Speaker 1: Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
Speaker 2: and it's Saturday. We're heading into the vault for a
Speaker 2: classic episode of the show. This one originally aired on
Speaker 2: February second, twenty twenty three. This is part one of
Speaker 2: our series on Tea Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: The first cup caresses my dry lips and throat. The
Speaker 1: second shatters the walls of my lonely sadness. The third
Speaker 1: searches the dry rivulets of my soul to find the
Speaker 1: stories of five thousand scrolls. With the fourth, the pain
Speaker 1: of life's grievances evaporates through my pores. The fifth relaxes
Speaker 1: my muscles and bones become light. With the sixth, I
Speaker 1: find the path that leads to the immortal ancestors. Oh,
Speaker 1: the seventh cup, better not take it. If I had it,
Speaker 1: the only feeling is the fresh en blowing through my
Speaker 1: wings as I make my way to Pung Lai.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormack, and today we're going to begin
Speaker 2: a series on tea. Yes, t the beverage and the
Speaker 2: plant that it comes from. Now, Rob, you began today's
Speaker 2: episode by reading a Is this a poem or a song?
Speaker 1: This is a poem by Lu Toong from the Tang
Speaker 1: dynasty titled Seven Bowls of Tea, and it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: widely cited. I ran across various like tea blogs talking
Speaker 1: about it and sometimes saying that this is overly sited
Speaker 1: in the literature of tea, especially in the West, and
Speaker 1: I think with good reason, because it's it's amazing. It
Speaker 1: captures this just intense enthusiasm for tea. And also it's
Speaker 1: essentially about a man drinking way too much tea during
Speaker 1: the course of the day that brings him to the
Speaker 1: to the very brink of like blinking out of physical
Speaker 1: reality and going to toping lie the mystical mountain where
Speaker 1: you have fantastic creatures and immortal beings.
Speaker 2: So you don't want to do the seventh cup because
Speaker 2: that will just essentially you will leave your body in
Speaker 2: the place where you currently reside.
Speaker 1: Right, But it's not it doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: case where you have to worry about like crashing with
Speaker 1: that seventh cup. It's just the seventh cup is one
Speaker 1: pleasure beyond that which you should grant yourself. You should.
Speaker 1: You have to show restraint because you still have stuff
Speaker 1: to do here in the mortal realm.
Speaker 2: Well, I like the way that the poem escalates because
Speaker 2: at the beginning it's more just about the like the
Speaker 2: first line is about the sensory experience, caresses, dry lips
Speaker 2: and throat. It's it's happening in the mouth. And then
Speaker 2: after that it's like mood, you know, shatters the walls
Speaker 2: of my lonely sadness. That's mood stuff. That's level two.
Speaker 2: But beyond that, you're like talking about communing with other beings,
Speaker 2: the path that leads to the immortal ancestors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it gets very spiritual towards the end, transformative.
Speaker 2: Even I've never gone six cups in on caffeinated tea,
Speaker 2: but I don't doubt it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I my wife and I probably have, but only
Speaker 1: through re steeps. We're big into picking out a good
Speaker 1: tea that you can resteep several times. So I could
Speaker 1: probably write a similar poem about, like, you know, steeps
Speaker 1: one through four or five on a particular tea that
Speaker 1: I like, because sometimes you get get the you get
Speaker 1: an interesting tea, and it changes like cup. Cup one
Speaker 1: might actually not be the best cup, and it's your
Speaker 1: second or third steep where things maybe become a little
Speaker 1: more nuanced, a little less sharp. I found that to
Speaker 1: be the case with some of the poorer teas that
Speaker 1: I really like.
Speaker 2: I assume does the caffeine content become less powerful as
Speaker 2: you go through multiple steeps.
Speaker 1: That is my understanding, and I believe that is my experience,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons I tell myself that
Speaker 1: it's okay to have so many cups of tea during
Speaker 1: the course of an afternoon because I'm getting decreased returns
Speaker 1: on the cup from a caffeine standpoint. But yeah, we've
Speaker 1: touched on tea in the past, but I don't think
Speaker 1: we've ever done a proper deep dive on this most
Speaker 1: splendid beverage, not just splendid, but really one of the
Speaker 1: most popular beverages in the world. You could probably make
Speaker 1: a case for it being the most popular. There's a
Speaker 1: great deal of variety to how it's cultivated, prepared, brewed,
Speaker 1: and consumed, and yeah, there's no denying its appeal. And
Speaker 1: it's importance weaves in and out of global history, various cultures.
Speaker 1: It factors into mythology, literature, politics, and much much more.
Speaker 2: Yes, And to clarify something here, I guess we should
Speaker 2: do this at the beginning. There's a little bit of
Speaker 2: confusion in English. I don't know if it's like this
Speaker 2: in other languages, but at least in English. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of things that we call tea that are
Speaker 2: not made with the tea plant. So we use the
Speaker 2: word tea as like a generic synonym basically for an infusion.
Speaker 2: Anytime you take a substance, herbal or otherwise, and you
Speaker 2: expose it to hot water in order to extract some
Speaker 2: kind of flavor or chemical compounds into the water, and
Speaker 2: then you drink the water, people will call this a
Speaker 2: tea no matter what it is. So you've got herbal
Speaker 2: teas made from everything from like camomal to turmeric to mint,
Speaker 2: or even cases where people will refer to meat based
Speaker 2: broths as like beef tea, but there is no really.
Speaker 2: But there is also the specific tea plant, the leaves
Speaker 2: of which are used to make tea proper. And it
Speaker 2: is this plant and its eponymous infusion that we're going
Speaker 2: to be most focusing on in these episodes.
Speaker 1: And obviously there are various blends that have taken place.
Speaker 1: There's so many teas available now, especially loose leaf teas
Speaker 1: where you'll have like little bits of dried flavor bits
Speaker 1: that are not tea, but still the primary ingredient is
Speaker 1: the dried tea. Now, I think one of the other
Speaker 1: exciting things about this is and this is going to
Speaker 1: be a fun one to hear from listeners because I
Speaker 1: know everyone out there you have your own individual story
Speaker 1: with tea. You probably have your own cultural story with tea.
Speaker 1: For my own part, I've come to like a number
Speaker 1: of different teas. I want to also throw out an
Speaker 1: important caveat that I would not say that I am
Speaker 1: like a tea super nerd, you know, like I'm not
Speaker 1: a connoisseur of teas, So I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: speaking from that vantage point in these episodes. But I've
Speaker 1: grown particularly fond of these pooh Air teas, which we'll
Speaker 1: discuss in due course. I like several things about them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I like the various tastes. They often have this kind
Speaker 1: of dark, earthy or sometimes there's lighter, but there's often
Speaker 1: an earthy tone to them sometimes compared to hay, and
Speaker 1: that is a flavor profile that I find it works.
