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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode

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Speaker 1: of the show. This is part two of our series

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Speaker 1: on beans called Reconsider the Bean. This episode originally aired

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Speaker 1: on May Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of

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Speaker 1: our talk about beans. You know, I'm thinking this one's

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Speaker 1: gonna be even even it's like a two bean salad

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Speaker 1: if the last episode was a one bean salad. We've

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Speaker 1: got a lot of great stuff to get to today. Well,

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Speaker 1: this is one I think that especially will well. I

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Speaker 1: don't know if it'll make everyone think about beans in

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Speaker 1: an way, but it might in m chest because I

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Speaker 1: feel like, especially in that first episode, we were kind

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Speaker 1: of approaching or I was certainly approaching it. Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: beans are are very interesting, but they're also kind of mundane,

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Speaker 1: and they're the in this the mundane nature of beings

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Speaker 1: seems to run deep. You have beamed doubt well to

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Speaker 1: a certain extent. But uh, in the space between recording

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Speaker 1: the last episode and uh in recording this one, I

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Speaker 1: found a number of new angles and then um and

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Speaker 1: then leap frogged off rokoff a couple of angles you explored,

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Speaker 1: And I think it really paints a picture of beans

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Speaker 1: as a far weirder um part of our world and

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Speaker 1: are part of our culture and myth making, even if

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Speaker 1: a lot of that weirdness has largely been sort of

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Speaker 1: bled out um of sort of the like popular modern

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Speaker 1: understanding of the food. Yeah, I think that's right. So

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Speaker 1: if you out there still have bean doubts, allow us

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Speaker 1: to try to evaporate them with some with some deft

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Speaker 1: parching through today's episode. So I wanted to start off

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Speaker 1: today by talking about philosophers and beings and a particular

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Speaker 1: bean field slaughter from Greek history slash legend. So there

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Speaker 1: are actually a surprising number of stories about Greek philosophers

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Speaker 1: and beings. There was one that I came across, and

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Speaker 1: in the last episode I mentioned this book that I

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Speaker 1: had been quoting by Ken Alba called Beans a History

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Speaker 1: from Bloomsberry Publishing in and I'm going to refer back

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Speaker 1: to that book a lot in this episode two. But

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Speaker 1: there was one thing I came across, and that that

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Speaker 1: was talking about the cynic philosopher Diogenes, who the one

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Speaker 1: fact you may remember about him, if if nothing else,

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Speaker 1: is that he famously lived in a jar in Athens

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Speaker 1: instead of in a house like on a shelf. No,

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Speaker 1: not on a shelf. I think it was like out

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Speaker 1: in the out in a public square or something. It's

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Speaker 1: like a turned over jar. Uh. And and this is

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Speaker 1: consistent with the idea of the Cynic school of philosophy,

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Speaker 1: which is not about cynicism and the modern English use

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Speaker 1: of the word which means the sort of I don't know,

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Speaker 1: a pessimistic suspicion of others. Uh. The Cynic school of

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Speaker 1: philosophy meant rejecting unnatural social norms and conventions and sort

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Speaker 1: of being true to yourself, for true to your nature.

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Speaker 1: So Diogenes was famous for violating taboos and rejecting the

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Speaker 1: conventional norms of Greek culture in his day. So I

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Speaker 1: think he was known for being dirty, of course, living

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Speaker 1: in a big ceramic jar, for hanging out with dogs.

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Speaker 1: I think, for being nude, and doing inappropriate things in

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Speaker 1: public like if I remember correctly, there's a story that

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Speaker 1: he uh decided to defecate while in the middle of

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Speaker 1: watching a play. But apparently another way that he showed

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Speaker 1: contempt for society's and norms and and the normal sort

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Speaker 1: of like a food valorization scale, is that he made

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Speaker 1: a point of eating a type of being known as lupins. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is a being that was considered in many cases

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Speaker 1: only fit for feeding to animals or for the extremely

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Speaker 1: poor and starving. Now, of course this is not true.

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Speaker 1: Lupins are a perfectly good food if prepared in the

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Speaker 1: right way, and they're part of many uh you know,

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Speaker 1: food traditions around the world. But that, like we talked

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Speaker 1: about in the last episode, there are often negative cultural

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Speaker 1: and especially class associations with certain types of beans. And

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Speaker 1: you can't say lupin's are are a very They're a

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Speaker 1: difficult being. There there are being you really got to

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Speaker 1: get to know because they've got these toxic alkaloids in

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Speaker 1: them that you have to get out of them by

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Speaker 1: soaking the beans for a long time, and supposedly you

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Speaker 1: got to do all this other stuff to make them appetizing.

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Speaker 1: But so I think by eating them Diogenes was sort

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Speaker 1: of doing the equivalent of saying, like, you know, look

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Speaker 1: at me, I'll eat dog food. I don't give a crap.

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Speaker 1: But the the Greek philosopher being connection I really want

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Speaker 1: to talk about is between Beans and Pythagoras. So the

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Speaker 1: ancient Greek philosopher and religious leader Pythagoras lived from about

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Speaker 1: five seventy to four nine d b c E. And

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Speaker 1: though he was extremely influential, it is actually hard to

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Speaker 1: know all that much with certain t about the life

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Speaker 1: of Pythagoras because none of his writing survives, so we

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Speaker 1: have nothing from his own hand, and the earliest accounts

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Speaker 1: of his life and teachings come from hundreds of years

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Speaker 1: after he lived, and they often differ substantially from one another.

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Speaker 1: So when exploring basically any factual claim about Pythagoras and

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Speaker 1: his teachings, there's going to be disagreement within our sources

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Speaker 1: and in the analysis of modern scholars. So unfortunately there's

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Speaker 1: not a lot you can say about him with certainty.

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Speaker 1: But with that in mind, there's a lot of stuff

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Speaker 1: you can say about him that can be understood as

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Speaker 1: according to some sources. Right, we have echoes of Pythagoras,

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Speaker 1: uh As opposed to just Pythagoras like itself in a

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Speaker 1: pure recorded form right. But in these echoes from Pythagoras

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Speaker 1: some really interesting facts emerge. So a bit of basic background.

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Speaker 1: Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, again

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Speaker 1: some time around the year five seventy bc uh. He

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Speaker 1: was said to have traveled extensively around the ancient world

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Speaker 1: and youth, and he eventually founded a sort of religious

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Speaker 1: commune in Croton, a place in the south of Italy.

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Speaker 1: Pythagoras taught some kind of mystical beliefs that unified aspects

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Speaker 1: of metaphysics about the soul and the universe with mathematics

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Speaker 1: and numbers, which seem to occupy some kind of sacred

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Speaker 1: position in his worldview, as well as music which tied

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Speaker 1: in with the mathematical aspects, and also teachings about nutrition

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Speaker 1: and politics, so like in the realm of politics. It

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Speaker 1: seems that the Pythagoreans disdained tyranny, and they really disdained democracy.

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Speaker 1: They favored a kind of oligarchy where the body politics

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Speaker 1: would be ruled by supposedly the best of men, you know,

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Speaker 1: rulers appointed for their virtues. That always works out. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And in terms of nutrition, again there's some disagreement, but

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Speaker 1: the Pythagoreans were widely understood to be vegetarians, eating bread, honey,

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Speaker 1: and vegetables. More on that in a bit now, as

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Speaker 1: with his life and his teachings, there are a bunch

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Speaker 1: of conflicting accounts of the death of Pythagoras. But I

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Speaker 1: wanted to start with one of these stories about his

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Speaker 1: murder at the hands of a mob, and oh god

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Speaker 1: it again it's hard to keep all these straight. But

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Speaker 1: I think in this account, or at least in some

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Speaker 1: of these accounts, he's attacked by a mob that favors democracy.

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Speaker 1: So the people have spoken and and it is time

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Speaker 1: for Pythagoras to be slaughtered. So this account comes from

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Speaker 1: the writing of Diogenes Laertis, who is probably writing sometime

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Speaker 1: around the third century CES. So understand that it's like

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Speaker 1: hundreds of yours, like seven hundred or eight hundred years

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Speaker 1: after Pythagoras lived as a long time later. Oh, and

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Speaker 1: this is translated by a CD younge. Diogenes writes the

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Speaker 1: following Pythagoras died in this manner when he was sitting

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Speaker 1: with some of his companions in Milo's house. Some one

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Speaker 1: of those whom he did not think worthy of admission

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Speaker 1: into it, was excited by envy to set fire to it.

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Speaker 1: But some say that the people of Crotona themselves did this,

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Speaker 1: being afraid lest he might aspire to tyranny, and that

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Speaker 1: Pythagoras was caught as he was trying to escape and

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Speaker 1: coming to a place full of beans, he stopped there,

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Speaker 1: saying that it was better to be caught than to

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Speaker 1: trample on the beans, and better to be slain than

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Speaker 1: to speak. And so he was murdered by those who

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Speaker 1: were pursuing him. And in this way also most of

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Speaker 1: his companions were slain, being in number about forty, but

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Speaker 1: that a very few did escape. So what I when

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Speaker 1: I first read this, I was like the pigeon and

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Speaker 1: moonraker that does a double take? I did that? What? What? So?

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Speaker 1: According to this story, Pythagoras and his followers were running

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Speaker 1: away from a violent mob, and they came to a

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Speaker 1: bean field, and they decided it was better to stop

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Speaker 1: running and get chopped to pieces by the crowd than

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Speaker 1: to step on the beans. This is the first time

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Speaker 1: I'll mention this, but I probably mentioned it again. So

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Speaker 1: in the previo this episode, I made a statement about

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Speaker 1: how how you know beans are less interesting compared to corn,

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Speaker 1: that corn is spook here, that it's children of the corn,

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Speaker 1: not children of the being that uh and and uh

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Speaker 1: and likewise, you know you would you would maybe be

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Speaker 1: afraid of he who lurks behind the rows in the

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Speaker 1: corn field, but not in the bean field. Like there's

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Speaker 1: something about a corn field that can be kind of creepy,

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Speaker 1: especially in Stephen King's stories. But when when we look

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Speaker 1: back through uh in this account, but also in other

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Speaker 1: accounts that will look at later on, we really get

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Speaker 1: the feeling that that the I mean certainly there were

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Speaker 1: no corn fields in Italy at this at this time,

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Speaker 1: like beans bean fields were that place. So if you

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Speaker 1: can imagine a Stephen King's story where Solar, a fringe

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Speaker 1: religious leader on the run, refuses to go into the corn,

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Speaker 1: would rather face death by mob, but then go into

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Speaker 1: the corn, like that makes sense in a Stephen King's story.

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Speaker 1: So just sort of imagine that it's beans instead of

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Speaker 1: corn in the Stephen king universe, and I feel like

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Speaker 1: we get an appropriate idea of how Pythagoras and his

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Speaker 1: followers are are believed to have felt at this point right,

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Speaker 1: at least according to this story, But yeah, you're you're

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Speaker 1: exactly right. I love it. And and and there are other

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Speaker 1: versions of the story, by the way, particularly told by

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Speaker 1: one author named Iamblicus, who say that it was not

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Speaker 1: Pythagoras himself who died because he wouldn't cross a bean field,

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Speaker 1: but that it was a cadre of his disciples who

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Speaker 1: were chased to the edge of the field and then

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Speaker 1: accepted this gruesome death rather than cross it. And in

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Speaker 1: iamblicus version in particular, there's this detail that the last

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Speaker 1: member of pythagoras Is followers who were slain was a

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Speaker 1: pregnant woman named Timyka, who bit off her own tongue

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Speaker 1: rather than reveal the secret of why the beans were prohibited.

