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Speaker 1: Cold Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff.

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Speaker 2: Your weekly reminder that Margaret has a cold. No, that's

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Speaker 2: just a thing, that's true, Your weekly reminder that there's

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Speaker 2: people trying to do good things when there's bad things happening,

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Speaker 2: which are the aforementioned cool people. I'm your host, Marta Kildrey,

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Speaker 2: and I have a cold, so I'm only sort of

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Speaker 2: the host today, partly as a result of that, because

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Speaker 2: I've been on Twitter and so I thought to myself,

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Speaker 2: I sure would like to talk to my friend Renn.

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Speaker 2: Ren Awry is the author of the editor.

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Speaker 1: Of the editor of Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Nourishing Resistance, which is ren is like the only

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Speaker 2: radical food history that I personally know. But Hi, Ren,

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Speaker 2: how are you good?

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Speaker 1: How are you doing?

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Speaker 2: I have a cold?

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Speaker 1: You have colds?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been coffeeing all day and sneezing all week.

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Speaker 2: It's fun, totally.

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Speaker 1: I did pretty good. Yeah that sounds not fun.

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Speaker 3: I am getting ready in two days to move a

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Speaker 3: thousand miles away from where I've been living.

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Speaker 1: For the past decades, so it's a big week.

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Speaker 3: But I'm excited to be here and to be here

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Speaker 3: to talk about a very important food on cool people

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Speaker 3: the potato.

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Speaker 2: I'm so excited. I Wren pitched this a while ago,

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Speaker 2: being like, can I do the history of the potato?

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Speaker 2: And for those people who've been listening for a long time,

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Speaker 2: they know why this is a particular importance. But if

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Speaker 2: you haven't been listening for a long time, you're not

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Speaker 2: going to be in on it, and instead you just

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Speaker 2: get to learn about why potatoes are interesting or great

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Speaker 2: or I actually don't know what we're going to learn today.

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Speaker 2: All I know is that I'm going to learn about

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Speaker 2: potatoes and be able to mute my mic while I'm

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Speaker 2: coughing because Ren will be the one talking so potatoes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, actually, what got you to decide

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Speaker 3: that you want to do this episode is that I

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Speaker 3: I'm actually moving to Idaho, which is famous for potatoes.

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Speaker 3: But I'm sad to share with people that there is

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Speaker 3: no idea in this episode because I went through a

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Speaker 3: bunch of archives and I was up there and couldn't

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Speaker 3: find anything. So there is kind of like a tie

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Speaker 3: in for me too.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah, But before we talk about potatoes, what we

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Speaker 2: need to talk about is the fact that our producer

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Speaker 2: is Sophie Licktterman. Hi Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. Oh no, Sophie

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Speaker 2: isn't here. See this is a bit because I knew

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Speaker 2: that Sophie wasn't here because she's not on the zoom

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Speaker 2: but normally Sophie's here because she's the producer of the show.

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Speaker 2: But she's even sicker than I am. I don't know,

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Speaker 2: I'm supposed to tell you people that, but it's going

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Speaker 2: around and it's not COVID, and everyone's getting negative tests

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Speaker 2: on the COVID and positive tests on My throat hurts

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Speaker 2: all the time. So that's the news about that. And

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Speaker 2: then also probably our audio engineer is Rory Hi. Rory

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Speaker 2: Hi Rory, and our theme music was written for us

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Speaker 2: by O woman. And I can't tell you one way

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Speaker 2: or the other about the relative upper respiratory health of

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Speaker 2: either of those individuals, but I can tell you about

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Speaker 2: how I'm going to learn about potatoes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so it turns out that the political radical history

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Speaker 3: of Potatoes is actually extremely complex and broad.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot out there. So for this episode, there's

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Speaker 1: quite a bit that I'll definitely leave out, and there's

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Speaker 1: also a bunch of topics I'm going to talk about.

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Speaker 3: That I won't go in as much detail about as

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Speaker 3: I might otherwise. So if folks are listening and something

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Speaker 3: piques your interest, I encourage you to research it and

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Speaker 3: learn more about it. We're gonna be covering a lot

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Speaker 3: of ground and going on a whole potato journey.

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Speaker 1: But first, before we get into.

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Speaker 2: That, wait, what's your favorite kind of potato? Or like,

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Speaker 2: what's your favorite way to eat a potato?

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe this is actually the right segue, which

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Speaker 3: is that I'm in the middle of moving to Boise, Idaho,

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Speaker 3: and French fries.

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Speaker 1: There are actually extremely good.

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Speaker 3: And I didn't realize that French pries could be a

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Speaker 3: food that was like exceptionally good until I spent a

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Speaker 3: bunch of time there, And so right now I think

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Speaker 3: it's French fries amazing.

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Speaker 1: How about you.

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Speaker 2: I'm currently on a French fry kick too, because I

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Speaker 2: got an air fryar and a French fry cutter oo

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Speaker 2: and it's just a like I can have homemade French

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Speaker 2: fries that aren't deep fried that tastes like good French

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Speaker 2: fries very quickly. So that's my current favorite also, but

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Speaker 2: also I'm also eating aligob with potatoes in it off

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Speaker 2: mic because my food arrived just when I started recording.

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Speaker 2: I'm very professional. Everyone in the audience totally so also

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Speaker 2: that form of potato.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great form of potato too. I wanted

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Speaker 3: to ask you because I know that you were growing potatoes.

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Speaker 2: What I learned about growing potatoes is I am bad

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Speaker 2: at it. This is my second year of attempting to

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Speaker 2: grow potatoes, and this year I managed to harvest some

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Speaker 2: and then they went bad before I ate them, and

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Speaker 2: some of them went bad before I pulled them out

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Speaker 2: of the ground. And then one friend was like, oh,

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Speaker 2: that's potato blake and was like, that's the same stuff

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Speaker 2: that you know, kill lay your ancestors, Margaret, But I don't. No, well,

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Speaker 2: actually it wasn't a British person in the soil. It

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Speaker 2: was actually just a potato. But that's my There was

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Speaker 2: no potato, fam and the British are at fault. Joke.

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Speaker 2: But I have not eaten potatoes that I've grown, even

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Speaker 2: though two different years I've attempted to grow potatoes. So

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Speaker 2: I'm a terrible I'm a good prepper in terms of

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Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, but I am a terrible gardener.

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Speaker 2: And I keep trying and one of these days, because

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Speaker 2: I believe very strongly that you should always make a

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Speaker 2: habit of at least you should be doing at least

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Speaker 2: one thing you're bad at at all times. And I'm

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Speaker 2: bad at gardening, and I garden. I did eat a

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Speaker 2: lot of tomatoes, which rhyme with potatoes. I grew them

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Speaker 2: and then I ate them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And potatoes and tomatoes are, you know, from the

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Speaker 3: same general area, opposite sides of the same journal area.

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Speaker 1: This is a great segue.

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Speaker 2: Actually, is it South America?

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Speaker 3: I believe tomatoes originated in Mexico, but potatoes did originally

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Speaker 3: come from South America. So the potato is domestic in

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Speaker 3: the Andean region of what's now Peru between seventy eight

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Speaker 3: hundred and three thousand BCE, depending on who you ask.

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Speaker 3: There's really different statistics on this. And while Indian people

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Speaker 3: grew tubers for thousands of years before the rise of

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Speaker 3: the Inca Empire. Under the Inca, the status of the

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Speaker 3: potato actually fell. The Inca were a group of Ketchwas

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Speaker 3: speaking elites who rose to power in the Cousco Valley

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Speaker 3: starting in the fourteenth century, and they went on to

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Speaker 3: control large swaths of the Andes Mountains in the west

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Speaker 3: coast of South America in the next two centuries, and

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Speaker 3: despite coming from potato growing areas, they didn't value potatoes. Instead,

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Speaker 3: they put a really high importance on maize, which they

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Speaker 3: used to make the alcoholic drink chicha, and had a

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Speaker 3: set of ceremonies and rituals that went along with cultivating

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Speaker 3: that maze.

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Speaker 2: So they just didn't appreciate their own potatoes.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't appreciate their own potatoes. It was kind

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Speaker 3: of like a lowly everyday food.

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Speaker 2: I guess that's still what it is to most people now.

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Speaker 1: Still what it is.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it was going to be a theme that kind

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Speaker 3: of it kind of occurs throughout the episode. And the

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Speaker 3: Inca Empire I'm going to talk a little bit about

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Speaker 3: they're actually pretty interesting. Some scholars have described them as

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Speaker 3: a welfare state based on the traditional Andean concept of

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Speaker 3: amy or reciprocity. So peasants were required to use two

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Speaker 3: thirds of their land to grow food for the Incan

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Speaker 3: government and religious establishment, as well as pay a labor

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Speaker 3: tax so in which one member from each household would

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Speaker 3: work for the government for a certain number of hours

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Speaker 3: each year, and in exchange, they'd get stuff like infrastructure, irrigation,

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Speaker 3: route materials, religious monuments.

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Speaker 1: And really crucially food.

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Speaker 3: The Incan government relocated some people from mountainous potato growing

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Speaker 3: regions to valleys where maze grew in parts that they

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Speaker 3: could send that means back to their communities in the

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Speaker 3: mountains and ensure food security in those communities. And these

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Speaker 3: distributive policies protected everyday people from mass starvation even when

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Speaker 3: crops failed. But the Inca Empire was an empire, right,

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Speaker 3: so they were also pretty authoritarian, and they worked really

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Speaker 3: hard to maintain power. And the relocation of people from

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Speaker 3: these maize growing areas had another probably primary benefit for

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Speaker 3: the empire. It allowed Incan rulers to move potential or

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Speaker 3: active rebels from newly conquered areas to loyal communities where

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Speaker 3: Incan rule was long established as a method of preventing rebellion.