Speaker 1: You get interesting results when you do re steeps on it,
Speaker 1: because the hay taste might be a bit strong in
Speaker 1: that first cup, but then cup two or three is
Speaker 1: generally the comfort zone for me personally. I also really
Speaker 1: love how so many of these particular teas are preserved
Speaker 1: in bricks or pucks. Sometimes you have to break up
Speaker 1: the brick with a little specialized knife, and I like
Speaker 1: the ritual of that. I also like it when it's
Speaker 1: a little puck that's already been prepared, often circular, sometimes
Speaker 1: heart shaped today and that can be a lot of
Speaker 1: fun as well, and also makes it a little handy
Speaker 1: easy to get into the tea bag.
Speaker 2: Rob, I seem to recall you getting very into the
Speaker 2: idea of some kind of disgusting nineteenth century way of
Speaker 2: preparing coffee that involved like brick or puck based concentrate.
Speaker 2: Am I remembering that right now?
Speaker 1: Oh? No, no, no. I think I was interested in
Speaker 1: the study of like Civil War era instant coffee, but
Speaker 1: none of it sounded like anything I wanted to even
Speaker 1: experiment with.
Speaker 2: Okay, no, no, no, I just meant that you were
Speaker 2: interested in the idea and not that like you, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: hawking it's virtues as great coffee.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's just it's interesting history like the and
Speaker 1: it kind of speaks to the importance of caffeinated beverages
Speaker 1: to the people who consume them. You'll have situa like
Speaker 1: war situations where people realize, hey, these soldiers need coffee,
Speaker 1: these soldiers need tea. How do we get that to them?
Speaker 1: What is the most cost effective means of doing so?
Speaker 1: What happens when the product is bad? How do the
Speaker 1: soldiers in the field relate to this additional indignity. I
Speaker 1: also love how tea is like anything else. There's nothing
Speaker 1: like great branding. I love some of the names of
Speaker 1: the teas that I have enjoyed, Like there's one called
Speaker 1: the Bewitched Emperor, there's one called Evil Snake King, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, I'm obviously these are just the labels given
Speaker 1: to these and these are the English I think that
Speaker 1: these are translations though, of what they're actually called in
Speaker 1: the case of these two in China as well. But
Speaker 1: I just love the idea that is wrapped up in
Speaker 1: the branding for these as well. It makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I'm not only enjoying an afternoon cup of tea,
Speaker 1: but I'm engaging in something possibly supernatural.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say that I sense no other beverage
Speaker 2: to have as rich an array of supernatural associations as tea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. Like there's just there's so and
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that's interesting but also could
Speaker 1: probably be intimidating at times. Is you get into not
Speaker 1: just tea culture, but various tea cultures that all have
Speaker 1: various practices of how you're supposed to prepare it, how
Speaker 1: you're supposed to consume it, and so forth. I mean
Speaker 1: Macha from Japan is of course a great example of this,
Speaker 1: and just on its own can be a wonderful tea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are just so many, so many fascinating teas out there.
Speaker 1: We're going to touch on some of the tea cultures
Speaker 1: as we proceed through these episodes. But how about you, Joe,
Speaker 1: what's your personal story with tea?
Speaker 2: Well, I am not really a tea drinker, not because
Speaker 2: I dislike tea. I mean, when I have it, I
Speaker 2: enjoy it, But I think it's because for me personally,
Speaker 2: there is simply not room for additional caffeine in my life.
Speaker 2: I have my morning coffee routine, and I have to
Speaker 2: be very careful even with that, because if I have
Speaker 2: too much coffee, I will spend the rest of the
Speaker 2: day and night having visions of the doom of all
Speaker 2: and just hear the screams of a dying planet like
Speaker 2: I get the fear bad. And it's strange. I wasn't
Speaker 2: always like that. I can think years back, I used
Speaker 2: to hang out with my friends and drink cup after
Speaker 2: cup of coffee and I was fine. Something happened to me,
Speaker 2: and now I cannot handle that much caffeine. It just
Speaker 2: wrecks me. So after I've had my daily coffee, I
Speaker 2: do not have tolerance for anything else, no tea proper,
Speaker 2: no second or third cup whatever. So in order to
Speaker 2: do caffeinated tea, I think I would have to do
Speaker 2: a full switch out and have it instead of coffee,
Speaker 2: which I've never tried to do. But occasionally I do
Speaker 2: enjoy non tea teas. I like some herbal teas, lemon
Speaker 2: ginger infusions and stuff, and I guess they do make
Speaker 2: decaffeinated tea, but I've just never gone down that path.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, yeah, I'm like you, and that I can't
Speaker 1: quite put aside the morning coffee. I've gotten it down
Speaker 1: to just two cups of coffee, my initial wake up
Speaker 1: cup and then the second cup of coffee, and then
Speaker 1: everything after that for me is tea. Generally it's one
Speaker 1: tea bag, multiple steeps of set tea bag. And it's
Speaker 1: worth keeping in mind when thinking about the caffeine. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just general, and this maybe can't be applied
Speaker 1: completely across the board, but generally speaking, a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: a standard cup of coffee is gonna have somewhere between
Speaker 1: one hundred, one hundred and twenty milligrams of caffeine. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a cup of black tea is gonna have forty milligrams
Speaker 1: of caffeine. Green tea's gonna have thirty. Green and white
Speaker 1: tend to have the least amount of caffeine, followed by oolong.
Speaker 1: These numbers are pointed out by Laura C. Martin, who's
Speaker 1: excellent book A History of Tea is one of the
Speaker 1: sources that I'm going to keep coming back to in
Speaker 1: these episodes.
Speaker 2: Okay, so even if I did try to incorporate some
Speaker 2: tea into my daily routine, it would not be equivalent
Speaker 2: to drinking the same volume of coffee.
Speaker 1: Yes, that seems to be the case. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: there are so many ways to prepare tea, and certainly
Speaker 1: you could drink enough tea, you could drink those six
Speaker 1: fresh steeps of tea and risk of transporting yourself to
Speaker 1: the mystic mountain. So it's always always a possibility. And
Speaker 1: everybody's different, you know, And I think our relationship with
Speaker 1: caffeine does change as we age, so naturally, yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be a total tea nerd or immerged
Speaker 1: to any degree within an Eastern culture of tea to
Speaker 1: be into TV, because tea has spread around the globe
Speaker 1: by this point. Tea culture now encompasses everything from British
Speaker 1: high tea to Southern sweet iced tea, Taiwanese bubble tea,
Speaker 1: to things like Senegaluese tea and their Tibetan tea preparation
Speaker 1: methods that are also rather distinct. And again we'll come
Speaker 1: back to some examples of these later on. But I
Speaker 1: thought an interesting place to start might be too. Instead
Speaker 1: of starting with the familiar or even anything in the
Speaker 1: actual real world, we might start off by getting into
Speaker 1: the mythological origins of tea. Even before we get into
Speaker 1: the botanical realities of tea, we might start in just
Speaker 1: purely mythic and I think mostly Chinese mythological origins for
Speaker 1: this splendid beverage.