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Speaker 1: That's more, that's more walking behind the rose. I think, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's some straight up Stephen king jus right there. Now.

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Speaker 1: As I mentioned, there are other accounts of the death

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Speaker 1: of Pythagoras, But what we know is that either this

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Speaker 1: account is in some way based on the truth, or

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Speaker 1: if not, it was at least considered plausible enough to

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Speaker 1: believe given what people knew about Pythagoras in the ancient world,

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Speaker 1: and it seems that one of the things widely known

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Speaker 1: about him was that he really disdained beans. Have come

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Speaker 1: across some really good illustrations of him, you know, just

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Speaker 1: saying like no to beans. Like he's standing next to

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Speaker 1: a bunch of beans and he's like, uh yeah, both

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Speaker 1: hands up, looking away, get away. So why on earth

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Speaker 1: would anybody believe that that this ancient Greek religious leader

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Speaker 1: would rather die a painful, bloody death than trespass the

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Speaker 1: bean field. Well, there are a ton of possible answers,

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Speaker 1: and in a way, I think they're all fascinating. But

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Speaker 1: here's one of the main ones that I wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about, and we will go through a number here,

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Speaker 1: as as explored by Alba in his book, But one

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Speaker 1: of the main things comes down to a teaching that

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Speaker 1: is consistently associated with Pythagoras in the earliest writings about

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Speaker 1: his life, which is that he taught the metaphysical doctrine

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Speaker 1: known as metam psychosis, which is usually translated into English

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Speaker 1: as the transmigration of souls. This is actually very similar

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Speaker 1: to other ideas of reincarnation that you might have encountered before.

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Speaker 1: So according to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.

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Speaker 1: The Pythagoreans believed that there was an immaterial and immortal

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Speaker 1: soul that was separate from the body. This soul would

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Speaker 1: survive the death of the body, and after the death

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Speaker 1: of the body, the soul would be installed in a

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Speaker 1: new body, possibly the body of another human or another animal.

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Speaker 1: And this probably connects to one of the other Pythagorean

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Speaker 1: teachings that I mentioned before, which is that it's widely

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Speaker 1: understood that the Pythagoreans preached against the eating of meat.

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Speaker 1: He and his followers were said to be vegetarians. And

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Speaker 1: if if he was both a vegetarian and a believer

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Speaker 1: that that human souls and animal souls would transmigrate back

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Speaker 1: and forth into human and animal bodies, you can kind

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Speaker 1: of see how these beliefs would fit together, like if

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Speaker 1: you were to eat a chicken or a cow, you

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Speaker 1: might literally be cannibalizing a dead relative. Now, if this

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Speaker 1: is truly what Pythagoras taught, it is not known for

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Speaker 1: sure where he got this idea, though it's been speculated

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Speaker 1: that he could have acquired it from Indian thought during

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Speaker 1: his travels. It has has said that he traveled all

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Speaker 1: over the ancient world. But where this idea comes from,

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Speaker 1: we just don't know. Yeah, I mean it obviously it

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Speaker 1: sounds like a in many ways, like a less robust

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Speaker 1: version of of reincarnation as you encounter it in in

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Speaker 1: in Buddhism and Hinduism. Uh. But yeah, so it would

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Speaker 1: be interesting if this was an idea that he picked

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Speaker 1: up in his travels. There are some ancient authors, like

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Speaker 1: I recall reading somewhere that I think it might have

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Speaker 1: been Herodotus who said that Pythagoras got this idea from

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Speaker 1: the Egyptians. But I don't think there's any indication that

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Speaker 1: Egyptian religion ever featured reincarnation in this way, so that

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Speaker 1: seems to be probably a mistake on herodotus part. Now,

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Speaker 1: a slight variation on the reasoning here is just that

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Speaker 1: vegetarianism was considered consistent with a non violent way of

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Speaker 1: life preached by the Pythagoreans. But so this makes sense, right.

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Speaker 1: You don't know the exact reason, but it would seem

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Speaker 1: to all sort of fit together if he believed in

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Speaker 1: the transmigration of souls and also preached vegetarianism that you know,

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Speaker 1: don't eat animals because they might have souls that you

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Speaker 1: would you know, wouldn't want to be eating in them.

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Speaker 1: But then there's this other strange dietary prohibition of the

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Speaker 1: Pythagorean cult, which is that Pythagoras allegedly forbade his followers

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Speaker 1: to eat beans, which again, modern vegetarians and vegans, you know,

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Speaker 1: you know that you need the beans. Yeah, exacting, and

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Speaker 1: it seems counterintuitive in several ways. Yes, this is a

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Speaker 1: problem right now. At the time, within Greek culture, these

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Speaker 1: would have been over overwhelmingly. This would have been referring

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Speaker 1: to fava beans, like the Faziola's genus that gives rise

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Speaker 1: to many of the common beans we eat today. That

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Speaker 1: is a genus that comes from the America's and had

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Speaker 1: not crossed the the Atlantic yet. So probably what they're

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Speaker 1: talking about here are fava beans. So though I guess

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Speaker 1: there could have been lentils and stuff too, but it

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Speaker 1: seems they were referring to fava beans, and fava beans

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Speaker 1: were a common source of food for people and for

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Speaker 1: grazing animals like for cattle in the Mediterranean at the time.

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Speaker 1: Of course, beans are an especially important food if you're

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Speaker 1: a vegetarian, So why would Pythagoras have forbidden not only

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Speaker 1: eating them, but even treading upon them, even going into

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Speaker 1: a field where they're being grown. Well, here I'm want

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Speaker 1: to quote from Albola's book. Quote. The simplest and perhaps

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Speaker 1: most plausible explanation is that beans are part of the

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Speaker 1: whole cycle of reincarnation and they house human souls. To

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Speaker 1: eat a bean is thus a form of murder. This

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Speaker 1: was Varros explanation, and Orphic Fragment puts it like this,

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Speaker 1: eating beans and gnawing on the heads of one's parents

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Speaker 1: are one and the same. I think that's a sufficiently

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Speaker 1: vivid image, right, Like you you want to eat beans?

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Speaker 1: How would you feel about chewing on your dad's head?

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Speaker 1: It's very it's very dantee and actually it makes me

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Speaker 1: think of Count Ugolino and Archbishop grou Giery. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: so yeah, the idea here would be that beans contain souls,

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Speaker 1: potentially human souls. Now there's more. Now I want to

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Speaker 1: get into more explanation on that mode of thinking in

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Speaker 1: a bit, But first I also just wanted to mention

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Speaker 1: some alternative explanations offered by other writers over the centuries,

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Speaker 1: which Albola sort of catalogs and discusses. Now, there are

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Speaker 1: some explanations for the being prohibition that would be based

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Speaker 1: in politics, So I think these would be more sort

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Speaker 1: of metaphorical interpretations of the idea that the Pythagoras would

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Speaker 1: would have being scorn. One idea here is that beans

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Speaker 1: were a symbol of democracy, the democracy that Pythagoras hated,

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Speaker 1: because beans were used to cast votes. Right, you might

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Speaker 1: have a jar where if you want to vote ya,

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Speaker 1: you put in a black bean, and if you want

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Speaker 1: to vote nay, put in a white bean, or maybe

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Speaker 1: you put in different jars. You something like that. It

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Speaker 1: can be a it can be a way to tally

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Speaker 1: anonymous votes. Of course in a proper oligarchy. Uh, nobody

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Speaker 1: would need to vote with beans, right, that's right, the

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Speaker 1: best rule. And then do you just keep your beans

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Speaker 1: at home or in the field? Uh? Yeah, or you

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Speaker 1: or you just keep them away. But also the idea

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Speaker 1: here is that there could be a political implication, which

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Speaker 1: is just that beans are the food of the working class,

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Speaker 1: whereas meat was preferred by the rich elites, and probably

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Speaker 1: in Pythagoras's view, the better people, the people who deserve

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Speaker 1: to rule because of their virtues would have been associated

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Speaker 1: with meat, while you know, whereas the people who don't

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Speaker 1: know how to rule a city, that they would be

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Speaker 1: the people eating beans. I guess one way the one

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Speaker 1: thing we have to sort of think about with this,

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Speaker 1: this idea of this being the part of the pythagora

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Speaker 1: and belief system is to realize too that like, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean they were necessarily going out trying to liberate

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Speaker 1: the bean fields or or necessarily trying to change the

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Speaker 1: way that other groups UH consumed food. They could have

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Speaker 1: been very like closed off from them and saying this

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Speaker 1: is how we live, this is and then we are

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Speaker 1: better for it. Um. I think that's that's kind of

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Speaker 1: a distinction. I think in general we have to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind when thinking about different religious religious groups in

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Speaker 1: the contemporary world for sure, but also just historically, that

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Speaker 1: that not every religious group is going to be about

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Speaker 1: about spreading their belief system to all around them, right,

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Speaker 1: and not all like religious dietary restrictions are meant to

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Speaker 1: be a universal rule. Right. For example, I think there

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Speaker 1: are a lot of religious scholars of say like Judaism

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Speaker 1: and Islam that would say, like prohibitions on pork and

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Speaker 1: other types of food that are prohibited within that religion

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Speaker 1: are not meant to be universal prohibitions, but their prohibitions

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Speaker 1: for the faithful. Right. But then again, I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if we That's a possibility always when you're considering dietary

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Speaker 1: restrictions that are advocated by religious groups. But I do

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Speaker 1: recall coming across at least one legend, though one for

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Speaker 1: I don't recall the source of this, where Pythagoras was

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Speaker 1: said to have tried to convince a cow not to

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Speaker 1: eat fava beans. So if you're if you're preaching the cows,

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Speaker 1: that's probably it probably means you want all humans to

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Speaker 1: obey as well, right, But then again, that also sounds

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Speaker 1: like a perfect parody of someone whose belief system you're

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Speaker 1: you don't agree with, don't completely understand. You're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I bet Pathagoras is out there. What's he gonna do?

