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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: I was going to start off today by saying that,

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Speaker 1: of course it's the most wonderful time of the year,

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Speaker 1: but I think I'm actually already on record saying October

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Speaker 1: is the most wonderful time of the year. And of

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Speaker 1: course October is because that's you know, monster madness, but

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Speaker 1: monster season aside, I think tomato season is the second

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Speaker 1: most wonderful time of the year, and we're right in

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Speaker 1: it now. Tomato season is pretty wonderful. Um. We're we're

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Speaker 1: big tomato fans here in the house. Given the confines

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Speaker 1: of imposed by the pandemic, we're actually growing more tomatoes

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Speaker 1: at the house than ever before. Um, and yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: been fabulous. We're big fans of panzanella, which is a

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Speaker 1: I think a Tuscan chopped salad or originally but it's

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Speaker 1: like soaked or soaked stale or toasted bread. We throw

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Speaker 1: in basil and then of course the tomatoes. Uh. Similarly,

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Speaker 1: we really love a good caprice salad because yeah, a

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Speaker 1: great tomato just elevates anything. In my opinion. You know,

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Speaker 1: you can do a great tomato. All you need is

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Speaker 1: just a little salt and pepper, maybe a drizzle of

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Speaker 1: olive oil, and you're good to go. A great tomato

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Speaker 1: is I think, in the same class where people think

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Speaker 1: of like a great steak. It is just like a

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Speaker 1: complete food in itself that is so good, you know,

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Speaker 1: it kind of makes people moan when they eat it.

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Speaker 1: And I definitely grew up thinking that I did not

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Speaker 1: like tomatoes. I thought I hated tomatoes. I'd always pick

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Speaker 1: them off of a sandwich if if they were on there.

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Speaker 1: But I realized later in life the issue was just

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Speaker 1: that I hated bad tomatoes. And almost every tomato you

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Speaker 1: get in a you know, in a subway or what.

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Speaker 1: I don't mean to single them out, but you know,

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Speaker 1: any sandwich shop, whatever, it's almost never going to be

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Speaker 1: a good one. It's going to be kind of a white, mealy, tough,

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Speaker 1: flavorless thing that doesn't have all of the beautiful aromatic

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Speaker 1: tomato ee compounds, that doesn't have that perfect juicy texture,

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Speaker 1: A ripe, home grown or or you know, farmer's market

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Speaker 1: summer tomato that has never been refrigerated, never had to

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Speaker 1: be shipped on a big truck any of that stuff.

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Speaker 1: It is a thing of beauty. And if you've never

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Speaker 1: experienced a tomato that way, you don't know what you're

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Speaker 1: missing yet. Yeah, absolutely, you just you're not going to

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Speaker 1: get the same thing with a grocery store tomato generally,

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Speaker 1: unless you know they are actually servants selling like local

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Speaker 1: airlimb tomatoes. I'm a big fan of box meal kits.

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Speaker 1: I'm a subscriber to one of them right now. But

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Speaker 1: you're just not gonna You're not gonna get a wonderful

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Speaker 1: tomato through the mail like that. It's gotta it's got

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Speaker 1: to come from your own garden. It's got to come

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Speaker 1: from a local um garden. It and when you get

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Speaker 1: to dig into it, it is like nothing else. It's

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Speaker 1: just miles above uh, the sort of mundane canned tomato

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Speaker 1: grocery store tomato experience. Yeah. And I think one reason is, uh,

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Speaker 1: just the sheer mechanics of like shipping products. Right, have

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Speaker 1: you ever had a really good ripe summer tomato As

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Speaker 1: soon as you handle it, you know, like this would

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Speaker 1: not survive the like the rough process of getting from

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Speaker 1: a farm to the grocery store to my house. It's

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Speaker 1: a delicate baby bird. It's the thing that that you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's barely going to survive the trip from the

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Speaker 1: vine to your kitchen counter. Oh yeah, and again speaking

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Speaker 1: is a very amateur tomato grower here. But the ones

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Speaker 1: we bring in from the backyard, like they we have

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Speaker 1: to like knock the bugs off of them. They're already

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Speaker 1: oozing a little bit. Yeah, this is a very delicate

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Speaker 1: balance between the plate and the compost heap. You've got

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Speaker 1: to get there just the right time. But on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, I'm also actually I'm a pretty big fan

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Speaker 1: of canned tomatoes for cooked applications. If if it's a tomato,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you're making tomato sauce or something like that,

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Speaker 1: a decent can of of whole peeled tomatoes that you

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Speaker 1: puree yourself from ash to whatever consistency you want works

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Speaker 1: just fine. I mean, you know that they're picked when

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Speaker 1: they're ideal, and you know they go ahead and can them.

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Speaker 1: It's much better than trying to make a say, a

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Speaker 1: tomato sauce from tomatoes that are fresh in the off season. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it it ultimately depends, like what is the role of

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Speaker 1: the tomato in the dish is is this a starring

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Speaker 1: vehicle for a fresh tomato. If so, nothing but a

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Speaker 1: really good fresh tomato is going to work. But if

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Speaker 1: it's something where the tomato is more of a supporting player,

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Speaker 1: then perhaps one of these other things will work. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course there's not just one tomato. Obviously, there's so

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Speaker 1: many different types. For my own purposes, I find that

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Speaker 1: when it's not tomato season, those little like grape tomatoes

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Speaker 1: are pretty good if you have to get some of

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Speaker 1: the store. Absolutely, I'm a hundred percent in agreement, cherry tomatoes,

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Speaker 1: grape tomatoes are the much better option if you need

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Speaker 1: fresh tomatoes in the off season. So listeners, as you

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Speaker 1: can probably tell, we're going to be talking about tomatoes

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Speaker 1: not for one episode, but for two whole episodes. And

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Speaker 1: if you're thinking, well, the tomato is just so mundane,

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Speaker 1: it's so every day, this is gonna be a you know,

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Speaker 1: two episodes of of backyard um um like hoakery here

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Speaker 1: that I can just skip on stuff to blow your mind.

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Speaker 1: Nothing could be further from the truth, because there is

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Speaker 1: so much weirdness in these episodes. There's quackery, there's myth making,

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Speaker 1: they're tall tails, and there's all space colonizations, yes, space colonization.

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Speaker 1: It's going to cover really like a broad area of

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Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind content, even though at the

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Speaker 1: center of it is this fruit that has become just

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Speaker 1: such a staple of most of our diets in one

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Speaker 1: form or another. So maybe we should start off just

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Speaker 1: by looking at the tomato plant as an organism. What

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Speaker 1: what is this organism and how did we end up

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Speaker 1: with the modern cultivated tomato. Yeah, this is a great,

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Speaker 1: great place to start, because this is another one of

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Speaker 1: those stories where if you don't think about it too close,

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Speaker 1: if you don't research it yourself, you just might think, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: tomatoes have always been everywhere, they have always been a

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Speaker 1: part of our diet because they're just so ubiquitous now.

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Speaker 1: But this is not the case. Okay, So, first of all,

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Speaker 1: you've probably just heard us say the word fruit. This

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Speaker 1: is one of those facts I think most people know

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Speaker 1: at this point. You probably learned this before. But in

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Speaker 1: biological terms, a tomato is a fruit rather than a vegetable,

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Speaker 1: and part of this comes down to the different ways

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Speaker 1: that we use the term fruits and vegetables in a

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Speaker 1: sort of culinary or nutritional sense versus in a botanical sense.

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Speaker 1: Um like we in a culinary or nutritional sense, we

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Speaker 1: intuitively sort things into categories of fruits and vegetables, I think,

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Speaker 1: largely based on sugar content and whether they're primarily used

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Speaker 1: in sweet or savory preparations, So plants that are savory

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Speaker 1: or vegetables plants that are sweet or fruits. However, even

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Speaker 1: this is somewhat arbitrary as a cultural convention, because there

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Speaker 1: are ways in which these these types of groupings can

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Speaker 1: vary widely from culture to culture. One example is avocad

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Speaker 1: oos our avocados a sweet food or a savory food.

