Today: Happy Thanksgiving From This Week Health

This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the smartest robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.  Today in Health IT, we are talking Thanksgiving. I'm Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at This Week Health, where we host of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare, one connection at a time. I've spent the last 12 years interviewing healthcare leaders, and I'm excited to bring that knowledge into this community of leaders. This holiday season, we're reminded of the power of generosity, community, and the impact we can make together. That's why we're proud to continue our partnership with Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a national leader in the fight against childhood cancer. Since its founding, Alex's Lemonade Stand has been on a mission to raise funds for critical research And provide support for families navigating the challenges of childhood cancer. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our partners and community, we've raised over 182, 000 to date, but we're not stopping there. Our commitment to Alex's Lemonade Stand carries into 2025, and we're determined to make it our best year of giving yet. You can join us in this important cause. Visit our website where you'll find Alex's Lemonade Stand logo in the top right hand corner. Click on it to donate and help us support groundbreaking research, innovative treatments, and hope for so many families in need. So today we are having a special Thanksgiving episode. Of today in Health it, and I am joined by Sarah Richardson, president of this week, health 2 29 Executive Development Community. Sarah, thanks for being here and happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Kate, I am so excited to be here today, and I'll start off by saying how grateful I am to work with you every day. I feel exactly the same. It's been only a few months since I've joined this team, and I'm very grateful for it. This is a great group. Now, that being said, we are going to dive into some Thanksgiving fun. Whether that's the things that we do or don't like to eat, maybe we'll throw in a little trivia. And a few fun facts to spark your holiday conversations. So Sarah, happy Thanksgiving once again. Yes, because Thanksgiving isn't just for a day of feasting. We get to reflect on the power of togetherness, the value of gratitude, and the essential role we all play in improving the care and quality of human life. Which means we have to dive into some fun facts about Thanksgiving. And I'm going to start turkey stats. Nearly 46 million turkeys are eaten in the U. S. each Thanksgiving, enough to circle the globe, if laid beak to tail. Except for the one that gets pardoned by the president. Yes, which didn't start until 1989 with George Bush. He was the first one to pardon a turkey. I thought it had been so much longer than that. I did too. Yay for that turkey. And the first feast. So the first Thanksgiving was in 1621, and it was three days. It featured deer, shellfish, and no forks, just spoons and knives. Very interesting. I wish there was footage of that. Although I think a lot of us abandon the formalities on Thanksgiving. We're still going to have forks, though, in my house. At least I hope so. Oh, no, you should just go for it. Just tell everybody you're going back to 1621 and you only have spoons and knives to eat Thanksgiving dinner this year. Now, what about the parade, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? I do watch it. I enjoy it, even though the singing is pretty bad sometimes. But the first one happened in 1924, but didn't have balloons. Instead, there were live animals from Central Park Zoo as part of the procession. That would have been great. It would have been pretty cool to see that because now you just get like the big balloons. Although I went to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade once in my life, it was on my bucket list. It was back in 2000. I don't know that I've ever been colder in my entire life. Yeah. And there's really nowhere to go. I guess you're just huddled there like a penguin. Exactly. So if like me, you're not really versed at cooking turkey. There is a Butterball Turkey talk line that you can call for advice and it gets over 100, 000 calls each season, everything from how do I thaw the bird to what do I do if the dog eats the turkey, that's going to be one of those staff up models every year Hey, we needed enough people to answer a hundred thousand calls each holiday season for Butterball, although honestly, with as much as you and I cover about AI and technology, most of that could get answered. on chat, GPT, perplexity cloud, etc. We'd have to be careful of is verifying the information because every once in a while, as we all know, you do get misinformation from the LLMs and perhaps the database that's used by Butterball is more robust because they have years and years of being able to answer these calls. Yeah, that's true. And if I have a question about anything the dog eats, I actually have a list from the vet, so I'll consult that. I'm sure Butterball could help, but go right to the source on that one. That works. Cranberry sauce. It was first canned in 1912, which became a staple of the modern day. Thanksgiving table. Funny enough, in our Thanksgiving research, you and I found that most people don't