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Speaker 1: Is gonna tell the cows not eat beans? Yeah? That though,

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Speaker 1: that that could very well be the context there. Um, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So there are other possible explanations. One is more nutritional

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Speaker 1: and psychological, you know, pretty straightforward, beans give you gas,

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Speaker 1: and gas prevents you from having a clear head, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of ancient philosophers were really concerned about like

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Speaker 1: cutting things out that would cause problems in the body,

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Speaker 1: that would interfere with you having clear thinking. You gotta

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Speaker 1: have a clear head to live a good life, and

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Speaker 1: so you can't be going around farting. You know, this

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Speaker 1: is this is interesting because I was I was thinking

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Speaker 1: about this like it in terms of how we think

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Speaker 1: about flatulence and plate us. We it's easy to have

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Speaker 1: a very like one to one vision of that, you know,

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Speaker 1: the idea of like, well, farting is distracting and you

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Speaker 1: don't want to do it, that's gonna mess with your

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Speaker 1: mental um outlook, or you know, we'll or we'll get

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Speaker 1: into some of these ideas later where it's like, well,

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Speaker 1: a fart is a ghost. You don't want ghosts coming

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Speaker 1: out of your but you know that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: But uh, there's an idea that I ran across in

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Speaker 1: a book that I was I was really enjoying reading

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Speaker 1: through a book called Plants of Life Plants of Death

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Speaker 1: by Frederick J. Simoons and We which which deals not

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Speaker 1: not only with beans but various other plants entered traditions

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Speaker 1: in a number of different cultures in the East and

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Speaker 1: in the West, and uh in Africa, etcetera, about how

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Speaker 1: there are these different ideas of life and death wrapped

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Speaker 1: up in them. And in getting into the idea of

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Speaker 1: of beans and flatulens and in discussing Pythagorean bean bands, uh,

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Speaker 1: he discussed several of the possibilities, but but one that

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Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought about was the connection between flatuns

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Speaker 1: and bad dreams. And he cred it's uh Fridericus bomb

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Speaker 1: in this idea. But I've also read that Diogenes touched

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Speaker 1: on this in considering Pythagorean ideas quote one should abstain

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Speaker 1: from fava beans since they are full of wind and

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Speaker 1: take part in the soul. And if one abstains from

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Speaker 1: from them, one stomach will be less noisy, and this

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Speaker 1: is key, one's dreams will be less oppressive and calmer. Now,

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Speaker 1: that quote attributed to uh uh two Diogenes was brought

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Speaker 1: up in a l A Times article on beings from

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Speaker 1: by Russ Parsons. But I thought that was that that

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Speaker 1: was interesting, perhaps more telling. Yeah, if you're if your

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Speaker 1: sleep is troubled, if your dreams are troubled, troubled because

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Speaker 1: you're you're going to bed gassy with beans, then that

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Speaker 1: that could very well darken your outlook on life or

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Speaker 1: or mess with your head, especially in an age where

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Speaker 1: you have, you know, maybe more supernatural ideas. Uh. Concerning

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Speaker 1: dream teams and the interpretation of dreams, Yeah, that's really interesting.

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Speaker 1: But I mean another way to think about it, though,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's like it's kinda like the coach of

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Speaker 1: the chess team is also going to be like telling

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Speaker 1: all of their players, like, don't eat cookies right before

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Speaker 1: you don't eat pickles when you're going to bet or something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're trying to keep their people in in like ship shape. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Like reading through some of the other stuff in Simons book,

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Speaker 1: there's you get into a lot of their prohibitions against

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Speaker 1: foods because their connection to dreams, but also prohibitions against

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Speaker 1: foods that could be consumed in a dream. Like it's

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Speaker 1: not not that you shouldn't eat basil before you go

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Speaker 1: to bed, but you've offered basil within the dream you

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Speaker 1: should abstain. Um. Now, I was looking for more as

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Speaker 1: to promise I can't keep Yeah, yeah, I mean once

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Speaker 1: you're in the dream, and then not to say nothing

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Speaker 1: of the dream within a dream. Um. But but I

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Speaker 1: was looking around it for a little bit more about this,

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Speaker 1: And I found an echo of this sentiment in Iranian

419
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Speaker 1: tried traditional medicine uh in the two thousand fourteen paper

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Speaker 1: Insomnia and Iranian Traditional Medicine by face of Body at

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Speaker 1: all UH. Here's the quote. Upward movement of rancid vapors

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Speaker 1: towards the brain due to eating flatulent and vaporous foods beans, lintel,

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Speaker 1: leak and finn of Greek cause upward movement of vapor

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Speaker 1: towards the head, heavy headed, feeling headache, depraved, delusion, nightmares,

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Speaker 1: and consequently awaking at night and fearing during sleep. So yeah,

426
00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:29,040
Speaker 1: I think after reading that, I'm even more convinced. Yeah,

427
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:31,919
Speaker 1: if you're if you're you know, gassy and full of

428
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:35,399
Speaker 1: nightmares and flatus is waking you up in the night. Um,

429
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:38,000
Speaker 1: I could see where that could lead into some ideas that, yes,

430
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: these are some foods that should be avoided, certainly before

431
00:23:41,240 --> 00:23:42,920
Speaker 1: you go to bed, but maybe in general if the

432
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:45,199
Speaker 1: if the dreams are bad enough, well that makes me

433
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:47,919
Speaker 1: want to respond to to to these folk beliefs with

434
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,719
Speaker 1: some actual science on farting and beans. So what if

435
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: we take a brief little detail here on the science

436
00:23:52,880 --> 00:24:02,520
Speaker 1: of lagoons and flatulence. Yeah, let's get down to it. Okay.

437
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:06,000
Speaker 1: So the question is do beans cause flatulence? That seems

438
00:24:06,040 --> 00:24:09,159
Speaker 1: to be a widely believed association, and if so, why

439
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: do they cause flatulence? Well, the answer seems to be yes,

440
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:16,640
Speaker 1: they do, but maybe not as much as you might think,

441
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:19,639
Speaker 1: and that there are very good, well known reasons why

442
00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:23,840
Speaker 1: they cause flatulence. So the gas produced during the digestion

443
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 1: of beans is actually not produced by the cells of

444
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: your body themselves, but by your gut microbiota, the bacteria,

445
00:24:32,320 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 1: particularly in your large intestine that breakdown molecules that your

446
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: own metabolism sort of gives up. On dried beans even

447
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 1: after cooking, usually contain compounds known as oligo saccharides, and

448
00:24:45,600 --> 00:24:48,680
Speaker 1: I found an article in the Journal of Nutrition explaining this.

449
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: This was by in fact, I wonder if we have

450
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: cited this article before. It may have come up in

451
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: our Pardonomicon episode several years back. Um, but this is

452
00:24:58,080 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 1: by Donna M. Wyndham and Andrea M. Hutchins from the

453
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:06,280
Speaker 1: Nutrition Journal, called Perceptions of Flatulence from being consumption among

454
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,199
Speaker 1: adults in three Feeding Studies. This was published in two

455
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:11,679
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and so I just wanted to look at

456
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 1: the relevant paragraph where they break down the metabolic pathway

457
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: that causes flatulence as a result of eating dried beans.

458
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: So quote, most lagoons contain relatively high amounts of both

459
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: dietary fiber and resistant starches. These would be the oligosaccharides

460
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: I just mentioned. The soluble oligosaccharides found in lagoons are

461
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 1: not digestible by human intestinal enzymes alone. Instead, oligosaccharides such

462
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:42,240
Speaker 1: as raphinos and stachios are broken down by bacterial fermentation

463
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,879
Speaker 1: in the intestines. Although some rectal gas is due to

464
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 1: the ingestion of air, the majority of flatulence is produced

465
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:54,440
Speaker 1: from bacterial fermentation. The byproducts of this degradation are hydrogen,

466
00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:59,919
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, methane, and sometimes sulfur depending on the bacteria.

467
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: Normal intestinal processes move these gases out of the body

468
00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:07,359
Speaker 1: in the form of flat us. So the primary cause

469
00:26:07,560 --> 00:26:11,440
Speaker 1: of of beans leading to farts is the action of

470
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 1: the bacteria in the gut. I think specifically the large

471
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 1: intestine fermenting these starches that the body can't break down

472
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: on its own these oligo saccharides, and the authors also

473
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 1: point out that while there is evidence that eating beans

474
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:30,159
Speaker 1: can increase flatulence on average, there is a lot of

475
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: individual variations, so they're not going to increase flatulence or

476
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: increase it in the in the at the same rate

477
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: for everybody. UH to quote from the results of their

478
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: feeding studies a measuring flatulence quote, less than fifty percent

479
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: reported increased flatulence from eating pinto or baked beans during

480
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: the first week of each trial. Only nineteen percent had

481
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: a flatulence increase. With black eyed peas a small percentage.

482
00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: Three to eleven percent reported increased flatulence across the three studies,

483
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 1: even on control diets without flatulence producing components and so yes,

484
00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 1: it does appear that on average, beans do increase flatulence,

485
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: but they say that people's concerns about excess farting from

486
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 1: eating beans maybe exaggerated compared to how much difference they

487
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: actually make. Now, coming back to a note that's explored

488
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 1: an Albola's book on this mentioning that these these starches

489
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:27,000
Speaker 1: that can't be broken down by the body itself but

490
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: have to be fermented by the bacteria in the gut,

491
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,520
Speaker 1: these oligo saccharides, they have to be fermented in the

492
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:37,359
Speaker 1: large intestine, specifically as a product of eating dried beans,

493
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,800
Speaker 1: not fresh beans. And this is interesting because you can

494
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:44,439
Speaker 1: see how that has um sort of it translates to

495
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: the differing reputations of these vegetables. Like fresh green peas

496
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:52,919
Speaker 1: are beans that they are of the family Fabaci, and

497
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,880
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody link green peas to flatulence. They're

498
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:01,080
Speaker 1: eaten fresh. Fresh green beans are beings. They're beings still

499
00:28:01,119 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: in their pods. They're actually the common being Fasiolus vulgaris.

500
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,159
Speaker 1: And yet they don't have this association either, so they

501
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 1: don't seem to create these oligo saccharide problems. But there's

502
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 1: a trade off, of course, which is that by being

503
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: served fresh, they have to be more they have to

504
00:28:15,800 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: be served more seasonally, or they have to be frozen.

505
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 1: They don't offer the same advantages in terms of the

506
00:28:21,760 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: simplicity and durability of their storage and shelf life version

507
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: that that you get from dried beans. But anyway, Okay,

508
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:31,400
Speaker 1: scientific digression on flatulence done Now, I want to move

509
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:35,159
Speaker 1: back to albola cataloging the reasons that Pythagoras might have

510
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 1: disdained the eating of beans. So another explanation that has

511
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 1: been given by writers over the years is, well, what

512
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:43,560
Speaker 1: if it's just because beans are too delicious, you know

513
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: that this is basically a prohibition against gluttony. This is

514
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: perhaps plausible, though it doesn't seem to fit with most

515
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: of the other thinking of the time that looked on

516
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: beans not as like a decadent luxury, but as like

517
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,080
Speaker 1: the exact opposite of that. Maybe maybe this was just

518
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: offered by some ancient writer who personally really loved beans,

519
00:29:04,960 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: or perhaps you know, the idea that it's what it's

520
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: something available in bulk enough that that more people can

521
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: be gluttonous about it. I don't know, maybe I mean,

522
00:29:14,040 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: but but yeah, you don't see that coming up a

523
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,040
Speaker 1: lot like the bean is not the symbol of gluttony.