Speaker 2: Oh wait a minute, Wait a minute. If we're getting
Speaker 2: into a myth about a psychoactive substance and its ancient
Speaker 2: Chinese myth, are we going to meet the divine farmer
Speaker 2: once again?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes we will, because of course, if it involves
Speaker 1: something that you should eat or shouldn't eat, and is
Speaker 1: a plan of some sort, then yeah, the divine farmer
Speaker 1: Shinong has to show.
Speaker 2: Up Shinong putting things in his mouth for everybody's benefit.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, we've talked about Shinong before on the show.
Speaker 1: He's a pretty important figure in Chinese mythology and he's
Speaker 1: tied to myths concerning various botanical substances. His name literally
Speaker 1: means divine farmer. He's a culture bearer, a god. He's
Speaker 1: attributed with the invention of agriculture and the introduction of
Speaker 1: agriculture to human beings. He's an important name in Chinese medicine.
Speaker 1: He's said to have invented various farm tools and musical instruments,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot that this mythological figure is attributed with.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously as a mythological figure, he is
Speaker 1: sort of summing up and condensing a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that actual human beings did over the course of generations.
Speaker 1: Figuring out which plant has a medicinal property or seems
Speaker 1: to which plant is good to eat, which plant will
Speaker 1: kill you, that sort of thing. You should definitely look
Speaker 1: up some images of him, because he's He's often depicted
Speaker 1: as this kind of squat older man with bovine or
Speaker 1: ox like characteristics, often kind of wide set eyes, and
Speaker 1: even one of my favorite things about him is he
Speaker 1: often has these kind of nub like horns. Now I
Speaker 1: have seen depictions I think these are more modern, but
Speaker 1: it could be wrong where he has like full blown
Speaker 1: horns like a hornet deity. But generally it's these kind
Speaker 1: of nubs where he looks just again, very very bovine.
Speaker 2: Would you call them buds? Are those called buds?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They kind of look like like buds. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're looking at, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: why does that man have two bumps on his head?
Speaker 1: And it's because it's invoking this kind of ox like characteristics,
Speaker 1: a character stick of the character. And in some tales
Speaker 1: he was said to have had the head of a dragon,
Speaker 1: others the head of an ox. And so we do
Speaker 1: have to remember that he is a god, of course,
Speaker 1: so it's natural that he might have some qualities like this.
Speaker 1: There are various tales about his birth, including some traditions
Speaker 1: that relate his incredible rate of maturity. One version said
Speaker 1: that he could talk at three days old, he had
Speaker 1: all of his teeth, etc. And in some accounts his
Speaker 1: father was an actual dragon.
Speaker 2: Wait when you said had all of his teeth, you
Speaker 2: meant he was like born with all of his teeth,
Speaker 2: or he had all of his teeth when he was
Speaker 2: three days old.
Speaker 1: His memory serves, and I believe this is related in
Speaker 1: the book Chinese Mythology by yang An and Turner, there's
Speaker 1: tales that's like, all right, at three days he had this,
Speaker 1: At four days he had this. So he's just maturing
Speaker 1: at a rapid rate, where at like three months old
Speaker 1: he knows everything about agriculture and he's able to teach
Speaker 1: it to humanity. Okay, but the basic story with Shin
Speaker 1: own concerning plants is that he not only gave humans
Speaker 1: the knowledge of agriculture, he also sussed out which plants
Speaker 1: were useful in medicine and which ones were food, and
Speaker 1: also which ones were poison And he did this, of course,
Speaker 1: by testing them all himself. In some tellings, he's not
Speaker 1: actually eating them. He's thrashing them with a reddish brown whip,
Speaker 1: like a whip that is. And there's a lot you
Speaker 1: can get into with the symbolism of it. I've seen
Speaker 1: that it's there's something to it that this is kind
Speaker 1: of the color of dried blood. Other times he has
Speaker 1: a cauldron. So yeah. In some cases he says to
Speaker 1: have some tools that he's using. But in many tellings
Speaker 1: and certainly many artistic interpretations, he's testing all these various
Speaker 1: botanicals out by eating them, and then afterwards he passes judgment.
Speaker 1: He's okay, this this is a plant that would be
Speaker 1: good for medicine, so I'm going to put it into
Speaker 1: my right hand bag. This one is good for food,
Speaker 1: so it's going into my left hand bag, and he
Speaker 1: sorts it generally like that.
Speaker 2: What about the one that are poisonous.
Speaker 1: There's one tale where if something's poisonous, he just wants
Speaker 1: to stop it, Like, I think there's a story that's
Speaker 1: related about Ginger, where originally Ginger was said to be
Speaker 1: poisonous and Shinong took a look at each he like
Speaker 1: he checked it out and he's like, yeah, this is horrible.
Speaker 1: I want to stomp on it as well. And then
Speaker 1: Ginger had to change in order to be accepted, and
Speaker 1: that's when Ginger went underground. Oh beautiful. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to explore that one more at some point
Speaker 1: because I don't really understand all the meaning going on there,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's interesting now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: we've talked about this version of the story with Shinong before,
Speaker 1: but as Yang'an and Turner point out, in Chinese mythology,
Speaker 1: some versions also state that Shinnong is particularly good at
Speaker 1: figuring all of this out because he has a crystal
Speaker 1: stomach and he can see everything that's going on inside
Speaker 1: of his own internal organs as he's digesting things.
Speaker 2: It's like top ar. They open up his stomach and
Speaker 2: they can look inside and see it see all the
Speaker 2: parts working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just I love it. I definitely picture
Speaker 1: this as kind of like almost some sort of an
Speaker 1: android body that he has going on underneath his robes
Speaker 1: here that he can pull it up, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just crystal organs under crystal skin, and he can observe
Speaker 1: every little detail going on in digestion. So in some
Speaker 1: versions of the story, the first plant he was said
Speaker 1: to taste was a green leaf, which once he put
Speaker 1: it in his mouth and swallowed it, it went on
Speaker 1: a grand tour of his insides, cleaning up everything along
Speaker 1: the way, and again crystal stomach, so he gets to
Speaker 1: watch it go.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it's kind of like a dryer sheet or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess. This particular plant was referred to
Speaker 1: as cha, which means to inspect, which eventually got confused
Speaker 1: in later tellings with cha, which is the exact same
Speaker 1: phonetic sound but a different Chinese character. So the story
Speaker 1: becomes later on that Shinong was poisoning himself upwards of
Speaker 1: seventy times a day, testing out the world's plants to
Speaker 1: determine which ones we could use for various purposes, and
Speaker 1: if something got on top of him he got some
Speaker 1: poison going around in his system, he would turn to
Speaker 1: the cleansing power of tea to detoxify himself.
