Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: it is Saturday. Time to head into the vault for
Speaker 2: an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This
Speaker 2: one originally published February ninth, twenty twenty three, and it's
Speaker 2: part three of our series on tea. Pour yourself a cup.
Speaker 1: Times for drinking tea in idle moments, when bored with poetry,
Speaker 1: thoughts confused, beating time to songs, when music stops, living
Speaker 1: in seclusion, enjoying scholarly pastimes, conversing late at night, studying
Speaker 1: on a sunny day in the bridal chamber, detaining favored guests,
Speaker 1: playing host to scholars or pretty girls, visiting friends returned
Speaker 1: from far away in perfect weather, when skies are overcast,
Speaker 1: watching boats glide passed on the canal, midst trees and bamboos,
Speaker 1: when flowers bud and birds chat on hot days by
Speaker 1: a lotus pond, burning incense in the courtyard after tipsy
Speaker 1: guests have left, when the youngsters have gone out on
Speaker 1: visits to secluded temples, when viewing springs and scenic rocks.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. This
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that opening
Speaker 1: up the episode. There, that's the one last key poem.
Speaker 1: This one is also collected in a History of Tea,
Speaker 1: The Life and Times of the World's Favorite Beverage by
Speaker 1: Larc Martin, which is one of my sources for these episodes.
Speaker 1: This is a poem by Sue C. Shue, which I
Speaker 1: like it. You know, I guess it's kind of a
Speaker 1: simple format here, but yeah, it's basically saying, you can
Speaker 1: drink tea anytime. Anytime is a great time to drink tea.
Speaker 1: But here are some specific examples.
Speaker 2: I guess, pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is our third and I think this
Speaker 1: will be our final for now episode on tea. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's certainly a topic we could always come
Speaker 1: back to. It's a topic we could keep doing. But
Speaker 1: then if we delivered to do that, we would be
Speaker 1: a tea podcast. And we're not exclusively a tea podcast,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of great looking exclusively tea
Speaker 1: related podcasts out there, so certainly feel free to continue
Speaker 1: your tea journey with other shows, and if there's a
Speaker 1: particular topic related to tea that seems like something we
Speaker 1: should cover, well, we can always come back and do that.
Speaker 1: But if you didn't listen to the first two episodes
Speaker 1: on Tea, I highly recommend you go back and listen
Speaker 1: to those. We talked about, Oh, the botany of Tea.
Speaker 1: We talked about a lot of the history of tea
Speaker 1: and conclude the basic Chinese and Japanese history of tea
Speaker 1: in this episode, with a few other bits and pieces
Speaker 1: in there. We also talked about tea mythology in the
Speaker 1: first episode. Now before we move on and also get
Speaker 1: into some of these interesting tangents, I wanted to clarify
Speaker 1: what we said in the last section about the phases
Speaker 1: of tea because I think this can get confusing. So
Speaker 1: you have kind of like the primitive tea level, where
Speaker 1: it would be tea leaves dropped into boiling water, creating
Speaker 1: a bitter brew. Then you have this phase one of tea.
Speaker 1: This is where you have leaves dried and pressed into bricks,
Speaker 1: and then when you go to make it, you cut
Speaker 1: some of that brick off, you put it in water,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being kind of coarse and acidic.
Speaker 1: But this was kind of like the first phase, the
Speaker 1: first era of tea. Then comes Phase two, where the
Speaker 1: leaves are steam dried and ground into a fine powder
Speaker 1: whipped into hot water. This is the Mancha style of tea.
Speaker 1: It's fresher, it has a fresher, grassier flavor. And then
Speaker 1: eventually you get to phase three, have steamed, cut, dried, oxidized,
Speaker 1: and sordid and steeped tea that creates basically most of
Speaker 1: the modern flavors of tea that we think of today. Now,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of examples that kind of blur the line.
Speaker 1: You can still certainly get brick or cake, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Teas that are oxidized. Mancha tees are still used as well.
Speaker 1: So it's don't look at this as just like a
Speaker 1: strict evolution of form with past forms completely falling away.
Speaker 1: But I think it is a good structure to think
Speaker 1: of when we think about the evolution of tea. And
Speaker 1: as far as phase three goes, we will be getting
Speaker 1: into that later in this episode.
Speaker 2: Now, Rob, before we do that, you actually inspired me
Speaker 2: to go on a couple of tangents about teapots in
Speaker 2: this episode because while I am not much of a
Speaker 2: tea drinker, for many years I did have an intimate
Speaker 2: relationship with a tea kettle that lived on my stovetop,
Speaker 2: and most of that relationship was one of strife and agony.
Speaker 2: I really disliked this tea kettle for a number of reasons,
Speaker 2: and one of them is as follows, Rob, I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've had this experience a million times, whether it's from
Speaker 2: a poorly designed or vintage teapot, or I guess from
Speaker 2: any vessel containing liquid. You fill it up and you
Speaker 2: go to pour it out into a cup or a bowl,
Speaker 2: but instead of pouring in a steady arc where you
Speaker 2: aimed it, the liquid coming out of the spout clings
Speaker 2: to the underside of the teapot spout and then runs
Speaker 2: down the side of the pot and dribbles all over
Speaker 2: the table, or the floor or your pants.
Speaker 1: I have certainly encountered this before. Fortunately, our current teapot
Speaker 1: doesn't do this, or at least doesn't do this so much.
Speaker 1: But I have certainly encountered this before.
Speaker 2: The one that I'm thinking of had a very kind
Speaker 2: of wide, round, almost pipe like spout, and yeah, it
Speaker 2: did this all the time. So this is a phenomenon
Speaker 2: that is well known in physics. It actually has a name.
Speaker 2: It's called the teapot effect. Though it doesn't just happen
Speaker 2: in teapots. It occurs when pouring from all kinds of containers.
Speaker 2: I think it is probably one of the most common
Speaker 2: sources of spills and stains around the kitchen, when you know,
Speaker 2: when you're trying to pour out of one container and
Speaker 2: it just doesn't pour the way you intended, It doesn't
Speaker 2: arc like you meant it to. Instead, it runs down
Speaker 2: the side.
Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah, And I think I've certainly encountered this even
Speaker 1: more with other pouring vessels, and often it will be
Speaker 1: something you know, bright and colorful or sticky that I
Speaker 1: really don't want to get everywhere.
Speaker 2: I think I was trying to think about situations where
Speaker 2: I encounter it the most, and before understanding all of
Speaker 2: the underlying physics, the things that occurred to me were
Speaker 2: that it happens when you're trying to pour a liquid slowly,
Speaker 2: especially out of a container without a a designated pouring lip.
Speaker 2: So like if you're trying to pour liquid, say out
Speaker 2: of a saucepan or out of a drinking glass, that's
Speaker 2: dribble city.
Speaker 1: Yeah and yeah, especially this will occur, at least in
Speaker 1: my experience, where you have to say, like you're gonna
Speaker 1: pour orange juice out of an orange juice container, and
Speaker 1: the orange juice container has just been opened, it's super
Speaker 1: filled up, you know, so you have this impulse to
Speaker 1: want to pour slowly in order to control the juice
Speaker 1: which is already almost overflowing. But if you do so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to get that dribble more often than not.
Speaker 1: You've got to commit and really just slash it in there.