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Speaker 1: I think for me and for most Americans, the answer

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Speaker 1: overwhelmingly would be its savory food. They go in guacamole,

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Speaker 1: you pair them with lime and salt, you put them

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Speaker 1: on toast, you put them in a burrito. But for

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Speaker 1: millions of people in like South America and Asia, avocados

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Speaker 1: are primarily a sweet food, used more often in dessert dishes,

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Speaker 1: which seems very strange to us. But I don't know.

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Speaker 1: If you think of it as kind of basically just

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Speaker 1: a buttery substance, it starts to click in place. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree. I always grew up thinking of it certainly

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Speaker 1: something you add a little salt and pepper two against

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Speaker 1: some olive oil two and you have a great dish.

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Speaker 1: But we're big fans of going to local like bubble

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Speaker 1: tea places, uh and Asian dessert places, and you will

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Speaker 1: find like avocado smoothies as a as a you know,

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Speaker 1: a standard item you encounter on menus and I've tried

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Speaker 1: it before. It's it's delicious, But yeah, you wouldn't you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily think about it from a Western perspective of

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Speaker 1: being the dessert item. But either way, these culinary distinctions

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Speaker 1: often just don't have a biological basis. In fact, other

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Speaker 1: culinary vegetables things we think of as vegetables in a

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Speaker 1: cooking sense, are biologically fruits. Cucumbers, chili, peppers, eggplants, all fruits.

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Speaker 1: But to go even better, the tomato is not only fruit,

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Speaker 1: it is technically a berry and one thing that I

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Speaker 1: think you could probably even into it just looking at say,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you're growing a variety of heirloom tomato

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Speaker 1: in your backyard and you see this monstrous fruit hanging

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Speaker 1: off of a vine that you have to prop up

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Speaker 1: on a steak or a cage or otherwise, this gigantic

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Speaker 1: fruit is just gonna make it drooped down on the ground. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it's the you know, it looks like a thing

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Speaker 1: that should not be in a way. Um. So you

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Speaker 1: might be able to into it that tomatoes have not

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Speaker 1: always been this way, like many of the modern fruits

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Speaker 1: and vegetables we eat, it had to be adapted from

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Speaker 1: a naturally occurring fruit or vegetable that did not necessarily

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Speaker 1: grow as large in the edible part um. And it

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Speaker 1: appears that modern cultivated tomatoes, which have the scientific name

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Speaker 1: Solanum lycopersicum, are descended from a wild berry that grew

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Speaker 1: in northwestern South America, maybe around the area of Peru

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Speaker 1: or a little farther north. And the research tracing these

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Speaker 1: biological origins has been summarized in a few sources. I

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Speaker 1: looked at, for example, in the Oxford Companion to Food,

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Speaker 1: which was edited by Alan Davidson. Uh. They looked at

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Speaker 1: studies by, for example, Sophie co in N and other

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Speaker 1: researchers over the years that found that the wild ancestor

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Speaker 1: of the tomato was very likely. They identify a couple

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Speaker 1: of species, one Lycopersicon seraciform. And then another one, so

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Speaker 1: Lantum pimpanellifolium, which is today known as the current tomato.

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Speaker 1: Not current as in timely, but current as in the

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Speaker 1: fruit a current. And it's called this because in a way,

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Speaker 1: these these wild tomatoes, the Slanum pimpanilla folium, sort of

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Speaker 1: resemble currents. They're these tiny little berries, almost kind of

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Speaker 1: current or blueberry sized. Yeah, So some of the examples

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Speaker 1: I was reading was that if you went back to

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Speaker 1: pre Columbian Peru, you would encounter, if you knewhere to look,

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Speaker 1: you would find these wild growing, essentially yellow berries that

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Speaker 1: were the predecessor, the likely predecessor to the modern tomato. Yes,

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Speaker 1: now exactly how it went from that wild berry to

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Speaker 1: the cultivated varieties that people eat that that's still um.

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Speaker 1: We know some things, but it's still a somewhat open question.

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Speaker 1: That there have been some genomic studies that I'll talk

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Speaker 1: about in just a minute, but we know that such

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Speaker 1: a thing as the cultivated tomato existed by the time

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Speaker 1: the Spanish arrived in Mesoamerica. By that time, the az

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Speaker 1: tech people are the no waddle speaking people, were eating

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Speaker 1: tomatoes that they grew as crops, and they were eating

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Speaker 1: them in dishes, often prepared in conjunction with chili peppers.

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Speaker 1: But of course we we know that this wild ancestor

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Speaker 1: of the tomato, this berry grew in northwest South America.

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Speaker 1: It was you know, this wild fine and so there's

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Speaker 1: still a question of how exactly that wild fruit made

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Speaker 1: its way up north to Meso America in order to

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Speaker 1: be cultivated as a food crop by the Aztecs. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's already even at this early stage in the history

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Speaker 1: of of the global tomato. It's kind of a botanical

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Speaker 1: game of telephone, right. Uh. So I was trying to

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Speaker 1: look up what is some of the most recent scientific

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Speaker 1: work on this, and there was a new study about

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Speaker 1: the domestication history of the tomato that was published just

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Speaker 1: this year, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution

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Speaker 1: by Razafard at All. And so what they present is

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Speaker 1: a little complicated. I'm going to try to do the

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Speaker 1: simplest version I can. So the authors say that before research,

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Speaker 1: our best guess about the domestication history of the tomato

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Speaker 1: went like this, So you had this wild berry in

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Speaker 1: South America. It's growing up in the andes up in

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Speaker 1: the northwest corner of South America, and this is Solanum

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Speaker 1: pimpanella folium. Here again, this is the one we mentioned earlier.

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Speaker 1: The fruits are going to be about the size of

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Speaker 1: a blueberry. Then in this older understanding, this was transformed

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Speaker 1: into the semi domesticated plant Clanum Lycopersicum saraciform or SLC.

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Speaker 1: But if you see SLC and tomato literature, don't confuse

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Speaker 1: that with Salt Lake City. It means this species, and

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Speaker 1: this would have happened within South America. These fruits would

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Speaker 1: have been about the size of a cherry, so kind

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Speaker 1: of similar to cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes that you

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Speaker 1: could buy at the store today. Obviously somewhat different, but

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Speaker 1: similar somewhat in in look, in size. And then finally,

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Speaker 1: this middle species, the s l C, was transformed into

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Speaker 1: the larger, fully domesticated clandum Lycopersicum very lycopersicum. And this

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Speaker 1: was the Aztec food crop that was developed into the

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Speaker 1: tomatoes that people eat all around the world today. And uh,

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Speaker 1: strange fact lyco persicum. I think Robert you might have

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Speaker 1: a note about this later, but it means literally wolf peach. Yes, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and yeah that it's this is interesting because this was

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Speaker 1: some sort of a fruit that was described by Galen

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Speaker 1: who lived two hundred C, which obviously as well before

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Speaker 1: tomatoes actually came to uh To, uh To to Europe,

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Speaker 1: so obviously Galen was not describing a tomato. But this

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Speaker 1: just this description ends up getting wound up in the

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Speaker 1: classification of tomatoes in the West later on. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: so anyway, the authors of this study from US population

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Speaker 1: genomic methods to try to reconstruct a genomic map of

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Speaker 1: the modern tomatoes domestication history, and they conclude quote A,

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Speaker 1: results suggest that the ore gen of SLC may predate domestication,

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Speaker 1: and that many traits considered typical of cultivated tomatoes arose

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Speaker 1: in South American SLC, but we're lost or diminished once

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Speaker 1: these partially domesticated forms spread northward. These traits were then

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Speaker 1: likely re selected in a convergent fashion in the common

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Speaker 1: cultivated tomato prior to its expansion around the world. So

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Speaker 1: a little complicated. Basically, they're saying that the semi domesticated

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Speaker 1: breed of tomato that may have been used as as

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Speaker 1: not not a cultivated crop but a semi domesticated food

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Speaker 1: by some people in South America. It had some traits

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Speaker 1: that arose naturally, and then those traits were re selected

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Speaker 1: and emphasized by growers in meso America before the tomato

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Speaker 1: finally spread all over the world. Interesting, Now, we've already

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Speaker 1: touched on the fact that the tomato isn't the only

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Speaker 1: case of this. There there's a whole thing about what

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Speaker 1: you call breeds of plants and how to and how

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Speaker 1: to know whether you talking about the same fruit or plant.