524
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,480
Speaker 1: You don't think of Uh well no, no, I don't

525
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: think you do. You don't think of the mean like

526
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: it again, it is. It is often attributed as sort

527
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:28,400
Speaker 1: of the food of the common man. Okay, now we're

528
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: going to get into sexual biomagical explanations of which there

529
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: are a number. So in this category we get into

530
00:29:36,480 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 1: some really weird territory under this explanation, and this was

531
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: this was again put forward by a number of ancient

532
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: writers who were commenting on abstention from beings. Uh. In

533
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: this explanation, beans are to be avoided because, in various ways,

534
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 1: they either resemble human genitals or they have something to

535
00:29:56,160 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: do with sex, procreation, or regenerative power. And there there

536
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: are several ancient stories that compare fava beans in particular

537
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: to female genitals. But there's another one that connects all

538
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:11,479
Speaker 1: the way back to the transmigration of souls explanation. And

539
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 1: this goes from the connection to of beans to testicles.

540
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,960
Speaker 1: Here I want to read from Albala again. Quote Aristotle

541
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 1: picks up this thread when he explains that beans are

542
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: like testicles, but adds that they are like the gates

543
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:31,120
Speaker 1: of hades in being the only plant that has no joints.

544
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: That's some great Aristotle logic. Now what would that mean? Well,

545
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: Albila continues that is, bean stems are hollow and have

546
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: no nodes, and thus serve as a kind of elevator

547
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: shaft from the underworld, the means of exchange for souls. Actually,

548
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,040
Speaker 1: they are specifically compared to a ladder. And this makes

549
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: sense if one has ever seen fava bean pods protruding

550
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: horizontally from a plant. They do resemble a ladder. This

551
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: would explain the reluctant to run through a bean field

552
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,480
Speaker 1: and trample the stems, as well as the ban on

553
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: picking the pods or rungs of the ladder. In short order,

554
00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:11,400
Speaker 1: Aristotle also claimed that the beans were avoided because they

555
00:31:11,440 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: are like the form of the universe, perhaps again a

556
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: veiled reference to their regenerative power. Even otter is the

557
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: idea that a nibbled being leaf in the sun will

558
00:31:23,160 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: smell like semen or the blood of a murdered person,

559
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 1: which must smell different from ordinary blood. Uh. The good

560
00:31:31,360 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: editorializing from all their uh. In any case, all of

561
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: these notions point to the idea that beings are some

562
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: transitional form of human in the great transmigration of souls. Yeah,

563
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: this one is putting flatulence in my brain. The papers

564
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: are floating up. This is the kind of a statement

565
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 1: here that it can feel like like genuine madness setting

566
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 1: in you know where, where too many connections are made

567
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: between unrelated things and and then you end up seeing

568
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 1: like the human soul in everything around you. Um, it

569
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: just sounds like just falling into the philosophic deep end

570
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: and sinking to the bottom. Well, we're going to sink

571
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: even farther the same types of associations they keep going on.

572
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: So Albola explores some linguistic connections between ancient words for

573
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 1: beings in various languages, I think primarily in like Indo

574
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 1: European languages, and associations between that and words for swelling

575
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 1: or rotund nous, which could in some ways connect to

576
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: ideas of swelling up with flatulence, but also to pregnancy, fertility,

577
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: in the generation of life, and in the latter vein.

578
00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: Many ancient authors seem to make an association that seems

579
00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: quite bizarre, probably to most modern listeners, but an association

580
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: between foods that make you fart and foods that make

581
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: you sexually potent. Again. This there's basically a linguistic conceptual

582
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 1: logic to it, especially in ancient Greek thought, and Albola

583
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 1: explains it like this, So, so you've got numa, you know,

584
00:33:06,560 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: this is where we get like the word pneumatic p

585
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: n e u m A meaning air or breath or soul.

586
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 1: The Latin equivalent would be anima, as in like animated,

587
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: like an animal is. So there's already this existing linguistic

588
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: association between like the breath or the gas and and

589
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: what the soul is and that this is the principle

590
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: that animates a being and makes it alive. So like

591
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 1: in much ancient Greek thought, when you die, your your

592
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: breath leaves you, you know, like the gas of your

593
00:33:37,400 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: soul evaporates from your body. And also in the creation

594
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: of life, there's a breathing of life into things as

595
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,840
Speaker 1: an exchange of gas. Literally. Elbow rights that the numa

596
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:51,720
Speaker 1: quote was the basic principle of life, and it is

597
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: generated in the stomach in the form of gas, just

598
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: as it is transferred in the act of reproduction. This

599
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: also explains the bizoe our association among authors like plenty

600
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: of flatulence with the libido. In other words, eating beans

601
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 1: not only makes you fart, it helps you conceive the

602
00:34:10,160 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 1: being actually contains the regenerative force, and so this can

603
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:18,320
Speaker 1: be applied in multiple different ways. Elbow rights that, uh

604
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: that you know, you may want to eat beans to

605
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: absorb the power of these souls if you're trying to

606
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: like stimulate the farting and the libido part of your body.

607
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: But like the pythagoreans, you might do want to do

608
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: the opposite and avoid eating these beans because of the

609
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: sort of like windy regenerative soul power that's contained within them.

610
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: Very weird. Now, we've been exploring a lot of the

611
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: explanations that lie behind this in terms of I don't know,

612
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: linguistic associations and religious thinking and stuff, but there are

613
00:34:49,800 --> 00:34:54,719
Speaker 1: also some biological realities that Elbola explores that could possibly

614
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,239
Speaker 1: have to do with beans uh and and how they

615
00:34:57,239 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 1: could have influenced the creation of this story about byThe Aggaras.

616
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:04,160
Speaker 1: These following explanations that I'm going to mention are not

617
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 1: things that were explored by any ancient writers. These are

618
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 1: are modern explanations that have been offered. And the first

619
00:35:11,239 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 1: is based on a heritable genetic condition that causes an

620
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: enzyme deficiency. So most people can eat fava beans and

621
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:24,880
Speaker 1: breathe the pollen of fava bean flowers and they're just fine.

622
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: But there is a very rare inherited medical condition that

623
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:35,000
Speaker 1: causes a specific enzyme deficiency in the body, which can

624
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: in turn cause catastrophic reactions to the ingestion of fava

625
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 1: beans or fava bean pollen uh. And this condition is

626
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: known as favi is um, caused by an underlying glucose

627
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 1: six phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency or G six p d D.

628
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:55,640
Speaker 1: People with G six p d D can have horrible,

629
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 1: even deadly reactions to fava beans in their pollen, and

630
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:02,840
Speaker 1: if a person with this condition eats fresh raw fava beans,

631
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:06,920
Speaker 1: it can lead to a reaction called acute hemolytic anemia,

632
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: or the sudden destruction of copious amounts of the body's

633
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: red blood cells now outwardly. This can result in symptoms

634
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 1: like fatigue, difficulty breathing, fever, yellowing of the skin, dark urine,

635
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 1: and in extreme cases, it can even be fatal. So

636
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:28,240
Speaker 1: a question some modern scholars have posed is could Pythagoras

637
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 1: have prohibited fava beans because he witnessed somebody having an

638
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 1: acute reaction due to G six p d D. Interesting possibility,

639
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: but it seems like one of the I mean, there

640
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: are a lot of explanations like this for records of

641
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: the ancient world that like fit together in interesting ways.

642
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: But I didn't. I don't feel like there's any particular

643
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: reason to favor this hypothesis. No, I mean, it seems plausible.

644
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: You know, either he witnessed this or he heard accounts

645
00:36:57,080 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: of this happening. Hey, some people have been known to

646
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,880
Speaker 1: eat java beans and grow, you know, extremely ill or

647
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,840
Speaker 1: even die. But yeah, if we don't have any specific

648
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: cases for it, specific instances in in the writing, then yeah,

649
00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:13,040
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should put too much emphasis

650
00:37:13,040 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: on a yea. One thing is it is interesting about

651
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: the idea of avoiding not just eating the beans, but

652
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: avoiding running into a bean field, like if the pollen

653
00:37:20,719 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 1: could even trigger the reaction. I mean, that's kind of interesting.

654
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:26,880
Speaker 1: You could definitely see it potentially playing into some of

655
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 1: these ideas, especially if we get when we get more

656
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:34,239
Speaker 1: and more into this, this this realization that the bean

657
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,760
Speaker 1: fear and the being holiness here is by no means

658
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:41,880
Speaker 1: just uh, something that jumped out of Pythagoras's head, right,

659
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: This seems to have been a cultural idea, perhaps a

660
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: widespread cultural idea, but we'll get more into that in

661
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: a minute. Now. Another interesting scientific observation, Again, this is

662
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: not from ancient interpreters. This one might be original to

663
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 1: all below, but at least it's it's not ancient. Um.

664
00:37:59,600 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 1: This could complement the previous evidence that Pythagoras believed beings

665
00:38:03,760 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: to contain souls, and the simple fact here is that

666
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:13,560
Speaker 1: sometimes it looks like being plants bleed yeah, there's a

667
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:17,880
Speaker 1: chain of biological causes at work here. Essentially, being roots

668
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:23,279
Speaker 1: can become infected by a bacterium known as rhizobium, and

669
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: these bacteria thrive in tiny little oxygen starved chambers within

670
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:32,400
Speaker 1: the roots or nodes on the roots, and the bacteria

671
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 1: exists in a mutualistic relationship with the bean plants. So

672
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: the bacterium is, according to Albola, able to extract ammonium

673
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: nitrate from the atmosphere, which it shares with the plant,

674
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:44,800
Speaker 1: which is good for the plant. And then the plant

675
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:48,319
Speaker 1: provides these little anaerobic nodes for the bacteria to live

676
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,720
Speaker 1: on and in, and they both create proteins that bind

677
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 1: whatever free oxygen is available with the help of iron molecules.

678
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 1: This might be familiar to people who an anything about

679
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:05,280
Speaker 1: animal biology or medical science. Albolo rights quote. This protein

680
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:09,439
Speaker 1: is called leg hemoglobin and functions much in the same

681
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:14,240
Speaker 1: way hemoglobin does in our blood, binding oxygen with iron

682
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:19,240
Speaker 1: for our bodies to use in cellular respiration. Moreover, when cut,

683
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:25,279
Speaker 1: the nodes are red exactly like blood. So imagine being

684
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: in the ancient world. You cut open a bean plant,

685
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: there are parts of it that if you cut cut

686
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:33,240
Speaker 1: open might bleed or look like they're filled with blood,

687
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: and these little nodes would look red like human blood

688
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 1: for basically the same reason that human blood is read. Now,

689
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: I know a lot of you are probably thinking right now,

690
00:39:43,040 --> 00:39:47,280
Speaker 1: you're thinking, well, I bet Pythagoras just hated beats then, um,

691
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 1: And you know, actually, according to Simmons, we do see

692
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 1: aversion to beats in some cultures. He he mentions prohibitions

693
00:39:56,320 --> 00:40:00,239
Speaker 1: against quote certain plants as food or temple offer rings

694
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,760
Speaker 1: because their coats, flesh, or juice are similar to blood

695
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: and meat in color. So he cites examples members of

696
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: the Bannaya caste of the of the Punjab with meat

697
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:16,280
Speaker 1: prohibitions here extending two carrots, turnips, onions, and red lentils.