Speaker 2: But why does the dribbling happen? Well, it turns out
Speaker 2: the answer is not simple at all, and there have
Speaker 2: been fluid dynamics and raiology papers. Reology is the study
Speaker 2: of how matter flows, so the flow of fluids or
Speaker 2: plastic plastic solids. Reology and fluid dynamics papers on this
Speaker 2: tricky subject, going back at least as far as the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, there was an investigation of the teapot effect
Speaker 2: that in fact even won an Ignobel Prize in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. That you can see how that fits with
Speaker 2: their kind of like a quaint, quirky sense of humor,
Speaker 2: like oh, teapots, but it looks like A fairly definitive
Speaker 2: paper on this question came out in twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: and it was by Bernhard Schikel, Robert I. Bowles, and
Speaker 2: Giorgio's Passias called developed liquid film passing, a smooth and
Speaker 2: wedge shaped trailing edge, small scale analysis and the teapot
Speaker 2: effect at large Reynolds numbers. This was published in the
Speaker 2: Journal of Fluid Mechanics again twenty twenty one. By the way,
Speaker 2: if you scroll through this paper and check out the
Speaker 2: diagrams and equations, it's almost hilarious, like you would be
Speaker 2: shocked how complicated this looks. I'm not even going to
Speaker 2: pretend that I could make sense of it. Like I
Speaker 2: was trying to look and hack through this paper, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is hopeless. So instead I found a good article
Speaker 2: summarizing the results that includes an interview with one of
Speaker 2: the lead authors. The article is by Jennifer Woolett for
Speaker 2: Ours Technica and this paper so it was a collaboration
Speaker 2: between researchers at the Vienna University of Technology and University
Speaker 2: College London, and they say that their paper here is
Speaker 2: a complete theoretical description of the teapot effect, which has
Speaker 2: eluded these researchers for decades. Finally they've got all the
Speaker 2: forces modeled here correctly, so they can fully predict what
Speaker 2: happens with a t spout of various designs pouring in
Speaker 2: different ways. And they say the teapot effect has to
Speaker 2: include inertial, viscous, and capillary forces. So it turns out
Speaker 2: one of the major factors influencing whether the liquid dribbles
Speaker 2: or not is as you and I both intuited from
Speaker 2: our experience flow rate. To people who have less experience
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, I think this might sound counterintuitive because,
Speaker 2: as you know, you were saying, rob, a lot of
Speaker 2: times when you're trying to be careful and not spill something,
Speaker 2: your instinct is to pour slowly because pouring slowly seems
Speaker 2: like it's the careful option, right. Yeah, But as matches
Speaker 2: our experience at a higher flow rate, when liquid is
Speaker 2: coming out of the teapot or container faster, this actually
Speaker 2: makes the pouring action less likely to end up dribbling.
Speaker 2: That is how you are more likely to get the
Speaker 2: arc you're intending. It's actually once you start trying to
Speaker 2: pour slowly, the dribbling becomes more likely. So you know,
Speaker 2: you can imagine all kinds of scenarios here, like if
Speaker 2: you're trying to pour something out slowly, to carefully measure
Speaker 2: a volume of liquid into another container like a measuring cup,
Speaker 2: or maybe you were trying to pour something in a
Speaker 2: slow stream to risk and emulsify it. You've seen people
Speaker 2: doing that. They dribble all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then I'm thinking, especially like making cocktails
Speaker 1: and measuring out the various components. This is why the
Speaker 1: sides of your bottles are sticky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so fast steady pouring dribbles less. The design of
Speaker 2: the lip of the teapot or pouring container also matters.
Speaker 2: There were some French physicists who wrote a paper on
Speaker 2: this in twenty ten, and they suggested that you could
Speaker 2: fight the teapot effect by making the lip of the
Speaker 2: spout as thin and as sharp ended as possible, so
Speaker 2: like round lips are more likely to dribble. And apparently
Speaker 2: it would also help to coat the end of the
Speaker 2: spout in water repellent material so that the liquid or
Speaker 2: water based liquid doesn't want to cling to the underside
Speaker 2: of the lip. And this seems to be because the
Speaker 2: dribbling is partially the result of what the researchers call
Speaker 2: a hydrocapillary effect. Basically, whenever you start to pour water
Speaker 2: based liquid out of a container, drops will form on
Speaker 2: the underside of the lip of the edge you're pouring
Speaker 2: from the like the spout of a teapot, So you
Speaker 2: know the water's coming out of the spout, but then
Speaker 2: on the under side of that spout there's going to
Speaker 2: be some droplet formation, and the rate at which you
Speaker 2: pour determines how big those drops on the underside of
Speaker 2: the lip get. A high flow rate keeps them small,
Speaker 2: but a slow pouring allows the drops on the underside
Speaker 2: to become larger. And once those drops reach a certain
Speaker 2: critical size, once they get big enough, they actually start
Speaker 2: to grab hold of the water or tea or whatever
Speaker 2: that's coming out of the spout and redirect its flow
Speaker 2: down the side of the container instead of the arc
Speaker 2: that you're aiming for. Now, there was a thing that
Speaker 2: I was thinking about. This is another design feature that
Speaker 2: I didn't see mentioned in this summary or in any
Speaker 2: of the papers I was looking at, but it's one
Speaker 2: that I've seen in some kettle designs, and it's a
Speaker 2: teapot spout, they can have an upward arcing curve right
Speaker 2: before the opening of the spout. For example, you see
Speaker 2: this on some gooseneck kettles. Rob, I've got an example
Speaker 2: for you to look at here if you scroll down,
Speaker 2: if you try to picture it, it's kind of a
Speaker 2: curving swan neck shape. I don't know why I said, Swannik.
Speaker 2: They're literally called goose necks. The curving shape where if
Speaker 2: you imagine it in pouring position and you're trying to
Speaker 2: think how the liquid would have to travel to run
Speaker 2: down the bottom of the spout, it would literally have
Speaker 2: to go sort of uphill first before it would be
Speaker 2: able to run down the spout. And I think this
Speaker 2: also helps it not do that. One last thing that
Speaker 2: I thought was pretty interesting, So they had to model
Speaker 2: all these forces that determine whether or not liquid dribbles
Speaker 2: when it's coming out. Again. Those forces included an inertial, viscous,
Speaker 2: and capillary forces, but there was actually a very little
Speaker 2: role for gravity. Gravity does not play a major role
Speaker 2: in causing the teapot effect, meaning that teapots will still
Speaker 2: dribble on the Moon or in other low gravity environments.
Speaker 1: That reminds me. I was looking around for this episode.
Speaker 1: I briefly looked into drinking tea in orbit, and I
Speaker 1: did find anything that I was really compelled to include here.
Speaker 1: But I did see some footage of an astronaut having
Speaker 1: their tea with chopsticks, like eating the little floating globs
Speaker 1: of tea. Oh I see out of the atmosphere with
Speaker 1: their chopsticks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just grabbing like so, I guess with the surface tension,
Speaker 2: it's like a little blob of tea floating and then
Speaker 2: you like put the chopsticks in it and it sticks
Speaker 2: to them. Yeah, yeah, Okay, So that's the physical teapot tangent.
