Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our talk about beans.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking this one's gonna be even even
Speaker 1: it's like a two bean salad if the last episode
Speaker 1: was a one bean salad. We've got a lot of
Speaker 1: great stuff to get to today. Well, this is one
Speaker 1: I think that especially will well. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it'll make everyone think about beans in a new way,
Speaker 1: but in might in my chest because I feel like,
Speaker 1: especially in that first episode, we were kind of approaching
Speaker 1: or I was certainly approaching it. Like, you know, beans
Speaker 1: are are very interesting, but they're also kind of mundane,
Speaker 1: and they're in this the mundane nature of beings seems
Speaker 1: to run deep. You have beaned doubt well to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. But uh, in the space between recording the
Speaker 1: last episode and uh, in recording this one, I found
Speaker 1: a number of new angles and then um and then
Speaker 1: leap frogdof rokoff a couple of angles you explored, and
Speaker 1: I think it really paints a picture of beans as
Speaker 1: a far weirder um part of our world and are
Speaker 1: part of our culture and myth making, even if a
Speaker 1: lot of that weirdness has largely been sort of bled
Speaker 1: out um of sort of the like popular modern understanding
Speaker 1: of the food. Yeah, I think that's right. So if
Speaker 1: you out there still have being doubts, allow us to
Speaker 1: try to evaporate them with some with some deft parching
Speaker 1: through today's episode. So I wanted to start off today
Speaker 1: by talking about philosophers and beans and a particular bean
Speaker 1: field slaughter from Greek history slash legend. So there are
Speaker 1: actually a surprising number of stories about Greek philosophers and beings.
Speaker 1: There was one that I came across, and in the
Speaker 1: last episode I mentioned this book that I had been
Speaker 1: quoting by ken Alba called Beans, a History from Bloomsberry Publishing,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to refer back to that book a
Speaker 1: lot in this episode two. But there was one thing
Speaker 1: I came across, and that that was talking about the
Speaker 1: cynic philosopher Diogenes, who the one fact you may remember
Speaker 1: about him, if if nothing else, is that he famously
Speaker 1: lived in a jar or in Athens instead of in
Speaker 1: a house like on a shelf no, not on a shelf.
Speaker 1: I think it was like out in the out in
Speaker 1: a public square or something. It's like a turned over jar. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and this is consistent with the idea of the
Speaker 1: Cynic school of philosophy, which is not about cynicism and
Speaker 1: the modern English use of the word which means the
Speaker 1: sort of I don't know, a pessimistic suspicion of others. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Cynic school of philosophy meant rejecting unnatural social norms
Speaker 1: and conventions and sort of being true to yourself, for
Speaker 1: true to your nature. So Diogenes was famous for violating
Speaker 1: taboos and rejecting the conventional norms of Greek culture in
Speaker 1: his day. So I think he was known for being dirty,
Speaker 1: of course, living in a big ceramic jar, for hanging
Speaker 1: out with dogs. I think, for being nude, and doing
Speaker 1: inappropriate things in public, like if I remember correctly, there's
Speaker 1: a story that he uh decided to defecate while in
Speaker 1: the middle of watching a play. But apparently another way
Speaker 1: that he showed contempt for society's norms and and the
Speaker 1: normal sort of like a food valorization scale, is that
Speaker 1: he made a point of eating a type of being
Speaker 1: known as lupins. Uh, this is a being that was
Speaker 1: considered in many cases only fit for feeding to animals
Speaker 1: or for the extremely poor and starving. Now, of course
Speaker 1: this is not true. Lupins are a perfectly good food
Speaker 1: if prepared in the right way, and they're part of many,
Speaker 1: you know, food traditions around the world. But that, like
Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode, there are often
Speaker 1: negative cultural and especially class associations with certain types of beans,
Speaker 1: and you can't say lupins are are a very They're
Speaker 1: difficult being there. There are being you really got to
Speaker 1: get to know because they've got these toxic alkaloids in
Speaker 1: them that you have to get out of them by
Speaker 1: soaking the beans for a long time time, and supposedly
Speaker 1: you got to do all this other stuff to make
Speaker 1: them appetizing. But so I think by eating them, Diogenes
Speaker 1: was sort of doing the equivalent of saying, like, you know,
Speaker 1: look at me, I'll eat dog food. I don't give
Speaker 1: a crap. But the the Greek philosopher being connection I
Speaker 1: really want to talk about is between beans and Pythagoras. So,
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek philosopher and religious leader Pythagoras lived from
Speaker 1: about five seventy to four nine d b c E.
Speaker 1: And though he was extremely influential, it is actually hard
Speaker 1: to know all that much with certainty about the life
Speaker 1: of Pythagoras because none of his writing survives, so we
Speaker 1: have nothing from his own hand, and the earliest accounts
Speaker 1: of his life and teachings come from hundreds of years
Speaker 1: after he lived, and they often differ substantially from one another.
Speaker 1: So when exploring basically any factual claim about Pythagoras and
Speaker 1: his teachings, there's going to be disagreement within our sources
Speaker 1: and in the analysis of modern scholars. So unfortunately there's
Speaker 1: not a lot you can say about him with certainty.
Speaker 1: But with that in mind, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: you can say about him that can be understood as
Speaker 1: according to some sources. Right, we have echoes of Pythagoras
Speaker 1: UH as opposed to just Pythagoras like itself in a
Speaker 1: pure recorded form, right. But in these echoes from Pythagoras
Speaker 1: some really interesting facts emerge. So a bit of basic background.
Speaker 1: Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, again
Speaker 1: sometime around the year five seventy BC. UH. He was
Speaker 1: said to have traveled extensively around the ancient world in
Speaker 1: his youth, and he eventually founded a sort of religious
Speaker 1: commune in Croton, a place in the south of Italy.
Speaker 1: Pythagoras taught some kind of mystical beliefs that unified aspects
Speaker 1: of metaphysics about the soul and the universe with mathematics
Speaker 1: and numbers, which seem to occupy some kind of sacred
Speaker 1: position in his worldview, as well as music which tied
Speaker 1: in with the mathematical aspects, and also teachings about nutrition
Speaker 1: and politics, so like in the realm of politics, it
Speaker 1: seems that the Pythagoreans disdained tyranny, and they really disdained democracy.
Speaker 1: They favored a kind of oligarchy where the body politic
Speaker 1: would be ruled by supposedly the best of men, you know,
Speaker 1: rulers appointed for their virtues. That always works out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in terms of nutrition, again there's some disagreement, but
Speaker 1: the Pythagoreans were widely understood to be vegetarians, eating bread,
Speaker 1: honey and vegetables. More on that in a bit now.
Speaker 1: As with his life and his teachings, there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of conflicting accounts of the death of Pythagoras, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with one of these stories about
Speaker 1: his murder at the hands of a mob, and oh god,
Speaker 1: it again. It's hard to keep all these straight. But
Speaker 1: I think in this account, or at least in some
Speaker 1: of these accounts, he's attacked by a mob that favors democracy.
Speaker 1: So the people have spoken and and it is time
Speaker 1: for Pythagoras to be slaughtered. So this account comes from
Speaker 1: the writing of Diogenes Laertis, who is probably writing sometime
Speaker 1: around the third century CES. So understand that it's like
Speaker 1: hundreds of your like seven hundred or eight hundred years
Speaker 1: after Pythagoras lived as a long time later. Oh and
Speaker 1: this is translated by a CD younge. Diogenes writes the
Speaker 1: following Pythagoras died in this manner when he was sitting
Speaker 1: with some of his companions in Milo's house. Some one
Speaker 1: of those whom he did not think worthy of admission
Speaker 1: into it, was excited by envy to set fire to it.
Speaker 1: But some say that the people of Crotona themselves did this,
Speaker 1: being afraid lest he might aspire to tyranny, and that
Speaker 1: Pythagoras was caught as he was trying to escape and
Speaker 1: coming to a place full of beans, he stopped there,
Speaker 1: saying that it was better to be caught than to
Speaker 1: trample on the beans, and better to be slain than
Speaker 1: to speak. And so he was murdered by those who
Speaker 1: were pursuing him. And in this way also most of
Speaker 1: his companions were slain, being in number about forty, but
Speaker 1: that a very few did escape. So what I when
Speaker 1: I first read this, I was like the pigeon and
Speaker 1: moonraker that does a double take? I did that? What? What? So?
Speaker 1: According to this story, Pythagoras and his followers were running
Speaker 1: away from a violent mob, and they came to a
Speaker 1: bean field, and they decided it was better to stop
Speaker 1: running and get chopped to pieces by the crowd than
Speaker 1: to step on the beans. This is the first time
Speaker 1: I'll mention this, but I probably mentioned it again. So
Speaker 1: in the previous episode I made a statement about how
Speaker 1: how you know beans are less interesting compared to corn,
Speaker 1: that corn is spookier, that it's children of the corn,
Speaker 1: not children of the bean. That uh and and uh
Speaker 1: and likewise, you know you would you would maybe be
Speaker 1: afraid of he who looks behind the rows in the
Speaker 1: corn field, but not in the bean field, Like there's
Speaker 1: something about a corn field that can be kind of creepy,
Speaker 1: especially in Stephen King's stories. But when when we look
Speaker 1: back through uh in this account, but also in other
Speaker 1: accounts that will look at later on, we really get
Speaker 1: the feeling that that the I mean, certainly there were
Speaker 1: no corn fields in Italy at this at this time,
Speaker 1: like beans, bean fields were that place. So if you
Speaker 1: can imagine a Stephen King's story where Setlar, a fringe
Speaker 1: religious leader on the run, refuses to go into the corn,
Speaker 1: would rather face death by mob, but then go into
Speaker 1: the corn, like that makes sense in a Stephen King's story.
