WEBVTT - Part One: A People's History of Potatoes 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:02.880 Cold Media. 0:00:04.840 --> 0:00:07.000 Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff. 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:10.639 Your weekly reminder that Margaret has a cold. No, that's 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.560 just a thing, that's true, Your weekly reminder that there's 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.160 people trying to do good things when there's bad things happening, 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:19.840 which are the aforementioned cool people. I'm your host, Marta Kildrey, 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.320 and I have a cold, so I'm only sort of 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.040 the host today, partly as a result of that, because 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:26.759 I've been on Twitter and so I thought to myself, 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.520 I sure would like to talk to my friend Renn. 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.960 Ren Awry is the author of the editor. 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:37.040 Of the editor of Yeah. 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:41.880 Yeah, Nourishing Resistance, which is ren is like the only 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.280 radical food history that I personally know. But Hi, Ren, 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:46.600 how are you good? 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:47.360 How are you doing? 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:48.960 I have a cold? 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:50.040 You have colds? 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.240 Yeah, I've been coffeeing all day and sneezing all week. 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.400 It's fun, totally. 0:00:56.480 --> 0:00:59.280 I did pretty good. Yeah that sounds not fun. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.680 I am getting ready in two days to move a 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:04.960 thousand miles away from where I've been living. 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.560 For the past decades, so it's a big week. 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.400 But I'm excited to be here and to be here 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.240 to talk about a very important food on cool people 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:15.520 the potato. 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.399 I'm so excited. I Wren pitched this a while ago, 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:22.200 being like, can I do the history of the potato? 0:01:22.440 --> 0:01:24.760 And for those people who've been listening for a long time, 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:27.800 they know why this is a particular importance. But if 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:30.480 you haven't been listening for a long time, you're not 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:32.520 going to be in on it, and instead you just 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.120 get to learn about why potatoes are interesting or great 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.040 or I actually don't know what we're going to learn today. 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:39.240 All I know is that I'm going to learn about 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.240 potatoes and be able to mute my mic while I'm 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.600 coughing because Ren will be the one talking so potatoes. 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.640 Yeah, And I think, actually, what got you to decide 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.720 that you want to do this episode is that I 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.280 I'm actually moving to Idaho, which is famous for potatoes. 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:00.320 But I'm sad to share with people that there is 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.520 no idea in this episode because I went through a 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:04.280 bunch of archives and I was up there and couldn't 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:06.920 find anything. So there is kind of like a tie 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:07.720 in for me too. 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.120 Hell yeah, But before we talk about potatoes, what we 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.760 need to talk about is the fact that our producer 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:21.320 is Sophie Licktterman. Hi Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. Oh no, Sophie 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:23.160 isn't here. See this is a bit because I knew 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:25.880 that Sophie wasn't here because she's not on the zoom 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.800 but normally Sophie's here because she's the producer of the show. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.480 But she's even sicker than I am. I don't know, 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.040 I'm supposed to tell you people that, but it's going 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.800 around and it's not COVID, and everyone's getting negative tests 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.080 on the COVID and positive tests on My throat hurts 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:46.240 all the time. So that's the news about that. And 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.000 then also probably our audio engineer is Rory Hi. Rory 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:53.800 Hi Rory, and our theme music was written for us 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:55.400 by O woman. And I can't tell you one way 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:59.600 or the other about the relative upper respiratory health of 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:04.280 either of those individuals, but I can tell you about 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.079 how I'm going to learn about potatoes. 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:13.720 Yeah, so it turns out that the political radical history 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.640 of Potatoes is actually extremely complex and broad. 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.760 There's a lot out there. So for this episode, there's 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.280 quite a bit that I'll definitely leave out, and there's 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:25.239 also a bunch of topics I'm going to talk about. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:26.840 That I won't go in as much detail about as 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.000 I might otherwise. So if folks are listening and something 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.120 piques your interest, I encourage you to research it and 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:34.800 learn more about it. We're gonna be covering a lot 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:37.040 of ground and going on a whole potato journey. 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:38.960 But first, before we get into. 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:41.280 That, wait, what's your favorite kind of potato? Or like, 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:42.680 what's your favorite way to eat a potato? 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:44.360 Oh my gosh. 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.240 Okay, so maybe this is actually the right segue, which 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.600 is that I'm in the middle of moving to Boise, Idaho, 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:51.280 and French fries. 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:52.640 There are actually extremely good. 