Speaker 2: What about the philosophical teapot tangent. Well, I thought it
Speaker 2: would be interesting to very briefly talk about Russell's teapot,
Speaker 2: one of the most famous teapots in the world. It's
Speaker 2: not a physical artifact. It is a thought experiment used
Speaker 2: by Bertrand Russell to explain a certain form of skeptical reasoning,
Speaker 2: specifically in his case, to support his lack of bully
Speaker 2: in God, though I think it could be applied to
Speaker 2: other scenarios. Now, I want to front load a caveat
Speaker 2: and say that some theistic philosophers think they have good
Speaker 2: arguments for why Russell's teapot analogy does not or should
Speaker 2: not apply to beliefs about God. But even if you
Speaker 2: are inclined to agree with those critics, I think the
Speaker 2: teapot is useful to think about for a more general
Speaker 2: analogy for different types of beliefs that we hold in
Speaker 2: claims that we make. So very brief biographical background. Bertrand
Speaker 2: Russell lived from eighteen seventy two to nineteen seventy He
Speaker 2: was a famous British philosopher and public intellectual who was
Speaker 2: incredibly influential in a number of different fields. So he
Speaker 2: was pre eminent in his academic fields of logic and
Speaker 2: analytic philosophy, but he was also a big cultural figure
Speaker 2: in Britain and an advocate for political causes such as
Speaker 2: anti imperialism, socialism and nuclear disarmament. But Russell was also
Speaker 2: infamous for being non religious. In nineteen fifty two, he
Speaker 2: was asked to write an essay for a London magazine
Speaker 2: called Illustrated, which came to be called is There a God?
Speaker 2: And I think the essay was actually scrapped and not
Speaker 2: published in the originally intended venue, but Russell expanded upon
Speaker 2: it later and released it. And in the essay Russell
Speaker 2: uses the analogy of a teapot floating in space to
Speaker 2: explain his doubts about the existence of God. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to read from his essay here, and then we
Speaker 2: can we can analyze a little bit. So Russell says,
Speaker 2: many Orthodox people speak as though it were the business
Speaker 2: of skeptics to disprove received dogmas, rather than of dogmatists
Speaker 2: to prove them. This is, of course a mistake. If
Speaker 2: I were to suggest that between Earth and Mars there
Speaker 2: is a China teapot revolving around the Sun in an
Speaker 2: elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion,
Speaker 2: provided I were careful to add that the teapot is
Speaker 2: too small to be real even by our most powerful telescopes.
Speaker 2: But if I were to go on to say that,
Speaker 2: since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption
Speaker 2: on the part of human reason to doubt it, I
Speaker 2: should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however,
Speaker 2: the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient
Speaker 2: books taught as sacred truth, every Sunday and instilled into
Speaker 2: the minds of children at school. Hesitation to believe in
Speaker 2: its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle
Speaker 2: the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an
Speaker 2: enlightened age, or of the inquisitor at an earlier time. Now,
Speaker 2: to take a moment to be fair to Russell's critics,
Speaker 2: I think they make some I'm not sure what I
Speaker 2: think about this, some potentially good points about the belief
Speaker 2: in the teapot not actually being analogous to belief in
Speaker 2: an omnipotent creator God, because they say, for example, the
Speaker 2: teapot is an object in the world that could only
Speaker 2: plausibly have come to orbit the Sun if humans had
Speaker 2: put it there, which we would probably know about if
Speaker 2: it had happened. Meanwhile, God would not be an object
Speaker 2: in the world, but like the creator of the world,
Speaker 2: or somehow standing outside the world. And therefore, according to
Speaker 2: these theistic philosophers, the existence of God is like a
Speaker 2: proposition that is just not analogous to the existence of
Speaker 2: any physical object or entity that you could search for
Speaker 2: in physical space. So I think a good way of
Speaker 2: phrasing this objection is that they're saying, well, belief in
Speaker 2: God is not a claim about something that exists in
Speaker 2: the universe, but rather a claim about the way the
Speaker 2: universe is. I'm not going to try to adjudicate that
Speaker 2: particular dispute about whether Russell is right that this is
Speaker 2: a good analogy for religious beliefs in God or whether
Speaker 2: the critics are right that it is not. But either way,
Speaker 2: I think it is a useful thought experiment in a
Speaker 2: more general sense because it reminds us not to be
Speaker 2: taken in easily by unfalsifiable claims. And there's another thought
Speaker 2: experiment right along these lines that we've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before. You might if you listened for a while,
Speaker 2: you might remember it, the thought experiment by Carl Sagan,
Speaker 2: The invisible Dragon in his garage. So Carl Sagan says, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got a dragon that lives in my garage. And
Speaker 2: if you doubt this, you might say, well, okay, take
Speaker 2: me to your garage. I want to see it. And
Speaker 2: then Sagan says, no, no, no, no, no, you got
Speaker 2: it all wrong. It's an invisible dragon, so you shouldn't
Speaker 2: expect to be able to see it. I mean, you
Speaker 2: can look but you're not going to see it. It
Speaker 2: is there, though, and then you could say, well, okay,
Speaker 2: then let's walk around in your garage, you know, with
Speaker 2: our hands outstretched and feel around for it until we
Speaker 2: finally come upon this dragon's invisible scaly back, and once
Speaker 2: again Sagan can say, no, no, hold on. It is
Speaker 2: also an incorporeal dragon. It is made of spirit matter,
Speaker 2: not solid matter, so you shouldn't expect to be able
Speaker 2: to touch it, you know, that wouldn't disprove it that
Speaker 2: you can't feel it, And then you could go through
Speaker 2: more stages. I think he says that it's you might suggest, well,
Speaker 2: what if we use like an infrared heat detector, and
Speaker 2: then he could say, no, no, it's a dragon that does
Speaker 2: not produce any heat, and so on and so on.
Speaker 2: You can go moving the goalposts of detection always backwards,
Speaker 2: so that there's no way to really check and see
Speaker 2: if the dragon is really there. I think the main
Speaker 2: point of both of these analogies, Russell's teapot and Carl
Speaker 2: Sagan's invisible Dragon, is that people can always try to
Speaker 2: get you to believe things by shifting the obligation of
Speaker 2: evidence onto you for doubting the existence, rather than assuming
Speaker 2: that obligation themselves for claiming the existence. So it's the
Speaker 2: attitude of if I say X is true and you
Speaker 2: can't disprove it, you must accept it. And this is
Speaker 2: made doubly dangerous by like the rebuke of all potential
Speaker 2: investigatory tests. So in the case of Carl Sagan's dragon,
Speaker 2: that's like, oh no, no, no, it's invisible and you can't
Speaker 2: touch it and it wouldn't show up on infrared. But
Speaker 2: in the case of Russell's teapot analogy, it's that, well,
Speaker 2: the teapot is too small with any of our telescopes,
Speaker 2: but I tell you it is there. And the point
Speaker 2: of both of these analogies is essentially I say X,
Speaker 2: if you can't disprove it, you must accept it. Is
Speaker 2: not a legitimate way to reason because that type of
Speaker 2: argument could be it could be used to force you
Speaker 2: to believe in a teapot orbiting the sun or an
Speaker 2: invisible dragon in the garage. Reasonable claims are based on evidence,
Speaker 2: and most importantly, they are falsifiable. They entail certain physical predictions,
Speaker 2: like you should be able to see what I'm talking
Speaker 2: about if you look here, or you should be able
Speaker 2: to detect you know, the heat signature of the dragon
Speaker 2: if you look here, and if those predictions turn it false,
Speaker 2: the belief is probably false.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so to your point like that, one of
Speaker 1: the big applications here, of course, is with like conspiracy
Speaker 1: thinking today, where there are plenty of examples of this
Speaker 1: where it'll be some you know, ultimately kind of ridiculous
Speaker 1: or outrageous or perhaps supernatural claim and then it's presented
Speaker 1: as if it is on us disprove this, when really
Speaker 1: that's not the way it goes. And I think you
Speaker 1: see a more or I tend to see a more
Speaker 1: rational approach to this with some of the impossible or
Speaker 1: currently impossible to prove hypotheses so that we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show before, like say the bicameral mind hypothesis or
Speaker 1: the stone ape hypothesis, like these are both I think
Speaker 1: examples of very thought provoking ideas that cannot be proved
Speaker 1: or disproved, at least not currently. And I also don't
Speaker 1: see the major advocates of these hypotheses demanding that scientists
Speaker 1: disprove them like they seem to they understand how Russell's
Speaker 1: teapot or the invisible dragon works here and they know
Speaker 1: that it's on them to make the argument and provide
Speaker 1: the proof if there is such a thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I think it's fair to play around
Speaker 2: in speculative territory, but to always be hyper conscious to
Speaker 2: signal and remind yourself and remind others that that's what
Speaker 2: you're doing. We're playing around in speculative territory, rather than
Speaker 2: getting too attached to like a fun and interesting idea
Speaker 2: that maybe doesn't have a lot of strong evidence for
Speaker 2: it and insisting that people should believe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with time, who knows, with time and research,
Speaker 1: perhaps new evidence will come around to support a given
Speaker 1: hypothesis or idea. But then the reverse may very well
Speaker 1: happen as well, or it could be just something again
Speaker 1: that's completely in the realm of no evidence, where there's
Speaker 1: never going to be any additional evidence to back this
Speaker 1: up one way.
