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