← You're Dead to Me
You're Dead to Me
History of Spices: commerce, colonialism and culinary innovation
00:57:59
Join Greg and his guests to learn about the global history of spices and the spice trade.
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- [00:00]
Russell Cain
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- [00:06]
Megan McCardell
Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic and it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.
- [00:23]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are.
- [00:29]
Dr. David Vevers
You know, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for.
- [00:32]
Megan McCardell
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get.
- [00:35]
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Howie Mandel
N D.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Hello and welcome to youo Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we're rummaging in the kitchen cupboards and learning all about the history of spices and the spice trade. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions. And in History Corner, he's a lecturer in Early Modern History at Bangor University in Wales, where he specialises in the Early Modern British Empire and the East India Company. You might have read his wonderful book, the Great how the World Took on the British Empire. It's Dr. David Beavers. Welcome, David.
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Dr. David Vevers
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a stand up comedian and renowned quizzer. You'll have seen him on Taskmaster qi, Would I Lie to youo? And heard him on all over Radio 4 with his various wonderful series about general knowledge. But he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show the Chase. Yes, it's the Cinnamon himself, Paul Sinner.
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Paul Sinner
Welcome, Paul, It's a delight to be here. Thank you very much, Paul.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizzer. Literally. That is something you do. Yeah. I mean, for a job in your spare time.
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Paul Sinner
There's only about 20 of us in the country in history so that's a nice. Nice description. I'm proud of that one.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's a great description. Where are you with spices and spicy food? Are you a spicy food lover?
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Paul Sinner
On the scale of 0 to 10? I'm sort of 7. 8.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's quite.
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Paul Sinner
Which means I don't like to show off like the drunk in the curry house.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay.
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Paul Sinner
Making. Making a bad decision on the vindaloo or the phal. But I don't like my food too mild either.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay.
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Paul Sinner
Spices are good.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Spices are good. I am not particularly good on the spices. I'm probably a kind of five to six out of ten. Spicy meat. David, where are you on the spice index?
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Dr. David Vevers
I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two. A corma. I need a big glass of water.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay.
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Paul Sinner
This is the equivalent of me discussing Keeping up with the Kardashians.
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Dr. David Vevers
That's right, yeah.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So what do you know? This is the s. What do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know, of course, that spices famously come in five varieties. You've got ginger, baby. Scary sport. Hang on, then. That's not right. My bad. Anyway, you've all heard of spices. They turn our food from drab to fab. They're a key ingredient in England's national dish, which, of course, is chicken tikka masala. And every autumn, pumpkin spice. Objects conquer the shops, from lattes to cat litter and even pumpkin spice lube. But what other uses have people found for spices? How did they make their way into our global spice rack? And why shouldn't you wear a hat in front of a clove tree? Let's find out. Right, Paul, you are incredibly braining and famously knowledgeable, so presumably you can define for us what a spice is. What is the technical definition?
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Paul Sinner
That's a very good question to start off with. I mean, it's got to be savory rather than sweet.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Interesting.
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Paul Sinner
I mean, but what's the difference between a spice and a herb? Is it a ph thing? Is it is a spice.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
You're going chemistry. Okay.
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Paul Sinner
Is a spice more acid or even more alkaline? And a herb is the same? No, that doesn't make sense, because citric acid is not a spice.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I think we might need to turn to our historian, Dr. David. What is a spice?
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Dr. David Vevers
There wasn't a clear definition of what a spice was for a long time. I mean, traditionally, medieval, early modern period, a spice is a kind of blanket term for Anything. It's unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny. Technically, a spice is a part of a tropical plant, like a. Like the bark or the flower or the seed. And then there are some, like, vanilla that is actually the flower of a tropical plant. So the most common ones that we talk about really are from Asia. They're native to Asia, with a few exceptions. So saffron from Greece, for example, chilies from South America. But it's predominantly Asia we're talking about. And it's important that we do, because the geography of spices really shapes their history and the history we've had in trading with them.
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Paul Sinner
So saffron's from Greece.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yes. Yeah.
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Paul Sinner
This is new to me. Did you know?
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India.
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Dr. David Vevers
But it's vanilla chili allspice. They're South American. So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively vanilla. Vanilla, yeah.
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Paul Sinner
It's not Madagascar.
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Dr. David Vevers
No. But some of these spices are transplanted around the world.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, we'll get to that later, won't we? Because obviously that's the whole global story that we'll be rummaging in. Okay, where do we start our story? You know, if we're talking about the origins of the spice tree, Obviously, spices have grown on trees for millions of years, but the spice. Spice trade. When can we date that back to.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, so the trade in spices as long as human civilization. So we're talking really about a specific part of Asia. It's the Malaccas in East Asia. Those islands, exclusive, were known as the Spice Islands because that's where you would find only their nutmeg, mace, cloves, those sorts of rare spices, and they were exported by locals to the Malay Peninsula and found their way out across Asia and onward.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So the Spice Islands are what, Indonesia.
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Dr. David Vevers
Are they one there is in Indonesia.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay. One of many thousands of islands, but.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, and so there are thousands of islands, and just some of them will only cultivate nutmeg and clothes.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay.
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Dr. David Vevers
It's an amazing place.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Fantastic. So they were brought to Malay Peninsula from there into. Into wider Asia. And where. Where. Where are we back in the Bronze Age?
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Dr. David Vevers
Yes. Yeah. So around there. And so they're a staple of that particular region. But I think it's then from the Bronze Age, it's a story about the way they're disseminating further. Further outward.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Paul, do you know the 19th century euphemism to voyage to the Spice Islands? Do you know what it means, the number of things?
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Paul Sinner
It could be that perhaps I should keep clean.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
You don't have to.
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Paul Sinner
It could be an alternate sexuality euphemism for being gay to voyage to the Spice Islands. But it could be just doing something unusual or exotic, I suppose.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Sure.
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Paul Sinner
There's a whole list of things that are considered unusual and exotic. That list changes over the years.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay, in the 19th century, what would be exotic and unusual?
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Paul Sinner
Reading.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Now, according to Susie Dent, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet.
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Dr. David Vevers
But what does Susie Dent know across this period? Then we see it being traded across the Malay Peninsula over to India. Malabar then has its own pepper and spice cultivation in Southeast India, and then it crosses the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, into the Red Sea, and then across the Levant and North Africa and eventually the Mediterranean as well. And we know, you know, the Egyptian pharaohs are trading for them in the Arabian Peninsula. This is sort of 2800 BCE. So it's a long history. It's a long time ago. And there's even evidence that Mesopotamian civilizations were trading for spices with the Indus Valley. So a kind of vast expanse across a long time.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. I think archaeologists, when we did an Indus episode, listeners could listen to, but I think archaeologists have found, you know, they scraped the bottom of bowls and they found sort of herbs and spices in those bowls. So people were clearly enjoying that back in the Indus in what, four and
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Dr. David Vevers
a half thousand years ago, and not washing their plates.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Well, clearly no dishwashers back then, sadly. So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually, because eventually this stuff is going to spread. Paul, which spicy conqueror connected his new empire to North India in the 4th century BCE?
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Paul Sinner
I imagine that's the one. The only Alexander the Great absolutely is.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's a very impressive knowledge. I suppose he's famous for charging into India and trying to conquer it on his quest to conquer everything. Alexander the Great's conquest, he storms through Persia, he storms through Egypt, he storms into North India with his army. Does he therefore sort of connect up this Asian trade into a European world?
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Dr. David Vevers
He does. He sort of consolidates that link across the Hindu Kusha, across the kind of Indus Valley, and connects it into a network, you know, that connects Egypt to the Indus Valley, that connects the Greek world. And so he consolidates those trade links. And when spice is a big part of that story, there's a really interesting anecdote with Alexander, with the reputation he has, and his tutor Leonidas chastised him for just absolutely lashing his food with expensive and rare spices. So that after his conquest of some of these spice producing regions, he sent tons of spices Back to his old tutor, just to kind of rub it in his face.