Speaker 2: Oh so, by the way, you should not derive actual
Speaker 2: use value from that. But yeah, so in this version
Speaker 2: of the story, T is like a universal antidote, right.
Speaker 1: And my understanding too is that older versions of the
Speaker 1: story are not referring to T, but it becomes Tea
Speaker 1: and later tellings of the story though this eventually catches
Speaker 1: up with him. I was reading in that book that
Speaker 1: one day he is said to have tried a yellow flower,
Speaker 1: and upon trying the yellow flower, it broke his intestines
Speaker 1: into pieces. He sees this through his stomach, his crystal stomach.
Speaker 1: This occurs just the moment he swallows it, and he's
Speaker 1: quickly trying to, you know, get himself some tea so
Speaker 1: he can cleanse everything up, but it is too late.
Speaker 1: He dies, and the plant that does this to him
Speaker 1: becomes known as the intestine breaking weed.
Speaker 2: That is brutal in so many ways, especially because it
Speaker 2: imagines the intestines as brittle rather than elastic. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess you could think of them that way.
Speaker 1: Well again, it makes me personally think of Shinong's crystal
Speaker 1: organs as being like glass. And then the shattering is
Speaker 1: kind of like when a cartoon character bites on something
Speaker 1: that's too hard, and their teeth do that cartoon shattering thing.
Speaker 1: That's what I picture in my mind happening to Shinong
Speaker 1: here portion on. Yeah. Now there's a book, Shinong's Herbal Classic,
Speaker 1: a later Han dynasty book that includes a great deal
Speaker 1: of knowledge related to various botanical substances, and this book
Speaker 1: is attributed to Shinong, likely based on oral traditions. It
Speaker 1: includes a passage on tea, telling us that it's bitter
Speaker 1: and share some details about when, how and where it
Speaker 1: grows best. But as Laura C. Martin points out in
Speaker 1: a History of Ta, references to T in this book
Speaker 1: were probably not original to it, as the character for
Speaker 1: Ta itself didn't come into usage until seventh century. But
Speaker 1: more on the timeline of tea in a bit, because
Speaker 1: we're still for now in the mythic.
Speaker 2: Timeline, okay, But talking about this book attributed to Shinong,
Speaker 2: the idea is that probably there were earlier versions of
Speaker 2: the book that did not have the tea passages, and
Speaker 2: in recopying through the year's tea passages were inserted by
Speaker 2: some editor or copyist exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, Now, there are a couple of other tea related
Speaker 1: myths here. This is one that Young Haan Turner point out.
Speaker 1: It's a creation myth of the Dang ethnic people known
Speaker 1: outside of China as the Palolang people in Unan Province.
Speaker 1: And it's said that in this creation myth, one hundred
Speaker 1: and two tea leaves went around and around in the
Speaker 1: air for thirty thousand years and then transformed into fifty
Speaker 1: one young men and fifty one young women. That's the
Speaker 1: beginning of humanity. Now there's another one. This is a
Speaker 1: This is a tea myth that largely emerges from India
Speaker 1: rather than China. As Martin points out, the early history
Speaker 1: of tea centers around China. But the plant is indigenous
Speaker 1: to the Assam region of India in addition to southwestern China.
Speaker 1: Yet it seems that it was a little known or
Speaker 1: used in India prior to the sixth century.
Speaker 2: Seat and if you don't know where it is, Assam
Speaker 2: is located in northeastern India. So the area of origin
Speaker 2: for the tea plant, we think is basically southwestern China
Speaker 2: northeastern India.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, though it does seem like it was better
Speaker 1: known in China as opposed to India. But of course
Speaker 1: we see a fair amount of cultural exchange between India
Speaker 1: and China, and of course the most famous example of
Speaker 1: this is of course Buddhism, and this particular story does
Speaker 1: involve Buddhism as well. It's the story of Bodhidharma, who
Speaker 1: was a fifth century semi legendary Indian prince who, much
Speaker 1: like the Buddha himself a thousand years earlier, came to
Speaker 1: see the emptiness of wealth and abandoned all of it
Speaker 1: in the quest for enlightenment. He became a Buddhist monk,
Speaker 1: and after many years of study, he travels to China
Speaker 1: to reintroduce Buddhism and found Buddhism had been introduced into
Speaker 1: China previously, but this most period where maybe it was
Speaker 1: waning a bit, and he said to end up becoming
Speaker 1: the founder of Chan Buddhism in the process. But while
Speaker 1: he's in China, after visiting the emperor on this trip,
Speaker 1: he retreated. He eats to a shovelin temple and here
Speaker 1: he begins a long period of devoted meditation and asceticism.
Speaker 1: So depending on the tail, and again there are different
Speaker 1: versions with this. With most of these stories, he either
Speaker 1: stares at a wall for nine years in meditation, or
Speaker 1: he gives up sleep for nine years so that he
Speaker 1: can really double down on his meditation. In one version
Speaker 1: of this story, he grows so sleepy that he reaches
Speaker 1: out and he grabs a leaf, like a random leaf,
Speaker 1: and he just shoves it in his mouth to chew
Speaker 1: it as a way to perk himself up. And his
Speaker 1: luck would have it, this plant is tee and it
Speaker 1: really does perk him up because it we'll discuss it
Speaker 1: a bit, it contains a stimulant. There's another version of
Speaker 1: this tale, and this one I got in trouble for
Speaker 1: sharing at the Venner table in my post research excitement.
Speaker 1: But in this other version, he's getting sleepy and he
Speaker 1: pulls off his own eyelids because it's like, oh, heavy eyelids,
Speaker 1: they keep shutting. I'm trying to meditate, but I keep
Speaker 1: falling asleep. So he just pulls the eyelids off, throws
Speaker 1: them on the ground, and then a tea plant grows
Speaker 1: from where the eyelids fall. So, in either case, according
Speaker 1: to this legendary account, he discovers tea and passes it
Speaker 1: on to the other monks to assist them in their meditation.
Speaker 1: All right, So there's just a taste of some of
Speaker 1: the mythological stories involving the origin of ta, this spectacular
Speaker 1: plant that is either discovered or perhaps even created out
Speaker 1: of some sort of inspired inside by a legendary or
Speaker 1: semi legendary individual.