Speaker 2: Or the other. But I think one of the points
Speaker 2: that Russell and Sagan are making here, and I totally
Speaker 2: agree with this, is that if you have a good theory,
Speaker 2: the theory should include within itself ways of checking to
Speaker 2: know if the theory were wrong. So a theory should
Speaker 2: entail predictions about the world and all our good scientific
Speaker 2: theories do, and then you could go and check if
Speaker 2: those theories, if those predictions turn out true, and if
Speaker 2: it's a good theory, those predictions will turn out true,
Speaker 2: and if there's something wrong with the theory, those predictions
Speaker 2: will not turn out true. And if it's a really
Speaker 2: bad theory, it in fact will not make predictions at all.
Speaker 2: It will just be sort of in this unfalsifiable space
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, there's no way to check if
Speaker 2: it's true.
Speaker 1: I've also found if you were addressing doubters or your
Speaker 1: enemies within the first couple of paragraphs of laying out
Speaker 1: a given hypothesis, then that's a real red flag.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yes, that's one of the best.
Speaker 1: And I've encountered that at least a couple of times.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One last point I want to emphasize, though this
Speaker 2: is also from that Bertrand Russell quote. He goes on
Speaker 2: to argue that the fact that some beliefs are already
Speaker 2: held by many people gives those beliefs a superficial appearance
Speaker 2: of rationality, even if there is no more evidence underlying
Speaker 2: them than there is for an obviously absurd belief that
Speaker 2: you can make up on the spot, such as a
Speaker 2: teapot randomly floating in space. And I think this is
Speaker 2: a really good point that people should always keep in mind,
Speaker 2: because even if you are, for the most part a
Speaker 2: skeptical person, you will probably have biases along these lines.
Speaker 2: And I'll explain it in a second. But according to Russell,
Speaker 2: it's like, we only notice that the teapot claim is
Speaker 2: absurd because it is novel, because he just made it
Speaker 2: up on the spot. If people went around appearing to
Speaker 2: sincerely believe in the teapot, I think it truly would
Speaker 2: start to seem less absurd, and it might start to
Speaker 2: get you know, equal time in the panel discussion on
Speaker 2: the news. Like like one example, why does it seem
Speaker 2: I would say, even to me, I have no beliefs
Speaker 2: in the healing powers of crystals, but why does it
Speaker 2: just feel more plausible to me that crystals have literal
Speaker 2: healing properties then that driftwood has healing properties. They're both
Speaker 2: beautiful natural objects. If you want to fill your house
Speaker 2: up with them or put them by your bedside and
Speaker 2: all that, I think that's wonderful, But I don't think
Speaker 2: they like literally emit vibrations that drive away sickness or something.
Speaker 2: And I'd have to argue that the crystal proposition feels
Speaker 2: more plausible somehow, even though I don't believe it. And
Speaker 2: the reason is that this belief is familiar, and the
Speaker 2: driftwood belief is not. People have been saying this about crystals,
Speaker 2: people seem to believe it, so you just kind of
Speaker 2: there's this feeling in your gut. Then it was like, well,
Speaker 2: there must be something to it then, But the fact
Speaker 2: that people say something does not necessarily give it any credence,
Speaker 2: even though it does have this power of giving it
Speaker 2: the superficial appearance of rationality. And you know what, I
Speaker 2: would say, exactly the same thing is true of a
Speaker 2: lot of conspiracy beliefs, like you were talking about a
Speaker 2: minute ago, that like, once somebody has said something and
Speaker 2: appears to sincerely believe it, suddenly you kind of have
Speaker 2: this feeling in your gut like, oh, well, maybe there's
Speaker 2: something to that then, Whereas if somebody had said the
Speaker 2: same thing thing in the context of a thought experiment,
Speaker 2: where they're obviously just making up an absurd belief on
Speaker 2: purpose on the spot, it wouldn't have that feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: The drift wood is a great example because I could
Speaker 1: imagine it being supported and brought up enough if someone
Speaker 1: were to champion the healing powers of driftwood, if there
Speaker 1: were stores that sold healing driftwood, then like that idea
Speaker 1: would just be out there enough for you to sort
Speaker 1: of buy into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Likewise, even the teapot, you know, outside of its its
Speaker 1: traditional place here as a symbol of how we should
Speaker 1: think about outrageous claims. You could imagine the scenario where
Speaker 1: someone's making an argument like, yeah, we think there's a
Speaker 1: teapot out there, Like there's a face on Mars, and
Speaker 1: there is a teapot out there floating in space, and
Speaker 1: we need to figure out why it's there. We have
Speaker 1: a few theories, you know, So like if you it
Speaker 1: kind of comes down to the whole situation of the
Speaker 1: old reality of you say lie enough times, then people
Speaker 1: will begin to believe it on some level, like you've
Speaker 1: just created the internal reality of the thing enough to
Speaker 1: where people can't quite get it out of their mind.
Speaker 2: I mean, a favorite trick of the political demagogue. It's
Speaker 2: kind of scary, how much if you just say something
Speaker 2: and now this is an idea that has to be
Speaker 2: discussed and taken seriously, even if there's literally no evidence
Speaker 2: for it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if there were a teapot, though, just for the
Speaker 1: sake of argument, do you think it would be like
Speaker 1: an ornate historical teapot? Do you think it'd be like
Speaker 1: a simple like earthenware teapot, or would it be like
Speaker 1: a space age teapot from another.
Speaker 2: Why are you even asked? Obviously it would be a
Speaker 2: novelty Garfield head teapot.
Speaker 1: Oh, well that's good.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know what does have healing properties? Is Garfield merchandise?
Speaker 2: Oh does it?
Speaker 1: Yes? Well, to some people it may have slight healing properties. Really,
Speaker 1: there's a whole comparison there you could probably make to tea.
Speaker 1: You know, we again are not going to get into
Speaker 1: the healing powers of tea too much, but outside of
Speaker 1: any actual properties involved in the tea itself, outside of
Speaker 1: what is actually happening in your body when you drink tea.
Speaker 1: But by this point, like tea has so many ritualistic associations,
Speaker 1: cultural associations, and personal associations that there is a comfort
Speaker 1: tea kind of going back to that poem, there there
Speaker 1: are all these circumstances where it is the right time,
Speaker 1: it is the appropriate time, it is the comforting time
Speaker 1: to have a cup of tea, and therefore, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean to at least some extent, like any cup of
Speaker 1: tea is going to do you good if you were
Speaker 1: a tea person.