698
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 1: Also the prohibition of beat roots and tomatoes at Brahmin

699
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 1: meals and and Gujarat as well as Havoc Brahmin's in

700
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: South India, among others. And he mentions, um, how Frasier

701
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:31,719
Speaker 1: got into this a bit as well, the idea of

702
00:40:31,760 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 1: like similarity between things. Uh So, so that's Interating's not

703
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 1: again not specifically talking about Pathagoras in this instance, but

704
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: we do see this sort of thing in other cultures

705
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: enough to realize it's you know, it's kind of a universal, uh,

706
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:49,359
Speaker 1: phenomena of of of of humans engaging with their food.

707
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: Sometimes the food reminds you too much of a thing

708
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 1: that is prohibited, and the prohibition will extend to those things.

709
00:40:55,680 --> 00:40:59,120
Speaker 1: If not in an every day way, then certainly within

710
00:40:59,160 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: the realm of sacred ritual. When it comes to beat specifically,

711
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:05,880
Speaker 1: I can imagine another cause for for for beat scorn,

712
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 1: which would be possible horror at going to the bathroom

713
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: after consuming beats, which can be even though it doesn't

714
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:16,320
Speaker 1: hurt you, it just visually you could be quite alarming. Yes, yeah,

715
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,799
Speaker 1: new parents always warn your child the first time they

716
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: have a lot of beats or or blue cupcakes, either one.

717
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: Now I mentioned the idea that there, you know, this

718
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: idea of being weirdness and beans and death and reproduction

719
00:41:31,520 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: and so forth, that it doesn't just emerge right out

720
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: of Pythagoras's head, that it is perhaps more universal. That's

721
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: an argument that Simmons makes in his book. Uh. He

722
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 1: writes quote, since parallels to Pythagoraean beliefs about the fava

723
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:48,960
Speaker 1: being are found in the being beliefs involving various species

724
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: of beans of widely scattered non Indo European people's in Uganda, India, Japan,

725
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:58,000
Speaker 1: New Guinea, and the New World. We are likely dealing

726
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:02,160
Speaker 1: with basic human reactions to beans or lagoons in general,

727
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Yeah, okay, so this would

728
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 1: be the idea that since there's there are similar kinds

729
00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:12,879
Speaker 1: of being fascination and being magical beliefs in all these

730
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: different cultures that don't necessarily share like say, language or

731
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:20,800
Speaker 1: cooking traditions or anything like that, it might be something

732
00:42:20,880 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: more just like about the raw biology of beans that

733
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 1: causes people to have these sort of thoughts like maybe

734
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 1: the ways they look or things they do when you

735
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: eat them, Yes, and just thinking too hard and too

736
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: long about how they relate to our own worldview and

737
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:38,879
Speaker 1: magical ideas. At this point, I want to I want

738
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: to run through just a few other being uh ideas

739
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: that that that Frederick J. Simmons brings up in Plants

740
00:42:46,520 --> 00:42:49,240
Speaker 1: of Life Plants of Death. These these are all related

741
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: to so what I loosely categorized as being death folk

742
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: reliefs uh sort of leaning into the Stephen king esque

743
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:01,320
Speaker 1: um world of of of beans in the bean field

744
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: being a place of death, a pay, a place of

745
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: connection to the underworld and potentially rebirth. Okay, so we're

746
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: gonna walk behind the pods, yes, so um uh. He

747
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 1: points out that there was a British folk belief that

748
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 1: pregnant women should not eat beans because it could impact

749
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:22,120
Speaker 1: the child mentally. Additionally, bean blossoms have an evil reputation

750
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:25,840
Speaker 1: in Northern and Midland England in coal mining districts, because

751
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,879
Speaker 1: it was long held that coal mining accidents were far

752
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 1: more likely to occur when bean plants were blossoming. He

753
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,319
Speaker 1: also writes that, according to German folk belief, beans and

754
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: peas were quote cult foods of demons, so it was

755
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:42,200
Speaker 1: best not to eat them on nights that were quote

756
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 1: favorable for magical divination. Now I have to admit that

757
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: that all kind of sounds like a riddle to me.

758
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:50,360
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure what that would mean, You like,

759
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 1: don't get down with the fava beans on vol purchase knocked. Yeah, yeah,

760
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: something like that. I would imagine, um uh. Because and

761
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: and certainly there's some more examples where we see beans

762
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 1: connected to specific uh dates, specific traditional festivals. Because also

763
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 1: in Germany there were superstitions that eating peas on the

764
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 1: twelfth night, that's the twelfth night after Christmas. Uh that

765
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,279
Speaker 1: this would give you vermin infestations or leprosy, and it

766
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: beans peas or lintels during this time could at least

767
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: make you itch if you were to consume them. Now,

768
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:26,799
Speaker 1: there's another British folk belief that bean fields are inhabited

769
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: by ghosts and spirits, and in nineteenth century Leicestershire it

770
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 1: was said that if you slept in a bean field

771
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:38,799
Speaker 1: all night, the awful dreams and resulting desires would just

772
00:44:38,920 --> 00:44:41,200
Speaker 1: drive you insane, like you would just you would not

773
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 1: survive a night in the bean fields. Sleeping a night

774
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 1: in the bean field would be like sleeping a night

775
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: in a haunted house. Who but, due to my being love,

776
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 1: I want to say it's gonna be like that Simpson's

777
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:51,719
Speaker 1: episode where they have to spend the night in the

778
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 1: haunted house to discover that the tap water tastes better

779
00:44:54,239 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 1: than the stuff they have at home. Now, UM, I

780
00:44:57,960 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 1: know what a lot of you're probably thinking. You're a

781
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: probably thinking, well, this is all well and good, But

782
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: did beans ever march in battle bringing forth an army

783
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: of the undead to march alongside it, like walking trees

784
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: and Welsh smith. Well, yes they did, because Simmons points

785
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:18,520
Speaker 1: to the writings of the Welsh bard uh Talison, who

786
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:22,759
Speaker 1: described just such a scene, quoting quoting the work um

787
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:26,359
Speaker 1: the Elm trees he quotes quote stood firm in the

788
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,360
Speaker 1: center of the battle. Heaven and earth trembled before the

789
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: advance of the oak tree. The heroic Holly and Hawthorne

790
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: defended themselves with their spikes. And then meanwhile, the beans

791
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 1: took part in battle by quote, bearing in its shade

792
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:44,959
Speaker 1: an army of phantoms. So beans and spirits again. Yeah, yeah,

793
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: this idea that, like the beans, the bean field is

794
00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 1: where you find the ghosts that will drive you either

795
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 1: you know, mad or fill you with maddening desire. And

796
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 1: the idea that you have the trees were to to

797
00:45:56,400 --> 00:45:58,600
Speaker 1: into all the plants were to rise up and march

798
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:01,799
Speaker 1: in an army, then beans would surely lead an army

799
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 1: of phantoms into battle. I love that, Okay. I think

800
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,840
Speaker 1: we have a serious deficiency in the horror fiction and

801
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: horror movies of today, a deficiency of bean themed horror. Right.

802
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 1: This has got to be somebody's got to pick up

803
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,680
Speaker 1: on this. I feel like we have just largely abandoned

804
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,719
Speaker 1: our our understanding of of supernatural beings outside of like

805
00:46:21,880 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 1: the one you know of fairy tale about magic beings

806
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: that grow up gateways to the world of the giants. Now,

807
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: speaking of fava beans, I was looking at a University

808
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 1: of Copenhagen study looking into the possibility of fava beans

809
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: taking over more from soybeans to meet the increasing popularity

810
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:45,960
Speaker 1: of plant based meat alternatives, specifically in Denmark. The argument

811
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: here is that fava beans put less strain on the

812
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: environment as a crop, and unlike soy, they can be

813
00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:55,239
Speaker 1: grown locally in Denmark as opposed to having depend on

814
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: soy which is largely grown in the United States and

815
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 1: in South America. UM. And that in particularly in South America,

816
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:03,280
Speaker 1: that's where you get into some of the in the

817
00:47:03,320 --> 00:47:05,839
Speaker 1: real environmental concerns about you know, what kind of land

818
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:09,560
Speaker 1: is being transitioned into soy growing land. UM. But the

819
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: particular study here highlights the use of wet fraction nation

820
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:19,800
Speaker 1: to concentrate fava being protein and removed digestion inhibiting substances

821
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:24,320
Speaker 1: in the beans, and the result is dry fractionated fava

822
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:28,319
Speaker 1: being protein rich flower uh so I don't know where

823
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:31,279
Speaker 1: that will ultimately go, but it's it's an interesting, uh,

824
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 1: interesting bit of of info there and potentially insight into

825
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: the future again thinking about um you know, turning more

826
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,200
Speaker 1: and more to UM two artificial meats and uh and

827
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,320
Speaker 1: being based diets and returned to the bean fields and

828
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:47,640
Speaker 1: and perhaps returned to you know, beans, depending on beans

829
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 1: that that grow more naturally within a given region. Now

830
00:47:56,640 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: there's another great being I wanted to talk about for

831
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: a bit here, and that's the black eyed pea, also

832
00:48:01,120 --> 00:48:03,480
Speaker 1: known as the cow pea. And yes it's called a

833
00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:05,440
Speaker 1: p but it is a proper bean. It's in the

834
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: family for base And the modern species name of the

835
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: cow pea is vigna on guiculata, which was once known

836
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 1: as Vignus and insis because it was believed to have

837
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 1: come from China, but this is now known to be incorrect.

838
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,360
Speaker 1: Modern botanists and archaeologists believed that these beans were first

839
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 1: domesticated in Africa, probably originating in West Africa that I've

840
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: seen the possibility of Ethiopia as well. But Albala and

841
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: his book and notes that some of the archaeological evidence

842
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: about their history it comes from the Chad basin, which

843
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:41,279
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that people who were originally making a

844
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: living primarily through animal herding came into the area about

845
00:48:44,600 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred b c e. And within about six hundred

846
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 1: years of occupying the Chad Basin, they began to convert

847
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:55,359
Speaker 1: to an agricultural civilization, with their staple crops consisting of

848
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 1: pearl millet and black eyed peas. So again, like we

849
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:01,439
Speaker 1: see in so many places in the world, a transition

850
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: to a settled farming existence based on a sort of

851
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: crop package of complementary grains and lagoons. I think the

852
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: examples we talked about the other episode were, say, like

853
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,800
Speaker 1: you might have wheats or grasses like iron corn and lentils,

854
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: or you could have maize and beans in UH in

855
00:49:18,560 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 1: the Americas. But black eyed peas have been an important

856
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: part of West African agriculture ever since, and they've eventually,

857
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:26,839
Speaker 1: of course, spread all over the world. They spread north

858
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:29,120
Speaker 1: to Europe, they spread east to Asia, and they're they're

859
00:49:29,160 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: popular in all these different regions. Uh And of course

860
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: they eventually became part of the food traditions of enslaved

861
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 1: people taken from Africa to the Caribbean and to the

862
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: Southern US. So much like okra and rice, which were

863
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:45,000
Speaker 1: also imported from African culinary traditions, black eyed peas ended

864
00:49:45,080 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 1: up becoming foundational elements of Southern American cooking in general. Yeah. Absolutely,

865
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: I've seen some there's been some excellent cooking documentaries about

866
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,759
Speaker 1: this connection. Uh and uh and and I and I

867
00:49:57,840 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: have to say, yeah, if if anyone out there, if

868
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:04,480
Speaker 1: you haven't add um a bean sandwich um connected to

869
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: some of these African culinary traditions or at least descended

870
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:10,760
Speaker 1: from them, I highly recommended, Like it's it's so good.