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Speaker 3: So actually like shifting population around to prevent rebellion.

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Speaker 2: I mean, because it's funny because a lot of what

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Speaker 2: you just described, how two thirds of your land has

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Speaker 2: to be growing food for the state and things like that,

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Speaker 2: like that part sounds a lot like feudalism and serfdom

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Speaker 2: and a lot of the like more European concepts, only

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Speaker 2: the European concepts didn't have as much of a welfare

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Speaker 2: state built in. So this seems like a totally like

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Speaker 2: a better deal, a comparable but better deal. Like still

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Speaker 2: not how I would choose to live, right, I like

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Speaker 2: freedom and all that.

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Speaker 3: But that was the impression I got with the reading

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Speaker 3: that I did on this, that there were, you know,

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Speaker 3: all of the bad things about a conquering empire, but

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Speaker 3: then there were also these safety nets that didn't exist

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Speaker 3: in other parts of the world at the time. So

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Speaker 3: the Inca rulers and sort of like ruling class did

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Speaker 3: depend up potatoes to support population growth, feed government workers

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Speaker 3: and soldiers, and as an important backup food in times

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Speaker 3: of poor harvest. So as of like actual everyday food.

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Speaker 3: Even though it didn't have a lot of symbolic importance,

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Speaker 3: it had a lot of practical importance. But researchers have

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Speaker 3: hypothesized that these potatoes that the Incan government stored were

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Speaker 3: from a really narrow range of varieties, like potatoes that

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Speaker 3: were good for freeze drying, potatoes that stored well, and

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Speaker 3: it was actually peasants in small villages who continued to

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Speaker 3: grow this wide variety of potatoes.

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Speaker 1: For their own subsistence.

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Speaker 3: And I don't know how much you know about potatoes

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Speaker 3: in the Andes, but there's like a million different kinds

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Speaker 3: and they all look wild and different and like different colors,

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Speaker 3: different shapes, And so it was these peasants who were

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Speaker 3: keeping that potato biodiversity alive. Cool, and yeah, they grew

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Speaker 3: wide range of potatoes, repaired them in many different ways,

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Speaker 3: from soups and steice to freeze dried potatoes called tunio,

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Speaker 3: which can be stored for decades before being rehydrated and eaten,

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Speaker 3: and can also.

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Speaker 2: Wait, how are they freeze drying?

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Speaker 3: So it's this like complex process that involves, like I

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Speaker 3: don't want to like missay, but from what I remember,

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Speaker 3: it involves like breaking them apart and like drying them

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Speaker 3: in the sun.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna drop.

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Speaker 3: Actually, because this episode has so many sources, I'll like

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Speaker 3: put a source list on an Instagram or something, and

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Speaker 3: there's an article that describes in greater detail.

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Speaker 1: How this is made.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So yeah, but I read that they could be

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Speaker 3: stored for like years, which is pretty cool, and that

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Speaker 3: junio could also be ground into flour for baking potato products.

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Speaker 2: Cool.

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Speaker 3: There's also this sort of like religious aspect as well,

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Speaker 3: So rural farmers maintained household shrines to dieties such as

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Speaker 3: Ashamama potato mother who watches over the Indian potato fields,

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Speaker 3: and to quote potato historian Rebecca Earle, household shrines to

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Speaker 3: Pacha Mama and her fertile daughters balanced state level neglect

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Speaker 3: of potatoes. The veneration of this feminine dynasty long predated

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Speaker 3: the official rituals of the Inca Empire and persists to

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Speaker 3: the present and so one sort of like present day

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Speaker 3: example of this is the kin to ceremony, which involves,

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Speaker 3: according to a Ketchwa elder name Isabella. The article that

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Speaker 3: I read that quoted her only gave her first name,

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Speaker 3: but it involves giving thanks to Pasha Mama with coca leaves.

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Speaker 3: And Pacha Mama is an Andyan diity worshiped as the

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Speaker 3: earth mother and is considered the mother of Ashamama.

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Speaker 2: This is exciting. I like the Potato Mama.

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Speaker 3: There is yeah, totally a potato Mama. And the genocidal

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Speaker 3: Spanish conquest of the Andes in present day Peru, which

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Speaker 3: was aided by the spread of smallpox, took place over

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Speaker 3: the sixteenth century, from the Spaniard's first contact with Incan

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Speaker 3: rule in fifteen thirty two to the murder of the

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Speaker 3: last Incan emperor, tubac Amaru at their hands in fifteen

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Speaker 3: seventy two.

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Speaker 2: Well, I was reading on Twitter that this was actually

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Speaker 2: a positive thing. Twitter is pretty convinced actually that it. Sorry,

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Speaker 2: this is a dry humor joke about a really bad thing.

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Speaker 2: Never mind, it's bad. I hate that there's people who

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Speaker 2: apologize for this now anyway, Sorry, please continue totally.

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Speaker 3: I don't know where you were going with that, but

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Speaker 3: I can't continue. Although one thing that I learned is

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Speaker 3: that this was this last Incan ruler was tupac Amaru

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Speaker 3: the first, and it's tupac Amaru the second who let

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Speaker 3: her of vault in seventeen eighty, who is the one that,

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Speaker 3: like the rapper tupac is named after cool So there

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Speaker 3: were two of them. But food shortages increased under Spanish

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Speaker 3: rule because the storehouses that the Inca held were looted

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Speaker 3: by the Spanish, and the redistributive policies of the Incan

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Speaker 3: state were replaced by the encomanda system, which basically allowed

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Speaker 3: Spanish landowners to extract labor from indigenous andy and people

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Speaker 3: without recipe prosody. They also neglected that irrigation systems, mountain terraces,

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Speaker 3: all of the infrastructure that were previously up kept by

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Speaker 3: the Incan state, which made growing and distributing food even harder.

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Speaker 3: And the Spanish also started collecting potatoes alongside other food

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Speaker 3: as tributes. While the colonizers both exported potatoes to Europe

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Speaker 3: and ate them themselves, they were strongly associated with indigenous

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Speaker 3: food ways and religious rituals, and because of this, Spanish

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Speaker 3: settlers and their descendants considered them a menial food well

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Speaker 3: into the modern era. On the flip side, you also

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Speaker 3: see that potatoes, especially the diverse variety of potatoes that

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Speaker 3: continue to be grown in the Andes, become a symbol

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Speaker 3: of indigenous resistance to colonial and sort of like non

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Speaker 3: indigenous state rule.

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Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Were they like stuffing them full of razors

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Speaker 2: and throw them at fascist like they did in a

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Speaker 2: cable street. I don't know, I'm assuming not. I think

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Speaker 2: it's possible. I'm thinking of ways that you could throw

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Speaker 2: potatoes at people people.

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Speaker 1: Was that happening, Yeah, on the cable street?

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Speaker 2: The cable street riots, Okay. One of the things that

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Speaker 2: is said, And it might be that this was said

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Speaker 2: because they were like Irish and people were just like

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Speaker 2: trying to talk trash. But it's cool whether or not

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Speaker 2: they made this up about the Irish or not. They

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Speaker 2: were like they stuffed potatoes full of razor blades and

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Speaker 2: through them at the fascists. So I'm like, yeah, all right, Wow,

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Speaker 2: I want it to be true. Yeah, I love that.

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Speaker 3: That is something I didn't find in my potato research,

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Speaker 3: and I'm curious about it now.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, for.

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Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, onward with the Andes.

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Speaker 3: Although actually what I'm going to talk about now is

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Speaker 3: that while the Andes are considered the heartland of potatoes domestication,

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Speaker 3: it feels important to mention that potatoes have actually been

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Speaker 3: eaten outside of the Andes for thousands of years.

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Speaker 2: Oh.

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Speaker 3: Wild potatoes grow all along the American Cordillera, which runs

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Speaker 3: from Alaska all the way down to Patagonia, and it

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Speaker 3: includes the Rockies, the Andies, the Sierra Madres, and a

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Speaker 3: bunch of other mountain ranges.

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Speaker 2: Like it's native to those, or it's been cultivated there

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Speaker 2: or both or nazy sort of.

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Speaker 3: Blurry cultivated blurry folks are not totally sure, but we

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Speaker 3: do know that potatoes were eaten as far south as

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Speaker 3: Chile and as far north as Utah as early as

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Speaker 3: thirteen thousand years ago.

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Speaker 2: Cool.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so they actually were all over And interestingly, there

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Speaker 3: may have been a second point of potato domestication resulting

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Speaker 3: in the Four Corners potato in the southwestern United States.

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Speaker 3: It's a tiny spud that varies a lot in shape

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Speaker 3: and color, and it was cultivated in what's now Utah

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Speaker 3: starting at least eleven thousand years ago. It's long been

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Speaker 3: eaten in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado as well,

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Speaker 3: and it actually continues to be grown by Tonay hopey

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Speaker 3: Zuni payuten Ute farmers. And in an article I read

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Speaker 3: for the Counter written in twenty twenty one, to nay nutritness,

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Speaker 3: Cynthia Wilson shured that her mother, to quote the article,

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Speaker 3: thought Navajo families may have carried and dispersed the potatoes

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Speaker 3: on the Long Walk, the eighteen sixty four forced march

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Speaker 3: of thousands of Navajo people from their homeland by the

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Speaker 3: US Army. Scattering potatoes would have been a way to

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Speaker 3: work the path and ensure a source.