Speaker 2: Well, this gets back to, yeah, what we were talking
Speaker 2: about in the previous episode about the the studies on
Speaker 2: the health effects of tea. I mean, it looks again
Speaker 2: there are a lot of persistent methodological problems with studies
Speaker 2: like this, but it looks on the whole like tea
Speaker 2: may very well have some positive health benefits, but it's
Speaker 2: just really it's hard to study stuff like this because
Speaker 2: it's not like a new drug that nobody was taking anyway.
Speaker 2: It's something that is deeply enmeshed in culture and in
Speaker 2: people's lives and in all this so it's a lot
Speaker 2: harder to isolate the chemical mechanical properties of the molecules
Speaker 2: that enter your body when you drink tea, and like
Speaker 2: do these really fight disease? Or when you're studying correlations
Speaker 2: between tea use and other health outcomes, is that a
Speaker 2: secondary effect of some other correlation? Just because it's so
Speaker 2: much a part of human life. It's so much harder
Speaker 2: to study.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of a point I may come back
Speaker 1: to when we talk about the introduction of tea into Japan.
Speaker 2: Oh well, on that note, let's get back into your
Speaker 2: notes on the history of tea in China and Japan.
Speaker 2: Now where do we leave off with the history and
Speaker 2: development of tea?
Speaker 1: In the last episode, I believe we'd pretty much reached
Speaker 1: the Yen dynasty. So this was a period when the
Speaker 1: Mongols ruled China from the early twelve hundreds through thirteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. And as we I believe, as we noted
Speaker 1: in the last episode, when you when you have a
Speaker 1: period of outsider rule in China, historically you tend to
Speaker 1: see a decline in tea popularity. And I know we
Speaker 1: talked about this a little bit and you kind of asked, well,
Speaker 1: you know, why is that exactly? And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this would be a good, good example here. I wanted
Speaker 1: to go a little deeper into it. So I looked
Speaker 1: at a few different sources on this particular scenario, because
Speaker 1: on one level, it's not to say that the Mongols
Speaker 1: didn't like tea. They had already been exposed to Chinese
Speaker 1: tea trade earlier and apparently took to it. They valued
Speaker 1: it as a digestive aid, among other things. Some of
Speaker 1: the sources I was looking at pointed out that there
Speaker 1: were particularities of like the traditional Mongol diet where it
Speaker 1: was nice to have a big caffeine punch to sort
Speaker 1: of move things along, you know. And also we have
Speaker 1: to remember, like there's there's definitely cultural transference. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is one of the sort of the famous aspects
Speaker 1: of Mongol rule in China is that these new rulers
Speaker 1: take on a lot of Chinese cultural things, and so
Speaker 1: the transference is going to go both ways. But I've
Speaker 1: seen this mention of a decline in tea popularity during
Speaker 1: this period noted in multiple sources. Now there is an
Speaker 1: added wrinkle that I've seen discussed regarding the Marco Polo account,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to get into all the ins
Speaker 1: and outs of that and arguments about how historically accurate
Speaker 1: we should consider the Marco Polo account. That account barely
Speaker 1: mentions tea despite his visits supposedly taking place during this time.
Speaker 1: But we know through other sources that there were plenty
Speaker 1: of tea houses still operating during this time period. And
Speaker 1: I think I've seen it argued as well that, Okay,
Speaker 1: if we're to take the Marco Polo account at face value,
Speaker 1: he was ultimately more interested in things that were Mongolian,
Speaker 1: and he saw tea as this non mongol thing and
Speaker 1: therefore didn't pay as much attention to it.
Speaker 2: So you could say maybe he especially because he was
Speaker 2: interested in trade, he's interested in dealing with the cultural
Speaker 2: artifacts of say, the dominant culture at the time, the
Speaker 2: politically dominant culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it would also line up with
Speaker 1: some of the things I've read about how the Mongols
Speaker 1: they didn't like outlock tea or anything, but he became
Speaker 1: just another beverage during this period, so they valued it,
Speaker 1: but they didn't elevate it like we see in previous
Speaker 1: and subsequent dynasties in China. And I was reading about
Speaker 1: some of this All the Ta in China from nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety book by Chow and Kramer. But now another source
Speaker 1: I was looking at is by Valerie Sartor. This was
Speaker 1: published in the American Journal of Chinese Studies in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. Is a paper title All the Tea
Speaker 1: in China. The Political Impact of tea.
Speaker 2: Well again, they're both that the previous book you talked
Speaker 2: about in this paper both called all the Ta in China.
Speaker 1: It's just irresistible. You got to go with it, okay. Anyway.
Speaker 1: In this paper, Sartok points out that the Mongol rule
Speaker 1: in China, again the Yen dynasty, didn't put as much
Speaker 1: emphasis on Chinese tea culture or pay a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to traditional tea customs. However, they definitely liked it.
Speaker 1: They adopted the salting of their tea and mixing it
Speaker 1: with milk, and at the same time, traditional Chinese tea
Speaker 1: houses remained popular hangouts for scholars and poets. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and fives Tea and Chinese Culture by Ling Wang,
Speaker 1: it's pointed out that the Mongol rule during the End
Speaker 1: dynasty was not only rule by non Han ethnic minority,
Speaker 1: it also filled many of its key positions with ethnic
Speaker 1: minorities as well. Wang points out that while the Mongols
Speaker 1: during this time really took to tea, they also pushed
Speaker 1: things toward a mass produced product for the masses and
Speaker 1: pushed away from you know, the more like say, a
Speaker 1: exotic animal shaped tea cakes that had been popular in
Speaker 1: China prior to their coming to power. So you know, again,
Speaker 1: I think it's a more complicated, seeming historical issue than
Speaker 1: one might expect. But I wonder if we might think
Speaker 1: of it as being kind of a cultural shift away
Speaker 1: from the glamour of tea as opposed to like, you know,
Speaker 1: an abandonment of tea or a decline of tea. Really
Speaker 1: it was still valued culturally among the Chinese as a
Speaker 1: beverage and a medicine, but it wasn't maintained as a
Speaker 1: socially elite thing with the kind of trickle down effects
Speaker 1: of that social elitism that you would see during this
Speaker 1: time period.
Speaker 2: I see. So in these these sort of dormant periods
Speaker 2: that we were talking about in that push and pull
Speaker 2: pattern in the last episode, like in this example, it's
Speaker 2: not that tea really went away or that people stopped
Speaker 2: drinking tea, but just that it became less significant as
Speaker 2: a as a political and social elite signifier. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I bet we can compare this
Speaker 1: in a limited sense to various trends. You know, you'll have,
Speaker 1: say a particular style of cocktail. This would deal with
Speaker 1: a much shorter period of time, but like a particular
Speaker 1: cocktail comes out, it's exciting, but then it just becomes
Speaker 1: another cocktail, and the attention given to it, you know,
Speaker 1: it definitely goes down. Your average experience of this cocktail
Speaker 1: is maybe a bit mediocre until such time as someone
Speaker 1: brings it back and starts pushing the boundaries again and
Speaker 1: figuring out, like, what works about this cocktail, what can
Speaker 1: I improve upon, what new twists can I do to it?
Speaker 1: And in what ways can I go back to the
Speaker 1: original version of this cocktail? That sort of thing. So,
Speaker 1: but either way, during the Mongo rule, I think we
Speaker 1: can generalize and say that tea culture has stagnated a bit.
Speaker 1: Nobody seemed to have been advancing tea so much or
Speaker 1: pushing the boundaries of tea. But then you have the
Speaker 1: establishment of the Ming dynasty in thirteen sixty eight, and
Speaker 1: it's in this dynasty we see yet another revival of
Speaker 1: t And it's not to say that it's as simple
Speaker 1: as the Ming dynasty simply announcing hey, Ta's back on
Speaker 1: the menu, because again, it was never off the menu.
