleanor?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yeah, I try to eat things that are peeled and cooked.
Dan Pashman: What's the food like in the Gobi Desert, Mark?
Dr. Mark Norell: We eat incredibly well. Because we're, we're hundreds of miles away from the nearest town, so we provision really well. And then a number of the people on the expeditions are good cooks and we make homemade gnocchis, we make pizzas…
Dan Pashman: Is that traditional Mongolian fare?
Dr. Mark Norell: Not at all. Traditional Mongolian fare is you find the oldest, greasiest sheep you can find, boil it, and then take and skim all the fat off the top and spread that across a piece of stale bread.
Dan Pashman: That actually sounds pretty good. What do you do with the rest of the sheep?
Dr. Mark Norell: You eat it over days and days until it gets too maggoty to be able to actually choke it down.
Dan Pashman: Okay, well, so, is there a point at which it has maggots, but it's not yet too maggoty?
Dr. Mark Norell: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause then when you, like, dry the maggots out, you put them in a, in a pot, and then, and then heat it up really slowly and they all crawl out, and then you put water in it and it floats them off.
Dan Pashman: That is very useful information.
Dr. Mark Norell: [LAUGHS] It's a traditional technique from the old days.
Dan Pashman: So I should describe here, so we're in an actual working kitchen that's part of the exhibit here at the Museum of Natural History, and every couple of weeks you guys are doing a different theme. Different types of foods that you're going to be cooking. I was here a few weeks ago and there was cornbread. Now it looks like we have chocolate truffles. Is that right?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: It's chocolate in general. Today just happens to be truffles. But they get inventive here.
Dan Pashman: Yeah, and so if folks come here, you can, you'll get some free food. In addition to a very great exhibit.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Well, we had to do that. I mean, you come to an exhibition, you're learning about food, you're reading about food, you're talking about food, you get hungry.
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Dan Pashman: So, Mark, you discovered an oviraptor, or should I say a fossil of an oviraptor, nesting on a brood of eggs.
Dr. Mark Norell: Right.
Dan Pashman: Are you able, in your research, to have any idea what dinosaur eggs might have tasted like?
Dr. Mark Norell: Yeah, well, we eat them all the time. We just call them birds now. So that… I mean, the eggs of these animals like oviraptor in microstructure and everything else have exactly the… the shells are identical to the eggs of modern birds. So, an egg of Tyrannosaurus would have tasted just like a chicken egg, just bigger.
Dan Pashman: So, let's go over here and check out this part of the exhibit. This is a meal that we might have, might have seen between, it says 58 BC to 29 AD. So, Eleanor, I want you to tell me a little bit about this, and we should add that there is actually ambient sound being piped in to set the scene of the period of time that we are in, so if you hear that sound, friends, that will help to transport you. You hear that laughter? [SOUND UP] That's people laughing right around the time of the birth of Jesus. Eleanor, tell me about what we see before us, please.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: So this is a meal that, uh, the first empress of Rome, Livia Drusilla, might have eaten. And, um, what we tried to do was to figure out what was on the, the table regularly so that people could sit on one side of the table and feel like they were eating a meal with famous people around the world. So we have some things from the Mediterranean that people might feel are pretty obvious, like olives. And there's something that looks a little bit like a pesto sauce, some kind of a green leaf sauce. And we have some eggs that are stuffed. And then we also have sea urchins, which might be a surprise for people to think about that as a delicacy on a plate in Rome.
Dan Pashman: Let me ask you guys a question that applies to this particular part of the exhibit and the exhibit in general, which is: In putting this exhibit together, were there any tips, techniques for cooking or eating, recipes, dishes, ingredients that you happened upon or were reminded of that have changed the way you eat, or brought something back to your palate that you were like, Oh, I forgot that I like that thing, or I'm gonna try eating it the way they ate it 2,000 years ago.
Dr. Mark Norell: No. I'm a creature of habit. Like, I'm open to new things, and…
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: He had the same meal every day for the entire several years that we worked on this project. Every day for lunch.
Dan Pashman: What was it?