Speaker 1: So just sort of imagine that it's beans instead of
Speaker 1: corn in the Stephen King universe. And I feel like
Speaker 1: we get an appropriate idea of how Pythagoras and his
Speaker 1: followers are are believed to have felt at this point,
Speaker 1: right at least according to this story. But yeah, you're
Speaker 1: you're exactly right. I love it. And and there are
Speaker 1: other versions of the story, by the way, particularly told
Speaker 1: by one author named Iamblicus, who say that it was
Speaker 1: not Pythagoras himself who died because he wouldn't cross a
Speaker 1: bean field, but that it was a cadre of his
Speaker 1: disciples who were chased to the edge of the field
Speaker 1: and then accepted this gruesome death rather than cross it.
Speaker 1: And in Iamblicus version in particular, there's this detail that
Speaker 1: the last member of pythagoras As followers who were slain
Speaker 1: was a pregnant woman named Timika, who bit off her
Speaker 1: own tongue rather than reveal the secret of why the
Speaker 1: beans were prohibited. That's more. That's more walking behind the rose.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, that's that's some straight up Stephen
Speaker 1: king Jeue right there. Now, As I mentioned, there are
Speaker 1: other accounts of the death of Pythagoras, but what we
Speaker 1: know is that either this account is in some way
Speaker 1: based on the truth, or if not, it was at
Speaker 1: least considered plausible enough to believe given what people knew
Speaker 1: about Pythagoras in the ancient world. And it seems that
Speaker 1: one of the things widely known about him was that
Speaker 1: he really disdained beans. Have come across some really good
Speaker 1: illustrations of him, you know, just saying like no to beans.
Speaker 1: Like he's standing next to a bunch of beans and
Speaker 1: he's like, uh yeah, both hands up, looking away away.
Speaker 1: So why on earth would anybody believe that that this
Speaker 1: ancient Greek religious leader would rather die a painful, bloody
Speaker 1: death than trespass the bean field. Well, there are a
Speaker 1: ton of possible answers, and in a way, I think
Speaker 1: they're all fascinating. But here's one of the main ones
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about. And we will go
Speaker 1: through a number here, as as explored by Albola in
Speaker 1: his book, But one of the main things comes down
Speaker 1: to a teaching that is consistently associated with Pythagoras in
Speaker 1: the earliest writings about his life, which is that he
Speaker 1: taught the metaphysical doctrine known as metam psychosis, which is
Speaker 1: usually translated into English as the transmigration of souls. This
Speaker 1: is actually very similar to other ideas of reincarnation that
Speaker 1: you might have encountered before. So, according to the doctrine
Speaker 1: of the transmigration of souls, the Pythagoreans believed that there
Speaker 1: was an immaterial and immortal soul that was separate from
Speaker 1: the body. This soul would survive the death of the body,
Speaker 1: and after the death of the body, the soul would
Speaker 1: be installed in a new body, possibly the body of
Speaker 1: another human or another animal. And this probably connects to
Speaker 1: one of the other Pythagorean teachings that I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: which is that it's widely understood that the Pythagoreans preached
Speaker 1: against the eating of meat. He and his followers were
Speaker 1: said to be vegetarians. And if if he was both
Speaker 1: a vegetarian and a believer that that human souls and
Speaker 1: animal souls would transmigrate back and forth into human and
Speaker 1: animal bodies, you can kind of see how these beliefs
Speaker 1: would fit together, Like if you were to eat a
Speaker 1: chicken or a cow, you might literally be cannibalizing a
Speaker 1: dead relative. Now, if this is truly what Pythagoras taught,
Speaker 1: it is not known for sure where he got this idea,
Speaker 1: though it's been speculated that he could have acquired it
Speaker 1: from Indian thought during his travels. It has said that
Speaker 1: he traveled all over the ancient world. But where this
Speaker 1: idea comes from, we just don't know. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it sounds like a in many ways, like a
Speaker 1: less robust version of of reincarnation as you encounter it
Speaker 1: in in in Buddhism, in Hinduism. Uh. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: it would be interesting if this was an idea that
Speaker 1: he picked up in his travels. There are some ancient authors,
Speaker 1: like I recall reading somewhere that I think it might
Speaker 1: have been Herodotus who said that Pythagoras got this idea
Speaker 1: from the Egyptians. But I don't think there's any indication
Speaker 1: that Egyptian religion ever featured reincarnation in this way, so
Speaker 1: that seems to be probably a mistake on herodotus part. Now,
Speaker 1: a slight variation on the reasoning here is just that
Speaker 1: vegetarianism was considered consistent with a non violent way of
Speaker 1: life preached by the Pythagoreans. But so this makes sense, right.
Speaker 1: You don't know the exact reason, but it would seem
Speaker 1: to all sort of fit together if he believed in
Speaker 1: the transmigration of souls and also preached vegetarianism that you know,
Speaker 1: don't eat animals because they might have souls that you would,
Speaker 1: you know, wouldn't want to be eating in them. But
Speaker 1: then there's this other strange dietary prohibition of the Pythagorean cult,
Speaker 1: which is that Pytho a garis allegedly forbade his followers
Speaker 1: to eat beans, which, again, modern vegetarians and vegans, you know,
Speaker 1: you know that you need the beans. Yeah, exactly, and
Speaker 1: it seems counterintuitive in several ways. Yes, this is a
Speaker 1: problem right now. At the time, within Greek culture, these
Speaker 1: would have been over overwhelmingly. This would have been referring
Speaker 1: to fava beans, like the Fasciola's genus that gives rise
Speaker 1: to many of the common beans we eat today. That
Speaker 1: is a genus that comes from the America's and had
Speaker 1: not crossed the Atlantic yet. So probably what they're talking
Speaker 1: about here are fava beans, though I guess there could
Speaker 1: have been lentils and stuff too, But it seems they
Speaker 1: were referring to fava beans, and fava beans were a
Speaker 1: common source of food for people and for grazing animals
Speaker 1: like for cattle in the Mediterranean at the time. Of course,
Speaker 1: beans are an especially important food if you're a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: So why would Pythagoras have forbidden not only eating them,
Speaker 1: but even treading upon them, even going into a field
Speaker 1: where they're being grown. Well, here, I'm want to quote
Speaker 1: from Albola's book. Quote. The simplest and perhaps most plausible
Speaker 1: explanation is that beans are part of the whole cycle
Speaker 1: of reincarnation and they house human souls. To eat a
Speaker 1: bean is thus a form of murder. This was varros
Speaker 1: explanation and Orphic Fragment puts it like this, eating beans
Speaker 1: and knowing on the heads of one's parents are one
Speaker 1: and the same. I think that's a sufficiently vivid image, right,
Speaker 1: Like you you want to eat beans, how would you
Speaker 1: feel about chewing on your dad's head? It's a very
Speaker 1: it's very dantea and actually it makes me think of
Speaker 1: Count Ugolino and Archbishop Grugieri. But anyway, so yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea here would be that beans contain souls, potentially human souls.
Speaker 1: Now there's more. Now, I want to get into more
Speaker 1: explanation on that mode of thinking in a bit, but
Speaker 1: first I also just wanted to mention some alternative explanations
Speaker 1: offered by other writers over the centuries, which Alba sort
Speaker 1: of catalogs and discusses. Now, there are some explanations for
Speaker 1: the being prohibition that would be based in politics. So
Speaker 1: I think these would be more sort of metaphorical interpretations
Speaker 1: of the idea that the Pythagoras would would have being scorn.
Speaker 1: One idea here is that beans were a symbol of democracy,
Speaker 1: the democracy that Pythagoras hated, because beans were used to
Speaker 1: cast votes. Right, you might have a jar where if
Speaker 1: you want to vote, you you put in a black bean,
Speaker 1: and if you want to vote in a put in
Speaker 1: a white bean, or maybe you put in different jars,
Speaker 1: you know, something like that. It can be a it
Speaker 1: can be a way to tally anonymous votes. Of course,
Speaker 1: in a proper oligarchy. Uh, nobody would need to vote
Speaker 1: with beans, right, that's right, the best rule. And then
Speaker 1: do you just keep your beans at home or in
Speaker 1: the field? Uh? Yeah, or you or you just keep
Speaker 1: them away. But also the idea here is that there
Speaker 1: could be a political implication, which is just that beans
Speaker 1: are the food of the working class, whereas meat was
Speaker 1: preferred by the riche leads, and probably in Pythagoras's view,
Speaker 1: the better people, the people who deserve to rule because
Speaker 1: of their virtues, would have been associated with meat, well
Speaker 1: you know, whereas the people who don't know how to
Speaker 1: rule a city that they would be the people eating beans.