Speaker 1: And in fact, according to weighing in Tea and Chinese culture,
Speaker 1: the tea loving scholarly class, they were somewhat cracked down
Speaker 1: on during this Initially during this period, as were various
Speaker 1: other perceived threats as the Ming solidified their rule. Though
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, one of the founding hong Wu Emperor's sons
Speaker 1: became a key scholar and proponent of TA during this time.
Speaker 1: This was an individual by the name of Zu Kwan,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a manual on T and much of
Speaker 1: the Ming tea ceremony culture to follow would be based
Speaker 1: on the ideas presented in this manual T as this
Speaker 1: ritualized cleanser of the soul. So on one hand, yes, you
Speaker 1: have imperial folks pushing tea again, accepting TA. You can
Speaker 1: get kind of like that, that trickle down attraction to
Speaker 1: the beverage again. But it's also during this period that
Speaker 1: we enter phase three of tea, in which tea is picked, withered, dried, rolled,
Speaker 1: and oxidized. The result is dried, loose leaf tea that
Speaker 1: can then be steeped for a set number of minutes
Speaker 1: to create a smooth and rich beverage. It was easier
Speaker 1: to process this way, as Laura C. Martin points out
Speaker 1: in the History of Tea, and it better enables the
Speaker 1: incorporation of dried fruits and spices as well as flowers.
Speaker 1: All these were ingredients the Chinese tea enthusiasts during this
Speaker 1: day and tea masters definitely explored, and you see this
Speaker 1: a lot in tea today as well. Also during this time,
Speaker 1: the Honglow Emperor himself proclaims that only this new method
Speaker 1: of loose leaf tea is going to be acceptable as tribute.
Speaker 1: So tea tributes made to the Emperor and his household
Speaker 1: they have to be this new phase three t The
Speaker 1: scholarly class apparently held out a little bit longer, sticking
Speaker 1: to their older traditions, traditions again that they had they
Speaker 1: had stuck to through foreign rule. But even they eventually realize, hey,
Speaker 1: oolong tea is really good and they start drinking oolong
Speaker 1: tea instead.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they've got the larger process that includes oxidation
Speaker 2: like we talked about last time. But am I correct
Speaker 2: that Oolong that's a medium level oxidation tea, right, It's
Speaker 2: not as oxidized as like black tea, but it's more
Speaker 2: than green tea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I didn't read a whole lot on oolong
Speaker 1: or oolong tea, but but perhaps there was kind of
Speaker 1: like a meeting of halfway there where they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: but this one's just a little bit oxidized, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, new types of tea also means okay, we have
Speaker 1: we have new methods of brewing it, so we need
Speaker 1: new tea paraphernalia. And so it's during this time to
Speaker 1: come back to the teapot that historians think that the
Speaker 1: true teapot was possibly born. Now, prior to this one
Speaker 1: would use open pans and wide mouthed bowls to brew
Speaker 1: your tea in. But they discovered now that okay, if
Speaker 1: you have a small, covered container, this is going to
Speaker 1: bring out more flavor. But at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: thought that the invention of the teapot was largely more
Speaker 1: of a repurposing of pre existing wine oers and then
Speaker 1: adapting the design for tea, so, for instance, the handle
Speaker 1: being placed on the side of the teapot as opposed
Speaker 1: to on top of the teapot for easier access, though
Speaker 1: of course we still have a lot of teapots today
Speaker 1: where you have the handle on top that kind of
Speaker 1: folds to the side. Also, smaller pots, because while it
Speaker 1: might make sense to have a larger pot that you
Speaker 1: have filled with wine to distribute at a party or
Speaker 1: something if you're making tea in it. You don't want
Speaker 1: to make so much tea in the pot that everything
Speaker 1: gets over steeped. Because you oversteep your tea, it's going
Speaker 1: to take on a bitter and undesirable flavor. I imagine many
Speaker 1: of you out there have encountered this before. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: get a pot of tea at a restaurant and there
Speaker 1: are not enough of you drinking it, or you're drinking
Speaker 1: it at such a slow pace that by the end
Speaker 1: it's pretty strong and maybe a bit bitter.
Speaker 2: Sorry, this got me thinking about, with the invention of
Speaker 2: the teapot, if there are any older like of these
Speaker 2: tea poems, if any of them mentioned the dreaded dribbling
Speaker 2: like is the teapot effect reference that far back? I
Speaker 2: wonder when the first person to notice it in writing.
Speaker 1: Was Oh, this is a great question. We have to
Speaker 1: come back to this, because I bet there's an answer.
Speaker 1: Because these texts that were coming out on tea culture
Speaker 1: were so exhaustive about all the dos and don'ts, there
Speaker 1: has to be something in there about the I'm surely
Speaker 1: forbidden don't of dribbling your tea during a high class
Speaker 1: tea service like if it doesn't, like, surely it exists
Speaker 1: in Chinese and or Japanese literature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the instruction must be to pour with confidence. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now, there were other advancements here too. For example, light
Speaker 1: colored porcelain ceramics became all the rage as they allowed
Speaker 1: you to show off the natural color of a particular
Speaker 1: tea better. Blue underglazes were also quite popular, and there
Speaker 1: was also a special earthenware teapot known as a using
Speaker 1: that was quite popular as well. This was I think
Speaker 1: it basically means like purple earthenware, but it wasn't necessarily purple,
Speaker 1: But it was an earthenware tea pot that was essentially
Speaker 1: seasoned by the tea. And they could also be quite beautiful.
Speaker 1: But there are some mentions in the old writings about
Speaker 1: tea that like, oh, we have a nice tea here,
Speaker 1: but you're serving it out of the wrong pot. You
Speaker 1: need a properly seasoned pot otherwise it's just not going
Speaker 1: to taste it. Now, we mentioned Oolong tea already, but
Speaker 1: obviously this is the time during which black tea is discovered.
Speaker 1: You know that we could realize that we can have
Speaker 1: this this highly oxidized black or red tea as it's
Speaker 1: generally referred to in China, and as Mary Lou and
Speaker 1: Robert J. Heies discuss in the Story of Tea, a
Speaker 1: cultural history and drinking guide that came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. The discovery of black tea oxidation as
Speaker 1: a process was originally thought only suitable for barbarians and foreigners.