Speaker 2: Now, when it comes to the T plant itself, there
Speaker 2: were a few things that I actually did not know
Speaker 2: until recently. I don't know if I should be embarrassed
Speaker 2: about not knowing these, but I was just pretty much
Speaker 2: in the dark about tea. But one thing I discovered
Speaker 2: was that, apart from the issue of things being called
Speaker 2: tea just actually being an infusion of anything, even when
Speaker 2: you're talking about the T plant itself. Previously thought that
Speaker 2: the main varieties of tea you hear about, like green
Speaker 2: tea and black tea or maybe oolong tea, were from
Speaker 2: different plants. But actually these are all from the same
Speaker 2: plant as far as I can tell. They're just different
Speaker 2: preparation and curing methods. Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they're essentially we're talking about one single species
Speaker 1: of plant. Camellia senensuss Camellia sinensus is an evergreen shrub
Speaker 1: or tree, and you know Asterix there, we'll get to
Speaker 1: that that produces small white petaled flowers. In the wild,
Speaker 1: it will eventually reach tree size, but in situations where
Speaker 1: it's been cultivated, generally they're kept at a shrub size
Speaker 1: via pruning. They're typically kept at like a meter or
Speaker 1: three feet in height, as that's an ideal height for picking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you have these top layers of leaves
Speaker 2: that come out, and I think they refer to those
Speaker 2: as flushes, like the leaves keep protruding and then the
Speaker 2: top young leaves are harvested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and while we're essentially talking about one species, there
Speaker 1: are two varieties. There's Camillias Andensus. This is the one
Speaker 1: that's indigenous to western Yunnan in China. And then there's
Speaker 1: a variety of that Camillia Senensus issamica. This is indigenous
Speaker 1: to the Assam region of India as well as parts
Speaker 1: of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and southern China. Now,
Speaker 1: these two varieties they cross pollinate easily, so they are
Speaker 1: also blends of the two. But Martin stresses that they're
Speaker 1: actually not that different in taste either. So the varying
Speaker 1: tastes and colors of different teas they stem from the
Speaker 1: way we process them, whether you're talking about black or
Speaker 1: green oolong, et cetera. And so either variety of tea
Speaker 1: leaf processed the same way will basically be similar. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, we don't want to discount traditions
Speaker 1: surrounding particular teas. It's one of those things. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, wine tastes or any kind of
Speaker 1: like cultural food tradition. There's a lot tied up in
Speaker 1: knowing where something comes from as well, and some of
Speaker 1: that translates into the taste for the average consumer. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's something that translates into the connoisseur's taste experience, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you're getting into an area where yes, you're being
Speaker 1: primed that this particular I don't know, you know, this
Speaker 1: wine stems from this vintage versus this vintage, this winery
Speaker 1: versus this winery, etc. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of
Speaker 2: different foods that maybe you actually couldn't tell the difference
Speaker 2: in a blind taste test. But then again, it might
Speaker 2: be cool to enjoy an authentic version of something knowing
Speaker 2: the history behind it, like knowing where it comes from
Speaker 2: and being able to think about that and so forth.
Speaker 1: Exactly so in the wild, tea plants are generally going
Speaker 1: to thrive in an open woodland area or on the
Speaker 1: edge of the woodlands where they can benefit from the
Speaker 1: shade of larger trees. As such, when cultivating tea plants,
Speaker 1: they're generally grown alongside shade trees. These, as Martin points out,
Speaker 1: not only provide shade, but also it keeps weeds away
Speaker 1: and enriches the soil and generally the leaves and the
Speaker 1: buds or what are harvested fresh leaves generally contain about
Speaker 1: four percent caffeine.
Speaker 2: I'm reading, and I was wondering about this because I
Speaker 2: had read that it is maybe we can get more
Speaker 2: into this when we do some of the cultural history.
Speaker 2: But I have read that tea leaves were traditionally treated
Speaker 2: as a food plant in China, more so than a
Speaker 2: beverage plant, and the beverage stage came later. And so
Speaker 2: apparently you can eat tea leaves. You can just prepare
Speaker 2: them like a green and chew them up and eat them.
Speaker 2: People do this sometimes and it's fine, though you need
Speaker 2: to be careful about how much you eat, obviously, because
Speaker 2: you don't want to overdose yourself.
Speaker 1: On caffeine right right, because most of us don't have
Speaker 1: crystal clear guts that we can look at and to
Speaker 1: determine what's happening, you know, by the moment. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be fun to get into in a subsequent episode.
Speaker 1: The history of tea as a beverage is also the
Speaker 1: history of a food, so yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
Speaker 1: But coming back to the caffeine, this is a question
Speaker 1: that applies of course to tea, but also to other
Speaker 1: caffeinated beverages, or at least ones that have a natural origin,
Speaker 1: Like why is there caffeine in the leaf? Like what
Speaker 1: is there? Well, why is that substance that, for us
Speaker 1: humans is a stimulant that kind of manipulates us as
Speaker 1: a consumer of the plant, Like why is it even there?
Speaker 2: To begin with great question, So as a jumping off
Speaker 2: point to answer this, I want to refer to an
Speaker 2: article I was reading on the subject by previous show
Speaker 2: guest Carl Zimmer, who is one of our favorite science writers.
Speaker 2: He's been a guest on the podcast before. Maybe we'll
Speaker 2: get him back again someday, but he came on to
Speaker 2: talk about his book on genes and heredity called She
Speaker 2: Has Her Mother's Laugh, which is a fantastic book. And
Speaker 2: so Carl Zimmer had an article in twenty fourteen in
Speaker 2: The New York Times called how Caffeine Evolved to help
Speaker 2: plants survive and help people wake up? And he begins
Speaker 2: by pointing out some rough stats about the popularity and
Speaker 2: power of coffee and caffeine, saying the world consumes roughly
Speaker 2: twenty six thousand cups of coffee per second. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: That caffeine is probably the most widely used psychoactive substance
Speaker 2: in the world. But there's an interesting thing about caffeine,
Speaker 2: which is that it has a number of different associated
Speaker 2: plants that it comes from. So, for example, there are
Speaker 2: coffee beans. Coffee Beans are the seeds of a genus
Speaker 2: of flowering plant called Caffea or Coffea in the family rubiaishi.
Speaker 2: These plants are native to tropical Africa and tropical Asia.
Speaker 2: There is of course tea. Tea again is made from
Speaker 2: the leaves of the evergreen shrub Camillias and ensus, which
Speaker 2: is native to East Asia. There's mate made from the
Speaker 2: urbamate plant, which is a holly shrub native to South
Speaker 2: America scientific name Ilex paraguariensis. And then you've even got chocolate.
Speaker 2: Chocolate also contains caffeine. Chocolate's made from the seeds of
Speaker 2: the cacao tree or theobroma cacao. Theobroma, by the way,
Speaker 2: means food of the gods. Theo roma and historically was
Speaker 2: not always used as an ingredient in sweets and desserts.
Speaker 2: The main way we in the United States consume it today.
