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Quick, when we say fermentation, what comes to mind? [person speaks onstage]

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Alcohol? Healthy people who drink kombucha? Kimchi? Or maybe just a fermen... what? [fermented food/drink examples]

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Yeah. And what things can be fermented? Well, lots of stuff--from green juice, to

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cabbage, to cheese, to meat. Yeah, meat... they ferment shark meat in Iceland.

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Seriously it was a Viking thing; we're not making this up. Of course, the [fermented shark meat feast]

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fermentation process looks different depending on what kinds of bacteria are [bacteria work on fermentation]

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at work. Oh, you didn't realize there was bacteria involved? Yup lots and lots

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of bacteria. No worries, it's not as scary as it sounds, for the most part. [person hides]

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Let's take it to of the major categories of stuff that humans and

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friendly bacteria have fermented over the years. We'll start with the obvious: [person hangs out with bacteria]

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booze, the sauce, wacky juice, as some call it...

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Okay, well nobody calls it that anymore. But the fact is that one of the biggest [people drinking]

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uses for fermentation has been the production of alcoholic beverages, and

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it's also one of the oldest. Humans probably first drink alcohol from fruit

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that accidentally rotted or something, but they got the hang of making it [man eats bad fruit]

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themselves soon after... like, really soon after. Archaeologists have found beer

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jugs from 10,000 BCE, which is right around the time we started to [people excavate beer jug]

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domesticate crops. Yeah, quick work, there, Stone Age guys. But fermentation wasn't [early farmer works]

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just for booze. It also helped us out with dairy products. See, dairy has [bacteria with cow]

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always been kind of a problem for humans. It's high-calorie and fatty, but it tends

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to go bad super fast. You never really know what's going on inside the fridge [milk goes rogue]

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until it's too late. Luckily, there are lots of different ways

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of fermenting milk to make it into other stuff that keeps longer. There's yogurt, [dairy factory video]

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buttermilk, most kinds of cheese, and this stuff called kefir, which is a drinkable

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yogurt loaded with bacteria... the good kind of bacteria, not the kind that turns our [fermented dairy example]

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internal organs to goop. Fermenting also helps us preserve

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vegetables. Well, most fermented fruits just turn into wine, but vegetables can have a [fruit becomes wine]

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lower sugar content, so regular fermenting ain't going to work.

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This means they get pickled. Yup, they're either pickled with vinegar or they're [vegetables pickled]

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left to ferment in anaerobic, or oxygen-free, environments, where they

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start to produce lactic acid. The lactic acid then pickles the vegetables and

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preserves them so they don't rot. Hey, what did the cucumber say to the other [guy does pretty rough stand-up routine]

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cucumber when they were shoved into a vinegar-filled jar? We're in a pickle now... is this thing on?

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