“You never ate barbecue ribs in the 19th century because … you either ate a barbecue, you ate the whole animal, right? The ribs would be in it, but you wouldn't get a slab of ribs. That really came about with meat packing in the early 20th century. … They used to be the cheapest cut of meat you could find. … They had actually dumped them into the Ohio River by the wagon load because they had so many ribs they literally could not give them away.”

…stories of him picking, didn't take out ribs from a favorite rib joint and eating them on the train with all his Yankee buddies and drinking beer after the games on the way back to New York or wherever they were headed. So the whole story of ribs is just one I hadn't really thought about that much. But determined that ribs sort of just blossomed in the early 20th century as this American thing. They used to be the cheapest cut of meat you could find. In fact, the stockhouses in Cincinnati back in the 19th century, they couldn't sell them. They couldn't pack them and sell the ribs. They wouldn't fit in the barrels. And they had more than they gave them away to the boarding house owners to cook. And then ones they couldn't give away, they had actually dumped into the Ohio River by the wagon load because they had so many ribs they literally…