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Speaker 1: Of food on the way back.

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Speaker 2: That's cool.

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Speaker 3: So I thought that was really interesting, and that's the

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Speaker 3: one place that I found it, but it felt valuable

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Speaker 3: to share.

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Speaker 2: No, I like that it's not just like one little

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Speaker 2: origin point that I feel like the way the story

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Speaker 2: is often told is like there's one little origin point

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Speaker 2: and then like white people showed up and then spread

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Speaker 2: it everywhere, you.

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Speaker 1: Know, totally.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was definitely being spread across the Americas,

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Speaker 3: at least to some extent, long before the Spaniards ever

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Speaker 3: showed up.

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Speaker 1: But speaking of you know, white.

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Speaker 3: People showing up and then spreading it everywhere, the next

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Speaker 3: part of this episode I.

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Speaker 2: Thought was gonna be an ad break, but it's not.

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Speaker 1: No, it could be an ad break, right.

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Speaker 2: But no, we'll do that soon. We'll come up with

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Speaker 2: some other terrible interruptions soon.

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Speaker 1: Cool.

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Speaker 3: We're going to talk about what happened when potatoes arrived

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Speaker 3: in Europe, And I do want to mention that the

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Speaker 3: next couple sections of the scripts, while they bring in

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Speaker 3: a bunch of different sources, depend on the work of

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Speaker 3: Rebecca Earl, who wrote not one, but two books on potatoes,

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Speaker 3: including the Incredible Feeding the People The Politics of Potatoes.

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Speaker 3: So I wanted to make sure to give her a

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Speaker 3: shout out. Potatoes are brought to Europe very very shortly

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Speaker 3: after the Spanish colonization of the Americas began. And what's

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Speaker 3: interesting is there are all these myths about European peasants

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Speaker 3: refusing to eat potatoes when they first encountered them, and

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Speaker 3: there are some pretty wild reasons given for this. It's

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Speaker 3: said that the lumpiness of potatoes indicated that they were

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Speaker 3: a vector of leprosy, and another was that the potatoes

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Speaker 3: weren't mentioned in the Bible and thus were not properly Christian.

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Speaker 3: These myths are not at all true, and there are

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Speaker 3: plenty of foods that were eaten in early modern Europe

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Speaker 3: that weren't in the Bible.

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Speaker 2: I want Christian nationalists to return to this idea that

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Speaker 2: their predecessors didn't have. You know, they'll be like, yeah,

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Speaker 2: they'll be like, oh, in medieval era they knew better

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Speaker 2: than to eat foods that aren't in the Bible. And

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Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages they were like, the hell are

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Speaker 2: you talking about? It's just a book? Noah, Like, I mean,

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Speaker 2: we believe in God or whatever, but like we're not.

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Speaker 1: We're also eating cabbages, which aren't in the Bible, you know.

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Speaker 2: So, yeah, I just like the Christian nationalists now are

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Speaker 2: like kind of further wing nut afield than like the

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Speaker 2: average medieval Christian.

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Speaker 1: Oh totally, yeah, in a bad way.

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Speaker 3: I feel like there was a lot of like wing

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Speaker 3: wing nuttery happening in ways that were like kind of

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Speaker 3: interesting back then.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like there's no such thing as sin and

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Speaker 2: we all to feed each other. Yeah, anyway, totally.

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Speaker 1: I don't actually know exactly what you're referring to.

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Speaker 2: The takers in the ranters, I kind of combined.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, totally cool.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, so these mess are not true at all.

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Speaker 3: Peasants and especially peasant women were responsible for cultivating and

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Speaker 3: eating like we're the first people in Europe to be responsible.

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Speaker 1: For cultivating and eating.

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Speaker 3: Potatoes, in part because they were the people who tended

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Speaker 3: kitchen and subsistence gardens and oh the like.

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Speaker 2: Non market stuff, right, the reproductive labor and so the

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Speaker 2: productive labor.

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Speaker 1: Then non market stuff. Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 3: So it was like European peasant women who are the

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Speaker 3: reason why Europeans started eating potatoes, And there are reports

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Speaker 3: have been being grown by Italian peasants by the late

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Speaker 3: fifteen eighties. A German cookbook from the mid sixteen hundreds

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Speaker 3: noted how ubiquitous potatoes were in peasant gardens by that time.

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Speaker 3: Cool and around this time there starts to be evident

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Speaker 3: that potatoes are being grown across the European continent.

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Speaker 2: But you know what else is across the European continent.

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Speaker 1: Ads and services.

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00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:39,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're everywhere wherever you go. Although the best ad

402
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:41,120
Speaker 2: I ever saw on the European continent, although no, it's

403
00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:42,680
Speaker 2: no longer part of the European continent because it was

404
00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:46,160
Speaker 2: in England. But there was this ad on the subway

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00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:48,359
Speaker 2: whatever they call their subway, the tube or something, I

406
00:19:48,359 --> 00:19:51,560
Speaker 2: don't know. Two and it said it said we put

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00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:54,199
Speaker 2: the D in bread. And it was an ad for

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00:19:54,320 --> 00:20:00,480
Speaker 2: like vitamin D bread. But everyone just thinks it's about uses.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Not not great copy.

410
00:20:03,520 --> 00:20:08,560
Speaker 2: No, but maybe these following ads will also have weird

411
00:20:09,160 --> 00:20:21,440
Speaker 2: inferences in them. Let's find out together. Oh boy, we're

412
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Speaker 2: back from those ads. My favorite one was the one

413
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Speaker 2: for gambling, which is always good. This is my way

414
00:20:27,080 --> 00:20:29,359
Speaker 2: of saying, don't gamble. I know that we sometimes advertise that,

415
00:20:29,400 --> 00:20:31,080
Speaker 2: but you shouldn't do it anyway.

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Speaker 1: I have no strong feelings on gambling. Either way. But

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Speaker 1: I do have strong feelings on potatoes.

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Speaker 2: Okay, it's not a moral stands against gambling here, by

419
00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:41,320
Speaker 2: the way, I'm not being like you have sinned, you know.

420
00:20:41,480 --> 00:20:43,800
Speaker 2: It's more of a just a life. It always works out,

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00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:45,679
Speaker 2: the house always wins in the end. That is the

422
00:20:45,680 --> 00:20:47,080
Speaker 2: way that gambling totally.

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Speaker 3: I dislike gambling, But my grandma lived in Las Vegas

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Speaker 3: for the last twenty years of her life, so I've

425
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Speaker 3: been around.

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Speaker 1: It a lot. Oh, okay, and yeah, but I would agree.

427
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Speaker 3: I personally dislike gambling, but beyond that, don't have any

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Speaker 3: strong feelings bet.

429
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Speaker 2: Okay, but potatoes, But potatoes.

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Speaker 3: I do have strong feelings about Potatoes caught on in

431
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Speaker 3: Europe among the peasantry because they're a smart way to

432
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Speaker 3: feed a lot of people. They're incredibly water efficient, they

433
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:17,240
Speaker 3: grow in many different climates. A hector of potatoes, which

434
00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:19,800
Speaker 3: is about an acre and a half, provides triple the

435
00:21:19,840 --> 00:21:22,680
Speaker 3: calories that a hector of wheat oats does, and in

436
00:21:22,680 --> 00:21:25,680
Speaker 3: addition to calories on protein, potatoes are packed with important

437
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:31,160
Speaker 3: nutrients like vitamin C. But potatoes became popular for another

438
00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:34,240
Speaker 3: reason as well. To quote Earle, using a phrase from

439
00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:38,480
Speaker 3: anthropologist James C. Scott, who sometimes identified as an anarchist

440
00:21:38,800 --> 00:21:42,240
Speaker 3: and who's a very interesting thinker. Potatoes and other tubers

441
00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:45,440
Speaker 3: are state evating, and to explain.

442
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:48,400
Speaker 1: By Scott calls potatoes databating. I want to actually quote

443
00:21:48,480 --> 00:21:50,600
Speaker 1: him directly because I think he says it best.

444
00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:54,560
Speaker 3: So Scott says, in general, roots and tubers such as yams,

445
00:21:54,560 --> 00:21:59,399
Speaker 3: sweet potatoes, potatoes, and cassava maniac yaka are nearly appropriation proof.

446
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:02,200
Speaker 3: Sure they ripe, and they can be safely left in

447
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,440
Speaker 3: the ground from to two years and dug up piecemeal

448
00:22:04,440 --> 00:22:04,960
Speaker 3: as needed.

449
00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 1: There is thus no grainary to plunder.

450
00:22:07,680 --> 00:22:10,760
Speaker 3: If the army or the taxman wants your potatoes, for example,

451
00:22:11,119 --> 00:22:13,200
Speaker 3: they will have to dig them up one by one.

452
00:22:14,240 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 2: That's cool, yeah, and also more proof that I really

453
00:22:17,640 --> 00:22:20,159
Speaker 2: failed that the potatoes. I wasn't sure. I thought I

454
00:22:20,160 --> 00:22:21,960
Speaker 2: had left them in the ground too long. Apparently that

455
00:22:22,040 --> 00:22:24,240
Speaker 2: is not the case. Apparently there's just something wrong with them.

456
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:28,760
Speaker 3: Well, maybe you did have a potato blight, because the

457
00:22:28,800 --> 00:22:32,680
Speaker 3: potato blight and the way that the British government approached

458
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:33,640
Speaker 3: the famine were real.

459
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:34,680
Speaker 2: Yeah.