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Paul Sinner
It does strike me as a guy whose army would be the ones boasting about how much spicy food they could eat at the end of evening.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yes, I'm sure there was a lot of visiting the Spice island, those campaigns.
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Paul Sinner
He literally put the mace in Macedonia.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
There we go. Paul, have you ever held a long petty grudge for 30 years like Alexander?
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Paul Sinner
Not 30, but at 15 or 20, and I can't say it because it'll end up in the tabloids.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
We call this the Ptolemaic Empire, right. Alexander dies and his successor is Ptolemy in Egypt. So that connection stays connected. Right. When Alexander dies, the whole thing doesn't just collapse.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, I think we often think that, you know, with Alexander's death, it does all just collapse and you have this struggle of the successor states. But, you know, the thing is, when you establish lucrative trade routes and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. And so we get. The city of Alexandria is. Becomes the hub of the spice trade for the sort of North African, Mediterranean axis of, of that network. And it. And it flourishes partly on the back of the lucrative trade in spices. And then later on, obviously, we get the Roman annexation of Egypt and that only sort of further enlarges the spice trade, especially across the Roman Empire, you know, which really eventually, obviously will go all the way to Scotland. So you've got the border there. This is like the new spice frontiers, Hadrian's Wall, and it separates those that you enjoy their. Their cardamom against those who are deprived of it. And that's really what all those wars were probably fought over, that chance to get to. To Britain and the spices. But. But obviously, eventually, as all, as all empires do, the Western Roman Empire falls.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And does it fall or was it pushed?
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Dr. David Vevers
Was it fall? That's a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show qualified to say, but. But we know that does disrupt, obviously, access to spices across Western Europe with the fall of that empire that's in
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
the sort of late 470s, but the Roman Empire continues in the East. Do you know what it's called in the East?
- [11:08]
Paul Sinner
The Byzantine.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, very good. Yeah. Byzantine Empire. So they consider themselves still Romans. So they are there for another thousand years. You know, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine world, they're continuing that trade with, I guess, what is the Arab world by this point, or is becoming Arab?
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, yeah, becoming. Well, you've got a couple of big players, Arab merchants, Persian merchants, are kind of filling that. That power vacuum that's starting to emerge. But yeah, the East Roman Empire, I mean, you think it's the most glittering, the most ostentatious empire draped in purple. They're using cutlery. And, you know, the, the, the barbarians in the, in, in the Western Europe are still picking at a food with their hands. So. Yeah, and naturally it's a big consumer of. Of spice. And you know, the imperial dining table, which is replete with various spices sideways the Himalayas to Southeast Asia and so that. With that. But it's really the, the Persian, the Arab merchants are acting as intermediaries between Asia and the dining rooms of the East Roman Empire. And they're the ones who are essentially keeping that trade route alive.
- [12:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And we get connections into China as well, I suppose they presumably are through that sort of network.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. So it's not just going sort of Southeast Asia into Europe. The Chinese are coming to in quite large numbers in Southeast Asia as well, and establishing their own trade links. So kind of going in all directions.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Amazing. Okay, so we get a big increase in maritime trade in this period. And when I say this period, I suppose we are. We're in what we call late antiquity, early medieval period. It's that sort of seven hundreds, eight hundreds sort of space. One of the reasons big expanses is technological innovation. There are three major developments. Do you know what they might be, Paul, around this time? Technological, maritime, expansiony things.
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Paul Sinner
Oh, sextant.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, you think? Yeah, sextant's a good guess. Give me two more.
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Paul Sinner
Astrolabe.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yes, absolutely. Yep.
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Paul Sinner
Compass.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Compass. You've got two out of three. And sextants. A good guess. I think sexton's a bit later. So it is. It's astrolabe, David.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, yeah, it's astrolabe. That's, that's really good. Magnetic compass. Yeah, that's the next one. And the other one is the. Was known more commonly as the triangular cell, but the Latin cell that allows you to kind of tack into the wind and challenge the elements to go in for.
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Paul Sinner
Gonna get that one. So I'll take that.
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Dr. David Vevers
I felt that was the obvious one, Paul. No, no.
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Paul Sinner
Latines. Yeah.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Are you not a sailor, Paul? You're not out on the, on the water?
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Dr. David Vevers
No, no, no, no.
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Paul Sinner
That's a very different part of my life.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. So the sail allows you to sail into the wind, which means you can still navigate through the trade winds. If they're blowing against you, you can still.
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, of course. We're pre modern navigation, it's all about the wind. And this allows the trade to essentially run on its own rhythm rather than be dictated by the elements. So yeah, the lateen sail is a massive one.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Absolutely. So it's important to have wind to drive your spice sails and then you eat the spices and then you have
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Dr. David Vevers
wind and then you have wind. It's. Yeah, it's the circle of life.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Circle of life, yeah, as Elton John famously sang. Okay, so magnetic compass, astrolabe, lateen sail, we get the Sassanid empire. They always sound very saucy, the Sassanids. It's just a good name for an empire.
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Dr. David Vevers
It is especially like an empire that really gets rich off the back of spices. These are the successors of the Persian Empire. You know, it's really about geography. As we said at the beginning, they're occupying a space between east and west. And so the overland route and also the Sassanidum is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf. And their successors would do the same control. The Persian Gulf is one of the main arteries of the spice trade from Asia into into Europe. So they become powerful and rich off the back of, of this spice. And you know, for those of us who know the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad was a spice trader and that his family were involved in the spice trade as many well to do families were in that region that particular period of time. So we know it's kind of one of the more elite occupations. And then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East, North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula today and Portugal, they kind of bring the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had, pushing it well into Europe and beyond. And you see this great expansion with the Muslim conquest.
- [15:16]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. So the Arabs became the new spice supremos. They're the kind of the gateway into, into Europe, I suppose. Paul, There is then a major medieval event which brings medieval Europeans back into the trade. Know what that would be?
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Paul Sinner
Crusade.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, it absolutely is Crusades. Horribly violent as they were. They. They did increase access to spices in Europe and of course broaden tastes. They reintroduced western Europe to these spices that everyone has been enjoying for a long time over in Asia and in North Africa and so on. So, you know, what is that, what is that moment like?
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Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, I think in some ways is that resumption of those broken links that were established a long time ago. And it's not to say that Europe was completely cut off from, from spices. But the Crusades re establishes on a more firmer footing the trade links through, obviously, the horrendous violence of the Crusades, but also the establishment of maritime and overland routes that have become disrupted or passed out of European control. So this is kind of the re. Establishment of that. And we often associate that resumption of that trade. Introducing medieval Europe and its bland and horrible food, and it's rotting meat that was festering on, then everyone dying of the plague because of it. And, you know, that big myth that spices were. Were kind of, you know, held as this. This solution, finally, Europe's kind of horrible cuisine. And that they would just lash the rotting meat and conceal the. The horrible smell and taste. Taste of food. Of course that's nonsense.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
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Dr. David Vevers
Because spices cost an absolute fortune.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. It's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like the spices cost way more than the meat.
- [16:50]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, that's right. And so that we know that that doesn't have it. Spices are used in flavor, but they're not used to that extravagant extent of basically wasting them as a. As a kind of preservative for food. But. But yeah, they are assumed for their taste. And we know the sort of big players doing this that kind of follows on the heels of the crusading states are the Italian city maritime states. Venice is the big one. Yeah. General as well. The Venetians are really skillful at establishing outpost trading factories in the Crusader states and staying there when the Crusader states fall and creating a kind of enclaves in the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean and then taking control of the spice routes into Europe. And it's an incredibly lucrative route to control. And you just go around Venice today and you're marvel. And a lot of that is the direct result of the wealth that they accrued from the spice trade.
