Planet Money · Friday, August 28, 2026
Dan Pashman and Kenny Malone discuss the historical significance of New Jersey tomatoes. Nearly a century ago, a scientist at Rutgers, in collaboration with Campbell Soup Company, developed a new variety of tomato that became dominant for decades.
“See, Kenny, look how beautiful New Jersey is. It's very nice.”
“For like a couple decades, if you were eating a tomato, you were very likely eating a descendant of the plump red, platonic ideal of a tomato that the Rutgers scientists had helped to perfect.”