460
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:38,600
Speaker 1: Oh, we'll talk about this a little more a little bit, okay, Yeah, yeah,

461
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:40,600
Speaker 1: Like I love the idea that the potato like your

462
00:22:40,720 --> 00:22:42,040
Speaker 1: idea that the potato blight.

463
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:46,440
Speaker 2: Didn't exist, better famine didn't exist. The potato famine isn't

464
00:22:46,440 --> 00:22:49,240
Speaker 2: the potatoes fault. It is the British. It is the

465
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:52,919
Speaker 2: British famine. The potato blight is real. Yeah, we'll get

466
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:53,280
Speaker 2: to it.

467
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 1: I'm just teasing you.

468
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:55,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

469
00:22:56,880 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 3: But Scott also talks about potatoes being easier to conceal

470
00:22:59,840 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 3: the other crops because they're grown underground, and this will

471
00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:04,920
Speaker 3: come up again a little bit later when we are

472
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 3: talking about Ireland in a while. So potatoes played a

473
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:12,439
Speaker 3: stativating role in parts of early modern Europe. At first,

474
00:23:12,520 --> 00:23:15,720
Speaker 3: many European states weren't interested in potatoes grown by peasants

475
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:19,199
Speaker 3: for subsistence, and therefore they weren't taxed or tithes for

476
00:23:19,320 --> 00:23:22,680
Speaker 3: decades after they started being grown. And it may also

477
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,240
Speaker 3: been hard for tax collectors and other officials to quantify

478
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 3: who was growing potatoes or how many potatoes they were growing,

479
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:31,440
Speaker 3: for all of those reasons that Scott mentioned. Right, they're

480
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:34,399
Speaker 3: easy to conceal, they're easy to dig up when you

481
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 3: need them, and you don't have to always store them.

482
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:39,440
Speaker 2: You to convince them to eat the berries. Oh yeah, no,

483
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 2: I'm growing it for the berries. Here, eat these berries

484
00:23:42,320 --> 00:23:43,440
Speaker 2: because they're toxic.

485
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you won't have to pay any taxes.

486
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:46,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, I know.

487
00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it probably won't surprise you knowing all that,

488
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:55,120
Speaker 3: right that landlords were often against potato cultivation at this time,

489
00:23:56,119 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 3: and this is partially because they thought the fields were

490
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,679
Speaker 3: better used to produce st maarketable crops like wheaten oats.

491
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,840
Speaker 3: In seventeen ninety seven, an English estate manager recommended that

492
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 3: peasants who planted potatoes and fields that could otherwise be

493
00:24:08,640 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 3: used for growing commercial crops be fined ten pounds per acre,

494
00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 3: which is a ton of money at that time.

495
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:18,159
Speaker 1: But landlords also worried that if peasants.

496
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 3: Could feed themselves by growing potatoes, they'd be less likely

497
00:24:20,280 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 3: to labor in the landlord's field. Hell yeah, And the

498
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:26,479
Speaker 3: latter was the case in Sweden, where an eighteenth century

499
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 3: campaign to promote potato growing was thwarted by landlords.

500
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 2: I'm really excited that the potatoes even cooler than I

501
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:34,720
Speaker 2: thought it is.

502
00:24:34,600 --> 00:24:36,960
Speaker 3: Although it kind of swings the other way. In just

503
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 3: a moment, you'll see this happen. Okay, it does become Yeah,

504
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 3: a tool of state buildings.

505
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:42,800
Speaker 2: And we're just going to end the episode here. It's

506
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 2: been really great having you on.

507
00:24:44,840 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all we need to know.

508
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, no, okay, okay.

509
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:55,600
Speaker 3: Well, and interestingly, Karl Marx, despite having quite a different

510
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 3: political orientation from these landlords that I mentioned, was also

511
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 3: skeptical potato. Writing in the eighteen fifties, he compared French

512
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 3: peasants to potatoes in a sack, and with this metaphor

513
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:09,600
Speaker 3: he was describing how, according at least to his analysis,

514
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 3: the self sufficiency of small rural farmers kept them isolated

515
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 3: from both one another and other laboring classes, and precluded

516
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:20,159
Speaker 3: the development of political organizing and class consciousness.

517
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 2: Which, okay, I love this because it's one of the

518
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 2: most famously incorrect things that Karl Marx ever postulated, with

519
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:30,119
Speaker 2: the idea that like, rural poor people are inherently like

520
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 2: are going to side with the bourgeoisie in any class

521
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 2: conflict or whatever, right, and this has screwed things up

522
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 2: throughout history, the fact that some Marxists have believed this

523
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 2: over time. But then it's interesting because you could see

524
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 2: it now too, right, Like we now currently in the

525
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 2: United States have this idea that like all rural people

526
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:48,360
Speaker 2: are inherently right wing, and we kind of give them

527
00:25:48,359 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 2: to the right wing, you know. But the most famous

528
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:57,200
Speaker 2: Marxist revolution in history, well all both the China and Russia.

529
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,280
Speaker 2: I believe I know less about the Chinese Revolution. All

530
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 2: peasants is not just workers in the city anyway, whatever,

531
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 2: So I'm glad Marx is wrong.

532
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:07,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was definitely wrong on that.

533
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, take that guy who's been dead for a long time.

534
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 2: Totally you didn't get to see the future.

535
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, at least as hard as we know. Yeah, that's true,

536
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: or it was very bad at it.

537
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 2: Vampire Marks.

538
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 3: I think I just interpreted you saying see the future

539
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 3: as him like actually like being able to like look

540
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:24,160
Speaker 3: in a crystal ball.

541
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, that makes sense.

542
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 3: But now I'm realizing that you were just talking about

543
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 3: how he didn't live to see how things played out.

544
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, but either way, totally not much of an oracle.

545
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 2: He wanted to get into it, but it was like

546
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:37,159
Speaker 2: too magic for him, so he was like, yep, you

547
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,160
Speaker 2: got to stick to my materialism anyway.

548
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, too bad. Like maybe yeah, I don't know.

549
00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:45,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been a totally interesting aside to all

550
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:48,760
Speaker 2: seven people anyway.

551
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So I was just talking about how when

552
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 3: potatoes were first grown by European peasants, they weren't really tithed,

553
00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:01,840
Speaker 3: your text. But as spuds became more established and commercially

554
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 3: viable in Europe, that started to change.

555
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: So there are all these.

556
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:10,280
Speaker 3: Records of potato related tithe disputes from England, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium,

557
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,119
Speaker 3: and France in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,

558
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 3: and in some places peasants argued that potatoes were too

559
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,159
Speaker 3: new of a crop to tax, while in other places

560
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:21,560
Speaker 3: they claim that potatoes had been grown without being taxed

561
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 3: or tithed for like years upon years. So there's different

562
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 3: approaches that peasants are taking to kind of argue about

563
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 3: whether they should argue against being taxed on potatoes that

564
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 3: are really kind of opposite.

565
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 2: It's like gas station drugs though, right you're like, oh,

566
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:39,119
Speaker 2: well this isn't regulated because we don't know what it

567
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:39,680
Speaker 2: does yet.

568
00:27:40,320 --> 00:27:47,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally exactly, actually a perfect comparison. Weirdly, and so,

569
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:50,920
Speaker 3: as peasants continue to grow potatoes for sustenance in many

570
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 3: places and other places, they were becoming a commercial crop.

571
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,400
Speaker 1: Potatoes although it's possible that this.

572
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 3: Actually referred to sweet potatoes, historians aren't completely sure had

573
00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:02,399
Speaker 3: been grown commercially since the late fifteen hundreds in the

574
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 3: Canary Islands, from which they were important to parts of Europe.

575
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 3: Potato market started in northern England, Scotland and Ireland in

576
00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 3: the late seventeenth century, and Earl argues that the eruption

577
00:28:12,920 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 3: of the disputes in the eighteenth century is likely evidence

578
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 3: that potatoes are being grown and sold far more widely

579
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 3: than they had been in previous decades.

580
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 2: That makes sense. They figured out how to market it eventually,

581
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 2: am and.

582
00:28:24,200 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 3: They like are coming to the attention of the people

583
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 3: who are collecting the taxes and stuff.

584
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 2: So it's it's also like bitcoin.

585
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: Totally exactly, so many things.

586
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

587
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 3: In the seventeen hundreds, in the midst of the European Enlightenment,

588
00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 3: the reputation of potatoes started to change. So during the

589
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 3: Enlightenment there's new ideas that are emerging that suggests that

590
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 3: having a robust, healthy populace would actually increase the economic

591
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 3: and political power of the nation state. And the question

592
00:28:57,240 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 3: arose of how these politicians and rulers should feed a

593
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 3: lot of peapeople nutritiously and cheaply, and the potato was

594
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,400
Speaker 3: one of the main answers that people came to. It

595
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 3: was familiar, it had high yields, it was easy to

596
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 3: grow and cook, and it could double as animal feed.

597
00:29:13,040 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 3: Potato boosters wrote treatises and newspaper articles and had a

598
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 3: particular obsession with developing the perfect recipe for potato bread.

599
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 3: In seventeen ninety four, during the French Revolution, the formerly

600
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 3: royal Tulreise gardens in the heart of Paris were replanted

601
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 3: with potatoes.

602
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah.

603
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 3: So once potatoes came to be promoted by the state

604
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 3: and the capitalist class, they became a symbol of exploitation.

605
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 3: And these sentiments bubbled up during the Swing riots, which

606
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 3: were uprisings.

607
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: Have you heard of these the Swing riots?