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Speaker 1: When you're using different names throughout history, it can become

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Speaker 1: very confusing. Um. But just about the history of the

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Speaker 1: word tomato itself. The English word tomato, of course comes

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Speaker 1: via the Spanish tomate, which was adapted from the original

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Speaker 1: now Wattle word tomadel. Now I've seen a lot of

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Speaker 1: sources claimed that to model was simply the Noattle word

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Speaker 1: for the fruit for the tomato. But the entry and

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Speaker 1: the Oxford companion actually goes a little deeper. And this

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Speaker 1: is kind of interesting again about linguistic confusion. So apparently

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Speaker 1: in the now Wattle language, tom model simply meant plump fruit.

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Speaker 1: So to indicate the ancestor of our tomato you had

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Speaker 1: to add the prefix z. So the word was z

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Speaker 1: to model that was the ancestor of the tomato we

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Speaker 1: have today, and this distinguished it from the husked ancestor

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Speaker 1: to modern tomatos, which the as texts called meal to model,

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Speaker 1: and then the Spanish ended up using the word tomata

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Speaker 1: for both tomatillo in Spanish that just means little tomato,

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Speaker 1: though they are not actually large and small versions of

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Speaker 1: the same fruit. They're totally different species but that but

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Speaker 1: they are related. Um these are all in the nights

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Speaker 1: shade family, and we'll get into to that. Um into

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Speaker 1: that in a bit. But the authors of the Oxford

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Speaker 1: Companion point out this led to a bunch of confusion

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Speaker 1: for Spanish chroniclers who just didn't always seem to understand

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Speaker 1: which fruit was being talked about. Uh. THEO and I

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Speaker 1: have mentioned this before, But they also point out that

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Speaker 1: in as Tech cuisine, tomatoes were consistently linked with chili peppers,

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Speaker 1: and I gotta say it's a good combination. Tomatoes and

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Speaker 1: chili peppers are are two fruits that go well together. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: But here once we have contact between the hemispheres, this

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Speaker 1: opens up the doors of of of spread of this

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Speaker 1: plant all over the world, and eventually it does spread.

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Speaker 1: Now I have to say that the way that the

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Speaker 1: tomato spreads uh through and around the world is it

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Speaker 1: both is it was it once alarming, like it's really

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Speaker 1: it's really a success story. But it's also not one

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Speaker 1: of these situations where you can say, oh, well, this

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Speaker 1: individual brought the tomato to Europe and then it was

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Speaker 1: an enormous success and here we are like, it's not

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Speaker 1: that simple and uh and and we we certainly encourage

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Speaker 1: people are interested in this to seek out some of

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Speaker 1: the books were going to mention here in a bit

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Speaker 1: because they'll get into a lot more detail about this.

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Speaker 1: It is um, I guess you would say it is.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of touch and go uh, false starts, um.

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Speaker 1: And as we'll discuss a little bit too, there's some

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Speaker 1: myth making involved in some some legend regarding just how

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Speaker 1: the tomato takes off and what is standing in its way.

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Speaker 1: I would also say that the tomato has a somewhat

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Speaker 1: complicated and murky uh. If it were a text, we

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Speaker 1: would call it the reception history. Yeah. Absolutely, So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break, but when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we are going to dive into some of the issues

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Speaker 1: of its spread through Europe. And then paradoxically like back

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Speaker 1: into North America. Alright, we're back. So, uh, we may

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Speaker 1: have talked in the past, you and I about doing

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Speaker 1: a tomato episode, Uh, doing something about the tomatoes. Tomatoes

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Speaker 1: have definitely come up on the show before, but my

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Speaker 1: wife this summer had had specifically mentioned She said, you

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Speaker 1: guys should do tomato episode. You should do it, you should,

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Speaker 1: you should really dive in there. And I think something

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Speaker 1: that helped encourage this is that we encountered a sign

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Speaker 1: at a botanical garden that was describing tomatoes. Then it

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Speaker 1: mentioned that in the past people thought they were poisonous.

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Speaker 1: So I have to admit that that was like, that

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Speaker 1: was a real key area of interest for me going

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Speaker 1: into this episode, getting into you know, just just discussing

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Speaker 1: whether people ever actually considered the tomato to be poisonous

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Speaker 1: and what does that mean, because it just seems ridiculous

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Speaker 1: on the face of it, Right, the tomato has conquered

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Speaker 1: the planet. We know the tomato is not poisonous, and

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Speaker 1: the idea of people being afraid to eat it because

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Speaker 1: they think it is poisonous, Uh, it just seems completely looney. Well,

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Speaker 1: and it's funny because even once you investigate it, I

337
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Speaker 1: would say that this irony remains, because the irony remains

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Speaker 1: because we are going to encounter people who are saying

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Speaker 1: the tomato is poisonous, but they're not saying it at

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Speaker 1: a time when nobody was eating tomatoes because everybody thought

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Speaker 1: they were poisonous. They'd be like, well, some people eat them,

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00:19:25,520 --> 00:19:28,840
Speaker 1: but they're poisonous, right, Yeah, you didn't have like single

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Speaker 1: voices with a global reach saying we do not eat

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Speaker 1: tomatoes or no one should eat tomatoes, because you have

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Speaker 1: a lot of um, you know, a lot of division

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Speaker 1: based on like who's talking about it, what country they're in,

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Speaker 1: what you know, what levels of society they're at, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: And then on top of additional legends that pop up.

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Speaker 1: But but this basic idea that people specifically, you'll see

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Speaker 1: like Europeans or Americans used to be afraid to eat

351
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Speaker 1: tomatoes because they thought they were poisonous. You see this everywhere.

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00:19:58,920 --> 00:20:00,960
Speaker 1: You see this again it but uncle gardens. You see

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Speaker 1: this popping up in um news stories about the tomato,

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Speaker 1: and it is often just presented as just a straight

355
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Speaker 1: up fact. Uh. But again, when I started looking into it,

356
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Speaker 1: I became increasingly less sure because on one hand, yeah,

357
00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:15,359
Speaker 1: it sounds too good to be true, and then you

358
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Speaker 1: do encounter these um these are these, these wrinkles in

359
00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:21,879
Speaker 1: the description that really um drive home that Okay, not

360
00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:25,640
Speaker 1: everybody thought this at the same time. So again we're

361
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Speaker 1: not going to cover the entire history of the tomatoes

362
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Speaker 1: um influx into Europe and then it's um it's acceptance

363
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Speaker 1: by European societies. But the first known European reference to

364
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Speaker 1: tomatoes comes in four from Italian herbalist Peito Andre Matthioli,

365
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Speaker 1: and he wrote of the mala aria the golden apples

366
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Speaker 1: we she described as ripening from green to yellow. Now

367
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Speaker 1: he classified the tomato with the man drake, which was

368
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:01,760
Speaker 1: of course part of this big night shade family. And

369
00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:04,600
Speaker 1: this is, of course this is accurate. I mean they

370
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Speaker 1: are in this family. We consider the tomato to be

371
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Speaker 1: a night shade, along with things like the eggplant. Um.