Speaker 2: Well, it makes me wonder, as I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: many food inventions have an origin like this. Was this
Speaker 2: discovered by act accident? Was it like, ooh the tea
Speaker 2: the tea leaves got bruised up and smashed and then
Speaker 2: left around for a while and they turned dark and
Speaker 2: all that is it ruined?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, turns out it actually tastes great.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I ran across a story or
Speaker 1: to that effect, but then I couldn't rEFInd the story
Speaker 1: when I was finalizing my notes here. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like there was at least one story about like
Speaker 1: some discarded tea ship mints that an army came across,
Speaker 1: or something to that effect. But the other interesting thing
Speaker 1: about this is that like the resulting tea would simply
Speaker 1: keep longer and could therefore be shipped further both by
Speaker 1: land and by sea, and so the brick tea that
Speaker 1: started reaching Mongolia and to bet that would be black
Speaker 1: brick tea. Meanwhile, green tea bricks those more easily suffered
Speaker 1: from overheating from freezing, and it often developed mold in
Speaker 1: damp environments. So yeah, we get into the situation where
Speaker 1: the farther out you're sending your tea, the more where
Speaker 1: it makes sense for it to be black tea. And
Speaker 1: perhaps early on you're just like, well, yeah, get send
Speaker 1: that black stuff out of here. That's going to Mongolia,
Speaker 1: that's going to Tibet. But then of course over time
Speaker 1: it catches on, people start experimenting with it, and you
Speaker 1: get so many splinterid black teas as well. But at
Speaker 1: the same time black tea of course becomes the tea
Speaker 1: to catch on in the Western world and catch on
Speaker 1: by storm. There's a good great deal of Martin's The
Speaker 1: History of Tea that of course just deals with this,
Speaker 1: like how tea reaches Europe and how it I mean,
Speaker 1: because it's so crazy to think about this as well,
Speaker 1: like modern Britain and not even modern brit but historically
Speaker 1: Britain and tea so inseparable, like it is held up
Speaker 1: as this thoroughly British thing, but of course it is
Speaker 1: entirely an import one interesting thing. This is something we've
Speaker 1: discussed on an older episode of the show. But like
Speaker 1: thinking again about black tea being considered this thoroughly British thing,
Speaker 1: and yet at the same time, there seems to have
Speaker 1: been at least a mild panic Britain in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century about green tea making people hallucinate unlike proper black tea.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's almost like people don't realize they come
Speaker 2: from the same plant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you're talking about the same botanical origin here,
Speaker 1: they're both tea. But yeah, black tea is British, but
Speaker 1: green tea is something to mistrust.
Speaker 2: And again there's a dangerous foreign substance that may have
Speaker 2: the devil inside it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a Again there's an older episode of
Speaker 1: the show about this, but the scenario seem to have
Speaker 1: basically involved three factors mistrust of a tea seen as
Speaker 1: foreign or unusual, and I think this was also backed
Speaker 1: up by a popular ghost story that was written in
Speaker 1: the time during this time period about the dangers of
Speaker 1: green tea, also possible contaminants of the tea, and also,
Speaker 1: there were some sort of bad actors in the tea
Speaker 1: market here who thought, well, we need to make this
Speaker 1: color more exciting for Western customers, and so they were
Speaker 1: throwing in some perhaps less than healthy substances to try
Speaker 1: to enhance the coloration of the green tea. Hmmm.
Speaker 2: Oh, this may be a completely spurious connection, but it
Speaker 2: also makes me think of the English association between the
Speaker 2: color green and like the jealousy of the fairies.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know, I don't recall there if anybody
Speaker 1: called out that connection, but I could easily see that
Speaker 1: they're being the sort of color theory and color a
Speaker 1: version already present and given culture. And then you have
Speaker 1: these other that could potentially enhance these other reasons that
Speaker 1: we're seen at the time to be suspicions of green tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a green dress invites curses, what would a
Speaker 2: green beverage do?
Speaker 1: Yeah. But the other thing worth keeping in mind too
Speaker 1: is that there is an actual possible link between caffeine
Speaker 1: and hallucination. And this link is not all that shocking
Speaker 1: when you consider the relationships between anxiety stimulants and the minds.
Speaker 1: Just natural potential for hallucinations various reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but would there be more caffeine and the green
Speaker 2: tea than the black tea. I thought it was usually
Speaker 2: the other way around.
Speaker 1: Yes, But then also a lot of that comes down
Speaker 1: to how long you're steeping something, and you know, how
Speaker 1: often you're consuming it. I guess, like if you're having
Speaker 1: enough green tea during the course of a day. I mean,
Speaker 1: the other part of it is that an individual's susceptibility
Speaker 1: to caffeine is going to vary from person to person.
Speaker 1: But I guess one way to look at it is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if caffeine potentially enhances stress, then this could cause the
Speaker 1: body to release more cortisol. And another explanation that I
Speaker 1: remember from that episode was that people who use caffeine
Speaker 1: a lot, say three or more cups of coffee per day,
Speaker 1: are simply more prone to mental health associations that cause hallucination.
Speaker 1: So you know, there are various various ways to tease
Speaker 1: it apart if there's nothing special about green tea itself,
Speaker 1: unless it is, of course, has some sort of horrible
Speaker 1: substance added to it potentially to make it more hallucinogenic.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just kind of interesting in terms of
Speaker 1: the britishness or foreign nature of tea as perceived in
Speaker 1: England in the nineteenth century. All right, one final area. Again,
Speaker 1: We're not going to follow tea all around the world
Speaker 1: and cover all the various variations and customs on this show,
Speaker 1: but I think it is important to at least touch
Speaker 1: on Japanese tea culture and history a bit as well,
Speaker 1: because like knowing when and how tea reaches Japan is
Speaker 1: also important because Japanese culture has contributed so much to
Speaker 1: our global understanding and appreciation of tea. In fact, a
Speaker 1: number of the teas that I drink are Chinese teas,
Speaker 1: but I did make sure that I was drinking a
Speaker 1: Japanese tea when I was working on this section of
Speaker 1: the notes.
Speaker 2: Oh, which one is?
Speaker 1: That is a delightful Karagani tea, Which is a great tea.
Speaker 1: This one's made, but I think mostly from stems, and
Speaker 1: like a lot of green teas, you have to be
Speaker 1: you can't just go willy nilly in there and start
Speaker 1: steeping it at any temperature and for any amount of time.
Speaker 1: It's not one of the kind of slot. I like
Speaker 1: a good sloppy tea that I can accidentally forget about
Speaker 1: and come back too. And it's no worse for wear.
Speaker 1: This is one you have to be precise with. But
Speaker 1: if you if you just give it the appropriate amount
Speaker 1: of time at the appropriate temperature, it's thoroughly delightful, very
Speaker 1: smooth green tea. So tea culture as I was reading
Speaker 1: in most of my main source and this was Martin,
Speaker 1: but tea culture was originally introduced into Japan via Buddhism
Speaker 1: during the reign of Prince Chautauku, who lived five seventy
Speaker 1: four through six twenty two. This is a semi legendary figure,
Speaker 1: though there's nothing too legendary about the basic premise here,
Speaker 1: So this is not a story that involves the machinations
Speaker 1: of gods or supernatural deities. Basically, you had scholars traveling
Speaker 1: to China during this time studying Buddhism and in the
Speaker 1: process also learning to drink and cultivate tea. Now, this
Speaker 1: is definitely the Phase one era of tea at this point,
Speaker 1: So there's that level of tea technology that they have.
Speaker 1: This is the two level of tea technology that they're
Speaker 1: bringing back with them.
Speaker 2: Phase one would have been the brick form.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the brick form that did not have as enhanced
Speaker 1: flavor profile as most of the teas we think of today, okay,
Speaker 1: And it was a luxury item at first, mostly imported,
Speaker 1: but it was during the reign of Emperor Shomu, who
Speaker 1: lived seven oh one through seven fifty six he helped
Speaker 1: popularize it more by serving it to monks, particularly. There's
Speaker 1: a story about him serving it to monks during this
Speaker 1: day long reading of Buddhist scriptures and they're like, what
Speaker 1: is this and he's like, drink it. It's going to
Speaker 1: enhance everything you're doing today, trust me, And supposedly they
Speaker 1: end up embracing it up until the ninth century, when
Speaker 1: Sino Japanese relations strained somewhat. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: cultural transference there, with tea customs and practices entering into
Speaker 1: Japan from China, much of it tied to Buddhist practices
Speaker 1: and the tastes of the Imperial court at that time.