608
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 2: No, I'm saying, oh about the whole thing that happened

609
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,719
Speaker 2: during the late early modern era, where like there were

610
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 2: all these revolts against monarchies and stuff, and they seemed

611
00:29:52,120 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 2: really cool. But instead they just put in like capitalist

612
00:29:54,360 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 2: exploiters instead of like the aristocrats won and the nobles

613
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:01,160
Speaker 2: were out. Weren't actually like funder the nobles for the

614
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 2: peasant was usually better, not always but anyway, so I'm like,

615
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 2: that's my o shitting is that I'm like, ah, many

616
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 2: such cases where you know, things look like freedom and

617
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 2: then actually are just capitalism.

618
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

619
00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is like a huge like era of

620
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 3: like consolidating the contemporary nation state. Right, So yeah, that

621
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:26,440
Speaker 3: kind of threads through all of this. But you see

622
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 3: these sort of anti potato sentiments bubble up during the

623
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,200
Speaker 3: Swing Riots, which were these uprisings that spread across England

624
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 3: in eighteen thirty in response to worsening conditions of the

625
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 3: agricultural working class.

626
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: And these protesters are.

627
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 3: Demanded, among other things, higher wages and the eradication of

628
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 3: threshing machines because they replaced human labors, many of whom

629
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 3: really really needed this extra work to survive. In one village,

630
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 3: the protesting laborers banner read we will not live upon potatoes,

631
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 3: and workers in another village argued this point with landed

632
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:59,000
Speaker 3: farmers when they met in a local church, and that

633
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 3: meeting actually wasted in a wage increase. But of course

634
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:06,800
Speaker 3: these English laborers actually were eating potatoes. They weren't opposed

635
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: to the tubers being.

636
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: Part of their diet, right.

637
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 3: What they were opposed to was potatoes replacing their daily bread, right, so, actually,

638
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,960
Speaker 3: like when they could expropriate potatoes for food, English labors

639
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:22,080
Speaker 3: did so in eighteen hundred, rioters rated a potato warehouse

640
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 3: in Birmingham and then sold the potatoes at what they

641
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 3: considered a fair price. And it was also common practice

642
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 3: for the poor to plunder potatoes from the gardens of

643
00:31:29,640 --> 00:31:30,560
Speaker 3: well off neighbors.

644
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:35,400
Speaker 2: You like, can't even be mad, you know, You're like, yeah, totally,

645
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 2: some kid cave stole my potatoes out of my five

646
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 2: gallon buckets on my porch. Would be like, eh, needed

647
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 2: the potato more than me.

648
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 3: They needed the potato, yeah, for sure. And then all

649
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 3: the way over in the Russian Empire, state authorities started

650
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:55,440
Speaker 3: pressuring peasants into cultivating potatoes with a particular zeal starting

651
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:57,920
Speaker 3: in the eighteen thirties after a number of poor harvests,

652
00:31:58,560 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 3: and this led to the Russian potato riots, which spread

653
00:32:01,080 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 3: across Central Russia and the Urals in eighteen thirty four

654
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:06,680
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the eighteen forties, And I actually

655
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 3: really wanted this to be like a whole section of

656
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:12,160
Speaker 3: this episode, but unfortunately almost all of what I could

657
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 3: find either comes from a short Wikipedia article or is

658
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 3: in Russian, and the little that I have been able

659
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 3: to glean is that the riots were entangled with struggles

660
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 3: against serfdom.

661
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: There's this sort of relationship.

662
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 3: Happening between being unfree and being forced by the state

663
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 3: to plant potatoes, and that in some regions there may

664
00:32:29,040 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 3: have been over half a million peasants involved. They seem

665
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 3: to destroy fields of planted potatoes as a primary form

666
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 3: of revault, and according to one article that I was

667
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 3: able to translate, thank you to Deeple, there was a

668
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 3: religious aspect as well. Many of the serfs believe that

669
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 3: the act of planting potatoes was either in service to

670
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 3: or an omen of the coming anti Christ.

671
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:55,360
Speaker 2: Whoa unholy potatoes? Potatoes just getting cooler.

672
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this really wild stuff.

673
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 2: Is in vodka mostly made from potatoes, I think it

674
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,000
Speaker 2: is now, Yeah, oh, but it didn't used to be.

675
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 1: I don't know what the history. I know it can

676
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: be made from different like it can be made from

677
00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: grain as.

678
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 3: Well, I believe, okay, and I think potatoes have become

679
00:33:14,040 --> 00:33:17,400
Speaker 3: a pretty significant part of the Slavic diet at this

680
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 3: point in time.

681
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just I'm fascinated by how like so

682
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,239
Speaker 2: many cultures have the potato as a staple food, like

683
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 2: to the point where it's like hard to imagine that

684
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:33,760
Speaker 2: cuisine without it, you know, totally. I mean tomatoes are

685
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 2: the other one like this, right, but like it's just

686
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 2: so interesting to you know, when everyone was only eating

687
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 2: like beets and I don't know, in my mind the

688
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 2: European people before they found the New World or whatever,

689
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:50,400
Speaker 2: just eight beats but turnips. I don't know anyway, I

690
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 2: don't actually know these things. I'm just that's my impression.

691
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't actually know about beets, but yeah, I

692
00:33:56,120 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 3: think a lot of wheat and oats and cabbages.

693
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, it makes sense.

694
00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, potatoes are really nutritious and easy to grow, and

695
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 3: so I think that it makes a lot of sense

696
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 3: that they would have come to be used by a

697
00:34:07,800 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 3: lot of different.

698
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,880
Speaker 2: Cuisines and the devil wants us to eat them in

699
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:12,640
Speaker 2: Russia totally.

700
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 3: And I want to learn so much more about the

701
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 3: Russian potato uprising and potato riots, and so I'm hoping

702
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:23,319
Speaker 3: that someday more will get translated into English about it

703
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 3: because I just want to know more. But I wasn't

704
00:34:25,239 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 3: able to find too much, so Unfortunately, that's the little

705
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 3: that I was able to find.

706
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,200
Speaker 2: If anyone is listening and knows more about this or

707
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:35,800
Speaker 2: really likes reading Russian, should they reach out to you if.

708
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: They would like to.

709
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would love to hear from anyone who is

710
00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 3: passionate about potatoes and can read Russian.

711
00:34:41,640 --> 00:34:42,520
Speaker 2: So how can they do that?

712
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: Yeah? On my Instagram it's just at rand Away cool.

713
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:49,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, just my name anyway, Okay.

714
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, So potatoes also promoted during the European colonization of

715
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 3: parts of Africa, Asia, New Zealand, islands in the Indian

716
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 3: Ocean and elsewhere. So there is this whole tie in

717
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 3: with colonization, which also started to happen during this like

718
00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 3: Enlightenment capitalist era.

719
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:06,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

720
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 3: So, pro colonial thinkers argued that European agriculture was superior

721
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 3: to agriculture and colonized areas, and that in itself gave

722
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 3: the colonizers the right to rule. Perhaps such as potatoes

723
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 3: were introduced as part of betterment programs that replace traditional,

724
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:25,000
Speaker 3: time tested agricultural techniques with European ones.

725
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 2: The downside of the potatoes really kicking in.

726
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't do much betterment.

727
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,080
Speaker 3: They almost always increased food instability.

728
00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: In hunger.

729
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 2: This is like how when I found out that the

730
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:40,759
Speaker 2: piano is like one of the most important colonial like

731
00:35:40,880 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 2: destruction of non enlightenment, Like it is a colonial object

732
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:49,680
Speaker 2: that goes around and destroys folk music. And it makes

733
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 2: me so sad because piano is literally my favorite instrument

734
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 2: I love. I love it so much. And then I'm

735
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:58,879
Speaker 2: just like, anyway, the potato doing the same thing where

736
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, look at this superior technology we have that,

737
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:05,480
Speaker 2: you know, okay.

738
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 3: And I think anything that's like as widely grown as

739
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,120
Speaker 3: the potato is going to be both right, it's going

740
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 3: to be like a food to resist, you know, a

741
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 3: tool of like resistance against colonization and against capitalists, and

742
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 3: it's also going.

743
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 1: To be used by them.

744
00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:24,320
Speaker 3: And so British and French colonizers in Kenya and Burkino

745
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:28,320
Speaker 3: Fosso forced locals to grow potatoes and Kenya. These policies

746
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:31,759
Speaker 3: were coupled with the confiscation of Kenya land by white colonists.

747
00:36:32,600 --> 00:36:35,080
Speaker 3: And one woman who was a child in the Belgian Congo,

748
00:36:35,239 --> 00:36:37,879
Speaker 3: a colony that lasted from the late nineteenth century until

749
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty, shared that colonial officials would often tell men

750
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 3: to prepare a plant a field of potatoes, and if

751
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 3: these Congolese men didn't complete the task, they'd be arrested.

752
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 3: So it was certainly used as a tool of colonization.

753
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 3: We're also going to come back to that in the

754
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:56,839
Speaker 3: second part of the episode. Okay, but potatoes also played

755
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,479
Speaker 3: a significant role in the British colonization of India, which

756
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 3: began in the mid seventeen hundreds, and in India, where

757
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:07,120
Speaker 3: potatoes arrived in the seventeenth century, the British heavily promoted

758
00:37:07,120 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 3: the potato as the superior food stuff, an answer to famine.

759
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:13,880
Speaker 2: They did. They promote it by advertising it.

760
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,560
Speaker 1: You know, they actually did promote it by advertising it.