- [17:45]
Paul Sinner
Parking's an issue.
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Dr. David Vevers
Parking is an issue. Yeah. If only they had the foresight to think about that.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So Venice becomes the kind of dominant European spice hub, I suppose, and they get very, very rich off it. And then, of course, we end up with the Italian wars in the 1400s, which is where Europe sort of rips itself apart between the superpowers of France and Spain and so on. But by the end of the 1400s, we start to get European navigators going. I quite want a spice route. Do you know who these would be, Paul? Who would be the big players?
- [18:17]
Paul Sinner
Well, Spain and Portugal.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, absolutely.
- [18:19]
Paul Sinner
Ferdinand and Isabelle.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Very good. Yeah. Of Castile.
- [18:22]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
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Paul Sinner
And Henry the navigator.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Oh, this is good knowledge. Okay. And who would be your explorers? Who's getting on the ship and doing the Hard.
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Paul Sinner
Well, Vasco da Gama. But I happened to do Ferdinand Magellan mastermind many, many, many moons ago. So I'm aware that the first circumnavigation of the globe was because of spices.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
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Paul Sinner
Many men were lost in attempt to find a cheaper trade route to the Spice Islands because they didn't know the size of the Earth at the time. Yeah, they didn't know that that was not the most practical way to get to the Spice Islands.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And of course, Magellan himself was lost. Right. He died on the voyage.
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Paul Sinner
Yeah, he died in battle. Yeah, in 1521. And so never, never got around. The first person to complete navigation was Juan Sebastian Elcano, of whom we know very little. I think he died a few years later in a second attempt at navigation. When I did mastermind, I knew nothing about Magellan and it blew my mind that all of that was for spices. Yeah, the entire void. It had no other purpose. The trip. Magellan actually died because he decided on the way try to introduce Christianity by force for the islands of the Philippines. But that wasn't the. That wasn't the purpose of the trip.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [19:36]
Paul Sinner
So that's when I first got interested in spices.
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Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's fantastic knowledge. Thank you for sharing it, Paul. I mean, it's absolutely true. The spice trade is incredibly lucrative. And so you mentioned Vasco da Gama. He is probably the first big name. I mean, Columbus would be the other one. Columbus obviously goes. He's aiming to go east, so he heads west, bumps into Cuba, thinks it's Japan, gets very confused.
- [19:56]
Paul Sinner
They're both very good at baseball.
- [19:59]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
But it is the Portuguese, it is Vasco da Gama, as Paul said, who sort of really is our first great kind of navigator in the spice trade. And he's going. Not west, he's going south.
- [20:12]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, he is. He's going south. I mean, we. You're heading that way because, yeah, you're circumnavigating. You know, you think you're going for India. You know, this is why indigenous Americans are called Indians, because they've. They think they've hit India, they think they've hit Japan, but, yeah, they kind of go round South America and into the Pacific eventually. I mean, you know, when the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa around the Cape of Good Hope, under Vasco da Gama and into the Indian Ocean, this is the sort of first recorded European entry into the maritime route around the Cape of Good Hope. And it's in 1498, they hit the Malabar Coast, India, which is, if you're Looking for spices is exactly where you want to land a bunch, you know, a bunch of peppercorn forests surrounding you. And this is what they bring back. It's black peppercorn, which is the spice that, you know, we take for granted, that spice cupboard in the kitchen. But once upon a time that drove early modern navigation, trade, the global economy, you know, you could find in that, in that spice. Spice cupboard.
- [21:12]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So Portugal becomes the kind of dominant pepperer of Europe. I suppose they found, Is it. Well, they, they found a sort of fort. Is it Calicut?
- [21:19]
Dr. David Vevers
Yes. Calicut, which is in Kerala state in southwest India is the first major city where they are, we say, negotiating and buying spices, but it's the Portuguese. So they're also blow people up and blowing up parts of it.
- [21:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Negotiating with grenades.
- [21:33]
Dr. David Vevers
With grenades, yeah, a peace through force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're well suited for it. They've got large carracks, they're a thousand tons. They are bristling castles floating on the sea.
- [21:44]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
A carrick is like a large warship.
- [21:45]
Dr. David Vevers
It's like a large ocean going, heavily gunned warship but with a big hull.
- [21:50]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So you can stick your peppercorn but
- [21:51]
Dr. David Vevers
with a big hole, which is predominantly a giant transporter. You stick your peppercorns in the holes. That's right.
- [21:55]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
You swap out the grenades for the peppercorns.
- [21:57]
Dr. David Vevers
Exactly.
- [21:57]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
We've used all the grenades and now we just fill it with peppercorns.
- [21:59]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, exactly. And you can imagine what India are thinking at this time. And they do, they use these strong arm tactics to get the spices they want, often in resistance. This is another way we do it in India. You know, there's, you know, it's fair trade. The Portuguese use coercion tactics and they're, and they're very successful. They bring back these, the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe. And you know, Lisbon is almost overnight turned from, you know, mud and timber to marble. Its skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe largely because of this spice trade. And then by, you know, within 10 years the Portuguese pushed further into Asia. They're in Southeast Asia, they're in Malacca, which is the major sultanate or kind of clearing station for spices. Roughly about half of Asia's spices comes through the port of Malacca. And it's a great Islamic sultanate intellectually as well as commercially. And they conquer it. In 1511, they take control of the spice trade from the sultanate and it's the Portuguese who controlled access to the European trade in spices.
- [23:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And they take The Banda Islands too, which is home to two new spices too.
- [23:05]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. So it's the rarer. So this is. The bulk of this is black peppercorns, but it's the kind of mace and the cloves that. And the rarest spices that and nutmeg as well. I think nutmeg is one. You know, these are found on just, you know, a single island, some of these. So they are rare. You know, those few square miles of. Of territory. Sunken volcanic peaks in Southeast Asia are easily controlled. They build big forts and they coerce and force the. The spice farmers to produce certain quot. And they cornered the market, the European market, but to some extent as well, the Asian market as well.
- [23:37]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay, so the Portuguese are elbows out, violently conquering. I mean, this is also bad news for Venice as well because they've lost their monopoly. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:46]
Dr. David Vevers
And also for the Ottoman Empire, which has become the really the superpower of the early modern world, controlling those old routes, the East Europe, the East Roman Empire that the Sassanids and eventually the Caliphates of the Arab world. You know, the Ottoman Empire has struck out at the beginning of the 16th country, taken control of all these territories and there's a great leverage over the Europeans and they've gone around Venice, they've gone around the Ottoman Empire and now they're undermining those sources of traditional wealth.
- [24:14]
Paul Sinner
At this point ought to be pointed out, it's not an independent Italy. Venice is its own state.
- [24:18]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:19]
Paul Sinner
The reason I pointed out is in 1494 the Pope divided the world into two halves with the Treaty of Tordesillas. So there's a sort of meridian that runs and sort of clips the coast of Brazil and to one side the Portugal causing havoc, on the other side goes to Spain. So Venice didn't get it didn't get a look in, in the discussion on it was basically Spain, everything Spain or Portugal.
- [24:46]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. And so Europeans love their straight lines on map. Yes. They love carving. Just put a straight line through a little bit of Brazil and the rest is to carve up the world. Yeah.
- [24:55]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And so Portugal and Spain, as you say, Paul, are very, very suddenly very dominant by the kind of early mid 1500s. But. But by the end of 1500s we get two new players in the race. They're not super renowned for their well seasoned food. Who would they be?
- [25:08]
Paul Sinner
So when are we now?
- [25:10]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Late 1500s, think sort of 1580s, that sort of, you know, Queen Elizabeth type era.
- [25:15]
Paul Sinner
Is that a clue?