Speaker 1: I guess one way one thing we have to sort
Speaker 1: of think about with this, this idea of this being
Speaker 1: the part of the Pythagoraan belief system is to realize
Speaker 1: too that it doesn't mean they were necessarily going out
Speaker 1: trying to liberate the bean fields or or necessarily trying
Speaker 1: to change the way that other groups UH consumed food.
Speaker 1: They could have been very like uh closed off from
Speaker 1: them and saying this is how we live, this is
Speaker 1: and then we are better for it. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of a distinction. I think in general
Speaker 1: we have to keep in mind when thinking about different
Speaker 1: religious religious groups in the contemporary world, for sure, but
Speaker 1: also just historically that that not every religious group is
Speaker 1: going to be about about spreading their belief system to
Speaker 1: all around them, right, and not all like religious dietary
Speaker 1: restrictions are meant to be a universal rule. For example,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of religious scholars of
Speaker 1: say like Judaism and Islam that would say, like prohibitions
Speaker 1: on pork and other types of food that are prohibited
Speaker 1: within that religion are not meant to be universal prohibitions,
Speaker 1: but their prohibitions for the faithful. But then again, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if we that's a possibility always when you're
Speaker 1: considering dietary restrictions that are advocated by religious groups. But
Speaker 1: I do recall coming across at least one legend the
Speaker 1: one for I don't recall the source of this where
Speaker 1: Pythagoras was said to have tried to convince a cow
Speaker 1: not to eat fava beans. If you're if you're preaching
Speaker 1: the cows, that's probably it probably means you want all
Speaker 1: humans to obey as well, right, But then again, that
Speaker 1: also sounds like a perfect parody of someone whose belief
Speaker 1: system you're you don't agree with, don't completely understand. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I bet Pathagoras is out there. What's he gonna do?
Speaker 1: Is gonna tell the cows not deep beans? Yeah, though
Speaker 1: that that could very well be the context there. Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: so there are other possible explanations. One is more nutritional
Speaker 1: and psychological, you know, pretty straightforward. Beans give you gas,
Speaker 1: and gas prevents you from having a clear head, and
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient philosophers were really concerned about like
Speaker 1: cutting things out that would cause problems in the body
Speaker 1: that would interfere with you having clear thinking. You've gotta
Speaker 1: have a clear head to live a good life, and
Speaker 1: so you can't be going around farting. You know, this
Speaker 1: is this is interesting because I was I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this, like in terms of how we think about
Speaker 1: flatulence and plate us. We it's easy to have a
Speaker 1: very like one to one vision of that, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of like, well, farting is distracting and you
Speaker 1: don't want to do it. That's going to mess with
Speaker 1: your mental um outlook. Or you know, we'll or we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of these ideas later where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: a fart is a ghost. You don't want ghosts coming
Speaker 1: out of your but you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But Uh, there's an idea that I ran across in
Speaker 1: a book that I was I was really enjoying reading
Speaker 1: through Bok called Plants of Life Plants of Death by
Speaker 1: Frederick J. Simons and We which which deals not not
Speaker 1: only with beans but various other plants entered traditions in
Speaker 1: a number of different cultures in the East and in
Speaker 1: the West and in Africa, etcetera. About how there are
Speaker 1: these different ideas of life and death wrapped up in them.
Speaker 1: And in getting into the idea of of beans and
Speaker 1: flatulens and in discussing Pythagorean bean bands, uh he discussed
Speaker 1: several of the possibilities, but but one that I hadn't
Speaker 1: really thought about was the connection between flatuans and bad dreams.
Speaker 1: And he credits uh Fredericus bomb in this idea. But
Speaker 1: I've also read that Diogenes touched on this in considering
Speaker 1: but Pythagorean ideas quote, one should abstain from fava beans
Speaker 1: since they are full of wind and take part in
Speaker 1: the soul. And if one abstains from from them, one
Speaker 1: stomach will be less noisy, and this is key, one's
Speaker 1: dreams will be less oppressive and calmer. Now, that quote
Speaker 1: attributed to uh uh two Diagenes was brought up in
Speaker 1: an l A Times article on beings from by Russ Parsons.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was that that was interesting, perhaps
Speaker 1: more telling. Yeah, if you're if your sleep is troubled,
Speaker 1: if your dreams are troubled, troubled because you're you're going
Speaker 1: to bed gassy with means then that that could very
Speaker 1: well darken your outlook on life or or mess with
Speaker 1: your head, especially in an age where you have, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe more supernatural ideas, uh, concerning dreams and the interpretation
Speaker 1: of dreams. Yeah, that's really interesting, But I mean another
Speaker 1: way to think about it, though, I guess it's like
Speaker 1: it's gonna like the coach of the chess team is
Speaker 1: also going to be like telling all of their players,
Speaker 1: like don't eat cookies right before you don't eat pickles
Speaker 1: when you're going to bet or something. They're trying to
Speaker 1: keep their people in in like ship shape. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: reading through some of the other stuff in Simmons book,
Speaker 1: there's you get into a lot of their pro abitions
Speaker 1: against foods because their connection to dreams, but also prohibitions
Speaker 1: against foods that could be consumed in a dream, Like
Speaker 1: it's not not that you shouldn't eat basil before you
Speaker 1: go to bed, but you've offered basil within the dream,
Speaker 1: you should abstain. Um. Now, I was looking for more
Speaker 1: to promise I can't keep yeah, yeah, I mean once
Speaker 1: you're in the dream, and not to say nothing of
Speaker 1: the dream within a dream. Um. But but I was
Speaker 1: looking around he for a little bit more about this,
Speaker 1: and I found an echo of this sentiment in Iranian
Speaker 1: traditional medicine uh, in the two thousand fourteen paper Insomnia
Speaker 1: and Iranian Traditional Medicine by Face of Body at All uh.
Speaker 1: Here's the quote. Upward movement of rancid vapors towards the
Speaker 1: brain due to eating flagellent and vaporous foods beans lintel
Speaker 1: Leak and Finn of Greek cause upward movement of vapor
Speaker 1: towards the head, heavy headed, feeling, headache, depraved, delusion, nightmares,
Speaker 1: and consequently awaking at night in fearing during sleep. Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think after reading that, I'm even more convinced. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're you know, gassy and full of
Speaker 1: nightmares and flatus is waking you up in the night. Um,
Speaker 1: I could see where that could lead into some ideas
Speaker 1: that yes, these are some foods that should be avoided,
Speaker 1: certainly before you go to bed, but maybe in general
Speaker 1: if the if the dreams are bad enough, well that
Speaker 1: makes me want to respond to to to these folk
Speaker 1: beliefs with some actual science on farting and beings. So
Speaker 1: what if we take a brief little detail here on
Speaker 1: the science of lagoons and flatulence. Yeah, let's get down
Speaker 1: to it. Okay, So the question is do beings cause flatulence?
Speaker 1: That seems to be a widely believed association, and if so,
Speaker 1: why do they cause flatulence? Well, the answer seems to
Speaker 1: be yes, they do, but maybe not as much as
Speaker 1: you might think, and that there are very good, well
Speaker 1: known reasons why they cause flatulence. So the gas produced
Speaker 1: during the digestion of beings is actually not produced by
Speaker 1: the cells of your body themselves, but by your gut microbiota.
Speaker 1: The bacteria, particularly in your large intestine, that breakdown molecules
Speaker 1: that your own metabolism sort of gives up. On dried
Speaker 1: beans even after cooking, usually contain compounds known as oligo saccharides,
Speaker 1: and I found an article in the Journal of Nutrition
Speaker 1: explaining this. This was by In fact, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we have cited this article before. It may have come
Speaker 1: up in our Pardonomicon episode several years back. Um, but
Speaker 1: this is by Donna M. Wyndham and Andrea M. Hutchins
Speaker 1: from the Nutrition Journal called Perceptions of Flatulence from being
Speaker 1: consumption among Adults in three Feeding Studies. This was published
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, and so I just wanted to
Speaker 1: look at the relevant paragraph where they break down the
Speaker 1: metabolic pathway that causes flatulence as a result of eating
Speaker 1: dried beans. So quote, most lagoons contain relatively high amounts
Speaker 1: of both dietary fiber and resistant star arches. These would
Speaker 1: be the oligosaccharides I just mentioned. The soluble oligosaccharides found
Speaker 1: in lagoons are not digestible by human intestinal enzymes alone. Instead,
Speaker 1: oligosaccharides such as raphinos and stachios are broken down by
Speaker 1: bacterial fermentation in the intestines. Although some rectal gas is
Speaker 1: due to the ingestion of air, the majority of flatulence
Speaker 1: is produced from bacterial fermentation. The byproducts of this degradation
Speaker 1: are hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and sometimes sulfur depending on
Speaker 1: the bacteria. Normal intestinal processes move these gases out of
Speaker 1: the body in the form of flatus. So the primary
Speaker 1: cause of of beans leading to farts is the action
Speaker 1: of the bacteria in the gut. I think specifically the
Speaker 1: large intestine fermenting these starches that the body can't break
Speaker 1: down on its own these oligosaccharides. And the authors also
Speaker 1: point out that while they're is evidence that eating beans
Speaker 1: can increase flatulence on average, there is a lot of
Speaker 1: individual variations, so they're not going to increase flatulence or
Speaker 1: increase it in the in the at the same rate
Speaker 1: for everybody. Uh to quote from the results of their
Speaker 1: feeding studies a measuring flatulence quote, less than fifty percent
Speaker 1: reported increased flatulence from eating pinto or baked beans during
Speaker 1: the first week of each trial, only nineteen percent had
Speaker 1: a flatulence increase, with black eyed peas a small percentage
Speaker 1: three to eleven reported increased flatulence across the three studies,
Speaker 1: even on control diets without flatulence producing components and so yes,
Speaker 1: it does appear that on average, beans do increase flatulence,
Speaker 1: but they say that people's concerns about excess farting from
Speaker 1: eating beans may be exaggerated compared to how much difference
Speaker 1: they actually make. Now, coming back to a note that's
Speaker 1: explored an Albola's book on this, mentioning that these these
Speaker 1: starches that can't be broken down by the body itself
Speaker 1: but have to be fermented by the bacteria in the gut,
Speaker 1: these oligo saccharides, they have to be fermented in the
Speaker 1: large intestine, specifically as a product of eating dried beans,
Speaker 1: not fresh beans. And this is interesting because you can
Speaker 1: see how that has um sort of it translates to
Speaker 1: the differing reputations of these vegetables, like fresh green peas
Speaker 1: are beans that they are of the family Fabasi, and
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody link green peas to flatulence. They're
Speaker 1: eaten fresh fresh green beans are beans. They're beings still
Speaker 1: in their pods. They're actually the common being Fasiola's vulgaris,
Speaker 1: and yet they don't have this association either, so they
Speaker 1: don't seem to create these oligo saccharide problems. But there's
Speaker 1: a trade off, of course, which is that by being
Speaker 1: served fresh, they have to be more they have to
Speaker 1: be served more seasonally, or they have to be frozen.