871
00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:12,600
Speaker 1: I love black eyed peas, and I've never had a

872
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: bean sandwich, so I gotta I gotta look that up.

873
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 1: Do you know a good place to get one in town? Um?

874
00:50:17,280 --> 00:50:19,320
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've had one at a restaurant.

875
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: I've just we've just followed some recipes. Uh. But but

876
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: and yeah, you can find some really good recipes online.

877
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:29,160
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some form for black eyed pea based sandwiches,

878
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: which which can be a way to because we have

879
00:50:32,200 --> 00:50:34,239
Speaker 1: that kind of like loose New Year tradition of eat

880
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 1: black eyed peas, right because they're they're good luck or

881
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,879
Speaker 1: it's part of a good luck suite of foods. That's

882
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: the health part of the package, right, You eat eat pork,

883
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:46,759
Speaker 1: black eyed peas, and grains, and that's for what happiness,

884
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 1: health and wealth? Yeah. Yeah, And so the black eyed peas,

885
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:53,239
Speaker 1: if they're cooked certain ways, can be kind of a

886
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: hard sell. But I tell you, if you make a

887
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: really tasty sandwich with them, you're good to go. Okay, well,

888
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to try the sandwich. But but anyway,

889
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:03,960
Speaker 1: like other examples we've we've looked at, beans seem to

890
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: occupy a sort of hub of religious significance in the

891
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 1: West African context as well. And Albla mentions that, for example,

892
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: in Yoruba religious practice, people would regularly offer meals, often

893
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: based on black eyed peas, to the godly beings or

894
00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: spirits of the Oruba religion known as Orisha's and Albula

895
00:51:22,520 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 1: quotes this interesting Yoruba proverb that goes, you do not

896
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,360
Speaker 1: know what black eyed peas are like for dinner? And

897
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 1: I was like, WHOA, I wonder what that means. But

898
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 1: he explains that it refers to a person who is

899
00:51:34,120 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 1: so stupid and negligent that he is totally unmindful of

900
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:40,560
Speaker 1: the consequences of his actions. So like you're you're so

901
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:42,759
Speaker 1: dumb you don't know what black eyed peas are like

902
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: for dinner. That's very eating. But another interesting thing about

903
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: black eyed peas is um that one of the cultivars

904
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 1: that became especially popular and I think Eastern and Southeast

905
00:51:53,880 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: Asia are the so called yard long beans. These are

906
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,200
Speaker 1: a variety of cowpy They are Vigna anguikulata, but they

907
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:05,280
Speaker 1: are the subspecies uh Sesqua pedalists. They are not actually

908
00:52:05,280 --> 00:52:07,520
Speaker 1: a yard long, despite their name. I think they're usually

909
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: about half that, but they are really long. I don't

910
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:12,399
Speaker 1: know if you've ever bought these and tried to cook

911
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 1: with them or I remember like just like kind of

912
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,279
Speaker 1: laughing as I was trying to like handle them one

913
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 1: time at the farmer's market. Yeah, I don't know if

914
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:22,280
Speaker 1: you included a picture. I don't know if we've actually

915
00:52:22,280 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: tried to cook with with with peas this long. But yeah,

916
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:30,840
Speaker 1: you have to like choppaman half right or or I

917
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:33,439
Speaker 1: think sometimes you you just shell them, like you get

918
00:52:33,680 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: the fresh peas out of them. But but yeah, I'm

919
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,920
Speaker 1: not sure. I I honestly do not remember what I

920
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:41,759
Speaker 1: did with them when I got them being enthusiasts, let

921
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 1: us know, how do you handle these things. I got

922
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,080
Speaker 1: another black eyed pea fact that I think is very interesting,

923
00:52:47,120 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 1: And this picks up on something we've mentioned a couple

924
00:52:49,160 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: of times on the show before. It's one of those,

925
00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: you know, those sort of mind opening moments that is

926
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 1: triggered by a simple reimagination of a food item. In

927
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 1: the past, we've talked about how avocados. You know, American

928
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: audiences I think primarily are going to think of avocados

929
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:07,720
Speaker 1: as a savory food, right, you have them in salty

930
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:10,120
Speaker 1: applications or not necessarily they don't have to be salty,

931
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:14,480
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't usually think of putting avocados in sweet foods.

932
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: But that is by no means universal, and it is

933
00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 1: in no way based on objective things about the food itself.

934
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:23,720
Speaker 1: That's just a cultural convention. Avocados are used in sweet

935
00:53:23,719 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 1: applications in all kinds of food traditions. Oh absolutely, yeah.

936
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,320
Speaker 1: I mean, havocado smoothies, for example, can be quite sweet

937
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:34,359
Speaker 1: and quite lovely. But there's another food that's like this,

938
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:38,440
Speaker 1: black eyed peas. Black eyed peas are sometimes used in

939
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:41,520
Speaker 1: sweet rather than savory dishes. If you haven't had it

940
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 1: that can be kind of hard to imagine. But for example,

941
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: I was finding a bunch of recipes for a Vietnamese

942
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:50,760
Speaker 1: dessert food that was like like variations on the idea

943
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: of sweet or coconut sticky rice with black eyed peas. Yeah,

944
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:56,840
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean that reminds me that you do

945
00:53:56,960 --> 00:54:01,880
Speaker 1: encounter beans in a lot of of East Asian desserts,

946
00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: whether it be like a bean paste or a bean

947
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 1: filling that will be quite sweet. Another one I haven't tried,

948
00:54:06,600 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 1: but that's going on my list. So I gotta have, uh,

949
00:54:09,320 --> 00:54:11,399
Speaker 1: sweet sticky rice with black eyed peas and a black

950
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: eyed peas sandwich. Yeah, and get some red bean ice

951
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 1: cream in there as well. It's good stuff. Now. Now,

952
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: speaking of of of culinary traditions in East Asia, I

953
00:54:23,400 --> 00:54:25,399
Speaker 1: thought we might take a little bit of time here

954
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 1: to discuss the soybean, a vastly important being and one

955
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:33,839
Speaker 1: of humanity's principal food crops so um. In Chinese mythology,

956
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 1: the soybean is one of the five grains which are

957
00:54:37,120 --> 00:54:40,680
Speaker 1: either sacred themselves or their history is considered sacred. I

958
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:43,360
Speaker 1: think it depends on the telling. Uh So the exact

959
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 1: listing of five grains varies, but I think every version,

960
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 1: at least every version I was coming across, does include soybeans,

961
00:54:51,840 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 1: while some tellings will include the azuki bean as one

962
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:57,560
Speaker 1: of the five grains, but the soybeans tend to make

963
00:54:57,560 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: the list, and the five grains are often connected to

964
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:05,399
Speaker 1: the myths of Shinong, the divine farmer who we've talked

965
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:08,720
Speaker 1: about on the show before, the culture hero and mythological

966
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: ruler of ancient China often depicted in um in art

967
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: is having bovine qualities to his appearance, including horns or

968
00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: horn like nubs on his head. Oh yeah, we love

969
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:21,960
Speaker 1: Shinnong here. I think we talked about him in the

970
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,360
Speaker 1: Mushroom Foraging episode, didn't we, Because there's a legend that

971
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: he he sort of tested the mushrooms to see what

972
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:30,840
Speaker 1: was safe, right, because he is well he in general,

973
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 1: he's being the father of agriculture. He said to have

974
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:36,919
Speaker 1: sought out and sampled a vast multitude of plants and

975
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: you know, and that would include mushrooms in the ancient sense,

976
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: in order to determine what was beneficial and what was not.

977
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 1: And in doing so so, it's also sometimes said that

978
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: he sampled seventy poisons in one day. So again he's

979
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:53,879
Speaker 1: just it's the father of of of agriculture and into

980
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 1: a large traditional medicine. But also he's his personification of

981
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 1: the gradual process of human entity figuring out what different

982
00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:06,239
Speaker 1: plants do if they're consumed in different quantities. Now, as

983
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:10,600
Speaker 1: um Heimowitz and a Shirtlift pointed out in two thousand

984
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:14,239
Speaker 1: fives Debunking Soybean Myths and legends in the historical and

985
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:17,719
Speaker 1: popular literature, there are a lot of myths about soybeans

986
00:56:17,719 --> 00:56:20,879
Speaker 1: that get passed along, and they ultimately involve everyone from

987
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:25,120
Speaker 1: Shinnong to Benjamin Franklin. While it is sometimes said that

988
00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:28,120
Speaker 1: the mythical Chinong gave us the soybean as a domestic

989
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: crop five thousand years ago, uh, the author's stress at

990
00:56:31,760 --> 00:56:35,959
Speaker 1: the real time period is likely um eleventh century BC,

991
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:40,440
Speaker 1: or perhaps a bit earlier based on recorded history. So

992
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: it's still really impressive. Yeah, Now, do we know anything

993
00:56:43,960 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: about how the soybean was domesticated or does it seem

994
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:48,719
Speaker 1: like one of those things we have to infer kind

995
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:50,799
Speaker 1: of like the examples we were talking about in part one,

996
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:54,879
Speaker 1: where it was probably like an accidental process of of

997
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,719
Speaker 1: picking and then cultivating the ones like the pods that

998
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:03,360
Speaker 1: stayed closed the longest in the natural varieties. I believe

999
00:57:03,440 --> 00:57:07,680
Speaker 1: that's the case. I was reading, Uh Robert M. Stupars

1000
00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:11,640
Speaker 1: Into the Wild of from and p N A. S.

1001
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:14,759
Speaker 1: And the exact date uh they write is still a

1002
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:18,560
Speaker 1: matter of dispute. And quote, most estimates approximate the domestication

1003
00:57:18,600 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 1: occurred somewhere between three thousand, one hundred and nine thousand

1004
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: years ago, so a fair amount of leeway. And you know,

1005
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:29,280
Speaker 1: in in any attempt to really pinpoint when this was domesticated.

1006
00:57:29,560 --> 00:57:32,280
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is actually something I came across, uh

1007
00:57:32,480 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: with the number of beings referenced in Albola's book, which

1008
00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:37,080
Speaker 1: there are a number of cases where we really just

1009
00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 1: don't know when they refers domesticated. It's just not you know,

1010
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: big question mark. Now I want to get things back

1011
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:47,760
Speaker 1: into the magical realm here because I ran across this,

1012
00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:53,120
Speaker 1: this wonderful tradition, this festival known as setsubun, and it's

1013
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: um It's a tradition in Japan involving beans. It's a

1014
00:57:57,120 --> 00:58:00,760
Speaker 1: spring festival and it means changing of the seas, and

1015
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 1: it has the same energy as a number of seasonal

1016
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:06,520
Speaker 1: change traditions in uh in in Eastern cultures, in cultures

1017
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: in general, including the expulsion of evil spirits and bad

1018
00:58:10,280 --> 00:58:14,080
Speaker 1: luck and the invocation of good luck and good health. Uh.