- [25:16]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Might be England. Yep. And Netherlands. Yeah, very good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean the Dutch and the English suddenly sort of go, hang on a minute, everyone else is getting rich. How do we have one of these empires?
- [25:29]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, let's throw some spice on this herring. Let's get some flavour in this stew. Yeah. So it's the North Europeans, predominantly the English and the Dutch who are looking at their muddy timber cities going, wow, we'd love some marble. And they are. They're riding on the coattails of predominantly the Portuguese and it's really the Dutch that take the lead. And there's this great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a commodity, a foodstuff. With. With the emergence of modern capitalism, they're experimenting new ways to go thousands of miles, spend the equivalent today of, of hundreds of millions, maybe even billions investing in the trade, bringing it home. Which, you know, in the pre. In the period before steam power, you know, relying on. On the age of sale. It's incredibly risky. You know, entire merchants are kind of completely ruined by investment in.
- [26:18]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [26:18]
Dr. David Vevers
Overseas trades will sing Ships are sir Corsairs. Yeah, exactly Right. And so they're thinking, well, how can we do this in a way that will, you know, know, mitigate that risk, Spread the risk, pool our resources together. And they develop a joint stock company. You know, the modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands and the English developing East India companies to trade with the Indies. The first, the English East India Company on New Year's of 1600 is about 215 big weeks. You know, alderman mayors, they celebrate the
- [26:47]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
new century by saying, oh, we've invented a new idea.
- [26:49]
Dr. David Vevers
That's right, yeah, yeah. And so they're copying the Dutch. You know, I'd love to say this is an English innovation, but it's not much of what made England great in the early model period is ripped off from, from the Dutch. And so they played football in the 70s.
- [27:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Exactly.
- [27:02]
Dr. David Vevers
They both, they both head off to Asia on the ketchups. It's the Dutch who are wealthier. They've got more sea power, they've got bigger guns and they break the Portuguese
- [27:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
monopoly because they've been fighting the Spanish
- [27:12]
Dr. David Vevers
design because they've been fighting the Spanish for about 80 years.
- [27:14]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, they're literally an 80 years war.
- [27:16]
Dr. David Vevers
So they are.
- [27:16]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
They're pretty good at the war thing there.
- [27:17]
Dr. David Vevers
That's right, yeah. And they're more urbanized, they're more commercialized. England's getting there, but it's a lot slower. It's slightly poorer. And so it's. It's the Dutch East India Company that merges really as the winner of the spice trade.
- [27:28]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Interesting. Are the Dutch more polite than the Portuguese? I'm guessing not.
- [27:32]
Dr. David Vevers
Well, not really. They're just. They're really there to take over the enforced spice monopoly. But you get these great antiques with the English and the Dutch. They are feeling their way. They're not as confident as the Portuguese. They're both rocking up at the city of Banton, which is the. The main spice hub after Malacca. They're trying to kind of like get the spice concessions out of the sultan. He's only about 13 years old. And they turn up and they're in line to see the sultan, and the English are sort of go, you know, out loud. The Dutch don't even have a king. Can you fancy that? The Dutch are calling James the first king of fishermen and no more than a fart. And there's all this kind of like putting each other down. And it's the ceremony of the circumcision of the boy sultan.
- [28:19]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Right.
- [28:19]
Dr. David Vevers
And the English are in line, queuing up, and they realize that a great faux pas is that only women can present gifts to the sultan. So they quickly run around the port and they can't find any women. So they dress up 50 Chinese boys in the clothes of women and put them in a procession, and they present some kind of rattan display that they've cobbled together, almost like a homemade DIY project. And it's really embarrassing. And the Dutch absolutely rip them for it. And it's a great faux pas. And they go away and the Dutch get the trading concession, and the English are left looking embarrassed.
- [28:50]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Oh, that is embarrassing. Yeah.
- [28:52]
Paul Sinner
You know, first example of true cultural appropriation.
- [28:54]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, exactly. All right, so the Dutch get the dominance, really, in that sort of area. And the Dutch are violent. They are, you know, they are killing the Bandinese islanders. They are, you know, they're. Again, this is colonialism. This is not sort of fair trade.
- [29:05]
Dr. David Vevers
No, it's not fair trade. This is the age of mercantilism. It's, you know, resources are finite. We need to control them, take them from our neighbors. The Banda Islands are on the wrong end of this because that's the. The collection of islands that really have the rarest spices, like mason, clove, and nutmeg, especially nutmeg is the. The most valuable here.
- [29:22]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
There's a tactic the D subsequently used to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high. Paul, do you know what it would be?
- [29:30]
Paul Sinner
No, I don't, actually.
- [29:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
If you've got too much of something and you want to keep the Value high. What do you do with it?
- [29:36]
Paul Sinner
Store it away.
- [29:37]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Store it away is sensible. Or you could destroy it.
- [29:40]
Paul Sinner
Okay.
- [29:41]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So I mean, David, I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning.
- [29:45]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [29:46]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Just burning tons of this expensive stuff that they've imported in.
- [29:49]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. Oh, no, we've been too successful. There's too much and the prices are dropping and we're losing money. Money.
- [29:54]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it.
- [29:57]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [29:57]
Paul Sinner
Is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam?
- [30:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, I think that might be a different smell,
- [30:05]
Dr. David Vevers
but yeah. And it's about controlling the market and monopolizing it. And you know, when the English bring back tons of pepper, the Dutch brought it back first. They get to a depressed market.
- [30:14]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Right.
- [30:15]
Dr. David Vevers
And it sits in the warehouse in London for about seven years before they can shift it. And they do it at a loss. So in a way the Dutch are maintaining profitability but by just burning tons of this stuff.
- [30:24]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So that kind of lovely Christmas smell when you go to Christmas markets of nutmeg and cinnamon, that's just the smell of violent colonialism.
- [30:29]
Dr. David Vevers
It is the smell of violent colonialism in the morning.
- [30:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
What a cologne that would be. Okay, so empires are gonna empire and the English and Dutch, maybe that's where
- [30:39]
Paul Sinner
the word cologne comes from. Cologne.
- [30:40]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Cologne.
- [30:41]
Paul Sinner
Maybe it's short for violent colonialism.
- [30:48]
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- [32:04]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
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Dr. David Vevers
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- [32:20]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful by the 1600s, and they, they're fighting each other, but they're also fighting the people they're trying to conquer. So, I mean, we get more horrible violence here.
- [32:30]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, it's kind of that classic imperial rivalry for the most valuable overseas trading commodity ever. It's the people of the region that suffer the most. So in collusion with the English, the Dutch massacre the Bandonese living on these nutmeg plantations.
- [32:46]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So, hang on, they're in collusion, they join forces.
- [32:48]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. So a war between the English and the Dutch, East India Companies, that doesn't go very well for the English. And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger. They, they, they agree to share the spice trade. The Dutch get 2/3 and the English a third. And they'll move in in the same forts and factories and manage the trade together. It really, it sounds like a. An alliance. It's really a kind of Dutch corporate takeover of the ailing English company, but
- [33:13]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
the victims are the indigenous people.
- [33:14]
Dr. David Vevers
And so what happens is, yeah, the Dutch, once they're in position, the Banda Islands, thanks to England's weakness is they. They exterminate the people. L instead turn the entire islands over to plantations to control very tightly the cop. And they often bring in, in slave labor to then manage that cultivation.
- [33:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Sorry, Paul, it's not the funniest subject, is it?
- [33:34]
Dr. David Vevers
It's not.
- [33:34]
Paul Sinner
I've got nothing to say.
- [33:36]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I don't think you should say anything.
- [33:37]
Paul Sinner
Should I just say, alexander the Great put the mace into Macedonia.
- [33:41]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Thank you. Thank you for bringing the levity. Yes, absolutely.