Dr. Mark Norell: Sushi. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: And is there anything from any other part of the exhibit, Eleanor, that you've done that's, oh, you're pointing over here, I want to see if there's something else that's had an impact on your eating habits. Oh, we're now moving over to the time of Kublai Khan, 1215 to 1294, Immovable Feast. I should mention just quickly that if people hear the sound of liquids being poured or dishes being cleared, we are now in Kublai Khan's living room, essentially. And those are the sounds of the meal being served, so people shouldn't be confused by that. And what were you going to say, Eleanor?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Well, just that this,when Mark and I were trying to think about what we thought were really fundamental, um, Happenings in the food world, we realized that fusion was key, and a lot of people think about Cuban Dominican Chinese food as being this amazing new thing in the world that had, that we had these fusion across cultures. But as Mark will tell you, this particular exhibit we're in front of was a place where fusion was happening all across this empire.
Dr. Mark Norell: Everything that we eat is fusion cuisine. I mean, whether it's you're ripping it off from your neighbor or it's across the planet, so.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: I think that makes you think about food in a different way, and it makes me eat differently by appreciating the depth of experience that the food has had before it showed up on my plate.
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Dan Pashman: Coming up, we learn how to make ice cream when you don't have electricity -- something Eleanor did when she was on an uninhabited island in Madagascar. Stick around.
+++ BREAK +++
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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat, I'm Dan Pashman and I have a very big, exciting announcement for you. This past November, I took a group of Sporkful fans and some others on a special trip across Italy to eat pasta, to retrace many of the steps I took on my own research trip for my cookbook and we had so much fun and ate so, so well. We ate spaghetti all’asassina in Bari. We took a cooking class with Silvestro Silvestori in Lecce, we ate with Katie Parla in Rome, and the folks at Culinary Backstreets who organized the tour, they added some stops that I didn't even know about that were new to me, that were incredibly delicious and also fascinating. Point is, it was so great, we're doing it again. This November, we just opened up spots. It's a small group, so space is limited. Bottom line: Come eat pasta with me in Italy. For all the details, go to culinarybackstreets.com/sporkful.
Dan Pashman: Okay, now back to this week’s Reheat.
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Dan Pashman: Okay, so we're going to wander over here to Jane Austen. Summer 1810. We're now in Kent in southeast England, and this exhibit talks about ice cream before electricity. How did they do that, Mark?
Dr. Mark Norell: It just requires ice. And if you think about the whole problem of ice, you know, like, you're in southeast England, it's the middle of summer, I mean, it's like, the weather's miserable there all the time except it's really miserable in the summer. And, so where are they going to get ice from? Well, they might be able to get it from Scotland, or they might be able to get it during the wintertime, and they have to keep it in sheds or barns, and they have to keep it covered with hay or something else so that it'll last through the summertime, and that they're able to make these, like, great desserts, like ice cream. So, that it was a real, sort of, ultra-gourmet, ultra-high class, very exclusive, very expensive dessert before the advent of electrical coolers.
Dan Pashman: But how could they even keep ice for any period of time, even in a barn or some kind of storage facility?
Dr. Mark Norell: You'd be surprised even underground how long ice lasts. I mean if you like make, you know, carve a block of ice that's three feet long by like two feet by two feet, it'll last just by virtue of its size in a well-insulated area for months.
Dan Pashman: I don't suppose you made any ice cream in the Gobi Desert?
Dr. Mark Norell: [LAUGHS] Never ice cream.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: I made ice cream on an uninhabited island in Madagascar in the middle of the summer.
Dan Pashman: Oh my god, please tell me that story.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yeah. So, um, we had fishing boats that were nearby and they wanted to come on shore to be able to get some fresh water from our waterfall. And so we said, sure, fine, no problem, come on. And then they felt so Um, sad that we were there in the middle of this heat, heat, this uninhabited island in the heat. I was living there for a couple years, that they brought this block of ice on land and I was so excited to have cool water. I was so thrilled, but it was this huge block of ice. So I had, you know, a glass of ice water and I had another glass of ice water and then I was like, “Now what do I do with the ice?”
Dr. Mark Norell: Gin and tonic.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: We didn't have any of that. But we did have, um, eggs, and we had sweetened condensed milk, and we had a fire, and we had some vanilla because it was Madagascar, and so what we did was we, we made, we made this cream sauce, and then we put it inside a, a Nalgene water bottle, and then we found this big can from, an oil can, an old oil can, and we filled that full of ice and rock salt, and we rolled it up and down the beach. We made ice cream.
