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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and.

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Speaker 4: We have another superstition episode here for you today. You know,

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Speaker 4: we often have a lot of fun with these sorts

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Speaker 4: of episodes, digging into a superstition, trying to figure out

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Speaker 4: where does it come from, why does it persist, what

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Speaker 4: possible you know, science or logical or semiological or just

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Speaker 4: mirror correlation may be beneath all of it. And so

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Speaker 4: I was looking around for something that might be neat

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Speaker 4: to talk about on the show, and I happened upon

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Speaker 4: something that I was not familiar with before, a supposed

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Speaker 4: old timey maritime bit of folklore, much in the same

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Speaker 4: vein as you know some of these other prohibitions that

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Speaker 4: people have heard about before. You know that on old

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Speaker 4: timey sailing vessels, you would say, oh, you don't don't

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Speaker 4: let a woman come aboard, it's bad luck. Don't let

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Speaker 4: a redhead come aboard, it'll be bad luck, and so forth,

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Speaker 4: and and you know, and then beyond that there's all

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Speaker 4: sorts of bits of maritime lores, such as the Old

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Speaker 4: Red Sky at Mornings, Saylor take warning, which I think

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Speaker 4: we may have discussed in the podcast before, and various

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Speaker 4: bits of good luck, you know, as well as bad

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Speaker 4: luck omens rituals that will help ensure as safe voyage,

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Speaker 4: that sort of thing.

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Speaker 5: I feel like boats are really a place where where

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Speaker 5: memes of dubious knowledge can take hold, much for the

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Speaker 5: same reasons that schools are places where that can happen, because,

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Speaker 5: like you know, you have a group of people who

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Speaker 5: are all under the common command of you know, the

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Speaker 5: same authority figures. They're all kind of I don't know,

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Speaker 5: whispering between each other something something seems in common there.

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Speaker 5: I remember thinking that when I was in school.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess you could. I'd never thought about this before.

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Speaker 4: You could compare a sailing vessel, especially like you know,

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Speaker 4: an old, old sailing vessel, to a school. You know,

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Speaker 4: they're they're distinct environments. They're kind of pressure cookers for

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Speaker 4: a lot of social factors as well as biological and

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Speaker 4: health factors. And the ship you have the added the

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Speaker 4: added factor that it is often situated in an extreme environment.

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Speaker 4: It is something that takes off from the known world

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Speaker 4: into the unknown or or potentially into troubled seas or

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Speaker 4: contested waters, you know, the realm of pirates and maybe

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Speaker 4: the realm of of monsters and dragons.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, at least with most schools, I would hope that

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Speaker 5: you don't have to deal with the fact that the

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Speaker 5: headmaster killed a sacred albatross.

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Speaker 4: Right right, But in either case, banking is all around

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Speaker 4: right now, naturally, and we've we've touched on this before

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Speaker 4: in the show.

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Speaker 2: With a lot of the.

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Speaker 4: Different bits of ritual and folklore that are aligned with

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Speaker 4: maritime traditions, you can really look the basics of this

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Speaker 4: is what a Bronis law Malinofsky's anxiety ritual theory, which

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Speaker 4: holds that we turn to notions like this and especially rituals,

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Speaker 4: to generate an illusion of control over things to soothe

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Speaker 4: our anxiety. So obviously, sailing in the eighteenth century and

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Speaker 4: before could be a hazardous endeavor. It was hard work,

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Speaker 4: it could be dangerous work, and there are all sorts

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Speaker 4: of sensory, social, and medical factors as well. So seeking

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Speaker 4: to do X or making sure no one does why

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Speaker 4: with one way to feel like you're exercising control over

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Speaker 4: the uncontrollable, like I can't actually fully control what is

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Speaker 4: going to happen to this ship between here and our destination.

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Speaker 4: But I can darn well sure make sure that nobody

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Speaker 4: with wreckles comes on board, because that will be certain

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Speaker 4: to you know.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, when you don't control your destiny, you make up

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Speaker 5: rules as a way of coping.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, making sure everybody touches a piece of metal on

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Speaker 4: the vessel, or you know, does say a particular word,

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Speaker 4: that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So what's the superstition.

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Speaker 4: Today's superstition, the one we're going to be dealing with,

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Speaker 4: and to varying degrees, is is bad luck to bring

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Speaker 4: bananas on a ship. I'd never heard of this before, Joe,

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Speaker 4: had you ever heard this before?

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Speaker 3: Not at all?

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Speaker 5: And I fail all the time, Like I think most

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Speaker 5: of the time I get on a boat, I take

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Speaker 5: a banana.

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Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, I'm sure I've done it before because

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Speaker 4: I love bananas. Bananas are great. Bananas are such a

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Speaker 4: mobile food, you know, As was pointed out in some

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Speaker 4: of the sources I was looking at for this episode,

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Speaker 4: it's like one of the beautiful things about about the

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Speaker 4: bananas that you know, the food bananas, that dessert bananas

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Speaker 4: that most of you are going to have access to.

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Speaker 4: You know, they have their own wrapper and you can.

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Speaker 4: You could drop one on the ground, It could roll

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Speaker 4: through the most absurd filth, and you would probably still

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Speaker 4: be okay with picking it up, removing that peeling, and

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Speaker 4: having yourself a delightful banana snack, a nice, sweet, starchy,

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Speaker 4: fulfilling snack. And you know, not even getting into all

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Speaker 4: the other uses for the fruit of the banana and

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Speaker 4: the rest of the banana plant.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of appealing things about the banana. I

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Speaker 5: eat plenty of bananas myself, but I will I don't

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Speaker 5: want anybody to take me too literally with the joke

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Speaker 5: I made a minute ago. I don't always take a

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Speaker 5: banana on a boat, but it does happen more. I

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Speaker 5: think now that now that I have a child, so

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Speaker 5: like when I go on a boat. Because another great

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Speaker 5: thing about bananas is if you ever experienced having a

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Speaker 5: child who's a picky eater, banana often gets through the

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Speaker 5: screening somehow like that they'll might might be opposed to

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Speaker 5: a lot of other foods, but will accept a banana.

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Speaker 2: Hmm.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that means, yeah, bananas are sweet and squishy. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: they have a lot of things going for them. So, yeah,

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Speaker 4: this idea that you shouldn't bring a banana on a ship.

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Speaker 4: You will find a lot of a lot of energy

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Speaker 4: about this superstition online once you start looking for it.

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Speaker 4: As you and I were discussing before we turn on

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Speaker 4: the mics here, a lot of it is going to

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Speaker 4: be repeated over and over again on the blogs at

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Speaker 4: various like Marino websites and boating websites. We encountered this

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Speaker 4: sometimes in our you know, when we're researching, and I'm

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Speaker 4: sure a lot of you have encountered this with your

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Speaker 4: own personal research. Say you want to look up something

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Speaker 4: that's related to a particular pest you know, I don't know,

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Speaker 4: or rodent or whatnot. You start looking for info, and

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Speaker 4: a lot of it the search engines are sending you

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Speaker 4: right to these different blog posts on pest control websites,

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Speaker 4: and for whatever reason, a lot of the information out

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Speaker 4: there that's making claims about this superstition regarding bananas is

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Speaker 4: hosted on marina websites, voting websites and the like.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, Google thinks for some reason that when you're looking

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Speaker 5: for entomology information, you want to go to Joe's Dead

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Speaker 5: Bug before you go to you know, a scientific journal

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Speaker 5: or a pop science magazine or something. I wonder why

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Speaker 5: that is. Maybe that just has something to do with

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Speaker 5: generally ranking like commercial things higher. But why would that

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Speaker 5: be what people are looking for when they're searching for

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Speaker 5: I don't know. But yeah, same thing with this banana thing.