Speaker 1: In the ninth century, however, diplomatic ties between the countries
Speaker 1: dried up, and tea culture in Japan didn't really progress
Speaker 1: for a good three centuries. Its popularity to decrease, and
Speaker 1: its use was then limited mostly to monasteries, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because all this kind of mirrors what we saw
Speaker 1: during Mongol rule in China. But then during the twelfth century,
Speaker 1: relations between Japan and China improved, and it's during this
Speaker 1: period that the Monk Asi introduced both the Rinzai Zen
Speaker 1: Buddhism practice as well as whipped tea to Japan. So
Speaker 1: this is phase two once more with Asi. Here he's
Speaker 1: advocating tea as a key tool for Zen Buddhist practitioners
Speaker 1: as well as a quote divine remedy and supreme gift
Speaker 1: of heaven. Martin writes that Asi proclaimed t as the
Speaker 1: cure for or loss of appetite. Illness is caused by
Speaker 1: poor drinking, water, paralysis, boils, and what we would come
Speaker 1: to know of as a thimine deficiency. He saw tea
Speaker 1: drinking as something that benefited each organ in a different way,
Speaker 1: as well as the spiritual aspects of a person as well,
Speaker 1: just so everywhere it could go to leak into all
Speaker 1: your organs and into your spiritual structures, and it's just
Speaker 1: going to cleanse everything out and make everything better.
Speaker 2: Tea is great, But I love these different moments in
Speaker 2: history where like somebody discovers tea and then they're like
Speaker 2: it does everything. You know, they really get on the
Speaker 2: tea terrain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do like that. Again, it comes back to
Speaker 1: something we talked about in the last episode about tea
Speaker 1: being healthier than just normal drinking water that hasn't been
Speaker 1: brought up to the boiling point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, initially tea was really popular monasteries and among the
Speaker 1: ruling class, but then it spread to pretty much everyone.
Speaker 1: It also became highly ritualized during this time, the time
Speaker 1: of the samurai. For example, it became part of the
Speaker 1: Bushido code. So if you were a memo or of
Speaker 1: the elite warrior class in Japan, were yeah, you're expected
Speaker 1: to be able to kill people with your sword, but
Speaker 1: you were expected to apply yourself to say poetry and
Speaker 1: tea customs when you were not fighting or training to fight.
Speaker 1: By the mid fourteenth century, tea houses were a popular
Speaker 1: secular hangout as well, and it seems to have taken
Speaker 1: on a not only a secular air, but kind of
Speaker 1: a boisterous quality as well. They're apparently a number of
Speaker 1: tales of tea drinking exploits. Some of these exploits were
Speaker 1: tied to just drinking a whole lot of tea. There
Speaker 1: are accounts of like fifty cups, one hundred cups, though
Speaker 1: I don't think this is necessarily for an individual, but
Speaker 1: maybe more for like a group or a table.
Speaker 2: Okay, because I mean warning like you can't actually get
Speaker 2: too much caffeine. Be careful there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't do not try and drink fifty
Speaker 1: or one hundred cups. But I think this would be
Speaker 1: like a party, like a large group and they're just
Speaker 1: drinking a lot of tea and they're keeping track of
Speaker 1: how many they were going through. It could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but I think that's the case. There were also more
Speaker 1: refine find tea drinking exploits tied to contests that would
Speaker 1: take place to see if you could identify a tea
Speaker 1: by the taste or say taste of tea and determine
Speaker 1: what region it's from. That sort of thing, And the
Speaker 1: tea service during this time was also formalized as a
Speaker 1: part of politics. So really it's like at every level
Speaker 1: of the socioeconomic structure, tea ends up finding a place.
Speaker 1: Tea culture would come to impact various levels of design
Speaker 1: as well, from the physical instruments of tea brewing of
Speaker 1: course in Japan, but also this would end up being
Speaker 1: tied into the architecture of tea huts that were specially
Speaker 1: designed to blend into the natural environment and be part
Speaker 1: of this sort of like nature based understanding of tea
Speaker 1: and tea drinking.
Speaker 2: Speaking of pouring with confidence to avoid the teapot effect
Speaker 2: that I mentioned earlier, I've watched some video of Japanese
Speaker 2: tea masters from today at work, and man, I really
Speaker 2: notice a pouring with confidence kind of ethic to them.
Speaker 2: Like it's interesting to watch their actions because in the
Speaker 2: ones I've seen, they are of course very precise with
Speaker 2: their movements, so it's not it's the opposite of sloppy,
Speaker 2: but it is also very like forceful and deliberate, confident pouring.
Speaker 2: It is not delicate, little anything that would result in dribbling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I say, I know that some of these
Speaker 1: tea masters in their works have to have to tackle
Speaker 1: the avoidance of dribbling, and how you avoid dribbling in
Speaker 1: these various tea ceremonies. You know, I don't know about you, Joe,
Speaker 1: but another this is something that comes up for me
Speaker 1: and I know was just surely avoided by experts in
Speaker 1: the field. But in the resteeping of tea bags, one
Speaker 1: error that we have to keep looking out for in
Speaker 1: my house is you have an already wet tea bag
Speaker 1: and you're going to do your second or third steep,
Speaker 1: you put it in there, you have some new hot
Speaker 1: water added. If the tea bag is kind of partially
Speaker 1: hanging over the edge of the of the tea cup
Speaker 1: or the mug, then you'll have this kind of wicking
Speaker 1: effect where the water comes up through the tea bag
Speaker 1: and then gets all over the countertop. If you ever
Speaker 1: had this.
Speaker 2: Occurain, Yeah, I didn't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So another great way to make a big
Speaker 1: mess with tea.
Speaker 2: Different kind of capillary action, I would guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Capillary action sounds like a better explanation,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it do make a mess.
Speaker 2: Well, I've enjoyed this tea journey, Rob, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I say, this was not an attempt to provide
Speaker 1: an exhaustive and all inclusive understanding of tea, but hopefully
Speaker 1: sort of drive home like the basic evolution of tea
Speaker 1: and where a lot of the most important movements in
Speaker 1: tea were taking place. Because again, we have such a
Speaker 1: rich tea global culture out there to appreciate. Now, we
Speaker 1: didn't even get into all the various salted and buttered
Speaker 1: tea traditions. And again, we're already at this point. I
Speaker 1: don't think we've gotten to share any of these in
Speaker 1: listener mail yet, but we're already hearing from some folks
Speaker 1: about some of their favorite ways to prepare tea, things
Speaker 1: that are either personally or culturally important to them. So
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from everyone out there. If
Speaker 1: there's a particular tea you love, let us know. For
Speaker 1: my own part, and I'm doing this recording especially, I
Speaker 1: have a bit of a sore throat and a cold
Speaker 1: a cough going on, and I depended heavily on a
Speaker 1: puer tea called Evil Snake King. And normally I just
Speaker 1: take it straight, but for this I added a lot
Speaker 1: of honey to it. So normally I don't put anything
Speaker 1: into the teas that I drink, but man, if my
Speaker 1: throat is a little bit sore, I can add some honey,
Speaker 1: maybe even some lemon to that and it'll really get
Speaker 1: me through.
Speaker 2: Well, may the Evil Snake King breathe all his curses
Speaker 2: into whatever microbe is infecting your throat or virus A
Speaker 2: blast them on out of there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus, I just bought this piece of driftwood just arrived.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to have healing properties. Yeah, I have to
Speaker 1: swallow it and strap it to my neck. It would
Speaker 1: be good. Great, all right, So yeah, write in. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there about tea and
Speaker 1: tea culture in your life. If you have perhaps you
Speaker 1: have some answers to our questions about tea dribbling advice
Speaker 1: from the tea masters of old. In the meantime, check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Our
Speaker 1: core episodes come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed On Mondays. We
Speaker 1: do those listener mail episodes. On Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 1: short form artifact or monster fact, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
Speaker 1: strange film.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com.
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