The Produce Industry Podcast w/ Patrick Kelly

Why did a Greek historian standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid in 450 BC record that its builders were fed on onions, garlic, and radishes — and what does the archaeology say about whether he was right? Who were the people who actually built the pyramids, and what does a daily logbook written by a middle-ranking official called Merer, found in a Red Sea harbour in 2013, tell us about the greatest construction project in human history? And why does the onion, cut open to reveal its concentric rings, turn out to be both the fuel of the pyramid builders and a sacred image of eternity?
Join John as he tells the story of Egypt and the onion — Herodotus, the workers' city at Giza, the oldest papyrus ever found, and the vegetable that runs through Egyptian life from the Predynastic period to breakfast this morning...
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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
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Why do Bosnian Muslims make and celebrate a plum brandy that Islamic law technically forbids — and what does their answer to that question reveal about four centuries of Ottoman rule, Balkan identity, and the extraordinary weight of contingency behind things that seem simple? How did the Ottomans simultaneously bring distillation to the Balkans, prohibit alcohol, and shape the culture that would eventually inscribe plum brandy on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list? And what is in a glass of šljivovica that a supermarket bottle of slivovitz will never contain?
Join John as he tells the story of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the plum — the copper still, the neighbors arriving in October, and the soul extracted from a fruit that has outlasted every political settlement imposed on this landscape...
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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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Why did a Portuguese colonial sugar ban inadvertently create Cape Verde's national spirit — and what does it reveal about how cultures find ways through every door that's closed to them? How did ten uninhabited volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic become the birthplace of a creole language, a music of longing, and a sugarcane brandy whose flavour is specific to each valley's microbes? And what happens when the law designed to protect a traditional product becomes the mechanism that pushes out the people who made it traditional?
Join John and his special co-host as they tell the story of Cape Verde and grogue — the wild fermentation, the Barefoot Diva, the grogue wars, and the saudade that runs through all of it...
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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Why does the Emperor of Japan — head of state of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth — wade into a rice paddy every year to plant seedlings by hand, and harvest them in autumn by torchlight? How did a grain that arrived from the Korean peninsula three thousand years ago become not just the foundation of Japanese civilisation, but the source of imperial legitimacy, the unit of feudal taxation, and the subject of the world's first commodity futures market? And what does it mean that turtle shell divination was used in 2019 to select the rice fields for a new Emperor's enthronement ceremony?
Join John as he tells the story of Japan and rice — the sun goddess, the koku economy, and the three-thousand-year thread connecting the first Yayoi farmers to the Imperial Palace paddy in Tokyo...
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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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Why did a restless boy from a rural Swedish parsonage end up giving a name to every living thing on Earth — and how did he build a system so durable that it still runs as the operating system of modern biology, long after the theology behind it was overturned? How did the invention of the index card, a near-fatal journey through Lapland, and three years in the Dutch botanical gardens produce twelve thousand species names and a framework that has since scaled to potentially a trillion? And what do we do with the fact that the same man who placed humans in the animal kingdom also used his taxonomic authority to give scientific credibility to racial hierarchy?
Join John and a special co-host as they tell the story of Sweden and Carl Linnaeus — the apostles he sent around the world, the specimens that ended up in Piccadilly, and the system that names everything...
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
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