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Speaker 5: We like, all these Marina websites are coming up. It's

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Speaker 5: very funny.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and again I was not familiar with this superstition before.

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Speaker 4: It seems like it has origins and more like you know,

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Speaker 4: maritime ocean going traditions and in the banana trade, which

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Speaker 4: we'll get into in a bit, but it does seem

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Speaker 4: to also still be alive as a fishing superstition, and

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Speaker 4: the superstition of just you know, regular everyday anglers, not

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Speaker 4: even on international waters, but just on like, you know,

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Speaker 4: fresh water environments. I am not enough of a fisher

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Speaker 4: person to really have much to say about that. I

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Speaker 4: know we have some some fisher people out there. So

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Speaker 4: if you fish and you haven't heard about this, right

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Speaker 4: in and let us know. And if you have heard

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Speaker 4: about it deafly write in and let us know what

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Speaker 4: version of the superstition you've heard and to what degree

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Speaker 4: people seem to enforce it or you know, abide by it,

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Speaker 4: or believe that it has any bit of validity to it.

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Speaker 5: How plausible does it seem to you that bananas repel

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Speaker 5: the fish?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: Is that just will have you have trouble catching fish

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Speaker 4: if you bring a banana on the boat.

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Speaker 3: Call me skeptical.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: So, in today's episode, we're going to explore this superstition

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Speaker 4: a little bit and discuss some of the ways that

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Speaker 4: it that the case has been made that it might

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Speaker 4: actually make sense or at least correlate with perceptions of

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Speaker 4: ill fated voyages. We'll get into all that, but but

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Speaker 4: I guess first the thing to do is just talk

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Speaker 4: a little bit about the banana. There's a great excuse

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Speaker 4: to talk about what is really a fascinating fruit with

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Speaker 4: really fascinating history at times, a very dark and disturbing history,

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Speaker 4: but also a much deeper history than I think a

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Speaker 4: lot of us might have given given it credit. The

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Speaker 4: banana is so every day, it is so ubiquitous that

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Speaker 4: it is very easy to take it for granted. Like

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Speaker 4: I before, you know, every morning I have a banana

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Speaker 4: one way or another. You know, it's generally it's in

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Speaker 4: a smoothie, I have banana plants, non non food bananas

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Speaker 4: growing in my backyard.

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Speaker 2: Then they grow all over.

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Speaker 4: The place around Atlanta during the summer, it's just banana

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Speaker 4: leaves everywhere. So and then you go out to like

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Speaker 4: coffee shops or sometimes even kind of like surprising, it's

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Speaker 4: surprising you'll go to a particular store and they'll just

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Speaker 4: have bananas for sale. Like, like, bananas are just just

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Speaker 4: scattered throughout our lives. So it would be forgiven for

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Speaker 4: not really thinking long and deep about them. But let's see,

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Speaker 4: let's get into some of the basics about them. You know,

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Speaker 4: bananas are delicious.

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Speaker 2: Again.

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Speaker 4: They benefit from their own wrappers, their peels, which protect

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Speaker 4: the fruit and ensure that the fruit itself can be

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Speaker 4: eaten even if it's been dirty or damaged to some degree.

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Speaker 4: You know, I mean it can be damaged to a

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Speaker 4: degree that that actually affects the fruit. But you know,

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Speaker 4: for the most part, you can drop a banana on

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Speaker 4: the floor and you pick it up. You don't even

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Speaker 4: have to think about a three second rule. Banana plants

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Speaker 4: produce starchy, elongated to varying degrees, fruit covered in this

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Speaker 4: protective peel. They're botanically considered a berry, and many wild

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Speaker 4: varieties that should be noted are inedible. But among the

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Speaker 4: bananas that we eat, we have the cooking bananas, the

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Speaker 4: plantains that you generally need to cook first in order

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Speaker 4: to eat, and then you have the dessert bananas. And

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Speaker 4: these are the ones that, especially here in the States,

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Speaker 4: these are just bananas. Everyone just calls these bananas, but generally,

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Speaker 4: more often than not, you're talking about the Cavendish banana cultivar,

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Speaker 4: name for William Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire, who was

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Speaker 4: an enthusiastic horticulturist. He and his head gardeners Joseph Paxton,

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Speaker 4: successfully cultivated the Musa cavendishy cultivar in their English greenhouses.

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Speaker 4: So for the most part, this is going to be

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Speaker 4: the cultivar of the banana, of the seedless, edible dessert

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Speaker 4: banana that you're encountering, though this has not always been

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Speaker 4: the most available version. We're not going to get into

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Speaker 4: the full history of the banana trade and various conditions

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Speaker 4: that have affected the availability of bananas and might affect

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Speaker 4: them in the future, but it is a very fascinating history.

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Speaker 4: So for a little more on this, I turned to

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Speaker 4: a couple of sources. There's a book The Fate of

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Speaker 4: the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koppel, that's

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Speaker 4: quite good. And then I also turned to an article

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Speaker 4: hosted by the University of California, Santa Cruz, home of

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Speaker 4: the Banana Slugs, titled the History of the Banana Ancient

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Speaker 4: Origins to the eighteen hundreds, and so in this I

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Speaker 4: really have to admit, like, the history of cultivated bananas

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Speaker 4: goes back a lot farther than I had any any indication,

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Speaker 4: any idea that it stretched. So according to this source

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Speaker 4: and some others that I was looking at, human domestication

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Speaker 4: of bananas may date back to five thousand to eight

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Speaker 4: thousand BCE in the Cook Valley in New Guinea, though

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Speaker 4: other spontaneous domestication events might have occurred elsewhere within the

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Speaker 4: Southeast Asia and South Pacific range of the wild banana,

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Speaker 4: and these would have been The crazy thing here is

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Speaker 4: that you know, again most wild bananas they're not really edible,

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Speaker 4: and they're going to have like big seeds inside them.

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Speaker 4: This is not something you associate with the bananas you're

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Speaker 4: going to get at the grocery store or that you know,

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Speaker 4: eat first thing in the morning. Because these are seedless

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Speaker 4: and they have been selected for and domesticated so that

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Speaker 4: you get this seedless variety of this asexual banana.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, specially bread to be highly edible in their in

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Speaker 5: their natural raw state.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so this would have been a case where uh,

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Speaker 4: you know, ancient peoples were able to manipulate naturally occurring,

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Speaker 4: occurring seedless varieties of these wild bananas and and cultivate

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Speaker 4: them and and use them for their you know, their

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Speaker 4: starchy sweetness. And these ancient cultivated bananas then spread to

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Speaker 4: the Philippines and then spread widely throughout the tropics, though

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Speaker 4: it's apparently hard to trace the exact patterns of the

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Speaker 4: of the bananas movement. Sometimes and in some places is

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Speaker 4: introduction and then reintroduction might be thousands of years apart,

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Speaker 4: so you know, like, oh, everybody's crazy for the bananas.

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Speaker 4: They go bananas with the bananas, and then maybe bananas

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Speaker 4: are forgotten. Various calamities occur, and then bananas are reintroduced

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Speaker 4: later on, or reintroduced with a new spin. But yeah,

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Speaker 4: this is this is really amazing stuff because it constituted

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Speaker 4: an early triumph for human cultivators. The manipulation of a

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Speaker 4: plant in its seedless a sexual form, refining it from

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Speaker 4: different domesticated varieties to better meet human needs and desires

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Speaker 4: of that plant. And then, as Michael Polland would probably agree,

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Speaker 4: the banana plants also win out in this because in

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Speaker 4: their partnership with humanity, the banana plants are able to

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Speaker 4: spread to every continent except Antarctica.