- [33:44]
Dr. David Vevers
But it's. No, it's not a nice history. And we often forget we celebrate spice in this wonderful kind of multicultural culinary good. But it has a lot of the things we enjoy here in the west in the early modern, and then the moder and chocolate and sugar. Sugar as well. It has a dark history, and that's often because of Europeans. And so we get the. Then once the Bandonese have been exterminated. The Dutch and the English cooperating together, managing the trade. The Dutch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want sole exclusive monopoly of spices. And so they become very paranoid. And the Dutch employ a number of Japanese mercenaries in their forts and factories on the Banner Islands. And. And they start to believe that the English merchants and the Japanese mercenaries are colluding together to overthrow the Dutch and to take over the. The spice monopoly. So in. In 1623, the Dutch seize the Japanese and the English and they interrogate them and they use all these sorts of torture methods. Waterboarding, hanging them upside down, you know, pulling their fingernails off to extract confessions of. Of conspiracy. And they ended up executing 10 of. Of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries. It's known as the Amboyne Massacre. The English were. And for decades, there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states for compensation.
- [35:02]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
For the Dutch. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know you could sue a state in the 1650s. Whatever.
- [35:06]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, yeah. And essentially King James and then his successors had to sort of, you know, mediate between the families, and eventually the families are compensated, but it's, you know, almost no one is left alive that was involved in that.
- [35:17]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And eventually the English, the British, rather, by this point, I suppose it's a fusion. The Stuarts obviously rule Scotland and England, so I guess we're calling them kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands in. In favor of a new colony. Do you know what they got in in exchange with the Dutch? Quite a nice city.
- [35:34]
Dr. David Vevers
I believe the heir to the throne was James, Duke of York.
- [35:37]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yes, James, Duke of York.
- [35:38]
Paul Sinner
Oh, New York.
- [35:39]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
New York. Well done. I could see you. I could see the cogs wearing that Future James ii. Yeah, exactly. Very briefly, very briefly. So they swapped the spice trade for New York for Broadway. Yes, exactly. Is that a good deal, Paul?
- [35:52]
Paul Sinner
Fantastic deal.
- [35:53]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Would you. Would you take New York?
- [35:54]
Paul Sinner
I've been to New York this year, and I gotta say, there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there. So you got. You got the whole. Actually, you're. The whole deal.
- [36:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
The sort of spice trade is the Dutch monopoly in these. In the East. Do they hold it for long? I mean, I don't. We don't really think of the Dutch as a superpower in the 19th century, do we?
- [36:09]
Dr. David Vevers
You don't, but they are. They are a colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league for European superpowers. Colonial Superbads. But they are, they do, they do continue right up until beyond the Second World War with interludes. You know, there's, it's not, they're not exclusively controlled spices because they're grown elsewhere like in India, and that's the English East India Company and the British Raj. Eventually that takes over over spice production in India. The, the, you know, there's, there's an occupation by the British during the Napoleonic War of the Dutch Spice Islands. Right. Of Dutch Indonesia. And briefly Britain takes over that. So, so, you know, at times it's, it's broken and they're supplanted. But generally the Dutch East Indies hangs on until post Second World War, after a brief Japanese occupation as well, during the war itself. So. Yeah, so it's a long and violent monopoly that carries on there. And over that time it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them.
- [37:04]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. So we're back. So you made the point earlier, Paul, about transplanting of, of these spices into new places. So do you know what gets moved where? By whom?
- [37:12]
Paul Sinner
Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascar.
- [37:15]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, vanilla is a good one. Brazil becomes the great place, the Portuguese colony.
- [37:19]
Whimsound Advertiser
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- [37:20]
Dr. David Vevers
Or, you know, for everything from cinnamon to cloves, black pepper as well. Of course, the British take clothes of the Caribbean as well. Any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment with good conditions. By about the 20th century, you can find a lot of these spices being grown elsewhere, often to an industrial scale.
- [37:36]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Poivre? And you know what he planted in Mauritius? Pears. Well, if I give you a clue, poivre means pepper in French, not pear.
- [37:51]
Paul Sinner
Pepper here. What does he plant in Mauritius?
- [37:55]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
No, you think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative determinism fail. Yeah, he's Peter Pepper and he plants clove nutmeg.
- [38:04]
Dr. David Vevers
I believe they were his middle names.
- [38:06]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So, Peter Clove nutmeg pepper.
- [38:08]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, that's right.
- [38:09]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Dr. David Vevers
So he smuggles these out and, you know, the Dutch did guard them jealously. We're talking sort of late 18th century, 1770s, 80s. And he smuggles them to a series of French possessions, and the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They go on to Madagascar and eventually East Africa, Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. So Anzabar becomes in the 19th century, kind of what, the major slave port of that particular region. But also one time, it's also the largest producer of Clothes.
- [38:37]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wow. Amazing. So that's a. That's a huge sort of transition of the locus of where the spice industry is, isn't it? Moving to East Africa?
- [38:44]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [38:45]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay, so we've, we've done the global spice trade. It's been brutal and, you know, conquest trade, colonial rivalries, corporations fighting each other. It's not very fun. Let's talk about the actual spices, how they were used and understood. That's more fun. Paul Wiggins, gonna give you history's five most commonly traded spices. Can you guess what they are?
- [39:02]
Paul Sinner
Clove.
- [39:03]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Very good. Give me four more.
- [39:05]
Paul Sinner
Pepper?
- [39:05]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yes.
- [39:06]
Paul Sinner
Nutmeg?
- [39:07]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yes.
- [39:08]
Paul Sinner
Mace?
- [39:08]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
No. Your nickname.
- [39:11]
Paul Sinner
Oh, cinnamon.
- [39:12]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Cinnamon, Yep. And chillies. Yeah. I guess we start with black pepper because that is the one we talked about in the ancient world. David. It's originally from the Indian Malabar Coast. What is it?
- [39:22]
Dr. David Vevers
It's essentially a long string of berries on a vine. Is it? Yeah, there are different. Lots of varietals of pepper. Black pepper is commonly traded and consumed. The kind of immature berries are picked, then they're fermented and dried. Obviously that gives us the, the, the peppercorn that we use. And it's Hindu colonists in. On the island of Java that first cultivate this long time ago. So it's about 100 BCE.
- [39:44]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wow. Okay. And did you know pepper was particularly interesting to Rome? Do you know anything about this?
- [39:49]
Paul Sinner
Something to do with taxes and rent? I mean, is that where we get peppercorn rent from?
- [39:53]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That comes later. That's really good knowledge. That's fantastic knowledge. Yeah. No, in Rome it is known as black. Black gold. Oh, yeah. And they have a huge. In a huge trade with India, the Romans, which we. I guess we probably don't really know that well here.
- [40:05]
Dr. David Vevers
No, it's not a big one. But, you know, we know that it's massive in value because there's an actual tax that's placed on it.
- [40:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [40:11]
Dr. David Vevers
At the Port of Alexandria. So you don't put taxes on commodities if they're not being widely traded. So we know the Romans love it. Yeah, it's black gold. You know, one Roman cookery, but about 90 of the recipes have spices in them, mostly pepper. So we know that they've. That they've gone crazy for spices.
- [40:27]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And that book was written by Peter Pepper.
- [40:30]
Dr. David Vevers
Peter Pepper. Peter Mace, Clove pepper. That's right.
- [40:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Maximus Pepperus in his pseudonym. Yeah.
- [40:35]
Dr. David Vevers
But I'll just give you a quick example of a typical Roman dish. Chopped mushroom stems mixed with honey, then with a kind of a garum, like a fermented Fish sauce, pepper and lovage. I've probably had my stomach grumble. I haven't eaten breakfast cooked until all the moisture evaporates and is served with bread.
- [40:52]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That sounds quite nice. Would you have that, Paul?
- [40:53]
Paul Sinner
Of course. I'm not a fussy eater.