Dan Pashman: And how did it come out?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: It was more of a smoothie than an ice cream, but it was delicious.
Dan Pashman: Yeah, I mean, I guess beggars can't be choosers, right?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Hey, it was the best ice cream I had all that year.
Dan Pashman: Were you with locals there?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Had they had ice cream like this before?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Oh, no. No.
Dan Pashman: What was their reaction to it?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Well, first they thought we were crazy. Um, they're like, why are you using the eggs in that way? And the eggs are really important. And why can't we just have these for breakfast or for over rice for dinner? And, but after we convinced them that it was a really good use of all of those resources, they were pretty excited. It was, you know, it was hot. So they were, they loved the flavor and the texture.
Dan Pashman: God, I wish I could have been there to see. I mean, to see an adult have their first… I mean, it was fun for me to watch my daughter eat ice cream for the first time at age one or whatever. But to see an adult who has a lifetime's worth of experiences eat ice cream for the first time, I mean, it must have been exciting to share that experience with them.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Look, we spent a lot of time talking about why it was happening, because of course I cooked something, made it hot, and then I, and then I didn't actually make that thing cold directly, I just surrounded it with ice and then rolled it back and forth and so that transformation was something we spent a little bit of time in Malayasi trying to explain.
Dan Pashman: But in the end it sounds like it turned out well.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yep, absolutely. It was well worth the effort.
Dan Pashman: So we can turn back to Jane Austen's ice cream here. The ice cream is actually shaped like a column. I'm not going to try to guess whether it's Doric, Ionic, or
Dr. Mark Norell: Can't see the top, so you don't know.
Dan Pashman: Right, okay, thank you Mark for not making me sound stupid. [LAUGHS] Um Did they actually serve ice cream in shapes like this back then?
Dr. Mark Norell: Yeah, it was very popular all through, like Napoleonic times, as well as up into Victorian times to serve things in these really elaborate molds like this…
Dan Pashman: Because vertical food was a big trend in fancy restaurants for a while, but I guess even that concept wasn't so new after all, huh?
Dr. Mark Norell: Exactly.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: So the one thing that's cool, though, about ice cream, one of the reasons why we have this whole exhibition is because, um, I love ice cream. And if you have…
Dan Pashman: Basically, this whole Natural History Museum exhibit is an elaborate ploy for Eleanor to be able to talk about ice cream. Is that right?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: That's correct. And but no, what's fun is, is thinking about, you know, we, we feature this, um, summer ice house in England, but then Mark can tell you about the fact that this, these ice houses were actually found in China, in the 1300s. I mean, these, these ice houses were spread throughout the world, in fact, and people were trying to solve that same kind of problem over and over in different places.
Dr. Mark Norell: Well, even before that, there used, during the Tang Dynasty in 700 AD, that there was, uh, melons that were taken from the oasis towns in Central Asia, because of the Dianshan and Pamir Mountains and stuff, and Kunlun Mountains are so close, and they have glaciers, and they would pack these melons in ice and put them on the backs of camels and then take them to, like, Beijing and the Samarkand on the Silk Road. And things that are, look, just exactly like modern coolers, you know, that they were, instead of lined with aluminum or plastic, they were lined with lead, but they had insulation in them with camel hair and everything else and stuff, and they would like, loadot in the back of camels and taken across the desert.
Dan Pashman: It almost makes you wonder, I mean, what's left to be invented? I guess it helps that we keep forgetting that we've invented these things, and that we can keep being impressed with ourselves.
Dr. Mark Norell: Well, I don't think we were inventing anything. I mean, we're just improving and tinkering with. Even things like, I mean, freeze drying. Okay? Like freeze drying was a big thing back in the ‘70s. Well, we got to freeze dry all these foods and everything because it makes them last. Well, in Tibet, where I work sometimes, people take yak meat, and they'll take and they'll cut it in really thin slices, and then they'll lay it out on rocks in the middle of the night. And just overnight, the ice crystals will just form on it, and in the morning they just dust them off and they're completely dry. So it's like one night non-solar drying, just by virtue of it gets so cold. It just draws the water out, so.