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Speaker 2: Again, I have.

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Speaker 4: They live on the same plot of land that I live.

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Speaker 4: There in my backyard, I imagine a lot of you

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Speaker 4: out there can also point to the nearest banana trees,

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Speaker 4: and they are perhaps closer than you might think. So

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Speaker 4: within the first two thousand years, apparently, the domesticated banana

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Speaker 4: may have spread to India, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, East Africa

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Speaker 4: as early as like three thousand BCE, Madagascar by one

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Speaker 4: thousand BCE. Buddhist texts mentioned the banana. Around six hundred BCE,

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Speaker 4: Alexander the Great encountered bananas in India. This is one

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Speaker 4: of the stories that is said about his travels that

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Speaker 4: he reportedly took the Kadali Faalum of India, the bananas

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Speaker 4: of India, and brought them to the Middle East, where

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Speaker 4: they began to be known as the banan or the finger,

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Speaker 4: though I'm to understand, like the origin of the name

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Speaker 4: bananas maybe a little more complicated than that, and there's

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Speaker 4: some other factors involved there, but that's that's one of

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Speaker 4: the various names for it that is often pointed to.

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Speaker 5: Did we get a personal review of the banana as

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Speaker 5: a fruit by Alexander?

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Speaker 4: It may exist in one of the histories, but I

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Speaker 4: don't know that there's really like a whole story about it,

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Speaker 4: Like I was prepared for that, and if I'm missing it,

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Speaker 4: someone please bring it to my attention. But yeah, I

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Speaker 4: don't know that there's any particular story about him, you know,

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Speaker 4: developing a taste for bananas and deciding he needed to

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Speaker 4: share them with the world.

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Speaker 2: I'll say.

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Speaker 4: Furthermore, bananas may have reached South America as early as

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Speaker 4: two hundred BCE Southeast Asian sailors, and by the third

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Speaker 4: century CE, plantains were cultivated in China, and the Chinese

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Speaker 4: cultivation apparently stands out as an early example of larger

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Speaker 4: scale banana cultivation. So for the most part, you know,

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Speaker 4: especially in the ancient world, we're talking about very small

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Speaker 4: scale operations people cultivating bananas and harvesting them. But here

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Speaker 4: in China around this time, we see something that is

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Speaker 4: maybe a bit larger in scale, you know, not as

300
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Speaker 4: large scale as what we end up getting in recent centuries,

301
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Speaker 4: but still, you know, it's kind of a preview of

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Speaker 4: things to come. Bananas spread with the expansion of Islam

303
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Speaker 4: in the eleventh century CE, North Africa, Spain, West Africa.

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Speaker 4: This is sometimes referred to as the second wave of

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00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:51,520
Speaker 4: the bananas spread. And then you end up with a

306
00:16:51,560 --> 00:16:54,560
Speaker 4: third wave of the banana spreading around the world via

307
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Speaker 4: Portuguese sailors. They go to Brazil, and then from there

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00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:02,320
Speaker 4: it's able to spread out to various Caribbean and the

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Speaker 4: islands and then elsewhere in the Americas. Likewise, you also

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Speaker 4: have Japanese fiber artists utilizing the banana, and I believe

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Speaker 4: this was also practiced in China. But this would be

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Speaker 4: a case where the banana is prized more for what

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Speaker 4: you can do with its leaves parts of the plant,

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Speaker 4: as opposed to what you might do with the fruit.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess in American kitchens we don't do a

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Speaker 5: lot with the leaves, but I'm familiar like in Southeast

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Speaker 5: Asian cooking, the banana leaves are often used and maybe

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Speaker 5: like to as a container of sorts wrapped around foods,

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Speaker 5: or maybe to contain steamed foods.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and then yeah, there's just also just a

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Speaker 4: whole like refined Japanese fiber art tradition that involves using

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Speaker 4: them as well. During the period of European colonialism in

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Speaker 4: the New World, banana plants were apparently prized for the

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Speaker 4: shelter that they afforded more valuable crop plants, and then

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Speaker 4: they were also used as a food source, particularly for

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Speaker 4: enslaved peoples that had suffered under this system. Plantain cultivars

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Speaker 4: became integrated staples and various cuisines around this time, and

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Speaker 4: from the eighteenth into the twentieth century, bananas become not

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Speaker 4: just a widespread local crop but an international commodity. To

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Speaker 4: be clear, individual banana fruits as well as certainly as

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Speaker 4: banana plants, have been riding on boats for a very

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Speaker 4: long time. I mean, we discovered the various ways they

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Speaker 4: moved around, but large scale international maritime trade with bananas

334
00:18:34,080 --> 00:18:38,320
Speaker 4: didn't begin until eighteen seventy. This is when Lorenzo dal

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Speaker 4: Baker brought bananas from South America to Jamaica and then

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Speaker 4: to Philadelphia in what is generally considered the birth of

337
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Speaker 4: the modern banana production industry. And at this point, people

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Speaker 4: just become hooked on bananas, even if you don't have

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Speaker 4: food bananas growing in your immediate vicinity.

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Speaker 5: And apparently some people do we have any idea when

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Speaker 5: the superstition the superstition starts that, when do people start saying, now,

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Speaker 5: no bananas on my boat.

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Speaker 3: That's going to stay on the shore.

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Speaker 4: It really hard to nail down. I don't know if

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Speaker 4: you've found anything on this, but it's just kind of

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00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:14,760
Speaker 4: alluded to that. It's just you know, maritime traditions of

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00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:20,280
Speaker 4: the you know, certainly of the eighteen hundreds. And if

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Speaker 4: you're trying to take this and then place it in

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Speaker 4: time based on what we're doing with bananas, it would

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00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:31,000
Speaker 4: seem like you'd have to look to eighteen seventy and

351
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Speaker 4: after eighteen seventy if you're concerned with like large scale

352
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Speaker 4: shipping of bananas, because this is really when that kicks

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Speaker 4: into high gear. Before that, it would have to be

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Speaker 4: much smaller in scale, like somebody just trying to bring

355
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Speaker 4: aboard their own personal bunch of bananas, or perhaps you know,

356
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Speaker 4: the captain of a ship or whoever in charge on

357
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Speaker 4: the ship is in charge of making sure you have

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Speaker 4: food for for the voyage. You know the situation where

359
00:19:59,480 --> 00:20:01,560
Speaker 4: they have box some bananas for the crew and then

360
00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:03,160
Speaker 4: the crew is like, no, what are you doing?

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Speaker 2: Are you going to you're gonna do this? All that

362
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Speaker 2: sort of thing.

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Speaker 4: So a little again, we're gonna be a little foggy

364
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:22,640
Speaker 4: on when and really ultimately to what degree the superstition

365
00:20:22,840 --> 00:20:27,000
Speaker 4: is actually in play through history. But we can get

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Speaker 4: into some of the uh, the attempts that have been

367
00:20:31,040 --> 00:20:33,880
Speaker 4: made to explain why people might have felt this way,

368
00:20:34,520 --> 00:20:38,760
Speaker 4: what science might be beneath all of it, or at

369
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:42,080
Speaker 4: least correlate with some of these ideas, and so these

370
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Speaker 4: will be interesting to talk about. And really the first

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Speaker 4: one we're going to get into is I think very

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Speaker 4: relatable because a lot of us employ this, uh, this

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Speaker 4: known quality of the banana in our own kitchens.

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Speaker 5: Yes, that's right. So does this mean, Robb, you're ready

375
00:21:00,160 --> 00:21:01,720
Speaker 5: to talk about ethylene gas?