- [40:57]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So the Romans are cooking with pepper a huge amount and that means that it's not. We used to think it was like an exotic spice that only the rich could afford. We now believe it's quite commonly through middle classes Romans. So it's pepper is like a normal thing in the Roman Empire, which is quite surprising, I think. But in medieval Europe we are into the slightly weirder superstitions. So Paul, what weird theory did people believe about how pepper was harvested?
- [41:24]
Paul Sinner
I'm out of my depth here.
- [41:26]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I'll give you a hint.
- [41:27]
Paul Sinner
It involves snow snakes that it was harvested using snakes.
- [41:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
What did they do? What do you believe?
- [41:34]
Dr. David Vevers
I mean, I think in the medieval period they're so imaginative and it shows the value they placed on pepper. They believe it was guarded in trees, guarded by poisonous or venomous snakes. And that the reason why black pepper is that color is that the only way to get to the pepper was to set the trees on fire to drive the snakes away. And then you've got these kind of burnt peppercorns.
- [41:54]
Paul Sinner
But they were wrong.
- [41:56]
Dr. David Vevers
They were wrong, they were wrong.
- [41:58]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So the belief was they just. You have to set fire to the, the whole forest and then you collect peppercorns.
- [42:01]
Dr. David Vevers
Only then is it safe enough, you're not going to be killed.
- [42:03]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And that's why they're black.
- [42:04]
Dr. David Vevers
And that's why they're black, because they've been burned.
- [42:06]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I see, okay. So it's all the snaky fault. Paul, you were on the money with tax and rent because in medieval Europe, peppercorns, there was a thing called peppercorn rent.
- [42:15]
Paul Sinner
Yeah. I can't remember what it is, but I know of its existence.
- [42:18]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's right. So in billingsgate in the 11th century, you could pay a toll to the king, King Aethelred in your peppercorns.
- [42:23]
Dr. David Vevers
You could like same that they used to pay their rent in eels. So you know, whisper my money. Where's my eels? Got no eels.
- [42:29]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I've got some peppercorns. Do you accept eels? Yeah, I do. I don't have any. That's right, yeah, yeah.
- [42:34]
Dr. David Vevers
Have you got the app? No, I don't.
- [42:36]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Ah, that's fantastic. And Paul, you're a former doctor, of course, before you were a quizzer and a comedian, you've had multiple careers how do you think pepper was used in medicine? Medieval medicine. What are you curing with your peppercorns?
- [42:48]
Paul Sinner
Leprosy.
- [42:49]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. It's not a bad guess.
- [42:51]
Paul Sinner
Heart problems.
- [42:52]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Ah, okay.
- [42:54]
Paul Sinner
Sounds like it might be good for the heart.
- [42:55]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay, that's not bad. A shout. David, what do we know from our medical textbooks?
- [42:59]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, digestion was the big one. It was like a tonic for digestion. So, yeah, not too far off. We see this in Chinese medical treaties and texts, 17th century, that it's used for tonic. There's a French treatise, La tresa da sante, which is essentially pepper to cure or everything. Speaking of snakes. Snake bite. Does it. Yeah. My dad would appreciate this one. Flatulence.
- [43:23]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Shout out to your dad.
- [43:24]
Dr. David Vevers
Shout out to dad. There that even you know in midwives, to hasten acceptance, expelling children from. From, from, from the womb and then purging the brain of phlegm where naturally. Brain.
- [43:39]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I hate a flemmy brain.
- [43:40]
Dr. David Vevers
I hate that. It's worse in the morning. And this is quite the flemmy season for brain.
- [43:43]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I mean, my brain is so flemmy right now.
- [43:45]
Paul Sinner
Can I say I said heart, you said digestion and then you said, not too far out.
- [43:48]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [43:49]
Paul Sinner
I just, I could have used you as an examiner when I was at medical school. I could have really done with.
- [43:53]
Dr. David Vevers
It was a pity.
- [43:54]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [43:55]
Dr. David Vevers
I'm sorry.
- [43:55]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Similar medical education areas. Right, okay. So pepper was the original Pepto Bismol. Right. If you've got flatulence, you've got heartburn, you've got snakebite, pop a bit of pepper, you're all good. Okay. We talked about ancient Egypt earlier. Do you know why spices were so important in ancient Egypt? Not for food uses.
- [44:12]
Paul Sinner
Status.
- [44:13]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [44:14]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
In what way?
- [44:14]
Paul Sinner
People sort of judged on who they were by what, what spices they had in the house or.
- [44:19]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Nice. Okay. So it's a sort of showing off, keeping up with the Jones type thing. That's pretty good. It's also really important in religious rituals and funerals, David.
- [44:27]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, it's. We kind of associate that with spices and the Egyptians. So we know that there was a pharaoh that was embalmed with peppercorn shoved up his nose. Yeah, his Flemmy brain for his Fleming brain. Yeah, his flatness was. Okay. No, I'd be worried if this corpse was sneezing.
- [44:42]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. Anyway. But he's probably not dead, lads.
- [44:45]
Dr. David Vevers
But no, no. Mummies famously do get up and get around, don't they? But I, I. Yeah, but Egyptologists felt that they could smell the whiff of cinnamon when they Unwrap mummies. It's kind of a faint trace of
- [44:56]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
that lovely Christmas smell.
- [44:57]
Dr. David Vevers
Christmas mu. Smell. Yeah. I mean, cinnamon, obviously we get cinnamon sticks. That's really from the bark of the kind of an evergreen tree that is harvested when the. The tree's wet, then it's peeled off and then rolled up and left to dry.
- [45:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Lanka, isn't it?
- [45:11]
Dr. David Vevers
This is in Sri Lanka. Evergreen trees in Sri Lanka. Yeah, absolutely. And that they're highly valued. We know the Roman emperor Nero, for example, always burning stuff.
- [45:20]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
This time mostly Christians, but.
- [45:22]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, mostly Christians. But a year's supply of cinnamon for his wife funeral. Yeah, it's.
- [45:28]
Paul Sinner
Someone should let Cafe Nero know.
- [45:33]
Dr. David Vevers
So. Yeah, so it's widely used in Europe, but for different kind of rituals and ceremonial reasons.
- [45:38]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, you could use garlands of cinnamon enclosed in gold as a kind of. As a sort of lavish. It sounds like a kind of Christmas tinsel, isn't it? But it's more for kind of religious reasons and for sort of beautiful things. So. Yeah, so cinnamon's a biggie. Frankincense and myrrh, obviously, biggies in the ancient world. Those are spices, I think, but we haven't really talked about them. And again, we've got some weird stories. Harvesting cinnamon. Paul, which animal do you have to watch out for this time?
- [46:04]
Paul Sinner
A cow?
- [46:06]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, that's a good, sensible guess. Think more. Airborne bat. Oh, that's good. But no, it's unfortunately birds. So the belief here, David, is what?
- [46:16]
Dr. David Vevers
Not any old bird. Huge Arabian birds that were like monstrously gigantic, that this is.
- [46:23]
Paul Sinner
Is it real or mythical?
- [46:25]
Dr. David Vevers
Mythical. This is the ever reliable Herodotus with his stories of far off lands, which the moment he gets beyond the Greek islands, gets a little bit wonky. So there are huge birds in Arabia that you'd have to kind of cut up the body of an animal, leave it on the floor, that these gigantic birds would sweep down and then the cinnamon would fall from their giant nests. So essentially it was nest. Nest liners, the cinnamon be collected, the sticks.
- [46:49]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Hang on. The idea here is you make. You force the bird, you tempt the
- [46:52]
Dr. David Vevers
bird down, you tempt the bird out. You don't want to tangle with a giant nest.
- [46:54]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Picks up a very heavy bit of meat, brings it back to its nest and the nest is unstabilized by the
- [46:59]
Dr. David Vevers
weight of knocking out large.
- [47:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So cow was correct? Sort of.