Dan Pashman: And then how long does it last?
Dr. Mark Norell: I mean, they can just keep it all winter in their houses, then, and things, and it's just dry, so it's like jerky.
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Dan Pashman: It really drives home the universality of food and culture, and some of the video presentations you guys have I found really powerful.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yeah, and we do that throughout, um, and, uh, in the growing section, for instance, not only do you see how people create food and eat the food, but, but it, it's really how do they find something in nature and figure out that it's edible? I mean, there's some things we eat in the world that are really curious. They have poisons, they're funny looking, they don't look edible to me. And yet someone in our deep past figured out that they were edible, figured out how to process those foods, and really it took the ingenuity to identify those as food sources and then created them. That's pretty, pretty neat to think about.
Dan Pashman: One of the ones I've always wondered about is popcorn. Who was the first guy, or woman, who dried out some popcorn and accidentally or possibly purposely dropped it into a pot and cooked it?
Dr. Mark Norell: Well, actually, I mean, the first corn that was ever domesticated was popcorn or thought to be popcorn by a lot of anthropologists and archaeologists. So like, you know, it could have been totally serendipitous. I mean, somebody just could have had, said, what is this weird plant, throw it in the fire, and all of a sudden it goes, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, all the, whatever they had laying around the campfire started eating it, and they said, well, we can eat this. And, it could have been as easy as that, so.
Dan Pashman: And I would think that there's probably been a lot of trial and error over time, and there's probably some people who said, hey, let's try eating this and didn't end up as fortunate as people who ate popcorn. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: That's fair to say. Cassava is one of the main roots that a lot of people around the world eat and it is full of cyanide. So the first person who tried to eat that without preparing it probably didn't fare well.
Dan Pashman: But, and I'm so interested about, I wish I could talk to that, the first person who said, well, what if we cook it? What if we do this? Maybe then we won't die. I mean, that's a pretty risky field to be in.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: It is. But you know, I think as Mark said, a lot of it is is trial and error. A lot of it's just an accident. You know, something happened, a cassava fell into the fire, somebody stepped on it, it got, you know, that it got processed in some way and suddenly it was edible. I mean, who knows? But we did have millions of years to work on this.
Dan Pashman: Let's move over here and I would love if you guys could describe this part of the exhibit to people who obviously can't see it. But I think this is a really cool, cool thing here, this, this market.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: This is a market in the Americas, an Aztec market, in Mexico, from 1519. So just before the Europeans came before the Spaniards came. And you have a sense for the kinds of foods that are found here, so you get a sense for what was domesticated in the Americas. Tomatoes, corn, squash. Some of them have made their way around the world. Imagine some of those cuisines without the tomato, but really a tomato only showed up a couple hundred years ago in the Italian cuisine. So we try to play with that a little bit. What did foods look like here in Mexico before the chicken was here? Before wheat came over? Before really there was any cheese? Um, in, in the Americas.
Dan Pashman: Wait, Mexican food existed before cheese?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: You betcha.
Dan Pashman: An Italian food existed before tomatoes?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Yep.
Dan Pashman: Mark, what is your technique for eating corn on the cob?
Dr. Mark Norell: I'm more the typewriter style.
Dan Pashman: Typewriter style, interesting. I actually, um, like to hold up the corn vertically on the plate and take a knife. and chop off the corn niblets because I feel like when I do it typewriter style it gets stuck in my teeth.
Dr. Mark Norell: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Did the Aztecs have a solution to that problem?
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: I did my graduate degree at Yale and I worked in the basement of one of the buildings where the anthropologists had their collections from Machu Picchu and so we had, we were surrounded by skulls all the time that we were doing our research and you would look up and you'd see these amazing skulls that had these, uh, abscesses that were clearly from having had corn stuck in their teeth and then the, you know, something rotted and then the sugars came out and it began, it created these awful, horrible infections in their bone.
Dan Pashman: If only they had listened to my podcast.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Exactly.
Dan Pashman: Dr. Eleanor Sterling, thank you so much.
Dr. Eleanor Sterling: Thank you.
Dan Pashman: And Dr. Mark Norell, thank you.
Dr. Mark Norell: Thank you.
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