376
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Speaker 4: Let's talk about the gas emissions of the bananas and

377
00:21:05,600 --> 00:21:08,240
Speaker 4: what they could be doing to doom our voyage.

378
00:21:09,320 --> 00:21:13,200
Speaker 5: Ethylene gas and ripeness. So many of you have probably

379
00:21:13,280 --> 00:21:17,760
Speaker 5: heard this trick before. If you want your avocados to

380
00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:21,160
Speaker 5: ripen faster. Maybe you got to make some guacamole tonight

381
00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:23,879
Speaker 5: or you know, asap, and your.

382
00:21:23,760 --> 00:21:25,880
Speaker 4: Avocado pados as hard as stones.

383
00:21:25,960 --> 00:21:26,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, what can I do?

384
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:27,640
Speaker 3: Oh man?

385
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:29,560
Speaker 5: You could just you feel like you could crack a

386
00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:30,640
Speaker 5: diamond with this thing.

387
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:31,840
Speaker 3: What do you do?

388
00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:36,000
Speaker 5: The trick that some people suggest is you put the

389
00:21:36,040 --> 00:21:40,119
Speaker 5: avocados in a closed paper bag with a banana, and

390
00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:43,800
Speaker 5: the idea is the banana will speed up the ripening

391
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:47,119
Speaker 5: process for the avocados. And you might have tried this

392
00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 5: at some point and found, you know, maybe it doesn't

393
00:21:49,280 --> 00:21:52,320
Speaker 5: work same day, but it you know, you check later

394
00:21:52,359 --> 00:21:55,760
Speaker 5: and wow, the avocados did eventually get ripe. But they

395
00:21:55,880 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 5: probably were going to do that at some point anyway,

396
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,400
Speaker 5: and you don't know exactly how fast it have been

397
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:03,560
Speaker 5: without the banana. So you're left with the question did

398
00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:07,440
Speaker 5: the banana help or not? And I think the answer

399
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 5: is probably yes, Probably it did help, And there is

400
00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:13,400
Speaker 5: pretty solid science behind this.

401
00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:15,520
Speaker 2: Do you do this in your own household?

402
00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 5: Not necessarily by adding a banana. This may spoil some

403
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:21,639
Speaker 5: of the stuff I'm about to get into explaining, but

404
00:22:22,880 --> 00:22:26,080
Speaker 5: the method that I would more often use is an

405
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:31,240
Speaker 5: open or closed environment variable rather than adding a banana.

406
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 5: So do I let the avocados just sit out on

407
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:37,240
Speaker 5: the counter, or do I enclose them in a bag,

408
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:38,720
Speaker 5: in a sealed bag with each other.

409
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,479
Speaker 4: Okay, it'll be interesting to see how my version, how

410
00:22:42,520 --> 00:22:45,160
Speaker 4: effective my version is, because I never use the bag.

411
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:48,399
Speaker 4: But I will say to myself, Oh, that avocado has

412
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 4: a little ways to go. I'm going to put it

413
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:53,040
Speaker 4: in the same bowl with the bananas. Maybe allow the

414
00:22:53,040 --> 00:22:55,199
Speaker 4: banana to sort of spoon the avocado.

415
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:57,879
Speaker 5: The truth is just there are a lot of variables

416
00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:00,880
Speaker 5: in play about like how much gas and a piece

417
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:03,040
Speaker 5: of fruit is putting out, the mass of the fruit,

418
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 5: and the maturity and all this stuff it will get

419
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:09,640
Speaker 5: into it. So the question is, to the extent that

420
00:23:09,720 --> 00:23:13,840
Speaker 5: the presence of a banana makes other fruits ripen faster,

421
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:18,960
Speaker 5: Why does that happen? The answer is that bananas and

422
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:24,120
Speaker 5: many other fruits release a gas commonly known as ethylene. Now,

423
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:27,360
Speaker 5: if we have any chemistry sticklers in the audience, they

424
00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:31,120
Speaker 5: may be wanting to point out that the chemistry authorities

425
00:23:31,280 --> 00:23:36,880
Speaker 5: like the IUPAC now prefer the term ethne gas rather

426
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 5: than ethylene gas, refers to the same thing as apparently

427
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:45,120
Speaker 5: just the more accurate nomenclature for it. But most sources

428
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 5: that talk about this still say ethylene. So just for consistency,

429
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:52,240
Speaker 5: I'm going to say ethylene. Ethylene is still widely accepted

430
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:55,920
Speaker 5: to refer to this substance. It's just not the most

431
00:23:55,960 --> 00:24:00,439
Speaker 5: accurate chemistry term. But ethylene or ethene gas is a

432
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 5: hydrocarbon gas made out of two carbon atoms and four hydrogens.

433
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:09,400
Speaker 5: This gas is colorless and is sometimes described as odorless,

434
00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 5: but in other cases described as having a very faint

435
00:24:12,680 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 5: aroma of sweetness or musky sweetness. And in plants, this

436
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:22,160
Speaker 5: molecule acts as a hormone, so it's a hormone for plants.

437
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 5: Some fruits respond to ethylene gas with accelerated ripening, though

438
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 5: this is not universally true, and this is going to

439
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,639
Speaker 5: come down to a distinction between types of fruits that

440
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 5: are known as climacteric and non climacteric fruits, and I'll

441
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 5: explain the difference on that in a minute. So ripening

442
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 5: is a complex process, but it involves, among other things,

443
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:52,160
Speaker 5: the breakdown of cell walls in the fruit. So ethylene

444
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 5: gas triggers the cells ineffected fruits and vegetables to manufacture

445
00:24:57,760 --> 00:25:02,360
Speaker 5: enzymes that can break aparts cellulose, which is a polysaccharide

446
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 5: that gives plant cells their firm structure, and to dissolve pectin,

447
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:11,320
Speaker 5: which is a kind of biopolymer glue that sticks plant

448
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:15,400
Speaker 5: cells together. So the macro scale effect of these enzymes

449
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 5: busting up cellulose and pectin is that the food becomes softer.

450
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:23,680
Speaker 5: So you think about the difference between that hard, unripe

451
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:28,480
Speaker 5: avocado and a soft ripe and scupable avocado. The latter

452
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 5: becomes almost jelly like, you know, it's that nice soft consistency.

453
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 5: Of course, if you let it go too far into ripeness,

454
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,879
Speaker 5: you know what happens. You end up with the brown sludge.

455
00:25:39,040 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 4: It's like the ones that sometimes you find at the

456
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:43,119
Speaker 4: grocery store that it already feels like a water balloon.

457
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 4: That's it's gone too far.

458
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 3: Terrible, it's a horrible feeling.

459
00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:50,360
Speaker 5: But yeah, at the that's what it feels like at

460
00:25:50,080 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 5: the macro scale, the softening of the flesh of the fruit.

461
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:56,959
Speaker 5: But at the microscale that is due to the enzymatic

462
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:01,439
Speaker 5: breakdown of cell walls and pectin. Another major effect of

463
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 5: ripening is the conversion of starch into sugar. So think

464
00:26:05,560 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 5: about the difference in flavor between biting into a firm

465
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 5: green banana and a ripe yellow one. So it's not

466
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:16,199
Speaker 5: just a texture difference, there's a difference in taste. The

467
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,119
Speaker 5: ripe fruit is much sweeter, and this is another result

468
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 5: of the enzymatic effects of ethylene gas. Enzymes such as

469
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 5: amylase break down complex carbohydrates and fruits and they break

470
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 5: them into simple sugars like glucose and fructose, which taste

471
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 5: sweeter on our tongue. Now, it's worth noting that ethylene

472
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 5: gas is not only emitted by certain ripening fruits. In fact,

473
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:45,919
Speaker 5: in terms of plant matter, it's emitted both by ripening

474
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 5: fruits and by rotting plant matter. So you gotta have

475
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 5: a mass of rotting fruit or rotting plants that's going

476
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:54,800
Speaker 5: to put off ethylene gas. And there are also artificial

477
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:59,680
Speaker 5: technological sources, So the exhaust produced by the burning of

478
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 5: high carbons often contains ethylene gas of combustion engines fires.