Speaker 1: They don't offer the same advantages in terms of the
Speaker 1: simplicity and durability of their storage and shelf life version
Speaker 1: that you get from dried beans. But anyway, okay, scientific
Speaker 1: digression on flatulence done. Now, I want to move back
Speaker 1: to all black cataloging the reasons that Pythagoras might have
Speaker 1: disdained the eating of beans. So another explanation that has
Speaker 1: been given by writers over the years is, well, what
Speaker 1: if it's just because beans are too delicious? You know
Speaker 1: that this is basically a prohibition against gluttony. This is
Speaker 1: perhaps plausible, though it doesn't seem to fit with most
Speaker 1: of the other thinking of the time that looked on
Speaker 1: beans not as like a decadent luxury, but as like
Speaker 1: the exact opposite of that. Maybe maybe this was just
Speaker 1: offered by some ancient writer who personally really loved beans,
Speaker 1: or perhaps you know the idea that it's what it's
Speaker 1: something available in bulk enough that that more people can
Speaker 1: be gluttonous about it. I don't know, maybe I mean,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, you don't see that coming up a
Speaker 1: lot like the bean is not the symbol of gluttony.
Speaker 1: You don't think of Uh, well, no, no, I don't
Speaker 1: think you do. You don't think of the mean like
Speaker 1: it again, it is it is often attributed a sort
Speaker 1: of the food of the common man. Okay, now we're
Speaker 1: going to get into sexual biomagical explanations, of which there
Speaker 1: are a number. So in this category we get into
Speaker 1: some really weird territory under this explanation, and this was
Speaker 1: this was again put forward by a number of ancient
Speaker 1: writers who were commenting on abstention from beings. Uh. In
Speaker 1: this explanation, beings are to be avoided because, in various ways,
Speaker 1: they either resemble human genitals or they have something to
Speaker 1: do with sex, procreation, or regenerative power. And there there
Speaker 1: are several ancient stories that compare fava beans in particular
Speaker 1: to female genitals. But there's another one that connects all
Speaker 1: the way back to the transmigration of souls explanation, and
Speaker 1: this goes from the connection to of beans to testicles.
Speaker 1: Here I want to read from Albala again. Quote. Aristotle
Speaker 1: picks up this thread when he explains that beans are
Speaker 1: like testicles, but adds that they are like the gates
Speaker 1: of hades in being the only plant that has no joints.
Speaker 1: That's some great Aristotle logic. Now what would that mean? Well,
Speaker 1: al Willa continues that is, bean stems are hollow and
Speaker 1: have no nodes, and thus serve as a kind of
Speaker 1: elevator shaft from the underworld, the means of exchange for souls. Actually,
Speaker 1: they are specifically compared to a ladder, and this makes
Speaker 1: sense if one has ever seen fava bean pods protruding
Speaker 1: horizontally from a plant, they do resemble a ladder. This
Speaker 1: would explain the reluctance to run through a bean field
Speaker 1: and trample the stems, as well as the ban on
Speaker 1: picking the pods or rungs of the ladder. In short order,
Speaker 1: Aristotle also claimed that the beans were avoided because they
Speaker 1: are like the form of the universe, perhaps again a
Speaker 1: veiled reference to their regenerative power. Even otter is the
Speaker 1: idea that a nibbled bean leaf in the sun will
Speaker 1: smell like semen or the blood of a murdered person,
Speaker 1: which must smell different from ordinary blood. Uh. Good editorializing
Speaker 1: from Alba there. Uh. In any case, all of these
Speaker 1: notions point to the idea that beings are some transitional
Speaker 1: form of human in the great transmigration of souls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one is putting flatulence in my brain. The papers
Speaker 1: are floating up. This is the kind of a statement
Speaker 1: here that it can feel like like genuine madness setting
Speaker 1: in you know where, where too many connections are made
Speaker 1: between unrelated things and and then you end up seeing
Speaker 1: like the human soul in everything around you. Um, it
Speaker 1: just sounds like just falling into the philosophic deep end
Speaker 1: and sinking to the bottom. Well, we're gonna sink even
Speaker 1: farther the same types of associations. They keep going on.
Speaker 1: So Albola explores some linguistic connections between ancient words for
Speaker 1: beings in various languages I think primarily and like in
Speaker 1: European languages, and associations between that and words for swelling
Speaker 1: or rotund nous, which could in some ways connect to
Speaker 1: ideas of swelling up with flatulence, but also to pregnancy fertility.
Speaker 1: In the generation of life and in the latter vein,
Speaker 1: many ancient authors seem to make an association that seems
Speaker 1: quite bizarre, probably to most modern listeners, but an association
Speaker 1: between foods that make you fart and foods that make
Speaker 1: you sexually potent. Again, this there's basically a linguistic conceptual
Speaker 1: logic to it, especially in ancient Greek thought, and Albola
Speaker 1: explains it like this, So, so you've got numa, you know.
Speaker 1: This is where we get like the word numatic p
Speaker 1: n e u m a meaning air or breath or soul.
Speaker 1: The Latin equivalent would be anima, as in like animated,
Speaker 1: like an animal is. So there's already this existing linguistic
Speaker 1: association between like the breath or the gas and and
Speaker 1: what the soul is, and that this is the principle
Speaker 1: that animates a being and makes it alive. So like
Speaker 1: in much ancient Greek thought, when you die, your your
Speaker 1: breath leaves you, you know, like the gas of your
Speaker 1: soul evaporates from your body. And also in the creation
Speaker 1: of life, there's a breathing of life into things as
Speaker 1: an exchange of gas literally elblow rights that the numa
Speaker 1: quote was the basic principle of life, and it is
Speaker 1: generated in the stomach in the form of gas, just
Speaker 1: as it is transferred in the act of reproduction. This
Speaker 1: also explains the bizarre association among authors like plenty of
Speaker 1: flatulence with the libido. In other words, eating beans not
Speaker 1: only makes you fart, it helps you conceive the being
Speaker 1: actually contains the regenerative force, and so this can be
Speaker 1: applied in multiple different ways. Elblow rights that uh that
Speaker 1: you know, you may want to eat beans to absorb
Speaker 1: the power of the souls if you're trying to like
Speaker 1: stimulate the farting and the libido part of your body.
Speaker 1: But like the pythagoreans, you might do want to do
Speaker 1: the opposite and avoid eating these beans because of the
Speaker 1: sort of like windy regenerative soul power that's contained within them.
Speaker 1: Very weird. Now, we've been exploring a lot of the
Speaker 1: explanations that lie behind this in terms of I don't know,
Speaker 1: linguistic associations and religious thinking and stuff, But there are
Speaker 1: also some biological realities that Elbola explorers that could possibly
Speaker 1: have to do with beans h and how they could
Speaker 1: have influenced the creation of this story about Pythagoras. These
Speaker 1: following explanations that I'm going to mention are not things
Speaker 1: that were explored by any ancient writers. These are are
Speaker 1: modern explanations that have been offered. And the first is
Speaker 1: based on a heritable genetic condition that causes an enzyme deficiency.