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.360 And I didn't realize that French pries could be a 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.480 food that was like exceptionally good until I spent a 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:00.920 bunch of time there, And so right now I think 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:02.600 it's French fries amazing. 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:03.360 How about you. 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:05.880 I'm currently on a French fry kick too, because I 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:09.280 got an air fryar and a French fry cutter oo 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.800 and it's just a like I can have homemade French 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:16.080 fries that aren't deep fried that tastes like good French 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.359 fries very quickly. So that's my current favorite also, but 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:24.080 also I'm also eating aligob with potatoes in it off 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:27.279 mic because my food arrived just when I started recording. 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.400 I'm very professional. Everyone in the audience totally so also 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:32.159 that form of potato. 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:35.679 Yeah, that's a great form of potato too. I wanted 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.039 to ask you because I know that you were growing potatoes. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.080 What I learned about growing potatoes is I am bad 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:44.360 at it. This is my second year of attempting to 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:46.839 grow potatoes, and this year I managed to harvest some 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:48.640 and then they went bad before I ate them, and 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.080 some of them went bad before I pulled them out 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.160 of the ground. And then one friend was like, oh, 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.159 that's potato blake and was like, that's the same stuff 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:00.520 that you know, kill lay your ancestors, Margaret, But I don't. No, well, 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.919 actually it wasn't a British person in the soil. It 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.159 was actually just a potato. But that's my There was 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.400 no potato, fam and the British are at fault. Joke. 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:14.080 But I have not eaten potatoes that I've grown, even 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.479 though two different years I've attempted to grow potatoes. So 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.279 I'm a terrible I'm a good prepper in terms of 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:21.400 a lot of stuff, but I am a terrible gardener. 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:23.880 And I keep trying and one of these days, because 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:27.680 I believe very strongly that you should always make a 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:30.039 habit of at least you should be doing at least 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.120 one thing you're bad at at all times. And I'm 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:35.560 bad at gardening, and I garden. I did eat a 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:38.880 lot of tomatoes, which rhyme with potatoes. I grew them 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:40.359 and then I ate them. 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:45.120 Yeah, And potatoes and tomatoes are, you know, from the 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:48.880 same general area, opposite sides of the same journal area. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:50.040 This is a great segue. 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:51.520 Actually, is it South America? 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:57.000 I believe tomatoes originated in Mexico, but potatoes did originally 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:00.520 come from South America. So the potato is domestic in 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.320 the Andean region of what's now Peru between seventy eight 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.159 hundred and three thousand BCE, depending on who you ask. 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.839 There's really different statistics on this. And while Indian people 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:15.279 grew tubers for thousands of years before the rise of 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:18.320 the Inca Empire. Under the Inca, the status of the 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.400 potato actually fell. The Inca were a group of Ketchwas 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.080 speaking elites who rose to power in the Cousco Valley 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:26.760 starting in the fourteenth century, and they went on to 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:29.320 control large swaths of the Andes Mountains in the west 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:33.200 coast of South America in the next two centuries, and 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:37.000 despite coming from potato growing areas, they didn't value potatoes. Instead, 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:39.520 they put a really high importance on maize, which they 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.440 used to make the alcoholic drink chicha, and had a 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:45.400 set of ceremonies and rituals that went along with cultivating 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:46.120 that maze. 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:48.680 So they just didn't appreciate their own potatoes. 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:51.960 Yeah, they didn't appreciate their own potatoes. It was kind 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:53.920 of like a lowly everyday food. 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:56.839 I guess that's still what it is to most people now. 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:57.919 Still what it is. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:06:59.640 Yeah, it was going to be a theme that kind 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.320 of it kind of occurs throughout the episode. And the 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:05.160 Inca Empire I'm going to talk a little bit about 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:09.200 they're actually pretty interesting. Some scholars have described them as 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:13.040 a welfare state based on the traditional Andean concept of 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.800 amy or reciprocity. So peasants were required to use two 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:18.760 thirds of their land to grow food for the Incan 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.200 government and religious establishment, as well as pay a labor 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:24.800 tax so in which one member from each household would 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:27.120 work for the government for a certain number of hours 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.920 each year, and in exchange, they'd get stuff like infrastructure, irrigation, 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:33.960 route materials, religious monuments. 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:35.720 And really crucially food. 