actually like traditional Thanksgiving food, cranberry sauce, turkey, and even pumpkin pie, where it's Apple pie is the number one pie still in America. Yeah, that is interesting. I prefer apple pie, but to me a dessert should have chocolate in it. So I'm not a big fan of some of these Thanksgiving dishes and I love it when people go non traditional. one year, I'm going to do that. Go non traditional. You're going to have pork chops and chocolate mousse and something else at the table. not traditional. we do pork chops, stuffed pork chops and other yummy side dishes simply because most of the food is Better the next day anyway. So I prefer to go non traditional myself. It's the next year's New Year, Kate. Next year, we're going to make sure that you have like chocolate cream pie at your Thanksgiving dinner. Sounds delicious. Speaking of Thanksgiving dinner. I have to talk about Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorites ever. I watch it every year, at least once. And what's funny is that I plugged into chat GPT the summary just to see what it would say. And it was pretty amusing. It said, Charlie Brown is faced with hosting an impromptu Thanksgiving dinner for his friends after Peppermint Patty invites herself and others to his home. Overwhelmed, Charlie enlists Linus and Snoopy to help prepare the meal, and it goes on. But as you can recall, the meal ended up being toast, popcorn, pretzels, and jelly beans. I would be all for it. And I, unlike Peppermint Patty, would be grateful that my dog helped assemble this beautiful meal. We literally, about a month ago, watched all the Charlie Brown cartoon specials. I believe it was because of The Great Pumpkin came out on one of the streaming services that was available. So we watched all of them. I remember watching the Thanksgiving special. One a few months ago and loved that Snoopy, I'd forgotten that Snoopy had made popcorn for dinner that night. And of course, Marcy is terrible at making eggs and everything else that goes with it. So it was really cute to revisit those cartoons. And we probably will do it again before the holiday season is over. I'm all for it. And I love my dog dearly, but sometimes I wish he had the ambition of Snoopy. Not gonna lie. I'm pretty sure that if Ted made dinner, you would have a very different outcome than you making dinner. More importantly, he can't eat chocolate, so it would thwart your chocolate pie plans for next year. So maybe Ted just gets some leftover turkey later on in the I think we should close this out with a little bit of trivia. Let's see how much we actually know about this holiday. I'm ready. Okay, so what meat did the Pilgrims serve at the first Thanksgiving instead of turkey? I'm gonna go with venison? That's correct! Wow, I think I would have said chicken, but that's because I don't know. I always want chicken. That doesn't make sense. And fish, right? Yeah, and how domesticated were chickens in 1621 time period? I'm just thinking like what was available at the time, and I'm like you're right, you're probably eating like shellfish and deer, which we've heard about. So deer was a wild stab. Okay, so here's another one then for you. We know that female turkeys don't gobble, they purr. Why do male turkeys gobble? First of all, I'm very amused by the fact that they purr. I'm going to have to hear that. I'm going to Google that later. But I would guess, like most birds, it involves attracting a mate. Yes, a female turkey. And for all of you that know that I have a cat or a couple cats out there, I don't want a turkey, even if they do purr, FYI, as a pet. I just don't think they make a good pet. So this is one that I would be really impressed if you or anyone knew. How many feathers does a mature turkey have? 10, It's a good guess. It's apparently around 3, 500. I wouldn't want to be the person to count that. I also don't want to be the person that when, if you raise a turkey and then killed your own turkey, or Thanksgiving dinner. That's a lot of feathers to pull out of a bird. I agree. Okay. So Kate, which president officially declared Thanksgiving a national holiday? I thought it was FDR, but I don't think that's correct. Abraham Lincoln in 1863. FDR, to your point, was the president who chose the official date, for Thanksgiving to be when it is in November. Okay. So it's been an a national holiday for longer than I thought. All right. Good job, President Lincoln. Yes. And you think about that, that was in the middle of civil war too. So it was very necessary at that point at, in our country to bring something forward that would give people pause for gratitude in a time that I'm certain that was literally right in the middle of the war. That had to be tough for so many families who were divided in many cases. So makes sense why he did it when he did it. Yeah, definitely. And I really hope that everyone who's listening has a really nice holiday. Enjoy your time. And I'm sure that there's a lot of things that we're all grateful for. Enjoy it. Take a minute and appreciate all that we have. Absolutely. And whether you're going shopping to burn off your mashed potatoes, which I do believe is a staple, Kate, that everybody likes to have on the table, it's the mashed potatoes component, or you're watching football or going for a walk with a dog, or simply enjoying time away from work. From This Week Health to all of you, have a very happy Thanksgiving.