761
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 1: So this is great.

762
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, so much like the British Empire, we promote potatoes

763
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 2: through advertise. Oh it sounds bad when you say it

764
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 2: like that.

765
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:28,800
Speaker 1: No, not like the British Empire.

766
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 2: Resistance potatoes. This podcast is proudly brought to you by

767
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,799
Speaker 2: potatoes as a form of resistance instead of potatoes as

768
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:39,440
Speaker 2: a form of colonization. Remember, if you're using potatoes to colonize,

769
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:50,480
Speaker 2: you're doing it wrong. And here's the other ads and

770
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 2: we're back. Sorry, I know you were like kind of

771
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 2: in the middle of a sentence when you said that

772
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,280
Speaker 2: I was just I mean like waiting to like leap

773
00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 2: in at any possible segue moment. So you know.

774
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, in addition to being seen as this superior

775
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,239
Speaker 3: food stuff and an answer to famine, it was also

776
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 3: seen as a way to bulk up the population and

777
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:14,359
Speaker 3: provide the British with additional colonial labor slump. A lot

778
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:18,160
Speaker 3: of these themes just kind of echo throughout so records

779
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:20,560
Speaker 3: from the late eighteenth century so is that in Mumbai,

780
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 3: which was called Bombay at the time, the British East

781
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 3: India Company accepted potatoes from the usual crop transit taxes,

782
00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 3: and in Bengal they distributed free seeds to peasants across

783
00:38:30,880 --> 00:38:34,520
Speaker 3: the subcontinent. They also financially rewarded peasants to group potatoes.

784
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 3: But much like in other parts of the world, British

785
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 3: rule was super destructive to the Indian food system. Under it,

786
00:38:41,640 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 3: essential staples were exported and India's irrigation system was allowed

787
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:49,520
Speaker 3: to decay. And unlike in Britain, where poor laws offered

788
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 3: some hunger relief, the colonial government refused to provide Indians

789
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 3: with food even in times of famine. Instead, they continued

790
00:38:57,080 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 3: to levy taxes and blame famines on Indians for not

791
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,439
Speaker 3: practicing the quote unquote right kind of agriculture.

792
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:06,880
Speaker 2: Boo yeah, boo.

793
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: Yeah.

794
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,880
Speaker 3: Unequivocal bad feelings about that. And while potatoes were eventually

795
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,200
Speaker 3: assimilated into Indian cuisine much like the food that you're

796
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 3: eating right now, the tubers never replaced rice as the

797
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,239
Speaker 3: main staple as British colonizers intended them to.

798
00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: Instead, they were used in place.

799
00:39:23,960 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 3: Of traditional gourds and became part of iconic homegrown dishes

800
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 3: like aluposto and masaladosa. What's really interesting, and this is

801
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 3: just kind of a tidbit, is that anti colonial Indian

802
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:39,160
Speaker 3: writers and thinkers in the early twentieth century promoted potatoes

803
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,440
Speaker 3: as a nutrient rich vegetable that would allow its eaters

804
00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:47,279
Speaker 3: to grow stronger and militantly resist British rule. So even

805
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 3: though they were promoted and imposed by the colonizers, potatoes

806
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 3: were reclaimed to become part of Indian food ways, and

807
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 3: this happened in other parts of the colonized world as well.

808
00:39:57,320 --> 00:39:59,440
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that's like it's weird to talk

809
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 2: about a plant as a technology. But like it doesn't

810
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 2: seem totally alien from that, where it's just like, well,

811
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,640
Speaker 2: on some level, if there's potatoes are a really good

812
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:13,320
Speaker 2: food technology, they are a really good way of getting

813
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:16,920
Speaker 2: calories out of a small amount of effort and land,

814
00:40:17,320 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 2: So it totally it makes sense. It's kind of like,

815
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,800
Speaker 2: no one's going to be like, I don't know, I

816
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:25,800
Speaker 2: don't want to fight them with guns. Their guns are British.

817
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 2: I'm going to fight them with swords, right, people are like, no,

818
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 2: I want the gun, you know, I mean obviously gun

819
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 2: in this case was actually developed in the East, not

820
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 2: the West, but anyway, well gunpowder but anyway, whatever.

821
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, but potatoes right, like, because they are so yeah,

822
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:45,919
Speaker 3: they just have such a widespread history and are using

823
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 3: all sorts of different ways.

824
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:47,720
Speaker 2: And they're so useful.

825
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: It makes sense they're so useful and so delicious.

826
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 3: And so we're going to talk more about the relationship

827
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 3: between potatoes and overseas European colonization in part two of

828
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 3: this episode. We're going to talk about South Africa then,

829
00:40:59,600 --> 00:41:03,000
Speaker 3: but first I want to discuss a European island that

830
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 3: was famously colonized by the British and is famously associated

831
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 3: with potatoes.

832
00:41:07,640 --> 00:41:08,880
Speaker 2: It's Ireland.

833
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:13,040
Speaker 3: It's Ireland, and I haven't really mentioned Ireland in this

834
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 3: episode yet, even though there's crossovers between what was happening

835
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:19,800
Speaker 3: in Ireland and other parts of Europe, because it's getting

836
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 3: its own section, okay, And to do this, I'm going

837
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 3: to start by offering a brief and simplified, very oversimplified

838
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,840
Speaker 3: summary of why the potato became so important in Ireland.

839
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 3: According to tradition, the potato was brought to Ireland around

840
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,239
Speaker 3: fifteen eighty five, and by sixteen thirty five it was

841
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:40,120
Speaker 3: established enough for colonists in the United States to refer

842
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 3: to it as the quote unquote Irish potato. It became

843
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 3: a really important food stuff in Ireland for a few reasons. Traditionally,

844
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 3: the Irish were pastoralists, with the diet that prized dairy

845
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,279
Speaker 3: since a lot of land in Ireland isn't great for agriculture,

846
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 3: and these traditional food ways became less and less possible

847
00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:01,160
Speaker 3: under English colonization. The sixteen sixty three Catalog passed by

848
00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:04,160
Speaker 3: the British Parliament place to high tariff on cows expert

849
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:07,280
Speaker 3: from Ireland, and soon after there was a British embargo

850
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:10,839
Speaker 3: on importing cows, pigs, and sheep as well as their

851
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:12,360
Speaker 3: meat from Ireland altogether.

852
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:15,839
Speaker 2: Was this pretty much to get because they wanted them

853
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 2: to stop being pastoralists, so they'd stop being like, quote

854
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 2: unquote lazy. I think it was. I think you're the

855
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:21,840
Speaker 2: person who pitched this idea to me a couple of

856
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 2: years ago. I want to run it past you and

857
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 2: see if I'm wrong or okay? Which is that basically?

858
00:42:27,320 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess there was some colonization happening, but

859
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:32,840
Speaker 2: you know, for a long time, the average Irish peasant

860
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 2: was like, I'm broke, but I got a cow, so

861
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,479
Speaker 2: I guess I'm all right. I eat cheese and milk

862
00:42:37,600 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 2: or whatever, right, and like it's fine. And therefore I

863
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 2: don't want to be more industrious into the like later capitalists,

864
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:48,120
Speaker 2: but sort of civilizational industrial framework, right, I just want

865
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:51,560
Speaker 2: to like hang out and be almost nomadic and hang

866
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 2: out with my cow. And so that was like the

867
00:42:54,080 --> 00:42:55,839
Speaker 2: thing that they had to kind of destroy in order

868
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:57,640
Speaker 2: to get people to be like good workers. Are you

869
00:42:57,680 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 2: the one who told me this? Am I completely wrong?

870
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 3: Like it seemed as possible that I was the one.

871
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,200
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but you are onto something here.

872
00:43:05,239 --> 00:43:07,239
Speaker 2: Okay, for sure, I came up with it.

873
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:11,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, you totally actually independently. Yeah, all of these historians

874
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 3: are actually quoting you.

875
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing that people didn't know. I've been

876
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,680
Speaker 2: around for a long time. Okay, yep, yeah.

877
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're totally down the right track here.

878
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 2: Okay.

879
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: And to make matters worse.

880
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 3: Between fifteen eighty seven and sixteen ninety one, nearly twelve

881
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,520
Speaker 3: million acres of land were redistributed. I'm laughing because it's

882
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 3: so horrible, or redistributed to wealthy English and Scottish planters. Yeah,

883
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,760
Speaker 3: and this drastically cut down on the land. The Irish

884
00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:38,520
Speaker 3: had to grape livestock and eat grains like oats and

885
00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 3: barley out of the earth. So while it's true that

886
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 3: there was a huge population boom in Ireland in the

887
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:47,399
Speaker 3: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that drove demand for land, there

888
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 3: actually would have been enough for everyone if it was

889
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:50,240
Speaker 3: divided equally.

890
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 2: Yep.

891
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: And the land distributions that happened under.

892
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:00,359
Speaker 3: Oliver Cromwell, an English statesman who became Lord Protected, which

893
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 3: was basically dictator of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland for

894
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 3: nearly five years in the sixteen fifties were particularly brutal.

895
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:10,480
Speaker 2: He's like the poster boy of this thing I was

896
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,280
Speaker 2: talking about about when the aristocracy comes into power. It's actually,

897
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 2: if anything, a lateral at best. It's a lateral move. Yeah,

898
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 2: because like you'd think that Cromwell coming into power is

899
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:22,759
Speaker 2: not a king. They're like, haha, we don't have a

900
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 2: king anymore. We have this lord protector. And then he

901
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 2: like turns around and genocides Ireland like and also was

902
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 2: terrible to England, but I care less about that.