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.440 The Incan government relocated some people from mountainous potato growing 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.440 regions to valleys where maze grew in parts that they 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:44.560 could send that means back to their communities in the 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:48.880 mountains and ensure food security in those communities. And these 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.200 distributive policies protected everyday people from mass starvation even when 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:57.560 crops failed. But the Inca Empire was an empire, right, 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.560 so they were also pretty authoritarian, and they worked really 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.800 hard to maintain power. And the relocation of people from 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:08.360 these maize growing areas had another probably primary benefit for 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.920 the empire. It allowed Incan rulers to move potential or 0:08:11.960 --> 0:08:15.920 active rebels from newly conquered areas to loyal communities where 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:19.840 Incan rule was long established as a method of preventing rebellion. 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.160 So actually like shifting population around to prevent rebellion. 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:25.960 I mean, because it's funny because a lot of what 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:28.000 you just described, how two thirds of your land has 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.200 to be growing food for the state and things like that, 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:35.080 like that part sounds a lot like feudalism and serfdom 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:37.600 and a lot of the like more European concepts, only 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.160 the European concepts didn't have as much of a welfare 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.520 state built in. So this seems like a totally like 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.560 a better deal, a comparable but better deal. Like still 0:08:46.040 --> 0:08:48.080 not how I would choose to live, right, I like 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:49.360 freedom and all that. 0:08:49.320 --> 0:08:52.040 But that was the impression I got with the reading 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.360 that I did on this, that there were, you know, 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.200 all of the bad things about a conquering empire, but 0:08:57.240 --> 0:08:59.880 then there were also these safety nets that didn't exist 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.560 in other parts of the world at the time. So 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.560 the Inca rulers and sort of like ruling class did 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:11.959 depend up potatoes to support population growth, feed government workers 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.160 and soldiers, and as an important backup food in times 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.760 of poor harvest. So as of like actual everyday food. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.920 Even though it didn't have a lot of symbolic importance, 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:24.559 it had a lot of practical importance. But researchers have 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.680 hypothesized that these potatoes that the Incan government stored were 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.120 from a really narrow range of varieties, like potatoes that 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:33.880 were good for freeze drying, potatoes that stored well, and 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.559 it was actually peasants in small villages who continued to 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.040 grow this wide variety of potatoes. 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:40.040 For their own subsistence. 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:42.800 And I don't know how much you know about potatoes 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.760 in the Andes, but there's like a million different kinds 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:51.920 and they all look wild and different and like different colors, 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.079 different shapes, And so it was these peasants who were 0:09:55.360 --> 0:10:00.000 keeping that potato biodiversity alive. Cool, and yeah, they grew 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.000 wide range of potatoes, repaired them in many different ways, 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.600 from soups and steice to freeze dried potatoes called tunio, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:10.319 which can be stored for decades before being rehydrated and eaten, 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:11.440 and can also. 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:13.680 Wait, how are they freeze drying? 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:18.760 So it's this like complex process that involves, like I 0:10:18.840 --> 0:10:22.040 don't want to like missay, but from what I remember, 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.760 it involves like breaking them apart and like drying them 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:27.560 in the sun. 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:29.280 I'm gonna drop. 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.840 Actually, because this episode has so many sources, I'll like 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.400 put a source list on an Instagram or something, and 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.880 there's an article that describes in greater detail. 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:38.520 How this is made. 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.360 Okay, So yeah, but I read that they could be 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:46.800 stored for like years, which is pretty cool, and that 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:50.520 junio could also be ground into flour for baking potato products. 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:51.360 Cool. 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.280 There's also this sort of like religious aspect as well, 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.160 So rural farmers maintained household shrines to dieties such as 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:03.480 Ashamama potato mother who watches over the Indian potato fields, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:08.000 and to quote potato historian Rebecca Earle, household shrines to 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.040 Pacha Mama and her fertile daughters balanced state level neglect 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.640 of potatoes. The veneration of this feminine dynasty long predated 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.280 the official rituals of the Inca Empire and persists to 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:19.920 the present and so one sort of like present day 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:23.319 example of this is the kin to ceremony, which involves, 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:26.080 according to a Ketchwa elder name Isabella. The article that 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:28.720 I read that quoted her only gave her first name, 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.680 but it involves giving thanks to Pasha Mama with coca leaves. 0:11:33.040 --> 0:11:35.600 And Pacha Mama is an Andyan diity worshiped as the 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.360 earth mother and is considered the mother of Ashamama. 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.680 This is exciting. I like the Potato Mama. 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:49.160 There is yeah, totally a potato Mama. And the genocidal 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.600 Spanish conquest of the Andes in present day Peru, which 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:54.959 was aided by the spread of smallpox, took place over 0:11:55.000 --> 0:11:58.000 the sixteenth century, from the Spaniard's first contact with Incan 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.920 rule in fifteen thirty two to the murder of the 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:06.199 last Incan emperor, tubac Amaru at their hands in fifteen 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:07.000 seventy two. 