1019
00:58:14,080 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: And this one in particular appears to have roots in

1020
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:20,720
Speaker 1: Chinese Lunar New Year traditions that took on new form

1021
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:24,680
Speaker 1: in Japanese culture. So one of the activities around this time,

1022
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:26,240
Speaker 1: and you know, there's several different things, it's not just

1023
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,000
Speaker 1: one thing you do. But one of the activities involves

1024
00:58:29,320 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: driving the only out of one's house. So the only

1025
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: we've I think we've discussed them on the show before.

1026
00:58:35,600 --> 00:58:39,040
Speaker 1: Uh in one of our Halloween episodes. Only were evil

1027
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:43,080
Speaker 1: spirits or demons thought capable of causing illness and disease.

1028
00:58:43,640 --> 00:58:46,120
Speaker 1: I think we may have even discussed some kind of

1029
00:58:46,160 --> 00:58:49,240
Speaker 1: traditions of driving the only out of your house. This

1030
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 1: sounds very familiar. Well, one way you can do it,

1031
00:58:52,360 --> 00:58:55,560
Speaker 1: especially at sets a bund, is by pelting them with

1032
00:58:55,680 --> 00:58:59,440
Speaker 1: roasted soybeans. Ah. These are these are also a traditional

1033
00:58:59,480 --> 00:59:04,600
Speaker 1: snack of festivities, but they symbolize purity. Oh, this makes

1034
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,080
Speaker 1: me think of something that uh, you know, it is

1035
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 1: something that so when I grew up, I always thought

1036
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:13,000
Speaker 1: of beans being cooked in a wet application. You know,

1037
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:16,600
Speaker 1: they're they're cooked in water, boiled over time. Of course,

1038
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: you know you usually need to do that to dry beans,

1039
00:59:19,600 --> 00:59:21,959
Speaker 1: because this is another thing we actually haven't talked about

1040
00:59:21,960 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 1: in this episode yet, but many, many dry beans can

1041
00:59:25,120 --> 00:59:27,400
Speaker 1: have high levels of toxins in them if you do

1042
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:30,080
Speaker 1: not boil them for before eating them. So you don't

1043
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 1: ever want to take a dry bean and then just

1044
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: soak it and eat it. That can give your food poisoning.

1045
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:37,040
Speaker 1: You don't want to do that. You got to boil

1046
00:59:37,080 --> 00:59:39,240
Speaker 1: the beans or cook it with high heat somehow. But

1047
00:59:39,720 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: another common method in in many food traditions around the

1048
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:46,120
Speaker 1: world is roasting beans, roasting them dry in some way.

1049
00:59:46,120 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 1: And I think you could probably do this with with

1050
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:51,320
Speaker 1: fresher beans probably, but you can kind of pop some

1051
00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 1: beans like you can make popcorn. Yeah. And and certainly

1052
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:56,600
Speaker 1: if you're trying to drive only out of the house,

1053
00:59:56,640 --> 01:00:00,200
Speaker 1: you don't want to be thrown like handfuls of of

1054
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:05,440
Speaker 1: canned beans or whole candy beans. Yeah, especially since a

1055
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 1: lot of the times you can look at pictures of

1056
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:10,800
Speaker 1: this in videos. It's pretty pretty charming because apparently sometimes

1057
01:00:10,800 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 1: at schools you'll have a principle, or a teacher put

1058
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 1: on the only costume, and the and the children will

1059
01:00:17,240 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: be in the hallways and then they will throw the

1060
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 1: beans at the only to drive it out of the school. Now,

1061
01:00:24,320 --> 01:00:26,080
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit more about this on

1062
01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 1: the Japan Society website, and uh, I want to read

1063
01:00:30,200 --> 01:00:32,800
Speaker 1: a quote from from their web page that gets into

1064
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,000
Speaker 1: some more answers about why you would throw these beans

1065
01:00:36,080 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 1: at an own e. They write quote, to find an answer,

1066
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 1: we must go back in time and look at Chinese numerology,

1067
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:46,240
Speaker 1: where many concepts come in fives to correspond to the

1068
01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:51,440
Speaker 1: five elements would water, fire, metal, and earth. Soybeans were

1069
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:54,720
Speaker 1: included in what we're designated the five cereals or the

1070
01:00:54,760 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 1: five most important crops. That's what we we just talked about. Uh,

1071
01:00:58,360 --> 01:01:02,600
Speaker 1: they continue. Soybeans or Da Dao literally the big being,

1072
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:06,200
Speaker 1: were considered particularly powerful because they were believed to contain

1073
01:01:06,240 --> 01:01:11,320
Speaker 1: the spirits of all the serials combined. Um mommy or

1074
01:01:11,480 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 1: being is a homophone for mommy, and I'm sure I'm

1075
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:18,440
Speaker 1: I'm not saying mommy correct in these these cases, but

1076
01:01:18,600 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 1: in both cases they're saying it means destroying evil. So

1077
01:01:22,200 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: soybeans were thought to be especially effective weapons against only demons,

1078
01:01:27,240 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 1: somewhat like garlic is believed to be powerful against vampires

1079
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:34,400
Speaker 1: in the West. Wow. Okay, so the being the word

1080
01:01:34,520 --> 01:01:38,240
Speaker 1: being as a homophone for another word that that sounds

1081
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:42,640
Speaker 1: similar but means destroying evil. Yeah yeah, so, uh, you

1082
01:01:42,680 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 1: know that's you see that connection come up time and

1083
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:47,440
Speaker 1: time again when you're dealing with you know, particularly with

1084
01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 1: I've seen this, you know plenty of times in um

1085
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 1: in Chinese writings where you know, something just doesn't translate,

1086
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 1: like the various ghost stories in um uh In Tales

1087
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:03,720
Speaker 1: a Chinese studio, Like in translation. Uh, They're all still

1088
01:02:03,760 --> 01:02:05,600
Speaker 1: really amusing, but a lot of times if you were

1089
01:02:05,600 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: reading them in the original Mandarin, there would be there

1090
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:11,760
Speaker 1: would be homophones in place that would make everything more

1091
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:15,120
Speaker 1: meaningful or perhaps more funny in some cases, that sort

1092
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:17,840
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, there's I mean, there's so many features

1093
01:02:17,880 --> 01:02:20,440
Speaker 1: of Chinese poetry that I've read about. It's just so

1094
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:24,680
Speaker 1: difficult to capture effectively in translation. Uh. And I do

1095
01:02:24,760 --> 01:02:27,040
Speaker 1: love a lot of Chinese poetry in translation, But I

1096
01:02:27,040 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: mean that's one thing. Another thing I've read about is

1097
01:02:29,600 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 1: just that, like a lot of really good Chinese poetry

1098
01:02:32,440 --> 01:02:36,160
Speaker 1: has a has a quality of density that cannot really

1099
01:02:36,280 --> 01:02:41,200
Speaker 1: be communicated in English. Yeah. Uh, Now, this is this

1100
01:02:41,280 --> 01:02:44,160
Speaker 1: idea of using beings as a as a weapon against

1101
01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:48,800
Speaker 1: the demons, or some sort of protective amulet against demons. Ultimately,

1102
01:02:48,960 --> 01:02:51,439
Speaker 1: this can be found in plenty of other cultures as well.

1103
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:54,800
Speaker 1: So I'd like to come back to Frederick J. Simmons

1104
01:02:54,800 --> 01:02:57,440
Speaker 1: Plants of Light, plants of death, because he has a

1105
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:01,160
Speaker 1: number of other examples in which the beans are serving

1106
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 1: as a weapon or a protection against evil spirits. He

1107
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: points out that British folk belief once held that beans

1108
01:03:07,480 --> 01:03:10,800
Speaker 1: were associated with witches, and you could protect yourself against

1109
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:14,040
Speaker 1: a witch is evil spell by spitting a bean at

1110
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:17,919
Speaker 1: her u food. So yeah, I mean it's I would

1111
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:19,840
Speaker 1: not I don't think you should spit beans that people

1112
01:03:20,080 --> 01:03:22,880
Speaker 1: you think might be witches, but clearly it was once done.

1113
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:26,280
Speaker 1: All right, here's another. He also writes that at the

1114
01:03:26,320 --> 01:03:30,080
Speaker 1: start of the eighteenth century, on the Aisle of Harry's

1115
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:34,720
Speaker 1: in Scotland, melucca beans, especially white meluca beans, were worn

1116
01:03:34,760 --> 01:03:37,080
Speaker 1: around the necks of children as a ward against the

1117
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:41,000
Speaker 1: evil eye and also sort of witchcraft in general, and

1118
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: if evil magic came shooting in at the child, the

1119
01:03:44,440 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 1: bean would turn black. Whoa, which also reminds me of

1120
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:50,960
Speaker 1: some of the you know, we've talked about poison detection,

1121
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 1: uh in various cultures. You know, it sounds like trying

1122
01:03:55,120 --> 01:03:57,600
Speaker 1: to achieve the same thing but with a bean, like

1123
01:03:57,640 --> 01:04:02,720
Speaker 1: your little radiation detector badge, except is for witchcraft. Yeah. Uh.

1124
01:04:02,800 --> 01:04:05,320
Speaker 1: Now there are other European beliefs of protective beans. The

1125
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:08,840
Speaker 1: Cilian traditions held that beans had protective qualities for childbirth.

1126
01:04:09,200 --> 01:04:12,800
Speaker 1: So a woman in or approaching labor could eat nine

1127
01:04:12,840 --> 01:04:16,360
Speaker 1: black beans and that would serve as a protective Uh

1128
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: not really, an emulated would be a protective act. I

1129
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 1: guess there's also a tradition of stacking nine black beans

1130
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:26,080
Speaker 1: and placing them on a table near a newborn child

1131
01:04:26,320 --> 01:04:28,920
Speaker 1: protect to protect it from evil spirits. Wait, how do

1132
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:32,200
Speaker 1: you stack black beans? Um? I think it would be

1133
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:34,560
Speaker 1: like a little pyramid of black beans, kind of make

1134
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:38,400
Speaker 1: a structure of the black beans. Now, in Morocco, uh,

1135
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:41,919
Speaker 1: an ambulance of of seven black beans could be used

1136
01:04:41,920 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: to protect sheep and goats from smallpox, and seven black

1137
01:04:45,800 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: beans could also be used by Moroccan scholars or scribes

1138
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 1: rather in order to become invisible, so you know, using

1139
01:04:52,600 --> 01:04:57,360
Speaker 1: black beans and some sort of essentially sorcery. Now that's

1140
01:04:57,400 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: the kind of spell that I would imagine is probably

1141
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 1: more like cataloged by somebody who attributes the the used

1142
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:06,680
Speaker 1: to others rather than somebody who did it themselves, because

1143
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:09,480
Speaker 1: you could probably quite quickly find out if you were

1144
01:05:09,520 --> 01:05:12,760
Speaker 1: actually trying this, that you cannot become invisible by using

1145
01:05:12,760 --> 01:05:17,520
Speaker 1: black beings. There are also traditions in Morocco of five

1146
01:05:17,560 --> 01:05:21,000
Speaker 1: black beans being used in protective amulets. So these might

1147
01:05:21,040 --> 01:05:23,920
Speaker 1: be for instance, sewn into fabric, so you could have

1148
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:27,320
Speaker 1: have the five black beans in this piece of fabric.