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Speaker 1: But this is often held up is one aspect of

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Speaker 1: the poisonous reputation that tomatoes gathered in European society, with

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Speaker 1: botanists signifying that they were a part of this family

375
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Speaker 1: that contained things um uh like deadly nightshade or like

376
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Speaker 1: like the man drake. Root, which of course has all

377
00:21:29,359 --> 00:21:33,720
Speaker 1: these connotations with various medicinal and sort of magical practices,

378
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:35,879
Speaker 1: but at the same time, at the only discussed how

379
00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:38,840
Speaker 1: tomatoes were cooked and eaten at the time much in

380
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,200
Speaker 1: the same way as eggplants, which were another imported food,

381
00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:46,639
Speaker 1: only this this eggplants came from Asia um And and

382
00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 1: they were again part of the night shade family. And

383
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:51,359
Speaker 1: this has to be this seems to be a major

384
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Speaker 1: sticking point for a large portion of of the tomatoes

385
00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:00,320
Speaker 1: European tradition uh with it and the related egg plant

386
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:03,679
Speaker 1: not traveling all that well into New European cuisines, or

387
00:22:03,680 --> 00:22:07,080
Speaker 1: not all of them anyway, because of their association with

388
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:10,320
Speaker 1: man brakes and poisons as well as I would imagine

389
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:13,239
Speaker 1: just sort of a a general hesitation to take up

390
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Speaker 1: new plants into a into a pre existing culinary tradition.

391
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Speaker 1: One one really interesting example of this UHM. I was

392
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Speaker 1: reading about UH regards the seventeenth century German garden. I

393
00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:30,359
Speaker 1: was reading when the tomato was purely ornamental considering New

394
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Speaker 1: World foods in seventeenth century Berlin. And this was by

395
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:39,160
Speaker 1: Millie Taylor Pulaski, published in Transatlantic Trade and Global Cultural

396
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,879
Speaker 1: transfer since fourteen. This was published in twenty nineteen. So

397
00:22:43,920 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 1: the author mentions that tomatoes were purely ornamental summer plants

398
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Speaker 1: in most Berlin gardens in sixteen fifty six, and this

399
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,879
Speaker 1: was due in large part to a German naturalist by

400
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Speaker 1: the name of Johann uh Sigismund el schotz Um, who

401
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:03,240
Speaker 1: highlighted its connections first of all to the vile eggplant

402
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:08,160
Speaker 1: which uh um, which was also present in the gardens

403
00:23:08,160 --> 00:23:11,280
Speaker 1: of Berlin, but not consumed, just grown so you could

404
00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 1: look at it. But Taylor at Polinski also points out

405
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:18,560
Speaker 1: that el Schultz didn't argue that either of these plants

406
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:23,760
Speaker 1: was poisonous, only that they were unhealthy. And he also

407
00:23:23,840 --> 00:23:27,400
Speaker 1: seems to mention with some disdain that Italians eat them

408
00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:30,719
Speaker 1: and Spaniards did too at the time. So um, the

409
00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:33,480
Speaker 1: idea is that there was likely um a large amount

410
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:36,760
Speaker 1: of anti Catholic sentiment here as well, Like this is

411
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 1: this is a plant. Yes, you can eat it, the

412
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:43,320
Speaker 1: Italians eat it, the Catholics eat it, but Protestant Germans

413
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:45,840
Speaker 1: should not eat it because it's bad for you. Yeah,

414
00:23:45,840 --> 00:23:47,400
Speaker 1: that seems to go along with some of the things

415
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:49,879
Speaker 1: I was reading. And and and this is interesting because we

416
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,280
Speaker 1: see a similar trend actually if you look at potatoes,

417
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: which are also part of the large night shade family. Again,

418
00:23:55,760 --> 00:23:59,080
Speaker 1: where a new food is destined just destined for widespread

419
00:23:59,119 --> 00:24:04,880
Speaker 1: popularity and ultimately is going to have a life sustaining success. Um.

420
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: You know. With the potato particularly, it ends up being

421
00:24:07,359 --> 00:24:12,360
Speaker 1: embraced by um lower levels of the socio economic um

422
00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: uh ladder first and those communities that take up the

423
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 1: potato benefit from them like nutritionally uh and and and

424
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 1: dietarially um and then of course ultimately it it just

425
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:26,400
Speaker 1: takes over. But initially something like the potato as well,

426
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 1: it's grown only for decoration before it is ultimately embraced

427
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:35,160
Speaker 1: by everybody for decoration. Potato for decoration. Yeah, I mean,

428
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:37,000
Speaker 1: you know, I could I guess I could see it.

429
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 1: I see it less with the two with with the potato,

430
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 1: but certainly to tomato is a bright plant. It is

431
00:24:42,720 --> 00:24:45,800
Speaker 1: pleasing to look at. But it's impossible for for me

432
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,320
Speaker 1: to really imagine like a guarden, walking into a garden

433
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 1: where you have ripe tomatoes and eggplants and you're just

434
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:53,920
Speaker 1: gonna stand back and say, oh, look at that. Isn't

435
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:57,880
Speaker 1: that isn't that beautiful. Isn't that nice? No, you need

436
00:24:57,920 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 1: to harvest that stuff and make a raditui. Yeah. Now,

437
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:04,160
Speaker 1: one of the really wonderful text that we were both

438
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:08,240
Speaker 1: looking at for for this pair of episodes, uh is

439
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: a book by Andrew F. Smith titled The Tomato in America, which, again,

440
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 1: if you if you're tantalized by our discussions in these

441
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: episodes and you want more about the tomato, this is

442
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 1: the book for you. Highly recommended. But Smith points out

443
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: that some Renaissance herbalist when they were considering the the tomato,

444
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: they looked at these other sources, one of which is

445
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 1: Galen and the idea of the wolf peach. And that's

446
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:36,679
Speaker 1: again when we have the scientific name that we have

447
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: for the tomato. But also there were descriptions of um

448
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 1: of of glossium by Pedanius Dioscorides who lived forty through nineties,

449
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:50,080
Speaker 1: and this was a Syrian herb that was so named

450
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:53,119
Speaker 1: because it was recommended as a treatment for eye ailments.

451
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: Um So that was another sort of pre existing classification

452
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 1: that helped inform how we thought about tomatoes, or certainly

453
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: how naturalists and botanists thought about them at the time.

454
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:09,199
Speaker 1: But neither of these, Uh is the tomato, just to

455
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:12,080
Speaker 1: be clear, but they do tie into some of the

456
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: they frequently mentioned associations that were made at the time

457
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 1: with tomatoes. Now, to get into some of the myth

458
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: making a little bit, here's another frequently mentioned tail that

459
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: I imagine a number of you have heard, and this

460
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:26,959
Speaker 1: is how it goes. Uh, this is the story. I'm

461
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 1: not saying this is this correct. We'll get into that

462
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:31,399
Speaker 1: in a second. But the story goes that when the

463
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: tomato originally found its way onto European plates, you had

464
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,440
Speaker 1: aristocrats who were like, oh, I'm gonna try out this.