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:09.680 Well, I was reading on Twitter that this was actually 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:13.840 a positive thing. Twitter is pretty convinced actually that it. Sorry, 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.240 this is a dry humor joke about a really bad thing. 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:18.679 Never mind, it's bad. I hate that there's people who 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.600 apologize for this now anyway, Sorry, please continue totally. 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:24.160 I don't know where you were going with that, but 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.440 I can't continue. Although one thing that I learned is 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.480 that this was this last Incan ruler was tupac Amaru 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:34.600 the first, and it's tupac Amaru the second who let 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.840 her of vault in seventeen eighty, who is the one that, 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:39.640 like the rapper tupac is named after cool So there 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:43.640 were two of them. But food shortages increased under Spanish 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.680 rule because the storehouses that the Inca held were looted 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.439 by the Spanish, and the redistributive policies of the Incan 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:55.839 state were replaced by the encomanda system, which basically allowed 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.240 Spanish landowners to extract labor from indigenous andy and people 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:05.439 without recipe prosody. They also neglected that irrigation systems, mountain terraces, 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.280 all of the infrastructure that were previously up kept by 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.200 the Incan state, which made growing and distributing food even harder. 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:16.360 And the Spanish also started collecting potatoes alongside other food 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:20.360 as tributes. While the colonizers both exported potatoes to Europe 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:23.800 and ate them themselves, they were strongly associated with indigenous 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:27.160 food ways and religious rituals, and because of this, Spanish 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:30.440 settlers and their descendants considered them a menial food well 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.720 into the modern era. On the flip side, you also 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.400 see that potatoes, especially the diverse variety of potatoes that 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.680 continue to be grown in the Andes, become a symbol 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.400 of indigenous resistance to colonial and sort of like non 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:46.000 indigenous state rule. 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:48.920 Hell yeah, Were they like stuffing them full of razors 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.040 and throw them at fascist like they did in a 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:56.240 cable street. I don't know, I'm assuming not. I think 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:58.920 it's possible. I'm thinking of ways that you could throw 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:00.439 potatoes at people people. 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:03.280 Was that happening, Yeah, on the cable street? 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:06.400 The cable street riots, Okay. One of the things that 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:08.240 is said, And it might be that this was said 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.959 because they were like Irish and people were just like 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.400 trying to talk trash. But it's cool whether or not 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:15.600 they made this up about the Irish or not. They 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:18.000 were like they stuffed potatoes full of razor blades and 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:21.240 through them at the fascists. So I'm like, yeah, all right, Wow, 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.200 I want it to be true. Yeah, I love that. 0:14:24.200 --> 0:14:27.040 That is something I didn't find in my potato research, 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:28.480 and I'm curious about it now. 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:31.840 So yeah, anyway, for. 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:33.920 Sure, Yeah, onward with the Andes. 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:36.880 Although actually what I'm going to talk about now is 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:41.320 that while the Andes are considered the heartland of potatoes domestication, 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.040 it feels important to mention that potatoes have actually been 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:47.480 eaten outside of the Andes for thousands of years. 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:48.240 Oh. 0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:52.000 Wild potatoes grow all along the American Cordillera, which runs 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:54.800 from Alaska all the way down to Patagonia, and it 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.600 includes the Rockies, the Andies, the Sierra Madres, and a 0:14:57.640 --> 0:14:58.800 bunch of other mountain ranges. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.560 Like it's native to those, or it's been cultivated there 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.520 or both or nazy sort of. 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:09.640 Blurry cultivated blurry folks are not totally sure, but we 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:11.720 do know that potatoes were eaten as far south as 0:15:11.800 --> 0:15:14.360 Chile and as far north as Utah as early as 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:16.720 thirteen thousand years ago. 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:17.600 Cool. 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:22.200 Yeah, so they actually were all over And interestingly, there 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:26.720 may have been a second point of potato domestication resulting 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.720 in the Four Corners potato in the southwestern United States. 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:33.000 It's a tiny spud that varies a lot in shape 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:35.760 and color, and it was cultivated in what's now Utah 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.880 starting at least eleven thousand years ago. It's long been 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.640 eaten in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado as well, 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.720 and it actually continues to be grown by Tonay hopey 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:49.000 Zuni payuten Ute farmers. And in an article I read 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.680 for the Counter written in twenty twenty one, to nay nutritness, 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:55.320 Cynthia Wilson shured that her mother, to quote the article, 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.320 thought Navajo families may have carried and dispersed the potatoes 0:15:59.320 --> 0:16:02.520 on the Long Walk, the eighteen sixty four forced march 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.040 of thousands of Navajo people from their homeland by the 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:07.920 US Army. Scattering potatoes would have been a way to 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:09.680 work the path and ensure a source. 