Speaker 2: It was often consumed as a bitter, hot, or cold beverage,
Speaker 2: kind of similar to how we consume coffee, which of
Speaker 2: course would have carried a punch of caffeine, and chocolate
Speaker 2: does have caffeine.
Speaker 1: I think our Invention episode where we talk to Jeff
Speaker 1: Beach Bomberry, we talked a little bit about ancient recipes
Speaker 1: for hot chocolate.
Speaker 2: Essentially, But it's kind of interesting to look at this
Speaker 2: geographic distribution and say, how do all of these different
Speaker 2: plants that are not closely related to one another independently
Speaker 2: make this same compound. We know why humans like caffeine,
Speaker 2: but what does caffeine do for the plants, and how
Speaker 2: did all these diverse different species evolve to make it?
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: This article looks at a study published in the journal
Speaker 2: Science in twenty fourteen, where researchers detailed an effort to
Speaker 2: sequence the genome of a species of coffee plant responsible
Speaker 2: for many of the world's coffee beans. This remember, coffee
Speaker 2: comes from the genus Coffea or coffea, and this is
Speaker 2: Coffea canaphora. The study is by France. Oh, I do
Speaker 2: not know how to pronounce this last name, Deneud is
Speaker 2: how the name is spelled at all, and the title
Speaker 2: is the coffee genome provides insight into the convergent evolution
Speaker 2: of caffeine biosynthesis. Again, that's in the journal Science twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: So one thing this study looked at is how caffeine
Speaker 2: is actually synthesized in coffee plants. And it turns out
Speaker 2: it is a multi stage transformation of molecule that it
Speaker 2: begins with a compound called xanthozine, and the coffee plant
Speaker 2: manufactures several enzymes that act on this compound. So one
Speaker 2: enzyme removes an arm of the molecule, another enzyme adds
Speaker 2: a new arm, Two more enzymes come in and add
Speaker 2: two more clusters of atoms, and after all these transformations,
Speaker 2: you finally have transformed xanthezine into caffeine, and the enzymes
Speaker 2: involved in this multi step transformation are called in methyl transferases.
Speaker 2: They are found in all plants, and they do generally
Speaker 2: this sort of work, building specific compounds, many of which
Speaker 2: plants use to defend themselves against predator or parasites. And
Speaker 2: one example of a compound manufactured with the help of
Speaker 2: in methyl transferases that zimbercites in the article is salicylic acid,
Speaker 2: which is a compound produced by willow trees, which actually
Speaker 2: turns out to be a potent pain reliever in animals
Speaker 2: like us. Salicilic acid is the chemical basis for aspirin.
Speaker 2: But what about the enzymes that manufacture caffeine specifically in coffee. Well,
Speaker 2: the authors determine that some time ago, in the evolution
Speaker 2: of the coffee plant, a gene for creating one type
Speaker 2: of in methyl transfer enzyme underwent a series of mutations
Speaker 2: to produce a variety of enzymes which would eventually create caffeine.
Speaker 2: And so one of the co authors is quoted in
Speaker 2: Carl Zimber's articles. This is by Victor A. Albert saying
Speaker 2: they're all descendants of a common ancestor enzyme that started
Speaker 2: screwing around with xanthezene compounds, So the plants are just
Speaker 2: kind of like doing all these little variations on this
Speaker 2: originator molecule and producing these derivative molecules that in many
Speaker 2: cases are physiologically active or psychoactive on animals. And it
Speaker 2: turns out scientists had already discovered that caffeine was created
Speaker 2: by the action of in methyl transferrass in cocaw trees
Speaker 2: and in the tea plant, so similar molecular frameworks are
Speaker 2: going on within coffee plants, within the tree that makes
Speaker 2: chocolate or cocow, and within tea plants. However, the researchers
Speaker 2: also found that the enzymes for making caffeine in these
Speaker 2: different plants did not all evolve from the same ancestors.
Speaker 2: So this would be a case of convergent evolution, different
Speaker 2: branches on the tree of life evolving the same solution,
Speaker 2: the same phenotype independently. So you can think of a
Speaker 2: million different examples of this. One is wings. Birds and
Speaker 2: bees both evolved flapping wings independently for flight. They didn't
Speaker 2: get them from a common ancestor that had wings. They
Speaker 2: know their last common ancestor did not have wings, and
Speaker 2: they independently, separately came up with the same solution. Now,
Speaker 2: when you see convergent evolution, you see different streams of
Speaker 2: evolution converging on the same trait or the same solution
Speaker 2: to an environmental problem. It's usually a sign that that
Speaker 2: trait or solution is pretty good. It's a powerful adaptation,
Speaker 2: and there's a big survival and reproduction payoff. So it
Speaker 2: would seem, based on the evidence of convergent evolution, that
Speaker 2: producing caffeine is definitely good for something for the plants.
Speaker 2: So what is it really good for. Well, there are
Speaker 2: a few things we can talk about. One is activity
Speaker 2: in poisoning or deterring predation by insects. So, like so
Speaker 2: many of the plant based compounds that humans ingest on
Speaker 2: purpose for their psychoactive properties, caffeine seems to be at
Speaker 2: least in part useful for deterring predation by insects. Insects
Speaker 2: would of course naturally like to eat the leaves and
Speaker 2: the seeds of the cope plant, but high levels of
Speaker 2: caffeine are toxic to them, and this relationship can be
Speaker 2: seen further in the fact that the fruit fly Drosophila
Speaker 2: drosophala has the ability to taste the presence of certain compounds.
Speaker 2: I was reading about how they have an array of
Speaker 2: at least sixty eight known These are called seven transmembrane
Speaker 2: goostatory receptors or goustatory receptors are grs and goustatory meaning taste.
Speaker 2: So these goustatory receptors allow the fly to sense the
Speaker 2: presence of compounds that could kill it or harm it
Speaker 2: and avoid eating them. Caffeine is one of those compounds.