465
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:40,520
Speaker 1: This sounds great, and they started eating these tomatoes. But

466
00:26:40,560 --> 00:26:43,520
Speaker 1: then they started becoming very sick, and they end up

467
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: pronouncing the fruit to be poisonous. But it would turn

468
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: out that the acid in the tomatoes was leaching lead

469
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 1: out of the plates they were served on, which incidentally

470
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,119
Speaker 1: made poorer members of society um less susceptible to the

471
00:26:56,119 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 1: poison because they would be eating off of the wooden

472
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:03,000
Speaker 1: plates or earthenware plates. Now, whether or not this claim

473
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: is true, it is actually true, of course, that that

474
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: acidic fruits and vegetables, when cooked in or eaten on

475
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: certain types of pots, of pans or plates can actually

476
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:16,560
Speaker 1: react with the material. One example is if you cook

477
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,760
Speaker 1: overly acidic foods, including tomato based foods, in for example,

478
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:25,360
Speaker 1: aluminum cookware. Sometimes this isn't great, like they can react

479
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 1: with each other. The food can pick up a kind

480
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: of nasty metallic taste from the aluminum. The acid can

481
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:34,719
Speaker 1: sort of damage the surface of the aluminum. So so

482
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: there are reactions like that that can't happen, right, And

483
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: we have discussed lead making its way into food and

484
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: lead poisoning in at least a couple of episodes in

485
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,480
Speaker 1: the past. I know we did Cupids leaden Arrow, which

486
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:48,720
Speaker 1: discussed lead quite a bit, and then we also did

487
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,399
Speaker 1: one of one of our three or four Dangerous Foods

488
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 1: episodes touched on lead poisoning. But anyway, this idea of

489
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 1: tomatoes sucking the lead out of your your your plate

490
00:27:58,000 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: where uh. This ended up being circulated in the United

491
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: States as well, um, with commentators highlighting the lead issue,

492
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:07,719
Speaker 1: and there were also concerns over the general effect of

493
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:11,720
Speaker 1: the acidity of the tomato on the stomach, with some saying, oh, well,

494
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:13,679
Speaker 1: the you know, the the acidity and the tomatoes dangerous

495
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: to the stomach, others saying no, no, it's really beneficial.

496
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: Another thing I've read, Actually, I don't know if this

497
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,640
Speaker 1: overlaps with the lead issue or not, but the specific

498
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 1: substance I saw mentioned was pewter plates. Was that like

499
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:28,679
Speaker 1: that they would discolor. When you put tomatoes on a

500
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: pewter plate, it would allegedly discolor the plate, and this

501
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:36,959
Speaker 1: led to concerns. Yeah, now, Andrew F. Smith does right

502
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 1: that the acid content of tomatoes was a topic of

503
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:41,760
Speaker 1: concern in Europe and the United States for a while.

504
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: The Paris Society for Horticulture published a paper warning about

505
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: the possibility of leaching with metal plates uh including copper,

506
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: recommending that you should use wooden and earthenware plates instead.

507
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: But but I looked into this a bit more, reading

508
00:28:57,200 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: from a book titled Death by petticoat American His Three

509
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: Myths Debunked by Mary Miley Theobald, and the author points

510
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: out that in British barber surgeon published a botanical book

511
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 1: that claimed tomatoes were actually poisonous, while also noting that

512
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: the French and Italians did eat them. So I guess

513
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: it was like, these are dangerous to humans unless you're French.

514
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: Or Italians somehow, I don't know. Apparently this uh that

515
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: this was this was no expert um, this particular barber surgeon.

516
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: I guess it would be like the modern equivalent of

517
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: say a a like a YouTube based dietary expert. I'm

518
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: not positive, but I think that's referring to somebody who

519
00:29:36,760 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: cited in another paper by Andrew F. Smith. Not that

520
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:41,360
Speaker 1: book we're looking at, but a paper I'm gonna sighten

521
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 1: a bit. I think that is John Girard, a barber

522
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 1: surgeon and the superintendent of the gardens of the College

523
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 1: of Physicians in Holborn. And Smith says of of of

524
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:56,480
Speaker 1: this barber surgeon guy, that in addition to repeating the

525
00:29:56,520 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: claims of others that the tomatoes poisonous, he also made

526
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 1: strange comments such as quote the temperature of the tomato

527
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: was in the highest degree of coldness, which he said

528
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 1: was left quote to every man's censure. What does that mean?

529
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: I don't know, well, I know about the censure. It

530
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 1: just seems like, okay, yes, disdain in the tomato alright, Well,

531
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: at any rate, Um theobald of contends that quote this

532
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: book set the state for the negative view of tomatoes

533
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: among the English that lasted more than a century. However,

534
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 1: by the end of the seventeen hundreds, tomatoes had overcome

535
00:30:35,120 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: this bad press. Yeah, that seems in line with a

536
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,000
Speaker 1: lot of what I was reading as well, that it's

537
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: not that everybody thought that tomatoes were poisonous, but that

538
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:48,160
Speaker 1: there were some prominent writers that had made or repeated

539
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: these allegations that the tomato was in some way potentially

540
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: poisonous or unhealthy, and that these misimpressions trickled down to

541
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: some people in society, but not everybody. So some people

542
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: were reading tomatoes, other people we're saying, no, that's dangerous,

543
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 1: don't do that, And over time the non dangerous faction

544
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: grew in numbers. Yeah, I think, you know, it's easy

545
00:31:09,680 --> 00:31:12,400
Speaker 1: to look back at history and assume that there would

546
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: be sort of weirdly to think there would be some

547
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 1: sort of consensus at the time about whether you know

548
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,960
Speaker 1: wrong or correct about particular foods. But obviously we just

549
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 1: look around the world today and we see how um are,

550
00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: our understanding of the nutritional values of various foods shifts

551
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: with our understanding, and also just sort of the popular

552
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 1: idea of what we should be eating, what is good,

553
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: what is tasty, what is stylish, and even what is

554
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: healthy shifts as well. Yeah, you're exactly right, and and

555
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: there is a grain of truth here at least in

556
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,320
Speaker 1: the fact that, uh that plants in the soul and

557
00:31:46,360 --> 00:31:50,440
Speaker 1: a C family, including you know, say potatoes for instance,

558
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: to do sometimes in some parts of the plant have

559
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 1: do accumulate toxins that can be dangerous. For example, if

560
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: you consume the leaves or something, or even um, we've

561
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:06,120
Speaker 1: talked before about there there are ways that toxins can

562
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 1: accumulate in potatoes if they say, left out for a

563
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: long time, if you have a really old potato, it

564
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:14,719
Speaker 1: can get a lot of soulanine in it, which can

565
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:17,720
Speaker 1: lead to potato poisoning. Yeah, it turns green on the

566
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: sunlit countertop, that sort of thing. Um. Yes. Smith points

567
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: out that well, first of all, as far as um

568
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,040
Speaker 1: acidity goes, it's gonna very quite a bit across the

569
00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:31,440
Speaker 1: varieties of tomato. But then in terms of um potentially

570
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: dangerous alkaloids, those are going to be mostly in the

571
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: leaves and stem. That's where the highest concentrations are going

572
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: to be in a tomato plant. And there have been

573
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 1: cases where say a child consumed a tea made from

574
00:32:45,880 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 1: those leaves, and it has resulted in severe reactions. But

575
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:53,800
Speaker 1: as you can guess from the like billions of pounds

576
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: or whatever of catchup and other tomato products that people

577
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: eat around the world every day, the tomato itself is

578
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: over elming le safety. There's just yeah, there's nothing to this,

579
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: right and and certainly any of these cases where we're

580
00:33:06,240 --> 00:33:10,480
Speaker 1: discussing a place or a people or a community that

581
00:33:11,080 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: was afraid of the tomato, or did not eat the tomato,

582
00:33:13,400 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: or only grew it ornamentally, there was an all likelihood

583
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: um people or a place not too far away where

584
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 1: it was just a part of the It had already

585
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 1: become part of the culinary tradition. So yeah, you would

586
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: have english people or Germans that were not eating the tomato.

587
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:32,240
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, in Italy and Spain and France and Portugal

588
00:33:32,640 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 1: they were already all in I mean, it was already

589
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 1: a food crop when Europeans first encountered it. Yeah. Absolutely. Now,

590
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting paper I mentioned a minute ago

591
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: by also by Andrew F. Smith, from from the nineteen

592
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: nineties that was about the history of how perceptions of

593
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,880
Speaker 1: the tomato changed in the United States during the first

594
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century, and there are some some

595
00:33:56,200 --> 00:34:00,200
Speaker 1: interesting reasons involved in that transition that Smith gets into.

596
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: I think we're probably gonna explore that paper in the

597
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: second episode here, but it's got a lot of fun

598
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 1: quackery in it, so so pulled on for that one.

