Weird popcorn experience. I screwed up the first pan, burnt and mispopped everything. So I cleaned it out and put it back on the stove, still quite wet, tossed in a small amount of (olive) oil and popcorn (no test kernels, just all at once), and tried again. This time the corn took quite a while to start to pop, I could hear the water/oil mixture sizzling and splattering the inside of the pan. When it started to pop, it was all over in under 5 seconds, no trail off of slow to pop kernels like I typically get. And only 2 kernels didn't pop. Perfect.

Something went on with that water/oil mixture. My guess is that the water regulated the temperature, as long as the water was in there everything was kept right around the boiling point. When the last water evaporated, the temperature must have shot up to popping point very uniformly and quickly.