903
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 3: Yeah anyway, totally and then they like got a king back.

904
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:38,840
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, totally didn't work either. Yeah, it didn't.

905
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 1: Work at all. Yeah.

906
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:42,800
Speaker 3: And so to quote Margaret Hickey, who wrote a food

907
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:45,600
Speaker 3: history called Ireland's Green Larder a great book if you're

908
00:44:45,640 --> 00:44:50,120
Speaker 3: interested in food in Ireland. But Margaret Hickey writes, Cromwell

909
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:53,760
Speaker 3: drove the native Irish westward to the inhospitable lands of Connaught,

910
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 3: which were exposed to the first force of the weather

911
00:44:56,640 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 3: coming in off the Atlantic, and with wild mountainous land

912
00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:04,280
Speaker 3: unsuitable for tillage. His famous malediction to Heller to Connot

913
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:05,760
Speaker 3: was a grim envoy.

914
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 2: Whoa to Heller to cannock. That's fucking intense to heller

915
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:10,080
Speaker 2: to cannock.

916
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this led to a situation where by the

917
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 3: eighteenth century, few if any Irish peasants owned their own land,

918
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 3: and in some cases they would simply purchase the right

919
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:22,759
Speaker 3: to plant and harvest crops on a piece of land

920
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,719
Speaker 3: for a single growing season, which was referred to as

921
00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 3: a conacre system. There was one crop, however, that grew

922
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 3: well even in the poor and boggy soil of Western

923
00:45:32,560 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 3: Ireland and could be grown on tiny patches of land,

924
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 3: our friend.

925
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:37,320
Speaker 1: The potato.

926
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:37,760
Speaker 2: Potato.

927
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:38,320
Speaker 1: Yeah.

928
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 3: So potatoes had shown themselves to be indispensable when other

929
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 3: crops failed, as well as during Cromwell's occupation, when crops

930
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 3: were burned, but the potatoes tuck safely underground were untouched.

931
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: By the fire.

932
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:52,600
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's that.

933
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:53,839
Speaker 3: Oh.

934
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 2: I think it was a bunch of Mexican students were

935
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 2: murdered by the state a couple years ago, and the

936
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 2: slogan they tried to bury it. They didn't know that

937
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:03,200
Speaker 2: we were seeds came out. Yeah, and then I've seen

938
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,480
Speaker 2: people now since do they tried to bury us they

939
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 2: didn't know we were potatoes?

940
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, once again.

941
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 3: Having them underground saved Ireland potatoes from Cromwell.

942
00:46:14,760 --> 00:46:17,320
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, and.

943
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,879
Speaker 3: The Irish presentry grew potatoes and raised rich beds known

944
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 3: as lazy beds. And these lazy beds, once they were

945
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 3: dug and planted, needed little work, which was really important

946
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 3: right because it allowed landless labors to have time for

947
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:33,799
Speaker 3: other tasks, which was essential because they also usually had

948
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 3: to work for their landlords. Leftover potatoes could be fed

949
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,839
Speaker 3: to chickens and pigs, whose eggs and meat were sold

950
00:46:39,840 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 3: for rent, money and other necessities, and as a bonus,

951
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,839
Speaker 3: according to our friend James C. Scott, because they were

952
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:49,319
Speaker 3: grown in small mounds and English horsemen risked breaking his

953
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:54,799
Speaker 3: mount's leg galloping through the field and then to get

954
00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 3: back to what you were mentioning. Earlier opinions on the

955
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 3: Irish diet by Anglo elites followed the general potato trends

956
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 3: we've discussed previously. So English politician Charles Petty, who had

957
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:08,280
Speaker 3: large estates in Ireland towards the end of the seventeenth century,

958
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 3: thought that potatoes engendered Irish laziness. He believed that potatoes

959
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,880
Speaker 3: made it possible for Irish peasants to work for only.

960
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: Two hours a day, which I honestly don't believe is true,

961
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: but he believed it.

962
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:23,319
Speaker 2: If your main thing you do is grow potatoes, you

963
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 2: could grow a lot of potatoes at two hours a day.

964
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:26,880
Speaker 1: Oh totally.

965
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:28,759
Speaker 3: But I also feel like they probably had to do

966
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:30,960
Speaker 3: so many other things to survive, and if they were

967
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 3: like working for their landlord, you know, and all this

968
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:33,960
Speaker 3: other stuff.

969
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 1: He also believed that the English.

970
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:38,720
Speaker 3: Crown would have been able to tax the Irish twice

971
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 3: as much and turn them into more productive members of

972
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 3: the laboring classes that their diet didn't center on potatoes.

973
00:47:45,000 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 2: This is something that he and Marx had in common. Yeah, well,

974
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:52,360
Speaker 2: rather Engles. Engles was like specifically concerned with how the

975
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 2: Irish needed to get like more industrious and civilized so

976
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 2: that they could become proper communists, even though they were

977
00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 2: like literally already to socialist anyway. Whatever. I just don't

978
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 2: like angles, and I don't like what he has to

979
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:06,840
Speaker 2: say about the Irish totally anyway.

980
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, and you see this like it kind of

981
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 1: flip flops. Right.

982
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:13,480
Speaker 3: So, during the Enlightenment, when potatoes were the answer to everything,

983
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 3: Irish peasants were celebrated by writers and thinkers and other

984
00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:18,200
Speaker 3: parts of Europe for.

985
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:20,919
Speaker 1: Their fortitude and how many children they were.

986
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 3: Able to produce, which those thinkers attributed to their potato

987
00:48:24,120 --> 00:48:24,720
Speaker 3: based diet.

988
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:26,759
Speaker 1: Okay, and then we see it.

989
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:29,520
Speaker 3: Switched back right in the nineteenth century, at least according

990
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:32,359
Speaker 3: to some thinkers in some places, and the Irish are

991
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 3: once again considered backwards and emblematic of an unproductive surplus population.

992
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 3: John Ramsay McCullough, a Scottish economist, writing in eighteen twenty four,

993
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 3: made an argument that sounds a lot like the wind

994
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 3: marks made and apparently angles made a similar argument as

995
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:51,680
Speaker 3: well about French peasants a few decades later. McCullough argued

996
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:55,320
Speaker 3: that the self sufficiency that potato growing allowed for isolated

997
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 3: the Royal Irish from the outside world, and that their

998
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 3: ignorance meant that they weren't even aware of how bleak.

999
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: Their lives work.

1000
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:03,920
Speaker 2: They don't know that they're supposed to be sad.

1001
00:49:05,040 --> 00:49:10,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, this isolation and food autonomy, according to mcculu, prevented

1002
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:14,800
Speaker 3: Irish peasants from rising up against the English. And one

1003
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 3: of the most interesting things about his argument is that

1004
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:23,239
Speaker 3: he was very wrong. Okay, And to find out why

1005
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:25,520
Speaker 3: he was wrong. You're going to have to listen to

1006
00:49:25,640 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 3: Wednesday's episode.

1007
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: What because that's where we're going to leave things for today.

1008
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 2: I don't get to find out why he's wrong. Okay, Well,

1009
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,759
Speaker 2: I'm excited to find out why he's wrong, because I mean,

1010
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 2: I know about several of the rebellions. But okay, well,

1011
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it. Okay, But if people want to

1012
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:45,880
Speaker 2: know more about food and radical culture and all of

1013
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:47,879
Speaker 2: those things, is there a book that they could read?

1014
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:52,680
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I added an anthology called Nourishing Resistance, Stories

1015
00:49:52,680 --> 00:49:55,759
Speaker 1: of Food, Protest and Mutual Aid and it's out from

1016
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:56,360
Speaker 1: PM Press.

1017
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:58,719
Speaker 3: It's been out for about a year now, a little

1018
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 3: over a year, and you can pick get up from

1019
00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:02,880
Speaker 3: them or wherever books are sold.

1020
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:04,879
Speaker 2: You should go in and ask a store to carry

1021
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:06,279
Speaker 2: it if they don't already carry it, because then it

1022
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,440
Speaker 2: makes them more likely to carry it in the future.

1023
00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:09,200
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1024
00:50:09,239 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 2: But yeah, okay, I'm so excited. As soon as you

1025
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,400
Speaker 2: agreed to do a history of potatoes, I was like,

1026
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:19,480
Speaker 2: because I, okay, coming into it, I had assumed a

1027
00:50:19,520 --> 00:50:22,640
Speaker 2: couple things. One, I like potatoes. I knew that. I

1028
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 2: also assumed potatoes. I know a little bit about how

1029
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 2: potatoes tied into Irish history about you know, being able

1030
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:31,879
Speaker 2: to grow things where you can't really grow things, and

1031
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 2: it sort of allowed the Irish to survive colonization as

1032
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,040
Speaker 2: well as they did for a long time. But I

1033
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 2: also sort of had guessed this idea of like the

1034
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:45,239
Speaker 2: potato as an agent of colonization, right, But I was

1035
00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:48,040
Speaker 2: just sort of guessing that based on like, well, I

1036
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 2: don't know, it doesn't come from Europe, you know, like

1037
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:53,839
Speaker 2: and it clearly spread everywhere. But that was a kind

1038
00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 2: of an oversimplified way of understanding things. And I really

1039
00:50:57,560 --> 00:51:01,120
Speaker 2: I find it interesting this idea that like there's things

1040
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,840
Speaker 2: that can like spread and be good everywhere, that doesn't

1041
00:51:04,920 --> 00:51:08,040
Speaker 2: make them agents of colonization. Like is there a word

1042
00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 2: for this idea? Where like because the potato has been

1043
00:51:10,440 --> 00:51:13,760
Speaker 2: both it seems like, right, yeah, is there a word

1044
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 2: for when things spread besides like cultural appreciation as that

1045
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:19,960
Speaker 2: of cultural appropriation, But is there a word for just

1046
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 2: like the way that things spread around the world that

1047
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:27,080
Speaker 2: isn't that's like bottom up and like not oppressive, you know,

1048
00:51:28,360 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 2: I don't.