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:10.600 Of food on the way back. 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:11.680 That's cool. 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.880 So I thought that was really interesting, and that's the 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:17.360 one place that I found it, but it felt valuable 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:17.760 to share. 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:20.600 No, I like that it's not just like one little 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.680 origin point that I feel like the way the story 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:26.600 is often told is like there's one little origin point 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:28.280 and then like white people showed up and then spread 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:29.440 it everywhere, you. 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:30.480 Know, totally. 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:35.160 Yeah, No, it was definitely being spread across the Americas, 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.400 at least to some extent, long before the Spaniards ever 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:38.880 showed up. 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.120 But speaking of you know, white. 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.200 People showing up and then spreading it everywhere, the next 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:47.840 part of this episode I. 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:49.360 Thought was gonna be an ad break, but it's not. 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:51.680 No, it could be an ad break, right. 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:53.480 But no, we'll do that soon. We'll come up with 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:54.880 some other terrible interruptions soon. 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:55.440 Cool. 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.120 We're going to talk about what happened when potatoes arrived 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:02.600 in Europe, And I do want to mention that the 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:04.840 next couple sections of the scripts, while they bring in 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:06.919 a bunch of different sources, depend on the work of 0:17:06.920 --> 0:17:10.600 Rebecca Earl, who wrote not one, but two books on potatoes, 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:14.000 including the Incredible Feeding the People The Politics of Potatoes. 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:15.399 So I wanted to make sure to give her a 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:19.760 shout out. Potatoes are brought to Europe very very shortly 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.680 after the Spanish colonization of the Americas began. And what's 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:26.440 interesting is there are all these myths about European peasants 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.720 refusing to eat potatoes when they first encountered them, and 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:33.160 there are some pretty wild reasons given for this. It's 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.840 said that the lumpiness of potatoes indicated that they were 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:39.200 a vector of leprosy, and another was that the potatoes 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.760 weren't mentioned in the Bible and thus were not properly Christian. 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.520 These myths are not at all true, and there are 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:50.040 plenty of foods that were eaten in early modern Europe 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:51.000 that weren't in the Bible. 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:54.639 I want Christian nationalists to return to this idea that 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.080 their predecessors didn't have. You know, they'll be like, yeah, 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:00.680 they'll be like, oh, in medieval era they knew better 0:18:00.720 --> 0:18:02.240 than to eat foods that aren't in the Bible. And 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:04.399 in the Middle Ages they were like, the hell are 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:06.919 you talking about? It's just a book? Noah, Like, I mean, 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.240 we believe in God or whatever, but like we're not. 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.119 We're also eating cabbages, which aren't in the Bible, you know. 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.640 So, yeah, I just like the Christian nationalists now are 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.280 like kind of further wing nut afield than like the 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:20.640 average medieval Christian. 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:23.400 Oh totally, yeah, in a bad way. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:25.200 I feel like there was a lot of like wing 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:27.800 wing nuttery happening in ways that were like kind of 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:28.880 interesting back then. 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:30.720 Oh yeah, like there's no such thing as sin and 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.360 we all to feed each other. Yeah, anyway, totally. 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:35.359 I don't actually know exactly what you're referring to. 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:37.359 The takers in the ranters, I kind of combined. 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.399 Oh yeah, yeah, totally cool. 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.000 Yeah yeah, so these mess are not true at all. 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:48.320 Peasants and especially peasant women were responsible for cultivating and 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:51.159 eating like we're the first people in Europe to be responsible. 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:52.800 For cultivating and eating. 0:18:52.560 --> 0:18:54.800 Potatoes, in part because they were the people who tended 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.480 kitchen and subsistence gardens and oh the like. 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.000 Non market stuff, right, the reproductive labor and so the 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:02.000 productive labor. 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:03.920 Then non market stuff. Yeah, totally. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.520 So it was like European peasant women who are the 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:11.960 reason why Europeans started eating potatoes, And there are reports 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:14.120 have been being grown by Italian peasants by the late 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.960 fifteen eighties. A German cookbook from the mid sixteen hundreds 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:22.159 noted how ubiquitous potatoes were in peasant gardens by that time. 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.479 Cool and around this time there starts to be evident 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.320 that potatoes are being grown across the European continent. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.800 But you know what else is across the European continent. 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:34.439 Ads and services. 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:39.120