479
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 3: If you're just burning.

480
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 5: Wood, that's going to put off ethylene. I even read

481
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 5: somewhere that cigarette smoke has ethylene in it. So generally

482
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 5: the results of combustion and burning are going to produce ethylene,

483
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 5: and the rate of ethylene production by a plant can change.

484
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:26,000
Speaker 5: So it's not just like each plant puts out a

485
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 5: steady amount of ethylene given what kind of plant it is.

486
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:33,240
Speaker 5: It also varies based on physical damage or stress like

487
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,520
Speaker 5: bruising or cutting of a plant's flesh can cause it

488
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 5: to release an ethylene spike. Drought can produce more ethylene.

489
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 5: High temperatures, disease, all those many different kinds of stress

490
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 5: on the plant will make it put out more ethylene gas.

491
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,439
Speaker 5: And another thing worth noting is that ethylene production and

492
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:57,680
Speaker 5: ethylene sensitivity are not the same and they're not necessarily correlated.

493
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 5: One example of this I was reading about is that

494
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 5: like unripe, kiwi fruit is a low ethylene producer but

495
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,880
Speaker 5: is highly sensitive to ethylene in the air around it. Now,

496
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 5: it might produce more ethylene once it becomes ripe, So

497
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 5: you know, ethylene production can vary according to the ripeness

498
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 5: of the fruit as well. Now, there is another distinction

499
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:22,959
Speaker 5: that's worth talking about that I was reading about in

500
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 5: an article in the journal Vegetable and Fruit News from

501
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 5: April twenty twenty one. This is a this is a

502
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 5: publication associated with the University of Maryland Extension.

503
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:37,320
Speaker 3: The article is called.

504
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 5: Ethylene and the Regulation of Fruit Ripening by Annabel Kipino

505
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 5: and Macarena Farca. And the important distinction explored in this

506
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 5: article I wanted to mention is between what are called

507
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:54,320
Speaker 5: climacteric and non climacteric fruits. So the difference is does

508
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 5: the fruit continue to ripen after it is removed from

509
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 5: the plant, after it is hard harvested or falls from

510
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 5: the plant.

511
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:03,480
Speaker 3: So, you know, we.

512
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 5: Already talked about some of the effects of fruit ripening.

513
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 5: Of course, the flesh softens, the sugar levels go up,

514
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 5: starches converted into sugar. There are other important changes that

515
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 5: occur in ripening. Usually you often also get the retreat

516
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 5: of chlorophyll, which is why these plants become less green.

517
00:29:21,480 --> 00:29:23,640
Speaker 5: So the you know, as the fruit ripens, it takes

518
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:28,480
Speaker 5: on different colors. Also, aroma carrying volatiles are released, so

519
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 5: the fruit starts to smell more like itself. It has

520
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 5: the characteristic scent of the fruit more and more as

521
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 5: it ripens. And a lot of these changes, when and

522
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 5: how they occur will be different depending on whether you're

523
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 5: talking about a climactic or non climactoric fruit. So climactoric

524
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 5: fruits continue to ripen after you pick them. Non climactoric

525
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 5: fruits stop ripening after harvest. And examples of climactoric fruits

526
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 5: include apples, banana, avocados, peaches. You can think of all

527
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,640
Speaker 5: these things as fruits that continue to ripen sitting on

528
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 5: the counter.

529
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 4: You know, tomato is a big one, because yeah, most

530
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 4: of our counter space is covered with ripening tomatoes at

531
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 4: this point of the year.

532
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 5: On the other hand, you've got non climactic fruits like cherries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes.

533
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 5: These do not continue to ripen. They can rot, but

534
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 5: they're not going to display these characteristic changes that we've

535
00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 5: talked about as ripening.

536
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:31,040
Speaker 4: I think my main experience with this is I believe

537
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:34,840
Speaker 4: figs fall under this category because I remember the scenario

538
00:30:35,000 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 4: being it's like, oh, I want the figs to become sweeter,

539
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 4: and figs especially or one, you know, you know, they

540
00:30:41,040 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 4: just get sweeter and sweeter and more delectable, but everything

541
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:45,959
Speaker 4: else or not everything, But there are a number of

542
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 4: suspects out there that want to eat them too, and

543
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 4: so you're like playing that game. Do I go ahead

544
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 4: and grab them now, because I'm otherwise just going to

545
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:54,719
Speaker 4: come back and find that the best figs have been

546
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 4: eaten off of the tree already.

547
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 5: I actually did not make a note of where figs

548
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 5: fall in there, so I can't say for sure.

549
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 3: I don't know.

550
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 4: I think they at least function like them. I'm not

551
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 4: sure if the if they fall into that category or not.

552
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 5: But another distinction that I was going to make is

553
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:14,640
Speaker 5: that your climacteric fruits, the ones that continue to ripe

554
00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 5: in after harvesting, are also going to tend to be

555
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:20,719
Speaker 5: the ones that are most sensitive to ethylene gas because

556
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 5: they're being exposed to it. That's going to continue to

557
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:25,920
Speaker 5: ripe in the flesh even if they're no longer stuck

558
00:31:26,000 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 5: on the stem or on the fine. Now here's a

559
00:31:29,680 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 5: kind of interesting fact that would go against this wisdom

560
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 5: about putting the banana in the bag with the avocados.

561
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:41,600
Speaker 5: Did you know that bananas actually are not the highest

562
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 5: producers of ethylene gas among fruits. I found a table.

563
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,920
Speaker 5: This was in a fact sheet that was produced by

564
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 5: let's see, a company just called Felix Instruments that's like

565
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:58,000
Speaker 5: an agriculture business company. But they had like a business

566
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 5: fact sheet for post harvest handling, and it included a

567
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 5: table adapted from the research of a post harvest biology

568
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 5: specialist named Adel Cotter, who was long associated with the

569
00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:16,040
Speaker 5: UC Davis and based on Cotter's research, made this table

570
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 5: of very low through very high classes of ethylene producing fruits.

571
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 5: So your very low class would include things like cherry, citrus, grape, strawberry, pomegranate.

572
00:32:28,560 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 5: These things apparently produce extremely little ethylene gas. Your low

573
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 5: category that makes a little bit more would be like BlackBerry, blueberry, cranberry,

574
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 5: per simon, pineapple. Your moderate categories where you get bananas,

575
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 5: you get banana, fig honeydew, melon, plantain, tomato in the

576
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 5: moderate category. Then your high category is going to have

577
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 5: things like apples, pears, avocados, ripe, kiwi fruits, nectarines, pear, plum,

578
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 5: and then they're very high. Categy gory has two things

579
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 5: in it. One fruit I'd never heard of before called cherimoya,

580
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 5: which is apparently a I think a South American fruit,

581
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 5: and then also passion fruit. So passion fruit puts out

582
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 5: a ton of ethylene. So my guess would just based

583
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,240
Speaker 5: on this chart, would be if you want to put

584
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:19,400
Speaker 5: like the most turbo ripening agent in the bag with

585
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 5: your avocados. It would actually be put a passion fruit

586
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 5: in there.