599
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 1: I'd say one of the stumbling blocks to understanding the

600
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: idea of the tomato as is being received as poisonous

601
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: or beneficial is that sometimes the best seeming examples, the

602
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: best stories about about this are actually just legends, so

603
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 1: you know, are completely apocryphal, uh, such as the this

604
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 1: famous story that I imagined a lot of people have heard, uh,

605
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 1: the apocryphal legend of Robert Gibbon Johnson. Uh. So they

606
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:39,879
Speaker 1: are multiple versions of this, and they concern a real

607
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 1: life individual named Robert Gibbon Johnson who have seventeen seventy

608
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: one through eighteen fifty and he was a notable farmer

609
00:34:47,239 --> 00:34:51,400
Speaker 1: and horticulturist in Salem, New Jersey. He was an actual

610
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: tomato grower, uh and is sometimes credited with having introduced

611
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 1: the crop into the area in eighteen twenty, and certainly

612
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,400
Speaker 1: they become a major crop around that time. In southern

613
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 1: New Jersey. But this is was discussing a second like,

614
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: this doesn't seem to be the case either. He didn't

615
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: didn't actually introduce the crop. But in this particular story, Um,

616
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: the idea is that he said he was defending the

617
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 1: tomato and he announced I will publicly eat a basket

618
00:35:17,640 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: of tomatoes on the old Salem County Courthouse steps. Uh

619
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 1: that this is the uh in order to demonstrate that

620
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 1: they are not poisonous. And then and then the town's

621
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:32,239
Speaker 1: folk burned him as a witch. Wrong Salem. But um,

622
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 1: but you know, the idea is that people were like, oh,

623
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 1: he's gonna eat a basket and tomatoes and die publicly.

624
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 1: I've got to see that. So people gather to watch

625
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: the spectacle. They come from far and wide. And then

626
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 1: he eats the tomatoes and does not die. That's the story,

627
00:35:46,200 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: and it makes for a great story. But everyone seems

628
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 1: to agree that this is just not true as uh.

629
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 1: And Andrew F. Smith actually gets into this in the

630
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:58,120
Speaker 1: first few pages of the book, um, pointing out that

631
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,760
Speaker 1: there's some pretty good records from the time in Salem

632
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 1: and Johnson being a prominent citizen was mentioned quite a

633
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 1: bit for his other activities and exploits, like he was

634
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: also in the military and so forth, like he was

635
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,359
Speaker 1: a major deal at the time. But there's nothing about

636
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 1: him introducing the tomato. There's nothing about him um uh,

637
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: you know, eating tomatoes and as a matter of public

638
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: spectacle to to to prove that they're not poisonous. And

639
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: it just seems like that would be written up if

640
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 1: he had done that, Like the papers were not shy

641
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:31,800
Speaker 1: about writing about about this guy at the time. Anyway.

642
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: Smith goes on to note that as far as the

643
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,680
Speaker 1: the idea of him introducing the tomato, this is just

644
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:40,440
Speaker 1: one of some five hundred different myths about tomato introduction

645
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 1: in America, and that they often end end up involving

646
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: the the Great Man trope, in which someone such as

647
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, He's another individual that sometimes is erroneously cited

648
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: as being the introducer of tomatoes is responsible. But in

649
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:59,080
Speaker 1: reality we don't know who is responsible, you know, specifically

650
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:03,799
Speaker 1: for introducing tomato. There is no actual American King Tomato

651
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 1: to credit. I do love the idea though, that if

652
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: this story were true, I mean, so imagine this guy

653
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: sits out in front of the courthouse and eats a

654
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: bushel basket of tomatoes. Like, I don't think that would

655
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: kill him because they're not poisonous, but surely that would

656
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 1: give him just like horrible diarrhea. What you eat a

657
00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: basket of tomatoes with nothing else? Yeah? Maybe so, I

658
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:33,439
Speaker 1: don't know. Supposedly this whole incident has even been um

659
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: recreated in various past documentaries, but I didn't get a

660
00:37:38,640 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 1: chance to look them up and see how they presented it,

661
00:37:41,080 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: if if, because there are different versions of it. So

662
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:46,040
Speaker 1: maybe in some versions it's just like one tomato, uh,

663
00:37:46,080 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: and in others it's a whole bushel. I don't know.

664
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: So I've got another story like this about the supposed

665
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 1: reputation of tomatoes as poisonous, And this is the rumor

666
00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:00,800
Speaker 1: about the George Washington assassination attempt. Okay, so one version

667
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: of the story, as collected in the Snopes article on

668
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 1: this rumor quote. I remember one of my junior high

669
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:12,960
Speaker 1: history teachers reading us a suicide note by George Washington's cook.

670
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: The author of the note said that he could not

671
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: forgive Washington's treason against the British and had therefore decided

672
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,720
Speaker 1: to poison him then kill himself. The poison he used

673
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:29,520
Speaker 1: on Washington was a tomato. That's great story, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,

674
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: it's it's comedic, it generates laughter, and it ties into

675
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: this this ridiculous idea that people once thought that the

676
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: tomato was harmful and and exaggerated to the point where

677
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:44,240
Speaker 1: it could be used as a lethal weapon. Yeah. Unfortunately,

678
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,239
Speaker 1: as great of a story as this is, this one

679
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,600
Speaker 1: is fiction in a literal sense. It comes from a story,

680
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: a short story called the Murder of George Washington by

681
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:57,760
Speaker 1: Richard im Gordon, which was published in Ellery Queen's Mystery

682
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: magazine in April nineteen fifteen. Mine, I think the author

683
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,720
Speaker 1: is this guy, Richard Gordon, who was also a surgeon

684
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:10,000
Speaker 1: and uh an enthusiologist who who wrote historical fiction underpen names.

685
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,959
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the story, uh this, this cook wants

686
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: to kill Washington because he's a British loyalist, and so

687
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: he waits until Washington is quote afflicted with a cold

688
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: in his head which has seriously impaired his sense of taste. Okay,

689
00:39:26,320 --> 00:39:28,959
Speaker 1: so perfect opportunity, right, He's not going to be able

690
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: to taste the poison that the cook adds to his stew,

691
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:35,720
Speaker 1: which comes in the form of quote the scarlet flesh

692
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 1: of a fruit of a variety of the deadly nightshade.

693
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 1: And then, after serving what he assumes to be the

694
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 1: deadly poison, the cook writes a ps to his suicide

695
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,720
Speaker 1: note quote. As a cook, I have a prejudice against

696
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 1: dying by poison. I am too corpulent to hang. But

697
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: by reason of my calling, I am expert with a

698
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 1: carving knife. So it is alleged that he takes his

699
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: own life somehow with the aid of a carving knife.

700
00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:04,719
Speaker 1: And then, of course, I think the reader is just

701
00:40:04,840 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: left to assume that this guy's scheme does not work

702
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: because the poison does not work, because it is a tomato.

703
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: That's great, but no basis in history whatsoever. It sounds

704
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 1: like the author was merely having fun with some of

705
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:20,399
Speaker 1: these very these very topics that we've been discussing here.

706
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:22,279
Speaker 1: All right, on that note, we're going to take one

707
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 1: more break, but when we come back, we will discuss

708
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 1: the killer tomato worm. Than all right, we're back now, Robert.