Speaker 1: So most people can eat fava beans and breathe the
Speaker 1: pollen of fava bean flowers and they're just fine. But
Speaker 1: there is a very rare, inherited medical condition that causes
Speaker 1: a specific enzyme deficiency in the body, which can in
Speaker 1: turn cause catastrophic reactions to the ingestion of fava beans
Speaker 1: or fava bean pollen uh and this condition is known
Speaker 1: as favi is um, caused by an underlying glucose six
Speaker 1: phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency or G six p d D. People
Speaker 1: with G six p d D can have horrible, even
Speaker 1: deadly reactions to fava beans in their pollen, and if
Speaker 1: a person with this condition eats fresh raw fava beans,
Speaker 1: it can lead to a reaction called acute hemolytic anemia,
Speaker 1: or the sudden destruction of copious amounts of the body's
Speaker 1: red blood cells now outwardly. This can result in symptoms
Speaker 1: like fatigue, difficulty breathing, fever, yellowing of the skin, dark urine,
Speaker 1: and in extreme cases it can even be fatal. So
Speaker 1: a question some modern scholars have posed is could Pythagoras
Speaker 1: have prohibited fava beans because he witnessed somebody having an
Speaker 1: acute reaction due to G six PDD. Interesting possibility, but
Speaker 1: it seems like one of the I mean, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of explanations like this for records of the
Speaker 1: ancient world that like fit together in interesting ways, But
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't feel like there's any particular reason
Speaker 1: to favor this hypothesis. No, I mean, it seems plausible,
Speaker 1: you know, either he witnessed this or he heard accounts
Speaker 1: of this happening. Hey, some people have been known to
Speaker 1: eat fava beans and grow, you know, extremely ill, or
Speaker 1: even die. But yeah, if we don't have any specific
Speaker 1: cases for it, specific instances in in the writing, then yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should put too much emphasis
Speaker 1: on it. One thing is it is interesting about the
Speaker 1: idea of avoiding not just eating the beans, but avoiding
Speaker 1: running into a bean field, like if the pollen could
Speaker 1: even trigger the reaction. I mean, that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: You could really see it potentially playing into some of
Speaker 1: these ideas, especially if we get when we get more
Speaker 1: and more into this, this this realization that the being
Speaker 1: fear and the being holiness here is by no means
Speaker 1: just uh, something that jumped out of Pythagoras's head, right,
Speaker 1: This seems to have been a cultural idea, perhaps a
Speaker 1: widespread cultural idea, but we'll get more into that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Now. Another interesting scientific observation. Again, this is
Speaker 1: not from ancient interpreters. This one might be original to
Speaker 1: all below, but at least it's it's not ancient um.
Speaker 1: This could complement the previous evidence that Pythagoras believed beings
Speaker 1: to contain souls. And the simple fact here is that
Speaker 1: sometimes it looks like being plants bleed. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: chain of biological causes at work here. Essentially, being roots
Speaker 1: can become infected by a bacterium known as rhizobium, and
Speaker 1: these bacteria thrive in tiny little oxygen starved chambers within
Speaker 1: the roots or nodes on the roots, and the bacteria
Speaker 1: exists in a mutualistic relationship with the bean plants. So
Speaker 1: the bacterium is, according to Albola, able to extract ammonium
Speaker 1: nitrate from the atmosphere, which it shares with the plant,
Speaker 1: which is good for the plant. And then the plant
Speaker 1: provides these little anaerobic nodes for the bacteria to live
Speaker 1: on and in, and they both create proteins that bind
Speaker 1: whatever free oxygen is available with the help of iron molecules.
Speaker 1: This might be familiar to people who know anything about
Speaker 1: animal biology or medical science. Albola rights quote. This protein
Speaker 1: is called leg hemoglobin and functions much in the same
Speaker 1: way hemoglobin does in our blood, binding oxygen with iron
Speaker 1: for our bodies to use in cellular respiration. Moreover, when cut,
Speaker 1: the nodes are read exactly like blood, so Matt being
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, you cut open a bean plant,
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that, if you cut cut open,
Speaker 1: might bleed or look like they're filled with blood, and
Speaker 1: these little nodes would look red like human blood for
Speaker 1: basically the same reason that human blood is read. Now,
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you are probably thinking right now,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, I bet Pythagoras just hated beats then, um,
Speaker 1: And you know, actually, according to Simmons, we do see
Speaker 1: aversion to beats in some cultures. He he mentions prohibitions
Speaker 1: against quote, certain plants as food or temple offerings because
Speaker 1: their coats, flesh, or juice are similar to blood and
Speaker 1: meat in color. So he cites examples members of the
Speaker 1: Banaya cast of the of the Punjab with meat prohibitions
Speaker 1: here extending two carrots, turnips, onions, and red lentils. Also
Speaker 1: the prohibition of beat roots and tomatoes at Brahmin meals
Speaker 1: and and Gujarat as well as Havoc Brahman in South India,
Speaker 1: among others, and he mentions, um how Frasier got into
Speaker 1: this a bit as well, the idea of like the
Speaker 1: similarity between things. Um So, so that's Interating's not again
Speaker 1: not specifically talking about Pathagoras in this instance, but we
Speaker 1: do see this sort of thing in other cultures enough
Speaker 1: to realize it's you know, it's kind of a universal
Speaker 1: of uh phenomena of of of of humans engaging with
Speaker 1: their food. Sometimes the food reminds you too much of
Speaker 1: a thing that is prohibited, and the prohibition will extend
Speaker 1: to those things you. If not in an every day way,
Speaker 1: then certainly within the realm of sacred ritual. When it
Speaker 1: comes to beat specifically, I can imagine another cause for
Speaker 1: for for beat scorn, which would be possible. Horror at
Speaker 1: going to the bathroom after consuming beats, which can be
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't hurt you, it just visually you
Speaker 1: could be quite alarming. Yes, yeah, new parents always warn
Speaker 1: your child the first time they have a lot of
Speaker 1: beats or or blue cupcakes, either one. Now I mentioned
Speaker 1: the idea that there, you know, this idea of being
Speaker 1: weirdness and beings and death and reproduction and so forth,
Speaker 1: that it doesn't just emerge right out of Pythagoras's head,
Speaker 1: that it is perhaps more universal. That's an argument that
Speaker 1: Simmons makes in his book. Uh. He writes, quote, since
Speaker 1: parallels to Pythagorian beliefs about the fava being are found
Speaker 1: in the being beliefs involving various species of beans of
Speaker 1: widely scattered non Indo European people's in Uganda, India, Japan,
Speaker 1: New Guinea, and the New World, we are likely dealing
Speaker 1: with basic human reactions to beings or lagoons in general,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Yeah, Okay, so this would
Speaker 1: be the idea that since there's there are similar kinds
Speaker 1: of being, fascination and being magical beliefs in all these
Speaker 1: different cultures that don't necessarily share like say, uh, language
Speaker 1: or cooking traditions or anything like that. It might be
Speaker 1: something more just like about the raw biology of beings
Speaker 1: that causes people to have these sort of thoughts like
Speaker 1: maybe the ways they look or things they do when
Speaker 1: you eat them, Yes, and just thinking too hard and
Speaker 1: too long about how they relate to our own worldview
Speaker 1: and magical ideas. At this point, I want to own
Speaker 1: to run through just a few other being uh ideas
Speaker 1: that that that Frederick J. Simmons brings up in Plants
Speaker 1: of Live, plants of death. These these are all related
Speaker 1: to so what I loosely categorized as being death folk
Speaker 1: reliefs uh, sort of leaning into the Stephen king esque
Speaker 1: um world of of of beings and the bean field
Speaker 1: being a place of death, a pay, a place of
Speaker 1: connection to the underworld and potentially rebirth. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna walk behind the pods, yes, so um uh. He
Speaker 1: points out that there was a British folk belief that
Speaker 1: pregnant women should not eat beans because it could impact
Speaker 1: the child mentally. Additionally, being blossoms have an evil reputation
Speaker 1: in Northern and Midland England. In coal mining districts, because
Speaker 1: it was long held that coal mining accidents were far
Speaker 1: more likely to occur when bean plants were blossoming. He
Speaker 1: also writes that, according to German folk belief, beans and
Speaker 1: peas were quote cult foods of demons, so it was
Speaker 1: best not to eat them on nights that were quote
Speaker 1: favorable for magical divination. Now, I have to admit that
Speaker 1: that all kind of sounds like a riddle to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what that would mean. You like,
Speaker 1: don't get down with the fava beans on vulpurchase knocked. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. I would imagine um uh because and
Speaker 1: and certainly there's some more examples where we see beans
Speaker 1: connected to specific uh dates, specific traditional festivals. Because also
Speaker 1: in Germany there were superstitions that eating peas on the
Speaker 1: on twelfth night, that's the twelfth night after Christmas uh,
Speaker 1: that this would give you vermin infestations or leprosy, and
Speaker 1: that beans, peas or lintels during this time could at
Speaker 1: least make you itch if you were to consume them. Now,
Speaker 1: there's another British folk belief that bean fields are inhabited
Speaker 1: by ghosts and spirits, and in nineteenth century Leicestershire, it
Speaker 1: was said that if you slept in a bean field
Speaker 1: all night, the awful dreams and resulting desires would just
Speaker 1: drive you insane, like you would just you would not
Speaker 1: survive a night in the bean fields. Sleeping a night
Speaker 1: in the bean field would be like sleeping a night
Speaker 1: in a haunted house. Who but due to my being love,
Speaker 1: I want to say it's gonna be like that Simpsons
Speaker 1: episode where they have to spend a night in the
Speaker 1: haunted house discovered that the tap water tastes better than
Speaker 1: the stuff they have at home. Now, um, I know
Speaker 1: what a lot of you're probably thinking. You're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this is all well and good. But did beans ever
Speaker 1: march in battle bringing forth an army of the undead
Speaker 1: to march alongside in like walking trees and Welsh smith Well,
Speaker 1: yes they did, because Sentons points to the writings of
Speaker 1: the Welsh bard uh Talison, who described just such a scene,
Speaker 1: quoting quoting the work um the elm trees he quotes
Speaker 1: quote stood firm in the center of the battle. Heaven
Speaker 1: and earth trembled before the advance of the Oak Tree.