587
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 4: And then if you're going off in you know, a

588
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 4: number of you out there might have passion fruit in

589
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 4: your kitchen. But if you don't, like the apple is

590
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:35,200
Speaker 4: actually ranked higher than the banana. Yes, but the apple

591
00:33:35,400 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 4: is just totally getting Nobody's blaming the apple for overripening

592
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 4: anything or hauling it into scare straight an avocada that's

593
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 4: not behaving properly.

594
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 5: Well, I think part of the issue also is that

595
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 5: there are other factors in play. But you're right, like

596
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 5: all things being equal, based on this research, putting an

597
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 5: apple or an avocado in the bag with other climactoric

598
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 5: fruits will probably make them ripen faster than a banana will. However,

599
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 5: there are these other factors to consider, like mass, This

600
00:34:07,480 --> 00:34:10,760
Speaker 5: should be obvious, but the amount of the ethylene producing

601
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,879
Speaker 5: fruit matters. You know, two bananas produce more gas than one.

602
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 5: And then also, as we've been alluding to, the ripeness

603
00:34:18,000 --> 00:34:21,759
Speaker 5: of the donor fruit makes a big difference. So like

604
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 5: a ripe banana or avocado produces way more ethylene than one.

605
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 3: That is still green and hard.

606
00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 5: So does the presence of the banana cause other cargo,

607
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 5: maybe other fruit and vegetable cargo stored along with it,

608
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 5: to ripen or maybe even over ripen, to progress toward

609
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 5: rot faster. The answer is in some cases yes, but

610
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,280
Speaker 5: it depends on the banana, depends on how it's stored.

611
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:53,280
Speaker 5: And if your bananas are already ripe, meaning they're already

612
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:56,880
Speaker 5: releasing a lot of ethylene, and if the conditions around

613
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:59,520
Speaker 5: them are right, say they're not being stored under refrigeration,

614
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 5: then yes, they could be driving the over ripening of

615
00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 5: other things stored around them in transport.

616
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:11,120
Speaker 4: Because this is the argument is that, well, perhaps bringing

617
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 4: the bananas aboard the boat would be bad luck because

618
00:35:14,600 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 4: they would cause your other foodstuffs to ripen at a

619
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 4: faster rate, be those cargo food stuffs or food stuffs

620
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:22,800
Speaker 4: that are supposed to sustain the crew.

621
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 5: So, yeah, there are a lot of variables in play here.

622
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,960
Speaker 5: But yeah, so in certain scenarios, certain other foods could

623
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 5: ripen more in the presence of bananas, especially if the bananas.

624
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 3: Are already ripe.

625
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, they would help push your avocados over

626
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:38,200
Speaker 5: the edge.

627
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 3: They're already vulnerable.

628
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 4: But I guess a little bit of knowledge and or

629
00:35:42,800 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 4: a little bit of observational evidence is certainly enough to

630
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 4: potentially feed a superstition.

631
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:52,279
Speaker 5: Perhaps, though, as you were talking about earlier, I think

632
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 5: we should be hesitant to get too certain about any

633
00:35:55,640 --> 00:36:10,399
Speaker 5: attribution of reasoning here and where this alleged superstition comes from. Now,

634
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:13,320
Speaker 5: there's another thing I wanted to talk about. There was

635
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 5: an article I came across about the history of ethylene

636
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,239
Speaker 5: gas and post harvest ripening that I thought was really interesting,

637
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:23,920
Speaker 5: and it shares some stuff that is relevant both to

638
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,360
Speaker 5: ethylene gas and the history of bananas. So I wanted

639
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 5: to mention a few things from this. The article is

640
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:33,920
Speaker 5: called The Ripe Stuff. It's by an author named Uda Eberley,

641
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 5: published in Distillations Magazine, which is a publication put out

642
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:43,680
Speaker 5: by the Science History Institute of Philadelphia, and Everly's article

643
00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:46,720
Speaker 5: is really interesting. One of the things she talks about

644
00:36:47,480 --> 00:36:53,799
Speaker 5: is that until pretty recently in history, fruit was not

645
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 5: a regular, year round part of the human diet in

646
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 5: temperate climates, precisely because in under natural conditions, fruit is

647
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 5: palatable only within a narrow range of time and space.

648
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 5: For many, perhaps most people, in history, fruit was a

649
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 5: seasonal treat, something you would enjoy if it grew nearby

650
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 5: and if it.

651
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 3: Was in season.

652
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 5: Obviously, people living in tropical climates might be more treated

653
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 5: to the local fruits that grow there, you know, more

654
00:37:24,920 --> 00:37:27,719
Speaker 5: year round. But for a lot of people it's just

655
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 5: not going to be the case like it is today,

656
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:31,760
Speaker 5: where you can go to the supermarket in the winter

657
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 5: and get fresh fruits. So before the twentieth century, a

658
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 5: lot of the commercial agriculture dedicated to fruit was actually

659
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:44,440
Speaker 5: not oriented around bringing fresh fruit to market to be

660
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 5: eaten when it was ripe. There was that like if

661
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 5: you lived, you know, you ran an orchard near a

662
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 5: big city, you could grow fruits that you would take

663
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 5: to market to be sold in the city to be eaten.

664
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,239
Speaker 5: But a lot of other commercial fruit growing before the

665
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 5: twentieth century was dedicated to making fruits as inputs on

666
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 5: products with a longer shelf life. So a lot of

667
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 5: commercial orchards grew apples that were meant not for eating

668
00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 5: but for making cider. And in fact, these apples, cider apples,

669
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:15,319
Speaker 5: if you ate them, would taste disgusting. You know, they'd

670
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:17,359
Speaker 5: be full of tannins and like you couldn't eat them.

671
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 5: They were for making cider out of other fruits that

672
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 5: were grown were used as like animal feed to fatten

673
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 5: hogs before slaughter. And you could see this pattern across

674
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 5: all different kinds of fruits. That industry was focused on

675
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:36,040
Speaker 5: making shelf stable products that were more dependable, that were

676
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 5: less vulnerable to product loss do to you know, them

677
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:43,720
Speaker 5: passing their ripeness window. So grapes you would not sell

678
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 5: for eating, but you would turn into wine. Other you know,

679
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 5: berries you would turn into jam and preserves and things

680
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:50,879
Speaker 5: like that.

681
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean it reminds me a little bit

682
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 4: of the of our episodes that we did on the

683
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 4: suarro talking about the indigenous use of the suarros fruit,

684
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:01,759
Speaker 4: which meant, you know, eat as much as you can

685
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:05,160
Speaker 4: now while you can make it into wine and drink it.

686
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 4: And then there may be some other things you can

687
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 4: make jellies or syrup type things that can be preserved

688
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:13,560
Speaker 4: for later, and those can last with you for months,

689
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 4: But a lot of the energy is going to be

690
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 4: situated on enjoy it while you can enjoy the seasonal availability.

691
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 3: Yeah.

692
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:24,240
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And so when you think about it, the market

693
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 5: that we've come to expect for year round consumption of

694
00:39:28,000 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 5: fresh fruit relies on a lot of modern technology like

695
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 5: refrigerated storage, rapid transport, genetically specialized fruit strains, and in

696
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:44,200
Speaker 5: some cases post harvest chemical treatment. And one of these

697
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:48,880
Speaker 5: treatments is indeed the application the deliberate application of ethylene gas,

698
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 5: especially in cases of fruits that are too delicate for

699
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 5: transport once they ripen fully classic This is not the

700
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 5: main example that everly goes into in or are, but

701
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:02,800
Speaker 5: I was just thinking about this, the example of the tomato.

702
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 5: I think this has come up on the show before.