Speaker 2: Fruit Flies appear to have a suite of receptors, including
Speaker 2: one called g R sixty six A, that work together
Speaker 2: to sense the presence of caffeine in whatever they're eating
Speaker 2: and allow an avoidance response to take over. Now, I
Speaker 2: think it's interesting to put that together with the fact
Speaker 2: that in the human experience, most alkaloids taste. Bitter. Alkaloids
Speaker 2: are a broad class of nitrogen bearing organic compounds that
Speaker 2: plants make, many of which have physiological effects on humans
Speaker 2: and other animals, effects ranging from you know, all your
Speaker 2: standard types of poisoning and death to psychoactive effects such
Speaker 2: as the stimulant effect of caffeine. So bitter taste often
Speaker 2: causes animals to reject a food source. So I think
Speaker 2: it's kind of reasonable to put all this together in
Speaker 2: wonder if the sensation of bitterness when ingesting plants rich
Speaker 2: in alkaloids is perhaps a protective response that tells us
Speaker 2: to stop consuming these plants and reject them, similar in
Speaker 2: effect to the way that a fruitfly has the ability
Speaker 2: to taste and reject caffeine, though with a different evolutionary backstory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it makes me
Speaker 1: think of, you know, the obvious of example of say
Speaker 1: a child being introduced to coffee and finding it disgusting
Speaker 1: because it is bitter. And also we have to think
Speaker 1: about the fact that that the chocolate unsweeten has a
Speaker 1: very bitter taste to it as well, though of course
Speaker 1: in both cases coffee and chocolate, there is of course
Speaker 1: a process involved here we're not going to really get
Speaker 1: into with coffee and chocolate between plant and even the
Speaker 1: unsweetened food product, but that's something we can come back
Speaker 1: to in the future. I love to do something on chocolate,
Speaker 1: say in the future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And yeah, it's interesting to think about the complex
Speaker 2: human reaction or response to bitterness that it seems bitterness
Speaker 2: is probably primarily biologically relevant in getting us to reject foods.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like this has something in it that
Speaker 2: I don't want to get too much of, So I
Speaker 2: probably don't want to eat too much of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So many of the naturally occurring pesticides that we consume, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have some sort of a strong flavor that would
Speaker 1: tend to convince most humans to avoid them, certainly, and
Speaker 1: in many of the cases where there are various spices,
Speaker 1: avoid them in larger quantities than we traditionally use them.
Speaker 2: And yet we can really get a taste for them.
Speaker 2: I mean, I like the bitter taste of coffee and
Speaker 2: of chocolate and of tea and so forth. It might
Speaker 2: have to do with like it's a level of bitterness
Speaker 2: that doesn't reach kind of a threshold which you would
Speaker 2: find it disgusting, like it's like below the bar for rejection.
Speaker 2: Or it could be a totally it could be a
Speaker 2: learned response. I mean maybe naturally people don't like bitter
Speaker 2: stuff in any quantity, but if culturally they learn to
Speaker 2: appreciate it, I don't know, maybe maybe that's what's making
Speaker 2: the difference there.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean in cocktail culture, for example, you
Speaker 1: have a you know, a whole spectrum of bitter drinks.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you're just adding a little bitter taste
Speaker 1: via bitters in many cases, to to offset sweetness and
Speaker 1: give you a certain flavor profile. But some people go
Speaker 1: especially hard for those those bitter drinks. They're like, I've
Speaker 1: never tried one of these, but you have these recipes
Speaker 1: floating around for mixed drinks that contain like multiple bitter
Speaker 1: components to try and create like some sort of uber
Speaker 1: bitter concoction, which is not for me, but I assume
Speaker 1: it's for some people who have developed a taste for
Speaker 1: all of those bitter components.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I do think about how many of
Speaker 2: the bitter food almost all of the really enjoyable bitter
Speaker 2: foods and beverages I can think of or psychoactive in
Speaker 2: one way or another. I mean, I guess not like
Speaker 2: you know, bitter greens or something. You know, I like
Speaker 2: greens that can be bitter, but I think of coffee,
Speaker 2: which has caffeine. I think of chocolate, which has caffeine.
Speaker 2: I think of tea, which has caffeine. Or I think
Speaker 2: of alcoholic beverages that are bitter, like you know, like
Speaker 2: hoppy beers and so forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's almost like on some level, our bodies
Speaker 1: saying this tastes bad, but something good is happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but okay, So caffeine, one of it rolls within
Speaker 4: a plant might be to deter insects or other animals,
Speaker 4: maybe from eating the leaves of the plant.
Speaker 2: They got enough caffeine in there. One way or another,
Speaker 2: the toxicity of the caffeine will drive the animal away.
Speaker 2: Another interesting idea that Zimmer raises in this article is
Speaker 2: that caffeine in coffee plants is suspected to work also
Speaker 2: by inhibiting the growth and germination of other plants. He
Speaker 2: writes that when coffee leaves die and fall off of
Speaker 2: a coffee plant, they fall down to the soil below.
Speaker 2: The caffeine content seeps into the earth and interferes with
Speaker 2: the ability of other plant species in the soil nearby
Speaker 2: to germinate. So this helps limit competition for soil resources
Speaker 2: and sunlight in the area. Now, I didn't find anything
Speaker 2: specifically about whether or not that's true with tea plants
Speaker 2: as well, but it could also be the case if
Speaker 2: it works for the coffee plant. But one thing where
Speaker 2: I did find a parallel between how they think caffeine
Speaker 2: is working in coffee plants and tea plants is its
Speaker 2: role in pollination. I thought this was the most interesting
Speaker 2: of all. So, in addition to deterring insect or animal
Speaker 2: predation and perhaps limiting competition from nearby plants, the psychoactive
Speaker 2: and drug like properties of caffeine on animals might be
Speaker 2: not only an unintended byproduct or side effect of their
Speaker 2: physiological activity as a deterrent. They might actually be in
Speaker 2: part the point of the compound, or at least one
Speaker 2: of the points of the compound, and it would work
Speaker 2: like this So coffee and flowering plants that produce caffeine
Speaker 2: in their leaves also produce lower doses of caffeine in
Speaker 2: their nectar. Now, plants make nectar as a food for
Speaker 2: insects as an incentive for insects to spread their pollen.
Speaker 2: So the insect gets sugar from the plant, it gets
Speaker 2: a meal, and the plant gets help with reproduction and
Speaker 2: dispersal when returning it's help spreading its genetic material. Now
Speaker 2: here's the really interesting thing. Research has shown that when
Speaker 2: insects feed on plant nectar containing low doses of caffeine,
Speaker 2: they seem to become more disposed to remember the scent
Speaker 2: of the flower where they consumed that nectar, and researchers
Speaker 2: believe this may cause the insect to return to that
Speaker 2: flower more often and thus spread its pollen more effectively.
Speaker 2: So maybe out of just one compound, this one molecule
Speaker 2: that the plant creates, it can be getting multiple completely
Speaker 2: different effects depending on the dosage in the different part
Speaker 2: of the plant. So maybe higher levels in the leaves
Speaker 2: will deter insects from trying to eat the leaves, but
Speaker 2: lower levels in the nectar will be more like a
Speaker 2: cup of coffee for the insect, which boosts the insect's
Speaker 2: memory and allows it to return to the same plant
Speaker 2: more frequently and spread that plant's genetic material. Toxic and
Speaker 2: high concentration, but beneficial to some types of brain function
Speaker 2: at lower doses. And it's funny that caffeine has the
Speaker 2: same dual effect on humans. I mean, if you have
Speaker 2: too much of it, it will kill you. But if
Speaker 2: you have these low doses of it that people consume
Speaker 2: in beverages and stuff, people use it directly as a
Speaker 2: stimulant to improve their brain function.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, coming back to Shinong, the mythical story here,
Speaker 1: it's basically an individual god figuring out to what degree
Speaker 1: one should consume the world of poisons around us, how
Speaker 1: much of this poison is appropriate for desired outcome, and
Speaker 1: then which poisons should we not mess with at all?