1149
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:30,840
Speaker 1: Then then you then wear as an amulet. And he

1150
01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:34,000
Speaker 1: He also makes mention in the Book of European Traditions

1151
01:05:34,040 --> 01:05:37,760
Speaker 1: concerning St. John's Eve. This is the um the the

1152
01:05:37,760 --> 01:05:40,400
Speaker 1: eve of celebration before the feast day of St. John

1153
01:05:40,440 --> 01:05:44,880
Speaker 1: the Baptist, but the celebration itself existed before the coming

1154
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 1: of Christianity. Um and uh it's tied. Simmons explains to

1155
01:05:49,880 --> 01:05:53,080
Speaker 1: summer solstice anxieties and the belief that this is a

1156
01:05:53,080 --> 01:05:56,120
Speaker 1: time when demons and evil spirits will rise up and

1157
01:05:56,200 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: must be driven back. And if this sounds a lot

1158
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:02,560
Speaker 1: like Nido and Bald Mountain from Disney's Fantasia. While you

1159
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:06,600
Speaker 1: are correct because the original title of of Masursky's music

1160
01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:10,960
Speaker 1: was St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain. Yeah, that

1161
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:12,960
Speaker 1: was new to me as well, But at any rate,

1162
01:06:13,240 --> 01:06:16,360
Speaker 1: it's it's a time during which you have these various

1163
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:21,760
Speaker 1: traditions involving fire but also medicinal plants, uh such as St.

1164
01:06:21,800 --> 01:06:25,240
Speaker 1: John's wart, And unfortunately it also entailed more than a

1165
01:06:25,240 --> 01:06:29,200
Speaker 1: little burning of black cats. But given the fava beans

1166
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 1: association with the underworld and spirits, it may have been

1167
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:36,960
Speaker 1: connected as well. In Tuscany, St John's fire was lighted

1168
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:39,920
Speaker 1: in a field of beans to make them ripe and faster,

1169
01:06:40,040 --> 01:06:43,000
Speaker 1: it's said, And in Sicily you ate your fava beans

1170
01:06:43,080 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 1: with a word of thanks to St. John. And there

1171
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:48,400
Speaker 1: are other other religious and traditions of three beans that

1172
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 1: were ritually consumed, representing wealth, competence, and poverty, depending on

1173
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:56,160
Speaker 1: the state of the peeling. Oh yeah, well, this ties

1174
01:06:56,200 --> 01:06:58,120
Speaker 1: into another thing. I guess we sort of got into

1175
01:06:58,120 --> 01:07:01,720
Speaker 1: this when I was mentioning uh Oogenies the Cynic Philosopher.

1176
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:05,920
Speaker 1: But the in there there is also a tradition of

1177
01:07:06,320 --> 01:07:11,200
Speaker 1: intentionally eating beans to signal asceticism, like the ascetic life,

1178
01:07:11,280 --> 01:07:14,960
Speaker 1: you know, to say that I reject the pleasures of

1179
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:17,000
Speaker 1: this world and I'm going to be a person of

1180
01:07:17,040 --> 01:07:19,520
Speaker 1: the simple virtues of the spirit, meaning that you know,

1181
01:07:19,600 --> 01:07:22,400
Speaker 1: I I'm not going to be eating butter and bacon

1182
01:07:22,480 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: every day. Instead, I'm going to be having beans. Which

1183
01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:28,360
Speaker 1: makes me think, of course, about the associations with John

1184
01:07:28,360 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 1: the Baptist, Right. John the Baptist lived in wilderness, and

1185
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:33,440
Speaker 1: he you know, he wore rough clothes and he ate

1186
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:35,800
Speaker 1: honey and locusts, which might be the equivalent of a

1187
01:07:35,840 --> 01:07:38,800
Speaker 1: medieval European monks saying, Okay, I mean, I mean I'm

1188
01:07:38,840 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 1: just gonna eat beans. I'm gonna be a you know,

1189
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:42,840
Speaker 1: a person. I'm gonna be a man of the wild

1190
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:45,680
Speaker 1: and just commune with God. Now I have one more

1191
01:07:45,720 --> 01:07:47,560
Speaker 1: to mention here, and this one brings us back to

1192
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:52,000
Speaker 1: German celebrations of Twelfth Night. And this was the idea

1193
01:07:52,440 --> 01:07:56,520
Speaker 1: that Germans and uh And and other Northern Europeans once

1194
01:07:56,840 --> 01:07:59,800
Speaker 1: would select a king of the being and sometimes a

1195
01:08:00,040 --> 01:08:02,840
Speaker 1: queen of the bean as well. Uh And they would

1196
01:08:02,920 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 1: do this by by baking a cake which contained a

1197
01:08:08,080 --> 01:08:11,760
Speaker 1: single bean um uh, this would be like a single

1198
01:08:11,800 --> 01:08:15,640
Speaker 1: black bean perhaps, And basically it would be like everybody

1199
01:08:15,640 --> 01:08:17,800
Speaker 1: gets a piece of cake and if yours has the

1200
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:20,800
Speaker 1: bean in it, then congratulations, you are the bean king.

1201
01:08:21,080 --> 01:08:22,800
Speaker 1: Now was it good to be the bean king? Or

1202
01:08:22,840 --> 01:08:24,560
Speaker 1: bad to be the bean king? Because there are a

1203
01:08:24,600 --> 01:08:26,920
Speaker 1: lot of traditions there's something you get a special piece

1204
01:08:26,920 --> 01:08:30,280
Speaker 1: of cake, and that means you're kind of like scorned. Yeah, well,

1205
01:08:30,360 --> 01:08:33,320
Speaker 1: this one doesn't seem particularly wicker manny, if that's what

1206
01:08:33,400 --> 01:08:37,439
Speaker 1: you're asking, Um, this is this is what this is

1207
01:08:37,439 --> 01:08:40,479
Speaker 1: what he writes. Um. Of particular interest to us is

1208
01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:42,719
Speaker 1: the report that the first act of a being king

1209
01:08:42,800 --> 01:08:46,000
Speaker 1: after he had been enthroned and congratulated, involved his being

1210
01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:48,760
Speaker 1: lifted three times to the ceiling of the house, where

1211
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:51,640
Speaker 1: he drew white crosses of chalk on the beams and

1212
01:08:51,760 --> 01:08:55,720
Speaker 1: rafters to protect against evil spirits, devils, and witchcraft for

1213
01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:58,760
Speaker 1: the coming year. Also prominent in some places have been

1214
01:08:58,800 --> 01:09:02,360
Speaker 1: concerns about whether crop fertility and yield and the cake

1215
01:09:02,439 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 1: itself serving in divining good or bad things that might

1216
01:09:06,280 --> 01:09:10,200
Speaker 1: affect people in the ensuing year. So, I mean, I

1217
01:09:11,080 --> 01:09:14,160
Speaker 1: don't know what what else it necessarily entailed, but that

1218
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:17,000
Speaker 1: first major act of being king of the bean doesn't

1219
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:19,200
Speaker 1: sound too bad? No, no no, no, it's a no. It

1220
01:09:19,240 --> 01:09:20,880
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like they're about to throw them into the

1221
01:09:20,880 --> 01:09:26,760
Speaker 1: fire or anything. All right, Well, hopefully we have introduced

1222
01:09:26,760 --> 01:09:30,840
Speaker 1: a new, spooky, supernatural world of of bean fields to

1223
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:34,559
Speaker 1: everyone out there. Uh and and just made you think

1224
01:09:34,600 --> 01:09:36,479
Speaker 1: a little bit more about your beans. And we would

1225
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:40,040
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. What are your favorite beans? Uh?

1226
01:09:40,640 --> 01:09:44,320
Speaker 1: Do you are you privy to any uh superstitions or

1227
01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:48,200
Speaker 1: customs or rituals involving beans that we didn't mention here,

1228
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:52,360
Speaker 1: because definitely right in and tell us about them. Also, um,

1229
01:09:52,479 --> 01:09:55,360
Speaker 1: are are do you own the company Rancho Gordo and

1230
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:57,320
Speaker 1: want to send Joe and I free beans because we

1231
01:09:57,400 --> 01:10:01,160
Speaker 1: mentioned your company? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I go for it.

1232
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:03,519
Speaker 1: We would. We'd love to love to be a part

1233
01:10:03,560 --> 01:10:07,000
Speaker 1: of that. But uh yeah, in general, we just love

1234
01:10:07,040 --> 01:10:11,479
Speaker 1: to hear from everybody out there, um about about beans. Beans,

1235
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:16,599
Speaker 1: the the magical fruit, the mystical fruit, the supernatural fruit,

1236
01:10:17,320 --> 01:10:20,160
Speaker 1: but also not a fruit, not technically. In the meantime,

1237
01:10:20,200 --> 01:10:22,320
Speaker 1: if you would like to hear other episodes of stuff

1238
01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:23,840
Speaker 1: to blow your minds, you know where to find them.

1239
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:25,479
Speaker 1: You can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your

1240
01:10:25,479 --> 01:10:28,200
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed and you'll you'll find that wherever you

1241
01:10:28,240 --> 01:10:30,160
Speaker 1: get your podcast these days. I don't know, there's so

1242
01:10:30,160 --> 01:10:33,599
Speaker 1: many places to get podcasts, but we should be wherever

1243
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:35,760
Speaker 1: that is that you're going. And if you can rate

1244
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:38,400
Speaker 1: and review the show at that place, if they let

1245
01:10:38,439 --> 01:10:40,519
Speaker 1: you do that, uh well, then do that. That helps

1246
01:10:40,600 --> 01:10:44,320
Speaker 1: us out. That's uh that uh that's supposedly good, or

1247
01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:48,439
Speaker 1: so they tell them, Um yeah, yeah, give us five

1248
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:52,800
Speaker 1: or five beans. Five out of five beans, but only

1249
01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:56,040
Speaker 1: the good beans, not the not the witchcraft beans, just

1250
01:10:56,120 --> 01:10:58,240
Speaker 1: the the demon defeating beans. So I don't know, sort

1251
01:10:58,280 --> 01:11:00,280
Speaker 1: them out, figure out which one's which five out of

1252
01:11:00,320 --> 01:11:05,320
Speaker 1: five haunted bleeding beans for sexual potency. Hugh's thanks as

1253
01:11:05,360 --> 01:11:08,680
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1254
01:11:08,680 --> 01:11:10,439
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1255
01:11:10,600 --> 01:11:13,320
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1256
01:11:13,360 --> 01:11:15,400
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you

1257
01:11:15,439 --> 01:11:18,280
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

1258
01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:28,479
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1259
01:11:28,560 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1260
01:11:31,479 --> 01:11:34,160
Speaker 1: this is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever

1261
01:11:34,200 --> 01:11:46,599
Speaker 1: you're listening to your favorite shows,