Speaker 1: The heroic Holly and Hawthorne defended themselves with their spikes,
Speaker 1: and then meanwhile, the beans took part in battle by
Speaker 1: quote bearing in its shade an army of phantoms. So
Speaker 1: beans and spirits again. Yeah yeah, this idea that, like
Speaker 1: the beans, the bean field is where you find the
Speaker 1: ghosts that will drive you either you know, mad or
Speaker 1: fill you with maddening desire. And the idea that you
Speaker 1: have the trees were to to into all the plants
Speaker 1: were to rise up and march in an army, then
Speaker 1: the beans would surely lead an army of phantoms into battle.
Speaker 1: I love that. Okay. I think we have a serious
Speaker 1: deficiency in the horror fiction and horror movies of today,
Speaker 1: a deficiency of being themed horror. Right, this has got
Speaker 1: to be somebody's got to pick up on this. I
Speaker 1: feel like we have just largely abandoned our our understanding
Speaker 1: of supernatural beings outside of like the one you know
Speaker 1: of fairy all about magic beings that grow up gateways
Speaker 1: to the world of the giants. Now, speaking of fava beans,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a University of Copenhagen study looking
Speaker 1: into the possibility of fava beans taking over more from
Speaker 1: soybeans to meet the increasing popularity of plant based meat. Alternatives,
Speaker 1: specifically in Denmark. The argument here is that fava beans
Speaker 1: put less strain on the environment as a crop, and
Speaker 1: unlike soy, they can be grown locally in Denmark as
Speaker 1: opposed to having depend on soy, which is largely grown
Speaker 1: in the United States and in South America UM and
Speaker 1: in particularly in South America. That's where you get into
Speaker 1: some of the in the real environmental concerns about you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of land is being transitioned into soy growing land. UM.
Speaker 1: But the particular study here highlights the use of wet
Speaker 1: fraction nation to concentrate fava being protein and removed digestion
Speaker 1: inhibiting substances in the beans, and the result is dry
Speaker 1: fractionated fava being oteen rich flower. Uh So. I don't
Speaker 1: know where that will ultimately go, but it's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting interesting bit of of info there and potentially insight
Speaker 1: into the future again thinking about um you know, turning
Speaker 1: more and more to um too artificial meats and bean
Speaker 1: based diets and returned to the bean fields and and
Speaker 1: perhaps it returned to you know, beans, depending on beans
Speaker 1: that that grow more naturally within a given region. Thank thank,
Speaker 1: thank Now there's another great being I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about for a bit here, and that's the black eyed
Speaker 1: pea also known as the cow pea. And yes it's
Speaker 1: called a p but it is a proper bean. It's
Speaker 1: in the family for Basi. And the modern species name
Speaker 1: of the cow pea is vigna on guiculata, which was
Speaker 1: once known as Vignus and insis because it was believed
Speaker 1: to have come from China, but this is now known
Speaker 1: to be incorrect. Modern botanists and archaeologists believe that these
Speaker 1: beans were first domesticated in Africa, probably originating in West
Speaker 1: Africa that I've seen the possibility of Ethiopia as well.
Speaker 1: But Albala and his book and notes that some of
Speaker 1: the archaeological evidence about their history it comes from the
Speaker 1: Chad Basin, which seems to indicate that people who were
Speaker 1: originally making a living primarily through animal herding, came into
Speaker 1: the area about eighteen hundred BC, and within about six
Speaker 1: hundred years of occupying the Chad Basin, they began to
Speaker 1: convert to an agricultural civilization, with their staple crops consisting
Speaker 1: of pearl, millet and black eyed peas. So again, like
Speaker 1: we see in so many places in the world, a
Speaker 1: transition to a settled farming existence based on a sort
Speaker 1: of crop package of complementary grains and lagoons. I think
Speaker 1: the examples we talked about the other episode, we'll say,
Speaker 1: like you might have wheats or grasses like iron corn
Speaker 1: and lentils, or you could have maize and beans in
Speaker 1: UH in the Americas. But black eyed peas have been
Speaker 1: an important part of West African agriculture ever since, and
Speaker 1: they've eventually, of course, spread all over the world. They
Speaker 1: spread north to Europe, they spread east to Asia, and
Speaker 1: they're they're popular in all these different regions. Uh. And
Speaker 1: of course they eventually became part of the food traditions
Speaker 1: of enslaved people taken from Africa to the Caribbean and
Speaker 1: to the southern US. So much like okra and rice,
Speaker 1: which were also imported from African culinary traditions, black eyed
Speaker 1: peas ended up becoming foundational elements of Southern American cooking
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah. Absolutely, I've seen some there's been some
Speaker 1: excellent cooking documentaries about this connection. UM and UH and
Speaker 1: and I and I have to say, if anyone out there,
Speaker 1: if you haven't had um a bean sandwich, UH connected
Speaker 1: to some of these African culinary traditions, or at least
Speaker 1: descended from them. I highly recommended, like it's it's so good.
Speaker 1: I love black eyed peas, and I've never had a
Speaker 1: bean sandwich, so I gotta I gotta look that up.
Speaker 1: Do you know a good place to get one in town? Um?
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've had one at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: I've just we've just followed some recipes. But but and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find some really good recipes online. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some form for black eyed pea based sandwiches, which
Speaker 1: which can be a way to because we have that
Speaker 1: kind of like loose New Year tradition of eat black
Speaker 1: eyed peas, right because they're they're good luck or it's
Speaker 1: part of a good luck suite of foods. That's the
Speaker 1: health part of the package. Right, You eat eat pork,
Speaker 1: black eyed peas, and grains, and that's for what happiness,
Speaker 1: health and wealth. Yeah. Yeah, and so the black eyed peas,
Speaker 1: if they're cooked certain ways, can be kind of a
Speaker 1: hard sell. But I tell you, if you make a
Speaker 1: really tasty sandwich with them, you're good to go. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to try the sandwich. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: like other examples we've we've looked at, beans seem to
Speaker 1: occupy a sort of hub of religious significance in the
Speaker 1: West African context as well. And all Bla mentions that,
Speaker 1: for example, in Yoruba religious practice, people would regularly offer
Speaker 1: meals often based on black eyed peas to the godly
Speaker 1: beings or spirits of the Yoruba religion known as Orisha's
Speaker 1: and Albula quotes this interesting Yoruba proverb that goes, you
Speaker 1: do not know what black eyed peas are like for dinner?
Speaker 1: And I was like, whoa, I wonder what that means.
Speaker 1: But he explains that it refers to a person who
Speaker 1: is so stupid and negligent that he is totally unmindful
Speaker 1: of the consequences of his actions. So like, you're you're
Speaker 1: so dumb you don't know what black eyed peas are
Speaker 1: like for dinner. That's very easy. But another interesting thing
Speaker 1: about black eyed peas is um that one of the
Speaker 1: cultivars that became especially popular, and I think Eastern and
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia are the so called yard long beans. So
Speaker 1: these are a variety of cowpy They are vigna anguiculata,
Speaker 1: but they are the subspecies uh sesquipedalists. They are not
Speaker 1: actually a yard long, despite their name. I think they're
Speaker 1: usually about half that, but they are really long. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever bought these and tried to
Speaker 1: cook with them or I remember like just like kind
Speaker 1: of laughing as I was trying to like handle them
Speaker 1: one time at the farmer's market. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you included a picture. I don't know if we've
Speaker 1: actually tried to cook with with with is this long?
Speaker 1: But you have to like chopaman half right or well?
Speaker 1: I think sometimes you you just shell them, like you
Speaker 1: get the fresh peas out of them. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I I honestly do not remember what
Speaker 1: I did with them when I got them. Being enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: let us know, how do you handle these things? I
Speaker 1: got another black eyed pea fact that I think is
Speaker 1: very interesting. And this picks up on something we've mentioned
Speaker 1: a couple of times on the show before. It's one
Speaker 1: of those, you know, those sort of mind opening moments
Speaker 1: that is triggered by a simple reimagination of a food item.
Speaker 1: In the past, we've talked about how avocados. You know
Speaker 1: American audiences, I think primarily are going to think of
Speaker 1: avocados as a savory food, right, you have them in
Speaker 1: salty applications or not necessarily they don't have to be salty,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't usually think of putting avocados in sweet foods.
Speaker 1: But that is by no means universal, and it is
Speaker 1: in no way based on objective things about the food itself.