709
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:34,319
Speaker 1: Before we went to the break, did you say something

710
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: about a killer tomato worm. Yes, killer tomato worms, which

711
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: is another interesting area that combines like actual um actual

712
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:49,399
Speaker 1: in this case entomological fact with a fair amount of

713
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: myth making here. Uh and and just uh you know superstition,

714
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: I guess. So it is a fact of life that

715
00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: if you're going to raise some crops, uh, you're going

716
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:02,919
Speaker 1: to have to deal with other organisms that also want

717
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,720
Speaker 1: to eat said crops. And uh. Again, we've been growing

718
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,280
Speaker 1: some tomatoes in our own backyard here, so so we've

719
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 1: gotten used to this. As again we're growing tomatoes. We

720
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: also have some volunteer summertime pumpkins from our compost. We

721
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:18,359
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were gonna be. It turns out

722
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: they're useless pumpkins, but they're still fun. Are pumpkins useless? Well,

723
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 1: most of these are those little ornamental pumpkins. Uh, you

724
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:30,960
Speaker 1: know the kind uh that you you you buy around

725
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: um Halloween and you set out for decoration and you

726
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: put on the basket on the dining room table. Um.

727
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 1: That's what's been growing in our backyard. But can you

728
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 1: can can you imagine a future culture that looks back

729
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: on us with the same disdain that we had for

730
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: people who would have grown tomatoes and eggplants only as decorations,

731
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 1: and they think that about us about pumpkins. It's true,

732
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 1: I may be completely off on this. I could be

733
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,800
Speaker 1: wasting these um Like. It does remind me of a

734
00:41:59,840 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: time time when I was helping deliver for a C.

735
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 1: S A here in in our area, and you know,

736
00:42:07,160 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: so I would vote, we would volunteer, and we would

737
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: would get like a free basket of vegetables in return

738
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:14,919
Speaker 1: for our service. But we would deliver baskets of fresh

739
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: vegetables to various households, and there's a lot of good

740
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: stuff in there. There's stuff like sun chokes that I

741
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever had before. Um. But then we

742
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 1: would also have a lot of squash, and one of

743
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: them I particularly remember they were acorn squash, which can

744
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:33,040
Speaker 1: be quite delicious. And I delivered one week to this household,

745
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: and then the next week when I came back, there

746
00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: were the acorn squash, uh, not served up inside in

747
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 1: a dish, but on the porch as decorations. And I

748
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 1: was thinking, oh my god, those are so delicious and

749
00:42:45,280 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 1: you're just gonna use them as porch decorations. Did they

750
00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 1: carve a jackal interface and do them at least? No? No,

751
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: just they just set them out there. But it's possible

752
00:42:55,200 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: I'm doing the same thing with my summertime pumpkins. Um

753
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: so I do I do not know. Um, But at

754
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 1: any rate, growing all this stuff in the backyard, um,

755
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 1: other organisms are interested. Various bugs make a go at it.

756
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:09,839
Speaker 1: The squirrels, I think, get a little bit bored and

757
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,799
Speaker 1: we'll eat like part of something here and there. And

758
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,239
Speaker 1: we've also even had a rabbit shown up, show up,

759
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: which has been a lot of fun because you get

760
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 1: anytime you get to watch a rabbit in your own yard. Uh,

761
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: that's kind of magical, at least for me. Yeah, they'll

762
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 1: they'll gnaw on your fruits, but they bring bunny magic

763
00:43:24,480 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 1: with them in return. Yeah, they're they're fun to watch,

764
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: they're cute. Um. But but then there's but there's a

765
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:32,919
Speaker 1: different pest we're gonna be talking about here and um

766
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's quite interesting. According to Smith, there's

767
00:43:36,560 --> 00:43:41,080
Speaker 1: no beating the large green tomato worm, an alarming pest

768
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: that is three to four inches long or can grow

769
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: the three to four inches long. And it has this

770
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: weird horn sticking out of its back, kind of out

771
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 1: of the final portion of its body. And uh, I've

772
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:55,479
Speaker 1: included a picture here for you to look at. Joe.

773
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: It's It's really quite impressive, right, it is generally not spiky.

774
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: It just has one giant buttthorn. Yeah, that has kind

775
00:44:02,680 --> 00:44:07,319
Speaker 1: of a crimson or scarlet color to it, as if

776
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:11,760
Speaker 1: it has already like stabbed a muppet or something. Anyway,

777
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 1: it is is, so it's pretty impressive. It's closely related

778
00:44:14,520 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 1: to the tobacco worm. So if you've seen one or

779
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:18,719
Speaker 1: the other, you may have an idea what I'm talking

780
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:22,680
Speaker 1: about here. Smith points out that Ralph Waldo Emerson even

781
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: bemoaned these quote young entomologies that we're eating up his

782
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:32,359
Speaker 1: tomato plants. So this particular, these particular worms, they are

783
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: the larval stage of the five spotted hawk month and

784
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:40,440
Speaker 1: it is in fact a different species from the tobacco hornworm.

785
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:42,960
Speaker 1: But they're closely related. And the confusing thing is that

786
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:47,400
Speaker 1: both organisms feed on a variety of species that include

787
00:44:47,480 --> 00:44:51,440
Speaker 1: both tomato and tobacco leaves. Oh interesting, but they got

788
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: what different kind of specialties? Uh? Yeah? Or just one

789
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 1: is in one is more associated with tomatoes and one

790
00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: is more associated with tobacco. But the you know, either

791
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: one will eat the leaves of both plants now, will

792
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 1: will strip your nerves screamingly raw? Yes, apparently so, or

793
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:10,440
Speaker 1: at least that seems to have been the panic around

794
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,800
Speaker 1: them back in the uh certainly the mid nineteenth century.

795
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 1: Apparently in eighteen forty five New York Farmers Club report

796
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: described them as quote positively shocking to weak nerves. Well,

797
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 1: I think there were a lot of weak nerves back then.

798
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,319
Speaker 1: Smith has a bit more on this, you just have

799
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: to read in in the book. But but he includes

800
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: these quotations where people were talking about how like the

801
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: worm just ruins tomatoes for them forever, Like they're just

802
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: like they're just too gross. I'm not even going into

803
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:45,360
Speaker 1: my tomato garden ever again. Oh I see you like

804
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: you see the worm once and it like turns you

805
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:51,520
Speaker 1: off of the entire fruit. Right. But on top of that,

806
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:55,160
Speaker 1: some even considered it to be poisonous as well, including

807
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: such claims that the bite could cause instant death, or

808
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:01,919
Speaker 1: that the spittle, the mere spittle from one of these

809
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:06,319
Speaker 1: creatures could kill a small child dead. Um, so it's

810
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:08,200
Speaker 1: it's like it's not only is is it like a

811
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: foul creature to behold? Budd It befouls the entire tomato

812
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:15,800
Speaker 1: garden and makes it a dangerous place in which to venture.

813
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: So is there any truth to this? Where's this coming from? Uh?

814
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:23,319
Speaker 1: The thing is apparently not. The idea ran rampant through

815
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century until you had an Illinois based

816
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:30,439
Speaker 1: intomologist by the name of Benjamin Walsh who pointed out

817
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 1: and apparently this made the papers and all saying like, look,

818
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: this is hard, this is harmless to humans, This is

819
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 1: not going to kill you. This is it's a past. Yes,

820
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,320
Speaker 1: it's maybe a little big, it's a little maybe alarming

821
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,319
Speaker 1: to look at, but it's not going to poison you. Uh. Though,

822
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 1: as Smith points out, you still you had publications uh

823
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: in um Illinois based papers pointing out Walsh's um uh

824
00:46:53,239 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: facts here. But then you had other columns where people

825
00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 1: were saying, oh, there was a girl that was killed

826
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: by one of these tomato worms. So it took a

827
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:03,360
Speaker 1: while for this idea to really go away. Yeah, my

828
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: roommates cousin's friend died from a tomato hornworm. Yeah, now

829
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 1: I've got another poison tomato rabbit hole to run down here.

830
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:14,759
Speaker 1: Because I was trying to think, okay, well, what if

831
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: you do want to poison somebody with a tomato allah.

832
00:47:18,480 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 1: The you know, the early European misunderstandings, or or the

833
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:25,399
Speaker 1: fictional account of George Washington's cook I do have a

834
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: possible candidate for you. It's not confirmed how lethal this

835
00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:33,720
Speaker 1: tomato would be, but it's at least suspected with good reason.