- [47:02]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. You would imagine there'd be cows being
- [47:04]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
chopped up involved in that.
- [47:06]
Dr. David Vevers
The other one is a student of Aristotle, the kind of father of botany.
- [47:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Oh, very good, Paul.
- [47:12]
Dr. David Vevers
Buzz.
- [47:13]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. Bing.
- [47:16]
Dr. David Vevers
He claimed that cinnamon came from the bushes in ravines guarded by our favorite venomous snakes. Ah, it's always snakes, always snakes, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
- [47:26]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Indiana Jones had it right. Why does it always have to be snakes? Okay, so we've got terrifying sort of death bir. We've got venomous snakes. So I guess to a certain extent that drives the price up because people are like, oh, you wouldn't believe what I had to do to get this cinnamon. I had to fight a bird. Okay, we should talk about clothes. Any snakes involved here?
- [47:44]
Dr. David Vevers
No snakes. No. No snakes. Scary. Pregnant women, possibly, but the idea is that, well, they come for the Malacca Islands. Again, tall evergreen trees and. But they're the kind of flower buds are harvested and then they're dried. And so there's quite a. A lot of folklore about. From indigenous people over thousands of years. One of them is that the kind of blossoming clothes trees were treated like pregnant women in the fact you had to be very careful around them.
- [48:13]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [48:14]
Dr. David Vevers
Very calm. Don't make any silly or foolish remarks that you couldn't approach them wearing a hat.
- [48:19]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wow.
- [48:20]
Dr. David Vevers
Famously, women, the pregnant women hate hats. You can't make a noise and you couldn't have any light. You couldn't make a fire around them, otherwise they would not bear the precious fruit that you so wanted.
- [48:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wow.
- [48:33]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. Treat them with kid gloves. They're very tender. You have to cultivate. Cultivate them very carefully. But traditionally, to plant a clove tree, you did at the birth of a child. So it's that kind of association with
- [48:45]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
fertility and the life cycle.
- [48:47]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, exactly right. If the tree flourishes, so will the child and the tree withers. Oh, wow, you're in trouble.
- [48:54]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So don't wear that hat.
- [48:55]
Dr. David Vevers
So don't wear the hat. Yeah, exactly right. So it's really. India and China were the two major markets for clothes. They get that. They're the mass consumer markets in the ancient period as well. So you get mention of them in Sanskrit manuscripts and literature. They're used in. In Han China as kind of breath fresheners.
- [49:13]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Really close.
- [49:13]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. Clothes. Yeah, that was your.
- [49:15]
Paul Sinner
So let me get this straight. It's in. Associated with childbirth and it's big in the two most populous nations in the world.
- [49:22]
Dr. David Vevers
Yes.
- [49:22]
Paul Sinner
I think that might be a strong.
- [49:24]
Dr. David Vevers
There might be something to say for
- [49:25]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
it, some sort of correlation there from this.
- [49:27]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [49:28]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay. So it was used as sort of a mouth freshener in China. Paul, do you know what the nickname was in China? In ancient China for cloves, then based on this association of freshening your bread.
- [49:39]
Paul Sinner
No, I don't.
- [49:41]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was known as chicken tongue fragrance.
- [49:43]
Paul Sinner
Of course it was.
- [49:44]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Should we bring that back? It's not that catchy, is it?
- [49:47]
Dr. David Vevers
I feel like I know a few people with that kind of breath.
- [49:49]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah. Okay, so chicken tongue fragrance for cloves. Let's talk nutmeg again. More superstitions. Any Me, a bird, snake, pregnant women, hat.
- [50:00]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah, well, these are. These are European superstitions now, so they do get a bit weird. Yeah. So we're back in the Banda Islands. Nutmeg is the dried kernel of the. Of the fruit. Yeah. So Europeans thought that whoever receives a nutmeg on New Year's Day, carried in a pocket for a year and you'd never break a bone. Are you making idea? No. Well, someone did. Yeah. Once upon a time. So, yeah, this is the European superstition that if you carried a nut, put a nutmeg in your pocket on New Year's Day, and carried it around for the entire, entire year, that you would never suffer a stroke or break a bone if you had a nasty fall.
- [50:33]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wow.
- [50:34]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah. Also, it guarded you from hemorrhoids, apparently, as well. So it's an endless benefit from nutmegs. We've been putting it in our chocolate. Rookie mistake.
- [50:42]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah.
- [50:42]
Dr. David Vevers
Been putting in our pocket.
- [50:43]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
We should put it in our pockets.
- [50:44]
Dr. David Vevers
Yeah.
- [50:44]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay, so. And of course, in the 1600s, people said, oh, nutmeg could cure plague if you sniffed it in a pomander. You pop it up to your nose and sniff nutmeg. Okay. There's no medical science on that. Please don't do that. Internet. Our final spice, of course, would be the one not from Asia, apart from vanilla, of course. The most famous one. Of course. Did I give it away? Give it away. Give it away now. Yes, it's the red hot chili pepper. Why do we call it a chili pepper, Paul? Do you know? Because it's not pepper.
- [51:07]
Paul Sinner
No, I don't.
- [51:08]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Ah, okay. It's Columbus. He got confused.
- [51:11]
Paul Sinner
Oh, I see.
- [51:12]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
He showed up on one of his jaunts, he looked at a chili plant and went, that's probably pepper. And he took it home and went, it's pepper. And everyone went, it doesn't smell or taste like pepper.
- [51:22]
Dr. David Vevers
Easily confused.
- [51:23]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Columbus.
- [51:24]
Dr. David Vevers
We're in Japan, they're Indian. This is pepper.
- [51:27]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
This is the Indies. Yeah. So we call it the chili pepper
- [51:29]
Paul Sinner
because Red Hot Chili Peppers were around when Carry On Columbus was made. So go back and give it a tribute soundtrack.
- [51:38]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So the chili pepper, as you said, David, earlier on Is native. It's indigenous to central South America and the Caribbean and of course it was imported into Europe and then from Europe goes to India. So when we have chilies in our Indian curry, that's the Portuguese who've done that. So vindaloo is originally a Portuguese word. Carne de village, Villa Dallos. So it's a Portuguese dish that went to Goa and then the Goan chefs then took it into Central India. And it's more spicy because of the chilies, but it's. It's Portuguese. Yeah.
- [52:04]
Dr. David Vevers
Turkeys, potatoes and chilies.
- [52:05]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, absolutely. We have an episode on the Colombian Exchange. Listeners can listen to that will give you more of that. So there we go. We've gone around the world. We've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Paul, or was that.
- [52:16]
Paul Sinner
I'm thoroughly entertained by that.
- [52:17]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Wasn't too violent. Sorry.
- [52:19]
Paul Sinner
Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven't taught me anything new there, but it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has a violent past.
- [52:28]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't.
- [52:30]
Paul Sinner
Deep fried Mars, boss.
- [52:32]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Yeah, maybe the nuance window. Time now for the nuance window. This is where Paul and I silently rearrange our spice racks for two minutes while Dr. David cooks up something we need to know about the history of spices. So my stopwatch is. Is ready. Take it away, Dr. David.