Speaker 1: That's just a cultural convention. Avocados are used in sweet
Speaker 1: applications in all kind kinds of food traditions. Oh absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, have a cat of smoothies for example, can
Speaker 1: be quite sweet and quite lovely. But there's another food
Speaker 1: that's like this, black eyed peas. Black eyed peas are
Speaker 1: sometimes used in sweet rather than savory dishes. If you
Speaker 1: haven't had it, that can be kind of hard to imagine.
Speaker 1: But for example, I was finding a bunch of recipes
Speaker 1: for a Vietnamese dessert food that was like like variations
Speaker 1: on the idea of sweet or coconut sticky rice with
Speaker 1: black eyed peas. Yeah, I mean, I mean that reminds
Speaker 1: me that you do encounter beans in a lot of
Speaker 1: of East Asian desserts, whether it be like a bean
Speaker 1: paste or a bean filling. That will be quite sweet.
Speaker 1: Another one I haven't tried, but that's going on my list.
Speaker 1: So I gotta have uh sweet sticky rice with black
Speaker 1: eyed peas and a black eyed pea sandwich. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: get some red bean ice cream in there as well.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. Now. Now, speaking of of of culinary
Speaker 1: traditions in East Asia, I thought we might take a
Speaker 1: little of time here to discuss the soybean, a vastly
Speaker 1: important being and one of humanity's principal food crops so um.
Speaker 1: In Chinese mythology, the soybean is one of the five
Speaker 1: grains which are either sacred themselves or their history is
Speaker 1: considered sacred. I think it depends on the telling, so
Speaker 1: the exact listing of five grains varies, but I think
Speaker 1: every version, at least every version I was coming across,
Speaker 1: does include soybeans. Whilst some tellings will include the adzuki
Speaker 1: bean as one of the five grains, but the soybeans
Speaker 1: tend to make the list, and the five grains are
Speaker 1: often connected to the myths of Shinnong, the divine farmer
Speaker 1: who we've talked about on the show before, the culture
Speaker 1: hero and mythological ruler of ancient China, often depicted in
Speaker 1: um in art is having bovine qualities to his appearance,
Speaker 1: including horns or horn like nubs on his head. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we love Shinnong here. I think we talked about him
Speaker 1: in the Mushroom Foraging episode, didn't we, Because there's legend
Speaker 1: that he he sort of tested the mushrooms to see
Speaker 1: what was safe, right, because he is well he in general,
Speaker 1: he's being the father of agriculture. He's said to have
Speaker 1: sought out and sampled a vast multitude of plants, and
Speaker 1: you know, and that would have include mushrooms in the
Speaker 1: ancient sense, in order to determine what was beneficial and
Speaker 1: what was not. And in doing so so it's also
Speaker 1: sometimes said that he sampled seventy poisons in one day.
Speaker 1: So again he's just it's the father of of of
Speaker 1: agriculture and into a large extent, traditional medicine. But also
Speaker 1: he's his personification of the gradual process of humanity figuring
Speaker 1: out what different plants do if they're consumed in different quantities. Now,
Speaker 1: as Um Haimowitz and a Shirtlift pointed out in two
Speaker 1: thousand fives debunking soybean myths and legends in the historical
Speaker 1: and popular literature. There are a lot of myths about
Speaker 1: soybeans that get passed along, and they ultimately involve everyone
Speaker 1: from Shinnong to Benjamin Franklin. While it is sometimes said
Speaker 1: that the mythical Shinnong gave us the soybean as a
Speaker 1: domestic crop five thousand years ago, uh, the author's stress
Speaker 1: at the real time period is likely UM eleventh century BC,
Speaker 1: or perhaps a bit earlier based on recorded history. So
Speaker 1: it's still really impressive. Yeah, Now, do we know anything
Speaker 1: about how the soybean was domesticated or does it seem
Speaker 1: like one of those things we have to infer kind
Speaker 1: of like the examples we were talking about in part one,
Speaker 1: where it was probably like an accidental process of of
Speaker 1: picking and then cultivating the ones like the pods that
Speaker 1: stayed closed the longest and the natural varieties. I believe
Speaker 1: that's the case. I was reading, Uh Robert M. Stu
Speaker 1: bars Into the Wild of from in p. N. A. S.
Speaker 1: And the exact date uh they write is still a
Speaker 1: matter of dispute, and quote. Most estimates approximate the domestication
Speaker 1: occurred somewhere between three thousand, one hundred and nine thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. So a fair amount of leeway. And you know,
Speaker 1: in any attempt to really pinpoint when this was domesticated,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is actually something I came across. Uh
Speaker 1: with the number of beings referenced in Albola's book, which
Speaker 1: there are a number of cases where we really just
Speaker 1: don't know when they refers to domesticated, it's just not
Speaker 1: you know, big question mark. Now, I want to get
Speaker 1: things back into the magical realm here because I ran
Speaker 1: across this, this wonderful tradition, this festival known as setsubun,
Speaker 1: and it's um It's a tradition in Japan involving beings.
Speaker 1: It's a spring festival, and it means changing of the seasons,
Speaker 1: and it has the same energy as a number of
Speaker 1: seasonal change traditions in uh In, in Eastern cultures, in
Speaker 1: cultures in general, including the expulsion of evil spirits and
Speaker 1: bad luck and the invocation of good luck and good health.
Speaker 1: Uh and this one in particular appears to have roots
Speaker 1: in Chinese lunar New Year traditions that took on new
Speaker 1: form in Japanese culture. So one of the activities around
Speaker 1: this time, and you know, there's several different things. It's
Speaker 1: not just one thing you do, but one of the
Speaker 1: activities involves driving the only out of one's house. So
Speaker 1: the only we've I think we've discussed them on the
Speaker 1: show before. Uh in one of our Halloween episodes, only
Speaker 1: were evil spirits or demons thought capable of causing illness
Speaker 1: and disease. I think we may have even discussed some
Speaker 1: kind of traditions of driving the only out of your house.
Speaker 1: This sounds very familiar. Well, one way you can do it,
Speaker 1: especially at sets a bund, is by pelting them with
Speaker 1: roasted soy beans. Uh. These are these are also a
Speaker 1: traditional snack of the festivities, but they symbolize purity. Oh,
Speaker 1: this makes me think of something that, uh, you know
Speaker 1: is something that so when I grew up, I always
Speaker 1: thought of beans being cooked in a wet application. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're cooked in water, boiled over time. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know you usually need to do that to dry beans,
Speaker 1: because this is another thing we actually haven't talked about
Speaker 1: in this episode yet, but many, many dry beans can
Speaker 1: have high levels of toxins in them if you do
Speaker 1: not boil them for before eating them. So you don't
Speaker 1: ever want to take a dry bean and then just
Speaker 1: soak it and eat it. That can give your food poisoning.
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that. You got to boil
Speaker 1: the beans or cook it with high heat somehow. But
Speaker 1: another common method in in many food traditions around the
Speaker 1: world is roasting beans, roasting them dry in some way.
Speaker 1: And I think you could probably do this with with
Speaker 1: fresher beans probably, but you can kind of pop some
Speaker 1: beans like you can make popcorn. Yeah. And and certainly
Speaker 1: if you're trying to drive only out of the house,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be thrown like handfuls of of
Speaker 1: of canned beans or whole candy beans that's going to yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially since a lot of the times you can look
Speaker 1: at pictures of this and videos. It's pretty pretty charming
Speaker 1: because apparently sometimes it's schools. You'll have a principle or
Speaker 1: a teacher put on the only costume and the and
Speaker 1: the children will be in the hallways and then they
Speaker 1: will throw the beans at the one to drive it
Speaker 1: out of the school. Oh that's great. Now. I was
Speaker 1: reading a little bit more about this on the Japan
Speaker 1: Society website, and uh, I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from from their web page that gets into some more
Speaker 1: answers about why you would throw these beans at an owny,
Speaker 1: they write quote. To find an answer, we must go
Speaker 1: back in time and look at Chinese numerology, where many
Speaker 1: concepts come in fives to correspond to the five elements
Speaker 1: would water, fire, metal, and earth. Soybeans were included in
Speaker 1: what we're designated the five cereals or the five most
Speaker 1: important crops. That's what we just talked about. Uh, they continue.