1049
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 3: Know that word if there is, But I think you

1050
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 3: see this a lot with food, right, Like food has

1051
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:35,800
Speaker 3: been spreading all over the world for thousands and thousands

1052
00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 3: of years. Yeah, And sometimes it is because of conquest

1053
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:41,239
Speaker 3: and colonization.

1054
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not.

1055
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:47,240
Speaker 3: And even within those complexities or even within like deeply

1056
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:51,040
Speaker 3: fucked up situations, that spread of food can can be

1057
00:51:51,080 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 3: a positive outcome.

1058
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: Which is not to say.

1059
00:51:53,400 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 3: That the colonization bad, genocide bad, but like the spreading

1060
00:51:58,640 --> 00:52:00,359
Speaker 3: of food in and of itself is something that's been

1061
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:00,960
Speaker 3: happening for a.

1062
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 1: Very long time.

1063
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:04,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so yeah, I think about that a lot,

1064
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:08,400
Speaker 3: this sort of like differentiation between sort of the the

1065
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:12,399
Speaker 3: absolute evils of conquest and colonization and everything that comes

1066
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:15,200
Speaker 3: along with it, and the way that food spreading around

1067
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:18,640
Speaker 3: the world can actually lead to like not just good

1068
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:20,799
Speaker 3: things in terms of people having more options of what

1069
00:52:20,880 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 3: to eat, but like really beautiful things like different beloved

1070
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 3: foods being created, you know.

1071
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's like kind of like a cultural sharing

1072
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:30,360
Speaker 2: that is like really natural that you see also with like,

1073
00:52:30,920 --> 00:52:33,400
Speaker 2: I mean, religion is another really good example of obviously

1074
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 2: we're all aware of how religion can be used to

1075
00:52:35,960 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 2: be part of or be the primary thing of colonization,

1076
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:41,719
Speaker 2: right and like totally yeah, but you can also see

1077
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:44,560
Speaker 2: it in all of these, especially maybe like polytheistic cultures,

1078
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 2: but maybe not even just polytheistic cultures, but like the

1079
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 2: slow spread and inner weaving of like different deities and

1080
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,360
Speaker 2: like ways of thinking about things that isn't necessarily the

1081
00:52:56,400 --> 00:52:59,680
Speaker 2: result of like conquering, you know. And I've liked talked

1082
00:52:59,680 --> 00:53:04,080
Speaker 2: with about being really excited about you know, where their

1083
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:09,240
Speaker 2: culture's polytheistic stuff interacts with this other continence polytheistic stuff

1084
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 2: and like totally yeah, and so food doing that too

1085
00:53:11,960 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 2: makes so much sense, and like songs and music, and

1086
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 2: it's like part of why colonization is so bad, right,

1087
00:53:16,960 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 2: is because like the answer to that isn't nationalism. The

1088
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 2: answer to that isn't like, you know, whatever you're born,

1089
00:53:23,239 --> 00:53:25,200
Speaker 2: that's what you have to eat. You know, I don't

1090
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:26,880
Speaker 2: even know what I would eat, ida I have to

1091
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:30,040
Speaker 2: eat whatever. I mean, I was trying to come up.

1092
00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 2: I was gonna say potatoes because Irish, but that's not true, right,

1093
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, totally. So then apparently beats, but I'm

1094
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:41,160
Speaker 2: probably wrong about that, and so like cabbages, and I

1095
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 2: don't know.

1096
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 1: You know what I might not know.

1097
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:45,520
Speaker 3: So I did get the chance to take a course

1098
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:48,920
Speaker 3: that was like food history in the Global Middle Ages.

1099
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:51,239
Speaker 3: It touched on so many different foods, and I can't

1100
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 3: remember anything about beats, and I'm now wondering if that's

1101
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 3: because I don't.

1102
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:55,640
Speaker 1: Like beats very much.

1103
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I like mentally blocked out like anything

1104
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:01,600
Speaker 3: that had to do with beats, because now I'm curious.

1105
00:54:01,640 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to go down a rabbit hole about

1106
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: beats after this episode.

1107
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:09,040
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm probably conflating turnips, radishes and beats, all of

1108
00:54:09,080 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 2: the things that, like if Mario pulls it out of

1109
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,759
Speaker 2: the ground and Mario two, then like then it's all

1110
00:54:14,760 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 2: the same plant.

1111
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: I have no idea because apparently I blocked it out

1112
00:54:19,160 --> 00:54:19,760
Speaker 1: of my brain.

1113
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:21,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it makes sense.

1114
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:24,319
Speaker 3: But that's what I like so much about about looking

1115
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 3: at food and other aspects of culture, right, is that

1116
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 3: they are so complex. There aren't like simplified easy stories.

1117
00:54:30,920 --> 00:54:32,720
Speaker 3: You have to get into the weeds.

1118
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:39,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, ah, the weeds. Eh yeah, yep. All right, Well,

1119
00:54:39,480 --> 00:54:41,760
Speaker 2: if you want to what do I want to plug?

1120
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 2: I'm done with tour, That's what I want to plug.

1121
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:46,719
Speaker 2: I'm home. I'm not home yet. I'm recording this the

1122
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 2: last day of being on tour, and I but if

1123
00:54:51,160 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 2: you want to read my book The Sapling Cage that

1124
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 2: I just went on tour with. You can do that

1125
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,920
Speaker 2: by typing in the Sapling Cage and whatever. I don't know,

1126
00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:00,880
Speaker 2: you can figure how to buy it. There's also an

1127
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 2: audio version of it if you like hearing people talk,

1128
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:06,120
Speaker 2: which you might because you made it this far into

1129
00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:09,960
Speaker 2: a podcast, and also I have a substack. And also

1130
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 2: we got to take care of each other because really

1131
00:55:12,800 --> 00:55:16,439
Speaker 2: bad times is batting at least in the United States,

1132
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 2: I mean obviously everywhere, and it's a really important time

1133
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 2: for people to get involved. Like this is a really

1134
00:55:24,560 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 2: good time to kind of stop internet activisting or like

1135
00:55:28,520 --> 00:55:31,759
Speaker 2: stop having that be your primary activisting, and it's a

1136
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:34,640
Speaker 2: really good time to start talking with the people around

1137
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:38,440
Speaker 2: you and thinking about what you want to accomplish, how

1138
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 2: you want to accomplish, and getting together and doing that

1139
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 2: with the people that you care about. I think that,

1140
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 2: you know, one of the examples of a cool people

1141
00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 2: who do cool stuff that I haven't covered yet, and

1142
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 2: I probably should even know it's way more recent than

1143
00:55:49,560 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 2: I usually cover, is last time Trump took office, he

1144
00:55:52,960 --> 00:55:55,319
Speaker 2: tried to pass a Muslim ban, and people shut down

1145
00:55:55,360 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 2: airports and mass you know, and I don't know all

1146
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:00,560
Speaker 2: the details about it right now, because I didn't script

1147
00:56:00,600 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 2: any of this. I'm just spitting this off the top

1148
00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 2: of my head. But there is threats of mass deportations,

1149
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:09,000
Speaker 2: and there's threats of all kinds of stuff. A lot

1150
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 2: of people are in a lot of really specific trouble

1151
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 2: right now, and it's a good time to get organized.

1152
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:16,879
Speaker 2: And when I say get organized, I don't necessarily mean

1153
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 2: go join the following three letter acronym organization or whatever,

1154
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,960
Speaker 2: but maybe but also just going and getting together with

1155
00:56:26,000 --> 00:56:28,200
Speaker 2: your friends and thinking about what you want to do,

1156
00:56:29,600 --> 00:56:31,640
Speaker 2: or even not, as if you don't feel like your

1157
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 2: friends are into it, the people who are interested in

1158
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:37,440
Speaker 2: the same stuff around you, you know, go find go

1159
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:40,160
Speaker 2: volunteer at a food bank or food not bombs, Go

1160
00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,440
Speaker 2: work with my find out who's helping migrants where you

1161
00:56:44,480 --> 00:56:49,160
Speaker 2: live and go join them, or I don't know, do stuff.

1162
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 2: That's my plug. I don't know why I do know

1163
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 2: I'm plugging it. But anyone ad if I try and

1164
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:58,120
Speaker 2: make you do a rousing conclusion, I guess I could

1165
00:56:58,160 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 2: have done the rousing conclusion.

1166
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:04,200
Speaker 1: I don't have a rising conclusion for this part, but.

1167
00:57:04,680 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 2: Oh you have one for the second part. Okay.

1168
00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:08,320
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if I have one for the

1169
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 3: second part either, but now I feel the pressure's on.

1170
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:14,120
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, when we come back Wednesday, Ren will I

1171
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:16,400
Speaker 2: figured out arousing conclusion and I get to find out

1172
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:19,439
Speaker 2: what happened and you all get to find out too.

1173
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 2: So we'll see you all on Wednesday.

1174
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of

1175
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:32,680
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,

1176
00:57:32,840 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 1: visit our website Foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

1177
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1178
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 1: your podcasts.