Speaker 2: Exactly? So I found this so interesting. But anyway, this
Speaker 2: was all about the coffee plant. I was trying to
Speaker 2: find is the same thing true of the T plant,
Speaker 2: And I did, in fact find. A study from just
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago is from twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: published in the Journal of Insect Physiology. It was by
Speaker 2: Gwen Gong at All and it was called Laurel T
Speaker 2: polyphenols can improve honeybee memory retention and olfactory sensitivity. So
Speaker 2: the background on the study is to read from their
Speaker 2: abstract quote. Animal pollinated plants face a common problem how
Speaker 2: their defensive anti herbivore compounds may impair or alter pollinator behavior.
Speaker 2: Evolution has tailored multiple solutions, which largely involve pollinator tolerance
Speaker 2: or manipulation to the benefit of the plant, not the
Speaker 2: removal of these compounds from pollen or nectar. The T
Speaker 2: plant Camilli s. Senensis is famous for the caffeine and
Speaker 2: T polyphenols that it produces in its leaves. However, these
Speaker 2: compounds are also found in its nectar, which honeybees readily collect.
Speaker 2: So to summarize here, the authors tested the effects of
Speaker 2: these two different products of the tea plant, of the
Speaker 2: caffeine and the T polyphenols, and they tested it on
Speaker 2: the forging behavior of honeybees. And what they say they
Speaker 2: found is that honeybees preferred simulated nectar from a feeder
Speaker 2: when it contained T polyphenols over a control feeder that
Speaker 2: did not contain them. And they also found that bees
Speaker 2: that were fed on a feeder laced with caffeine showed
Speaker 2: small improvements in learning. Both caffeine and T polyphenols increased
Speaker 2: memory retention and showed influences on other behaviors as well,
Speaker 2: such as response to alarm pheromones. So it seems that
Speaker 2: the T plant may well be adapted to give pollinating
Speaker 2: insects small doses of caffeine and T polyphenols for a reason.
Speaker 2: It could mean, among other things, that the pollinating insects
Speaker 2: are more likely to keep returning to the same plant
Speaker 2: and spreading its genetic material. And I thought this was
Speaker 2: so interesting. So if this is in fact the case,
Speaker 2: it's a more complex relationship than I usually imagine between
Speaker 2: plants and the alkaloids that they manufacture and the animals
Speaker 2: that they target, because I usually think of the relationship
Speaker 2: as a pretty simple one way way interaction, like the
Speaker 2: plant alkaloid causes some kind of negative physiological response or
Speaker 2: reaction in the animal, and then the animal is deterred
Speaker 2: from eating the plant again, or the animal is driven
Speaker 2: to evolve like gustatory receptors or taste that make the
Speaker 2: plant taste nasty from the first spite, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's ancestors that didn't have that may have died. But
Speaker 2: this is a more complex implied relationship. I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what to compare it to. I mean, it's almost
Speaker 2: like the cultivating of an analog of an addiction, but
Speaker 2: one with I don't know, survival benefits for the bee
Speaker 2: as well, because it allows them to keep returning to
Speaker 2: a food source.
Speaker 1: So before we got into all this here, if I
Speaker 1: were put to the test, I would have just said, well,
Speaker 1: caffeine implants is just about keeping some things from eating them,
Speaker 1: and we've managed to manipulate that situation for our own benefit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it sounds like the reality is a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated. Of course, you can't really think about purpose
Speaker 1: and design and desire in the literal sense when it
Speaker 1: comes to the evolution of something like this in various
Speaker 1: plant species. But I am kind of reminded of how
Speaker 1: some products in the human world will end up with
Speaker 1: more than one purpose, Like, for instance, I think of
Speaker 1: bag bomb. Have you ever used bag bomb or seen
Speaker 1: a container of bag bomb?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Explain.
Speaker 1: It's like a little greenkin and I believe it dates
Speaker 1: back to her about eighteen ninety nine, and it was
Speaker 1: it's a salve to put on a cow's udders after milking.
Speaker 1: But people started using it because they realized that, hey,
Speaker 1: you can put this on dry cracked skin. And so
Speaker 1: it's one of these things where it ended up being
Speaker 1: there's this whole additional application of the product, an entire
Speaker 1: different consumer base that kind of sprang out of it.
Speaker 1: It's more complicated, obviously with the case with caffeine and plants,
Speaker 1: but it's almost it almost feels like that where there
Speaker 1: may be one purpose that's kind of driving the evolution
Speaker 1: of this, but then this other use, the other way
Speaker 1: that it can enhance the survivability of the plant emerges
Speaker 1: as well, and so you have these sort of dual
Speaker 1: forces driving it at that point.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Evolution loves to repurpose pre existing morphologies, So
Speaker 2: like a structure or a chemical capacity, or something that
Speaker 2: evolved initially for one reason can always be repurposed when
Speaker 2: a new opportunity presents itself. Yeah, and I don't know
Speaker 2: specifically what the order would have been in any of
Speaker 2: these cases, whether you're talking about coffee plants or tea plants,
Speaker 2: but you can imagine a compound. Initially, there is evolutionary
Speaker 2: pressure favoring the enzymes to produce that compound because it
Speaker 2: I don't know, because it deters predation by animals, or
Speaker 2: because it limits competition when the leaves fall into the soil.
Speaker 2: And then later something like this relationship with pollinators emerges
Speaker 2: using the same compound.
Speaker 1: And then eventually this relationship with human beings who start
Speaker 1: cultivating it. So it's fascinating to think about all of
Speaker 1: these relationships. All Right, we're gonna go ahead and wrap
Speaker 1: up this episode, but we'll be back in the next
Speaker 1: episode with more discussion of tea. In the meantime, of course,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. You might
Speaker 1: be thinking to yourself, well, I have some tidbit I
Speaker 1: want to share about tea, but surely Robert and Joe
Speaker 1: don't want to hear it. No, we want to hear
Speaker 1: it right in. We want to know about your individual
Speaker 1: or cultural differences and appetite for tea. If there are
Speaker 1: other myths or legends or folk tales that you've heard
Speaker 1: about about the origins of tea, write in. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. In the meantime, will remind
Speaker 1: you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 1: Mondays we do listener mail. That's that's when we will
Speaker 1: read the messages that come in about these episodes. On
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact episode,
Speaker 1: and then on Fridays it's Weird House Cinema time. That's
Speaker 1: when we set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about a strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.