- [52:53]
Dr. David Vevers
Today, almost every kitchen around the world has a spice rack or cupboard. Even the most exotic and rare of spices is cheaply and readily available in supermarkets around the world. The truth is, however we use spices today, they've played a key role in the commercial, social and cultural lives of the majority of people on this planet. Across a long period of time and over a vast expanse of space. From the Moluccas to London, Tobago to Beijing, spices have permeated the history of humanity going back millennium, from the Egyptian pharaoh in 1224 BCE, who was embalmed with peppercorns up his nose, to the UK today, where we consume well over a kilo of spices per capita every year. So how should we understand and regard spices in human history? Well, we can highlight the role they played in cultural exchange. Chinese merchants migrated to Java, married local women, converted to Islam, all in pursuit of spices. South Asian families migrated to the UK following decolonisation in the 20th century, where their spice fueled food culture fused with British traditions, allowing the melting pot in the kitchen to become a melting pot of wider society. Spices drove currents of economic change and helped to Facilitate globalization by contributing to the establishment of long distance trade at sea and overland. Spice roads vied with silk roads over Central Asia and across the United States Indian Ocean. Acting as global arteries along which people, ideas, goods, disease, war and religions traveled. Spices launched Europe's overseas empires. Spices represented not just the greater integration of people separated by distance and nationality for good or worse, but arguably. Like sugar, tobacco, textiles, enslaved people, iron, manufactured goods and capital, they established a truly global economy. Today, the mass production and dissemination of spices is another facet of 21st century global inequality, where mass cheap consumption in the west is often at the expense of low paid exploited labour in the Global South. In that way, the history of the not so humble spice is a lens through which we can view the history of the not so humble human and the beautiful and destructive rhythms of the past we create. In that way, spices contain multitudes and within them the great saga of humanity.
- [55:04]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Amazing. Thank you so much.
- [55:05]
Paul Sinner
I mean, having something as brilliant as that on a one hour podcast is like putting palladium in a pot noodle.
- [55:12]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I've always said is really interesting. Paul, isn't it? The history of spice, how we assume they just have always been there, but actually the story of how they got there is one of enormous change.
- [55:23]
Paul Sinner
As I said, I was totally ignorant on it until I did Magellan on Mastermind. And it blew my mind that so much happened to make food more flavoursome. It just hadn't occurred to me. It's an amazing story.
- [55:36]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
So what do you know now, Paul? We actually had a wrong buzzer that we were gonna play throughout this episode when you got a question wrong. Turns out a chaser cannot be caught. You have not got anything wrong. So we've just had an entire team over there just sitting there waiting to push the button, just twiddling their fingers.
- [56:00]
Paul Sinner
I'm not saying I'm competitive, you know,
- [56:03]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
we shouldn't have bet.
- [56:04]
Paul Sinner
You know, this functional way.
- [56:05]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was after I am. But now we will have a quiz for you. You know, the pressure is on perhaps a little bit. This is. This is the. So what do you know? Now this is our quickfire quiz to see how much you've learned and how much you've remembered. My plan initially was to get you to eat increasingly spicy food with every question. But then I think we'd be sued by hot ones. So unfortunately, I'm just gonna read you some questions. Okay? All right, I got 10 for you. 1010 questions. Okay, here we go. Have you taken any notes, Paul?
- [56:32]
Paul Sinner
I'm not gonna look at them.
- [56:34]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Okay. Question 1. What general name was given to the Malacca Islands, home of cloves.
- [56:39]
Paul Sinner
Spice islands.
- [56:40]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Very good. Spice islands and also home of clove and nutmeg. And a visit to the spy science. Something different. Question 2. Name one of the three technological developments in late antiquity that aided the ancient spice trade in the Indian Ocean.
- [56:52]
Paul Sinner
The astrolabe, the magnetic compass and the Latin surf.
- [56:56]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Oh, I'm going to give you a bonus point for that because that's fantastic. Okay. Question three. How did the Dutch keep their spicy so pricey?
- [57:02]
Paul Sinner
Destroyed it.
- [57:03]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
They burned it. Yeah, absolutely. Burned it in Amsterdam. Question 4. Which 17th century Frenchman transplanted spices to Mauritius?
- [57:10]
Paul Sinner
Pierre Poivre.
- [57:11]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was pierrepoiv. But Peter Pepper did not pick a peck of pickled pepper, like I said. Even say it. What non culinary use did black pepper have in medieval England?
- [57:20]
Paul Sinner
Curing various digestive ailments.
- [57:22]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Absolutely. And you could also use it to pay your rent, apparently, which is very, very charming. Question 6. According to Herodotus, how were cinnamon sticks harvested?
- [57:31]
Paul Sinner
Burning trees to keep the snakes away.
- [57:34]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
No, that's a different one. That's pepper. We're talking cinnamon here. I'll let you have one more chance.
- [57:39]
Paul Sinner
I've forgotten.
- [57:40]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
Ah, you've got to tempt the giant birds away from their nest with the lump of cow. Okay, so that's. That's one wrong. You can play the wrong buzzer. At last, the production. Okay. Question seven. What is one Moluccan superstition about clove trees involving pregnant women?
- [57:57]
Paul Sinner
Perhaps that you have to treat them like you treat pregnant women.
- [58:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
That's right. And you couldn't wear a hat nearby. Question 8. Roman food recipes often included which spice?
- [58:07]
Paul Sinner
Pepper.
- [58:08]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was pepper. Very good. Question 9. What nickname did cloves have in Han dynasty Ch. China.
- [58:14]
Paul Sinner
Oh, what was it called?
- [58:18]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
I think breath.
- [58:20]
Paul Sinner
Something breath, but I can't remember.
- [58:21]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was. It was chicken tongue fragrance.
- [58:22]
Paul Sinner
Chicken tongue fragrance.
- [58:24]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And question 10. Which of the major five spices comes from the Americas rather from Asia?
- [58:29]
Paul Sinner
The chili pepper.
- [58:30]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It was chili pepper. Right. I'm gonna give you, I think nine out of 11, I think is where we landed on that one. So a very good score. Very impressive. Are you pleased with that?
- [58:38]
Paul Sinner
That's much more than I thought I was gonna get.
- [58:40]
Dr. David Vevers
So that's fine.
- [58:40]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
You did well. You did really well. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been an absolute delight to have you here. Thank David, A listener. To learn more about the history of commodities, check out our episodes about coffee and chocolate. Or for more on global trade, of course you can listen to our episode on the Columbian Exchange. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to youo're Dead to me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen@BBC.com or on the BBC app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner we had the fantastic Dr. David Vevers from Bangor University. Thank you David.
- [59:15]
Dr. David Vevers
Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul.
- [59:17]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And in Comedy Corner we have the sensational Paul Sinner. Thank you Paul.
- [59:20]
Paul Sinner
Thank you very much.
- [59:21]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
And to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we cook up another flavoursome feast for your ears. Can you eat feasts with your ears? I don't know, but for now I'm off to try and pay my mortgage with a sack of peppercorns. Bye. You're dead to me is a BBC studios production for BBC radio 4. This episode was researched by emma mitchell and adam simcox. It was written by Dr. Emmy rose price goodfellow, Dr. Emma nagoose and me. The audio producer was steve hanke and our production coordinator was jill huggett. It was produced by Dr. Emmy rose price goodfellow, me and senior producer Dr. Emma nagus and our executive editor was philip sellars.
- [60:04]
Russell Cain
Greetings, malevolent munchkins, fiendish friends and devilish do gooders. Welcome back to the home of the October oxymoron evil Genius. I'm Russell Cain and I'm delighted to be steering the ship that unceremoniously wrenches historic figures from their perfect pedestals so that we can decide whether they're evil genius or a heady concoction of the two. It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Yes, it's evil. Yes, it's genius. Get on board now and listen to each other. Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
- [60:44]
Megan McCardell
Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic and it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. Every Wednesday I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward.
- [61:01]
Host of 'You're Dead To Me' (possibly the main presenter)
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems.
- [61:07]
Dr. David Vevers
You know, I am a believer in America and it's worth fighting for.
- [61:10]
Megan McCardell
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [61:14]
Howie Mandel
The Global Gaming League is presented by Atlas Earth, the fun cashback app. Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my How We do it gaming team take on Gilly The King Wallow 267's million dollars gaming in an epic Global Gaming League video game showdown. Plus a halftime performance by multi platinum artist Travy McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship MA match right now@globalgamingleague.com that's globalgamingleague.com in partnership with Level Up Expo.