703
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:08,279
Speaker 5: But you know, if you've ever wondered, like, why are

704
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:12,360
Speaker 5: tomatoes from the garden so much better than tomatoes you

705
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 5: get at the grocery store, they're actually you could argue

706
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:19,760
Speaker 5: there are multiple reasons for this, but one major reason

707
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:25,080
Speaker 5: is that commercial tomatoes have to survive the transport process

708
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,600
Speaker 5: from the farm to the market to your house. Tomatoes

709
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 5: that are really truly fully ripe, like as far as

710
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 5: you would take them on the vine in a garden

711
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:37,320
Speaker 5: in your backyard, are very soft, and they bruise easily.

712
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:40,640
Speaker 5: They would you can just imagine trying to ship crates

713
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:44,280
Speaker 5: of these things on trucks. They would get smashed and rumbled,

714
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 5: and a lot of them would get destroyed during transport.

715
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,399
Speaker 5: So transporting ripe tomatoes would have to be done very

716
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 5: carefully and it would probably be a very expensive proposition.

717
00:40:56,960 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 5: So most commercial tomatoes today are actually picked before they

718
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 5: are fully ripe. They're transported in what's called the mature

719
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 5: green phase, so full development of the fruit body. The

720
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 5: tomato has fully grown as a fruit, but it is

721
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:17,640
Speaker 5: still basically green and hard, and that firmness is good

722
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 5: because it helps the tomatoes stand up to post harvest handling.

723
00:41:21,719 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 5: But before being put on the shelf at the grocery store,

724
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:28,280
Speaker 5: these mature green tomatoes are briefly stored in a facility

725
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:31,280
Speaker 5: where they get exposed to ethylene gas to further ripe

726
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 5: in them.

727
00:41:31,880 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 2: And that ripening facility.

728
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 5: Yes, and that turns them red and makes their flesh softer.

729
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 5: But there's a downside to this. Most people seem to agree,

730
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 5: I would agree that tomatoes that are ripened post harvest

731
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,240
Speaker 5: do not taste as good and are not as juicy

732
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 5: as tomatoes that ripen on the vine. You know, there's

733
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 5: a more robust development of sugars and complex flavors and

734
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:58,399
Speaker 5: natural volatile aromas when the tomato gets to go all

735
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 5: the way to full ripeness, I'll still attached to the plant.

736
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, And if you know you're doing

737
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 4: it all in the kitchen, you know that, like that's

738
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 4: super fresh tomato. You don't have to do much to it.

739
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,080
Speaker 4: You know, a little salt, little pepper, maybe a little

740
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:13,319
Speaker 4: olive oil, and you're good to go. But if it's

741
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 4: the dead of winter and you have supermarket tomatoes, you know,

742
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 4: those are often some really sad tomatoes that you better

743
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 4: be prepared to cook with a lot of ingredients. They

744
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 4: need to be a part of something. They're not going

745
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:27,479
Speaker 4: to headline the show.

746
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 5: Well, there's another way you can appreciate my personal recommendation

747
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:34,239
Speaker 5: as a cook. I would say, if you want to

748
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 5: enjoy tomatoes in the winter, your best options are either

749
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 5: cherry tomatoes like little little grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes,

750
00:42:42,840 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 5: or canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes in the winter are going

751
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 5: to be just superior to you know, whatever fresh you

752
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 5: can get. But anyway, so coming back to the idea

753
00:42:52,239 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 5: of like why they do all this, it's just like

754
00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 5: not economically feasible for mass market producers to let tomatoes

755
00:42:59,680 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 5: fully ripen on the vine and then try to take

756
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 5: them to the store. There would be too much lost product.

757
00:43:04,680 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 5: So they use the post harvest ethylene treatment. That's the compromise.

758
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 5: And these concerns, these same kind of concerns about like

759
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 5: handling and the sturdiness of the tomato not being destroyed

760
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 5: or damaged in the transport process. Those concerns also affect

761
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,840
Speaker 5: the qualities that are selected for in the commercial tomato

762
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 5: breeds that are used. So growers tend to select genetic

763
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:33,280
Speaker 5: strains of tomato that are better able to survive post

764
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 5: harvest handling intact, rather than strains that, you know, the

765
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:40,200
Speaker 5: strains that people would rate as the most delicious. And

766
00:43:40,239 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 5: they again, they do that for the same economic reasons.

767
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:45,839
Speaker 5: So homegrown tomatoes are awesome. And to be clear, I'm

768
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 5: not trying to just you know, insult store bought tomatoes

769
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 5: like I buy them sometimes too. Sometimes you need them,

770
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:56,839
Speaker 5: sometimes you want them. But there are very practical reasons

771
00:43:56,880 --> 00:43:59,759
Speaker 5: why they're not as good usually as the ones that

772
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 5: get grown on a vine and you know, just carried

773
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 5: right into the kitchen. It's because it is not possible

774
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,200
Speaker 5: for these commercial retailers to let them ripen as much

775
00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:11,759
Speaker 5: as they should, but that's where the ethylene exposure comes in.

776
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 5: So regarding the introduction of ethylene gas as a post

777
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 5: harvest treatment for controlled ripening of fruits, Everly tells a

778
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 5: really interesting story. She talks about how a surprising shift

779
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:32,560
Speaker 5: in our understanding of fruit ripening came from observing street lamps. So,

780
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 5: beginning in the early eighteen hundreds, many cities in the

781
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 5: United States and Europe started to install street lamps that

782
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 5: were powered by coal gas to keep the streets illuminated

783
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 5: at night, and Everly narrates how people started to observe

784
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:52,319
Speaker 5: weird phenomena near these gas fed lamps. For example, the

785
00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 5: trees next to a certain street lamp might suddenly have

786
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 5: all their leaves turn yellow and fall off, not in

787
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 5: the fall, but in the middle of summer.

788
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:02,320
Speaker 3: She writes.

789
00:45:02,400 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 5: Quote in Hamburg, Germany, one hundred and fifty nine linden

790
00:45:06,120 --> 00:45:09,439
Speaker 5: and elm trees were felled in eighteen fifty one after

791
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:14,320
Speaker 5: they unexpectedly died in a Philadelphia greenhouse, several thousand exotic

792
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 5: plants withered overnight, So it was like a hyper localized

793
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,759
Speaker 5: turbo autumn. And you sometimes see these just around the

794
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 5: street lamp well, what's going on and why would it

795
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 5: tend to happen only in the direct vicinity of a lamp.

796
00:45:29,960 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 5: What people eventually figured out is that these local yellowings

797
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:37,800
Speaker 5: tended to happen where there were leaks in the pipes

798
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 5: that supplied coal gas to the lanterns, and scientists were

799
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 5: eventually able to isolate which component of coal gas was

800
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 5: causing the plants to react this way. It was ethylene,

801
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:53,319
Speaker 5: and the experiments experiments soon would show that it had

802
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:57,280
Speaker 5: a powerful effect on plants. So every highlights how around

803
00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 5: the year nineteen hundred, there was a researcher named Dimitri

804
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:05,440
Speaker 5: Neellubo working at the Botanical Institute of Saint Petersburg and Russia,

805
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 5: and he did experiments where he exposed pea plant seedlings

806
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 5: to ethylene, and the ones that were exposed to the

807
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 5: gas grew all weird and stunted. Rob I've got a

808
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 5: picture for you to look at in the outline here,

809
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:19,640
Speaker 5: so you can see the normal growth on the left

810
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 5: where they're shooting straight up. But if you expose the

811
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:26,160
Speaker 5: seedlings to ethylene gas, they start to grow crooked and sideways.

