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Apples! CGP Grey Style

2012-10-26 · explainer · Hank · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Internet & YouTube) · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: punishment or challenge, self promotion

Taking up CGP Grey's claim that his style of video is hard to make, Hank tells the history and biology of apples: their Kazakh origin, Johnny Appleseed's seedling orchards grown for cider, grafting, and the McIntosh apple behind the Apple Macintosh.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; YouTube's Education Summit and CGP Grey's claim that his style is hard; not those apples

  • ★★ Hank attended YouTube's Education Summit recently and met many educational YouTubers, including CGP Grey, of whom everyone agrees the world needs more. — 00:00:02
  • ★★★ Grey told Hank that making videos in his style was very hard, so Hank makes this apple video to prove he can. — 00:00:14

00:00:28 — Apples: Kazakh origin, oldest pie recipe, first cultivated fruit tree, 'apple' as generic word for fruit, Greek myths and apple throwing

  • ★★★ Hank says almost every apple anyone has eaten descends from wild apple trees in Kazakhstan, so apples are immigrants rather than 'American as apple pie'. (hedged) — 00:00:35 · as American as apple pie, United States
  • ★★ Hank says the oldest known apple pie recipe was written in 1381. — 00:00:44
  • ★★ Hank says apples may have been the first cultivated fruit tree in human history. (hedged) — 00:00:49
  • ★★ Hank says that until the 17th century the word for apple in Old English and Latin was a generic term for all fruits (berries excepted, nuts included), making ancient texts ambiguous. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Hank says apples feature heavily in Greek myths, especially about beauty and sexuality, and throwing an apple at a young lady was a way of saying you fancied her. (playful) — 00:01:20

00:01:34 — Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman): seedling nurseries, required fruit trees, heterozygosity and grafting, apples for cider

  • ★★★ Hank says Johnny Appleseed, unlike Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, was a real person: John Chapman, a businessman, nomad and missionary who crossed the American frontier in the early 1800s supplying apple saplings. — 00:01:38 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says many American settlers were required to plant fruit trees on their property as a sign they were improving land they had claimed. — 00:01:54 · United States
  • ★★★ Hank explains apples' extreme heterozygosity: a seedling's apples taste nothing like the parent's and are by default terrible, so good apples are cloned by grafting buds or limbs onto rootstock. (hedged) — 00:02:11
  • ★★★ Hank says Chapman planted seeds rather than grafts, producing terrible-tasting apples nobody minded, since apples were mashed and fermented into hard cider, water being distrusted for dysentery. (playful) — 00:02:32

00:02:57 — The cosmic lottery of a good tree; John McIntosh's 1796 tree; the McIntosh apple and the Apple Macintosh; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank says farmers who found a tree with tasty eating apples won a kind of cosmic lottery and often got rich selling grafts and apples. — 00:02:57
  • ★★★ Hank says every McIntosh apple descends from one tree Scotsman John McIntosh found on a farm in Canada in 1796. — 00:03:10 · Canada
  • ★★ Hank says the McIntosh apple inspired the naming of the Apple Macintosh, the kind of computer he is editing this video on. — 00:03:24

In the description and comments

  • ★★ In the description Hank writes that when he told Grey to make videos more often, Grey said it is really hard and told him to try; he did, found it extremely hard, and jokes he hasn't stood up in 'like two days'. (playful) — video description
  • ★★ Hank writes that his apple video turned out much less excellent than an average CGP Grey video, so he concedes Grey probably can't make one a week without killing himself, but still thinks he should try because he loves his work. (playful) — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank explains that 'apple' was the generic word for every fruit, though berries had their own word. — 00:01:09

    “but nuts? apples.”

  • Hank says throwing an apple at a young lady was a way of saying you fancied her. — 00:01:27

    “as long as you didn't throw it too hard.”

  • Apples were fermented into booze, first because everyone had seen dysentery and no one trusted the water. — 00:02:54

    “and second because, well, booze”

  • The McIntosh apple inspired the name of the Apple Macintosh computer. — 00:03:30

    “which some how happens to be the kind of computer I'm editing this video on right now”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Johnny Appleseed

Also: People: CGP Grey · John McIntosh

Concepts: cider · grafting · Greek mythology · heterozygosity · Latin · McIntosh (apple) · Old English

Places: Canada · Kazakhstan · United States

Events: YouTube Education Summit

Products: Macintosh

Myths: Paul Bunyan · Pecos Bill

Memes: as American as apple pie

Only in the description or credits: Evil Baby Orphanage card game

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