Speaker 1: Soybeans or dado literally the big being, were considered particularly
Speaker 1: powerful because they were believed to contain the spirits of
Speaker 1: all the cereals combined. Um, mom ay or being is
Speaker 1: a homophone for mommy, and I'm sure I'm not saying
Speaker 1: mommy correct in these these cases, but in both cases
Speaker 1: they're saying it means destroying evil. So, soybeans were thought
Speaker 1: to be especially effective weapons against only demons, somewhat like
Speaker 1: garlic is believed to be powerful against vampires in the West. Wow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the being the word being as a homophone for
Speaker 1: another word that that sounds similar but means destroying evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so uh you know that's you see that
Speaker 1: connection come up time and time again when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with you know, particularly with I've seen this, you know
Speaker 1: plenty of times in um in Chinese writings where you know,
Speaker 1: something just doesn't translate, like the various ghost stories in
Speaker 1: um uh In tales from a Chinese studio. Like in translation,
Speaker 1: they're all still really amusing, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: if you were reading them in the original Mandarin, there
Speaker 1: would be there would be homophones in place that would
Speaker 1: make everything more meaningful or perhaps more funny in some cases.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. Yeah, there's I mean, there's so
Speaker 1: many features of Chinese poetry that I've read about. It's
Speaker 1: just so difficult to capture effectively in translation. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I do of a lot of Chinese poetry and translation,
Speaker 1: but I mean that's one thing. Another thing I've read
Speaker 1: about is just that like a lot of really good
Speaker 1: Chinese poetry has a has a quality of density that
Speaker 1: cannot really be communicated in English. Yeah. Uh, Now, this
Speaker 1: is this idea of using beans as a as a
Speaker 1: weapon against the demons, or some sort of protective amulet
Speaker 1: against demons. Ultimately, this can be found in plenty of
Speaker 1: other cultures as well. So I'd like to come back
Speaker 1: to Frederick J. Simmons Plants of Light plants of death,
Speaker 1: because he has a number of other examples in which
Speaker 1: the beans are are serving as a weapon or a
Speaker 1: protection against evil spirits. He points out that British folk
Speaker 1: belief once held that beans were associated with witches, and
Speaker 1: you could protect yourself against a witch is evil spell
Speaker 1: by spitting a bean at her food. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's I would not I don't think you should
Speaker 1: spit beans that people you think might be witches, but
Speaker 1: clearly it was once done. All right, here's another. He
Speaker 1: also writes that at the start of the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: on the Aisle of Harry's in Scotland, melucca beans, especially
Speaker 1: white meluca beans, were worn around the necks of children
Speaker 1: as a ward against the evil eye and also such
Speaker 1: sort of witchcraft in general, and if evil magic came
Speaker 1: shooting in at the child, the bean would turn black. Whoa,
Speaker 1: which also reminds me of some of the you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about poison detection, uh in various cultures. You know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like trying to achieve the same thing but
Speaker 1: with a bean, like your little radiation detector badge. Except
Speaker 1: as for witchcraft, yeah, uh, Now, there are other European
Speaker 1: beliefs of protective beans. The Cilian traditions held that beans
Speaker 1: had protective qualities for childbirth. So a woman in or
Speaker 1: approaching labor could eat nine black beans and that would
Speaker 1: serve as a protective Uh not really, an emulated would
Speaker 1: be a protective act. I guess there's also a tradition
Speaker 1: of stacking nine black beans and placing them on a
Speaker 1: table near a newborn child protect to protect it from
Speaker 1: evil spirits. Wait, how do you stack black beans? Um?
Speaker 1: I think it would be like a little pyramid of
Speaker 1: black beans, kind of like a structure of the black beans. Now,
Speaker 1: in Morocco, an ambulance of of seven black beans could
Speaker 1: be used to protect sheep and goats from smallpox, and
Speaker 1: seven black beans could also be used by Moroccan scholars
Speaker 1: or scribes rather in order to become invisible, So, you know,
Speaker 1: using black beans and some sort of essentially sorcery. Now,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of spell that I would imagine is
Speaker 1: probably more likely cataloged by somebody who attributes the the
Speaker 1: used to others rather than somebody who did it themselves,
Speaker 1: because you could probably quite quickly find out if you
Speaker 1: were actually trying this that you cannot become invisible by
Speaker 1: using black beans. They're also traditions in Morocco of five
Speaker 1: black beans being used in protective amulets. So these might
Speaker 1: be for instance, sewn into fabrics, so you could have
Speaker 1: have the the five black beans in this piece of fabric,
Speaker 1: then then you then wear as an amulet. And he
Speaker 1: He also makes mention in the Book of European Traditions
Speaker 1: concerning St. John's Eve, this is the um the the
Speaker 1: eve of celebration before the feast day of Saint John
Speaker 1: the Baptist, but the celebration itself existed before the coming
Speaker 1: of Christianity. Um and uh it's tied. Simmons explains to
Speaker 1: summer solstice anxieties and the belief that this is a
Speaker 1: time when demons and evil spirits will rise up and
Speaker 1: must be driven back. And if this sounds a lot
Speaker 1: like Nido and Bald Mountain from Disney's Fantasia, will you
Speaker 1: are correct because the original title of of Masursky's music
Speaker 1: was St. John's Night on the Bear Mountain. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was new to me as well. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: it's it's a time during which you have these various
Speaker 1: traditions involving fire, but also medicinal plants, uh, such as
Speaker 1: Saint John's wart, and unfortunately it also entailed more than
Speaker 1: a little burning of black cats. But given the fava
Speaker 1: beans association with the underworld and spirits, it may have
Speaker 1: been connected as well. In Tuscany, St John's fire was
Speaker 1: lighted in a field of beans to make them ripe
Speaker 1: and faster, it's said, and in Sicily you ate your
Speaker 1: fava beans with a word of thanks to St. John.
Speaker 1: And there are other other religious and traditions of three
Speaker 1: beans that were ritually consumed, representing wealth, competence, and poverty,
Speaker 1: depending on the state of the pealing. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: this ties into another thing. I guess we sort of
Speaker 1: got into this when I was mentioning uh Diogenes the
Speaker 1: Cynic philosopher. But the in there there is also a
Speaker 1: tradition of intentionally eating beans to signal asceticism, like the
Speaker 1: ascetic life, you know, to say that I reject the
Speaker 1: pleasures of this world and I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: person of the simple virtues of the spirit, meaning that
Speaker 1: you know, I I'm not going to be eating butter
Speaker 1: and bacon every day. Instead, I'm going to be having beans,
Speaker 1: which makes me think, of course, about the associations with
Speaker 1: John the Baptist. Right, John the Baptist lived in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, he wore rough clothes and he
Speaker 1: ate honey and locusts, which might be the equivalent of
Speaker 1: a medieval European monks saying, Okay, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna eat beans. I'm gonna be a you know,
Speaker 1: a person. I'm going to be a man of the
Speaker 1: wild and just commune with God. Now I have one
Speaker 1: more to mention here, and this one brings us back
Speaker 1: to German celebrations of Twelfth Night. And this was the
Speaker 1: idea that Germans and uh and and other Northern Europeans
Speaker 1: once would select a king of the Bean and sometimes
Speaker 1: a queen of the Being as well. Uh and they
Speaker 1: would do this by by baking a cake which contained
Speaker 1: a single bean um uh. This would be like a
Speaker 1: single black bean perhaps, And basically it would be like,
Speaker 1: everybody gets a piece of cake, and if yours has
Speaker 1: the bean in it, then congratulations, you are the being king.
Speaker 1: Now it was it good to be the bean king
Speaker 1: or bad to be the being king? Because there are
Speaker 1: a lot tradition, there's something you get a special piece
Speaker 1: of cake and that means you're kind of like scorned. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this one doesn't seem particularly wicker manny, if that's what
Speaker 1: you're asking. Um, this is this is what this is
Speaker 1: what he writes. Um. Of particular interest to us is
Speaker 1: the report that the first act of a being king,
Speaker 1: after he had been enthroned and congratulated, involved his being
Speaker 1: lifted three times to the ceiling of the house, where
Speaker 1: he drew white crosses of chalk on the beams and
Speaker 1: rafters to protect against evil spirits, devils, and witchcraft for
Speaker 1: the coming year. Also prominent in some places have been
Speaker 1: concerns about weather and crop fertility and yield, and the
Speaker 1: cake itself serving in divining good or bad things that
Speaker 1: might affect people in the ensuing year. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what what else it necessarily entailed, but
Speaker 1: that first major act of being king of the bean
Speaker 1: doesn't sound too bad. No, no, no, it's a no.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like they're about to throw him into
Speaker 1: the fire or anything. No. All right, Well, hope, really
Speaker 1: we have introduced a new, spooky, supernatural world of of
Speaker 1: bean fields to everyone out there. Uh and and just
Speaker 1: made you think a little bit more about your beans,
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear from you what are
Speaker 1: your favorite beans? Uh do you are you privy to
Speaker 1: any uh superstitions or customs or rituals involving beans that
Speaker 1: we didn't mention here, because definitely right in and tell
Speaker 1: us about them. Also, um, are are do you own
Speaker 1: the company Rancho Gordo and want to send Joe and
Speaker 1: I free beans because we mentioned your company? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I go for it. We would. We'd love to love
Speaker 1: to be a part of that. But uh yeah, in general,
Speaker 1: we just love to hear from everybody out there, um
Speaker 1: about about beans. Beans, the the magical fruit, the mystical fruit,
Speaker 1: the supernatural fruit, but also not a fruit, not technically.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you would like to hear other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you know where
Speaker 1: to find them. You can find them in this Tough
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed and you'll you'll find
Speaker 1: out wherever you get your podcast these days, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's so many places to get podcasts, but we should
Speaker 1: be wherever that is that you're going. And if you
Speaker 1: can rate and review the show at that place, if
Speaker 1: they let you do that, uh, well then do that.
Speaker 1: That helps us out. That's uh that uh, that's supposedly good,
Speaker 1: or so they tell them. Um, yeah, yeah, give us
Speaker 1: five or five beans. Five out of five beans, but
Speaker 1: only the good beans, not the not the witchcraft beans,
Speaker 1: just the the demon defeating beans. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: sort them out, figure out which one's which. Five out
Speaker 1: of five haunted bleeding beans for sexual potency. Here's thanks,
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot car. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
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