836
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: And that candidate is the tomaco Now. Weirdly, whereas the

837
00:47:39,640 --> 00:47:44,719
Speaker 1: George Washington story takes a historically factual misunderstanding as the

838
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:49,759
Speaker 1: inspiration for fiction, this story takes a modern fiction as

839
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 1: the inspiration for a fact. So there's an episode of

840
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:58,480
Speaker 1: The Simpsons that aired in called Ei Ei annoyed grunt

841
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: as an e I e I dough uh. And in

842
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: this episode, Homer I guess he's trying his hand at farming,

843
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:10,279
Speaker 1: and he attempts to farm tomatoes and tobacco plants, but

844
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:14,280
Speaker 1: he fertilizes his crops with plutonium from the nuclear power plant,

845
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 1: and this produces a hybrid plant that is basically a

846
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 1: tomato stuffed with tobacco, which tastes bad but is highly addictive.

847
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 1: I think Bart says it's so refreshingly addictive, and he

848
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: sells it as tomacco, and everybody gets addicted to it.

849
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 1: And then I think there's some calamity where where all

850
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: his crops are destroyed. Okay, I'd forgotten about this episode,

851
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: but now that you summarize it, I do remember it.

852
00:48:38,960 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 1: But apparently reality caught up because I was reading a

853
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:46,359
Speaker 1: report in Wired from November of two thousand three by

854
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:50,399
Speaker 1: Kristen Philip Cooski, and it was about a man named

855
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:55,319
Speaker 1: Rob Bauer of Lake Oswego, Oregon. Now Bauer, I believe

856
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: he worked in wastewater management, and he had some scientific training, uh,

857
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: and he remembered reading about a similar procedure when he

858
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: had been in college, when I think when he was

859
00:49:08,080 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 1: in graduate school, and he decided to try to create

860
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: such a plant in reality, which he did by grafting

861
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:20,040
Speaker 1: together a tomato plant and a tobacco plant. Apparently, he

862
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 1: initially experimented with with grafting in in one direction, which

863
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:27,880
Speaker 1: was putting a tobacco plant on a tomato root, but

864
00:49:27,960 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 1: the graft didn't take and when he removed the wrapping

865
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:32,720
Speaker 1: that held them together, the plant kind of fell apart

866
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 1: and died. But the inverst grafting procedure did work. He

867
00:49:36,480 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: put a tomato plant on a tobacco root, and Bauer

868
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:44,959
Speaker 1: claims that this process was successful and the tomato plant

869
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:48,880
Speaker 1: with the tobacco roots actually bore fruit, though nobody ate

870
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: the fruit, because he suspected it was at least possible

871
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: that one of these tomatoes could contain a lethal amount

872
00:49:55,239 --> 00:50:00,040
Speaker 1: of nicotine. Wow. Well, on one hand, that's alarming, But

873
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's I guess it's not completely

874
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: surprising because tobacco is a part of this large night

875
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 1: shade family. Yeah, exactly, and that's probably why, yeah, why

876
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:11,840
Speaker 1: the grafting worked out. Uh. So, to be clear, I

877
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:13,880
Speaker 1: don't I couldn't find any evidence that it was ever

878
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:17,000
Speaker 1: confirmed that the tomato itself would have been poisonous with

879
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:19,279
Speaker 1: the lethal amount of nicotine. But it seems like a

880
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:22,239
Speaker 1: reasonable thing to worry about, at least good reason enough

881
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 1: not to eat the tomato. Uh And Bower, speaking to Wire,

882
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 1: had said, quote, I've got this one plant growing and

883
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:32,920
Speaker 1: it's blooming again. I accidentally left the tobacco on the

884
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: kitchen table, and my wife yelled at me, get that

885
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: thing out of the kitchen, you knuckle head, because it

886
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: looks like a regular tomato. Yeah, don't leave your secret

887
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: poison tomatoes just laying around. But but as I mentioned earlier,

888
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:50,680
Speaker 1: Bauer was apparently not the first person to try this

889
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 1: plant hybridization. He He mentioned that he had actually read

890
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 1: about this when he was in college, I think in

891
00:50:56,800 --> 00:50:59,800
Speaker 1: an article that was published in Scientific American in nineteen

892
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:03,440
Speaker 1: forty nine that described a similar procedure to what end.

893
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure. I don't know what what you

894
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,759
Speaker 1: really gain by creating a tomato that possibly has nicotine

895
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: in it. I mean, and that's probably ultimately the reason

896
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 1: you don't see a tremendous amount of effort go into this, right,

897
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,200
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what is the payoff? What's the incentive?

898
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:21,879
Speaker 1: Perhaps there's some I just don't know. I couldn't find

899
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: anything else about that. But hey, if you know of

900
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: a good reason to create a tomato tobacco hybrid right in,

901
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:30,320
Speaker 1: let us know. All right, Well, we we've reached the

902
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: point we're gonna have to stop and uh and come

903
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:37,320
Speaker 1: back in another episode to continue our exploration of the tomato.

904
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: But but real quick, Joe, Uh, fresh tomatoes are in

905
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:43,080
Speaker 1: your kitchen. What's what's one of the first dishes you

906
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,560
Speaker 1: you think you'll you would try to make? Like what

907
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 1: something is popular right now in your household with tomatoes? Oh?

908
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:51,960
Speaker 1: Answer to that is extremely easy. Um toast with a

909
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:55,040
Speaker 1: little bit of mayonnaise with tomato on top, salt and pepper,

910
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: I mean, unbeatable, Like just tomato sandwich with mayonnaise is

911
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:02,800
Speaker 1: the most delicious thing if it's a good ripe summer tomato.

912
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: Also just a good ripe summer tomatoes sliced with like

913
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe a bit of torn

914
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:11,799
Speaker 1: basil leaves. I mean, keep it simple. A good ripe

915
00:52:11,800 --> 00:52:14,919
Speaker 1: summer tomato is it's like a steak. It's a dish

916
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,960
Speaker 1: unto itself. Yeah, yeah, that sounds great. I mean it

917
00:52:18,000 --> 00:52:19,640
Speaker 1: reminds me that one of the things we like to

918
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:22,120
Speaker 1: do here at our house is make a sort of

919
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: b LT. We don't. We don't eat bacon anymore, but

920
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:29,360
Speaker 1: we will will use um like store bought soysage like

921
00:52:29,480 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: you get from like Morning Star or t J's. Put

922
00:52:32,200 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: that on there instead of bacon, and with a really

923
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: good tomato, it's fabulous. I've actually been wondering about trying

924
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:41,400
Speaker 1: to create a vegetarian version of a b LT, and

925
00:52:41,520 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 1: some of the ideas that came across for the bacon

926
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 1: substitute were like, um uh, sort of dried out charred

927
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 1: strips of eggplant or smoked strips of eggplant, but then

928
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 1: also just the idea of using like smoked tempe. That

929
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:56,960
Speaker 1: sounds good, It sounds good. All right, we're gonna we're

930
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:59,920
Speaker 1: gonna close out then, but obviously we want you to

931
00:53:00,120 --> 00:53:03,000
Speaker 1: come back for the next episode on tomatoes, and in

932
00:53:03,080 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: the meantime you can certainly right in and give some

933
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 1: feedback on the journey thus far, share some insight based

934
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: on your own experience with tomato growing with tomato consumption.

935
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:17,600
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. If you want to

936
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,560
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

937
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 1: you know where to find us absolutely anywhere you get

938
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,120
Speaker 1: your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Make sure

939
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 1: you rate, review and subscribe. Huge thanks as always to

940
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:32,120
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would

941
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on

942
00:53:34,040 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for

943
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us

944
00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:42,000
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

945
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:52,240
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio.

946
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:54,960
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart

947
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:57,719
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

948
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: favorite shows, The Three four thou