812
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:29,759
Speaker 5: They're not really growing much. It's like it's interfering with

813
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 5: their normal growth and maturation. Another interesting thing she mentions

814
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 5: is about citrus growers in Florida who had a common

815
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,800
Speaker 5: practice for what's called the d greening of citrus fruits

816
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 5: like lemons and oranges. Something you might not know is

817
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 5: that these fruits are often green when they are picked.

818
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 5: But what the citrus growers would do is they would

819
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 5: pick the lemons and oranges and then sit them in

820
00:46:57,760 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 5: these heated rooms. They would have them warm in a

821
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,319
Speaker 5: room with a kerosene heater, and that would turn them

822
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 5: into the familiar shades of yellow and orange. But it

823
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 5: turns out that it wasn't the heat from the heater

824
00:47:10,560 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 5: that was responsible for the de greening. It was the

825
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 5: ethylene present in the exhaust from the fire. Now, the

826
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,759
Speaker 5: citrus fruits are not climacteric fruits, so they're not really

827
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 5: going to undergo ripening ripening from the ethylene, but the

828
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 5: ethylene does cause this change in their outer skin, where

829
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,959
Speaker 5: the chlorophyll retreats and it brings the other colors through.

830
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 5: Everly quotes a figure named William B. Hardy in a

831
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,839
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty two address to the British Association of Refrigeration,

832
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:44,600
Speaker 5: reporting on discoveries about the effects of gases emitted by

833
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:47,800
Speaker 5: fruit on other fruit. And so there's a whole longer

834
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 5: quote that she includes here, but there was one subsection

835
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 5: of it that really struck me, and it was this

836
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 5: talking about apples quote. It is only elderly apples which

837
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 5: pour out these emanations, and the effect on young, unripe

838
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:05,359
Speaker 5: apples is again curious, for they are stirred to more

839
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 5: rapid progress, they ripen more quickly. It is as though

840
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,200
Speaker 5: the elderly apple were jealous of the youth and would

841
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 5: destroy it.

842
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 4: Oh man, those bitter old apples just look in to

843
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 4: crush the young ones.

844
00:48:19,480 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 5: Yeah, the old, the old hate the young. She also

845
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:28,160
Speaker 5: credits British biologist Richard Gain as the figure who isolated

846
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 5: ethylene gas from the emissions of ripe apples and figured

847
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 5: out that this was the thief of apple youth.

848
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,480
Speaker 3: That you know, it was the main agent causing the ripening.

849
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 5: Uh So, one question worth asking is from the plant's

850
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,360
Speaker 5: point of view, the plant that produces the fruit, why

851
00:48:46,400 --> 00:48:49,840
Speaker 5: do fruits go through this process, the ripening process and

852
00:48:50,200 --> 00:48:54,319
Speaker 5: the ethylene release. The main evolutionary purpose seems to be

853
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 5: to control when animals eat the fruit because plants do

854
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,320
Speaker 5: not want animals to eat their fruits when the seeds

855
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:04,480
Speaker 5: are not yet ready. When the seeds are not mature,

856
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:10,799
Speaker 5: so unripe fruit tends to be hard, sour, green, odorless,

857
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 5: and occasionally even toxic. Meanwhile, when the fruit ripens, it

858
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 5: often turns from hard to soft, from sour to mellow

859
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 5: and sweet, from green to colorful, from odorless to fragrant

860
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 5: and aromatic, and from toxic to benign. And all taken together,

861
00:49:28,840 --> 00:49:32,600
Speaker 5: these changes are signals to animals that kind of flip

862
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 5: the switch from leave me alone, I'm not ready yet,

863
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 5: to I'm here, I'm delicious, Come eat me. So the

864
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,799
Speaker 5: plant generally wants an animal to eat the fruit in

865
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:44,960
Speaker 5: order to help disperse its seeds, but not until the

866
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 5: fruit is finished developing. And this timed triggering of ripeness

867
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:53,640
Speaker 5: through the auto catalytic effect in climacteric fruits helps the

868
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 5: plant's fruit ripen together and to do so just on

869
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,200
Speaker 5: a ripeness timetable that is useful for the plant when

870
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 5: the seeds are ready. Now, I mentioned earlier that the

871
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:07,920
Speaker 5: amount of ethylene gas released by a banana depends very

872
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 5: much on the ripeness of that banana and Everly talks

873
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:13,920
Speaker 5: about this in her article about how you know, historically

874
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 5: people who transported bananas, even in refrigerated ships, they're the fate.

875
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 5: The fate of their stocks depended very much on the

876
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:28,399
Speaker 5: bananas being sufficiently unripe when they were loaded up. So

877
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:29,960
Speaker 5: she talks about how you know, if you get them

878
00:50:30,000 --> 00:50:32,080
Speaker 5: all when they're still green and you load them into

879
00:50:32,120 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 5: refrigerated ship, they can they can make their way to

880
00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 5: their destination and they can still be good. But if

881
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 5: you get one overly ripe banana, it slips in there,

882
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 5: it can start a cascade and you get a whole

883
00:50:44,520 --> 00:50:47,440
Speaker 5: container of fruit that is turned to mush because by

884
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 5: the time it arrives because the ethylene you know, cascade

885
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 5: has been kicked off by this overly ripe fruit. And

886
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 5: she also talks about how you know, bananas go through

887
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:01,319
Speaker 5: a process very similar to the process I described. For

888
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 5: what happens to tomatoes today. It's somewhat different, but the

889
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:07,839
Speaker 5: main process today is they get harvested when they're still

890
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 5: green and hard, and then before they are put on

891
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 5: the shelf at the store, they get subjected to a

892
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 5: particular dose of ethylene gas in a ripening room that

893
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:20,800
Speaker 5: allows them to be at just the right level of

894
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 5: ripeness when they're put on display for purchase. However, every

895
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 5: mentioned something that I thought was potentially interesting with regard

896
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,560
Speaker 5: to this superstition. Again, I would not want to suggest

897
00:51:33,160 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 5: causation here, but at least raising a possibility. So everly

898
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:44,800
Speaker 5: brings up the idea of banana ripening explosions. So ethylene

899
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:49,400
Speaker 5: gas is itself flammable, And though I could not find

900
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 5: credible looking examples of banana boat explosions in history, there

901
00:51:55,680 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 5: have been definitely banana ripening room explosions in history, so

902
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:04,480
Speaker 5: just one example. There have been multiple, but one that

903
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 5: I wanted to look into what took place in nineteen

904
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:11,799
Speaker 5: thirty six at the Pittsburgh Banana Company. So this was

905
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 5: on December seventeenth, nineteen thirty six, there was an explosion

906
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 5: in the Strip District at a storehouse of the Pittsburgh

907
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 5: Banana Company, which caused what some sources describe as a

908
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 5: rain of bananas all over the area. And I was

909
00:52:26,280 --> 00:52:29,239
Speaker 5: able to dig up an article in the Pittsburgh Sun

910
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 5: Telegraph that originally described this event. The title of the

911
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 5: article was blast raises storehouse in Strip. Now Bizarrely, this article,

912
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 5: actually the one article is talking about two different explosions.

913
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,280
Speaker 5: It's just like in this article, I'm reporting the banana

914
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 5: warehouse explosion and a bomb that went off near a railroad.

915
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:51,840
Speaker 5: So I'm just going to try to focus on the

916
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:54,239
Speaker 5: parts about the Banana warehouse explosions.

917
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 2: Beat at the paper.

918
00:52:55,239 --> 00:52:57,960
Speaker 4: You know, you discover all explosions and sometimes you just

919
00:52:58,040 --> 00:52:59,319
Speaker 4: have the one article to do it in.

920
00:52:59,440 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 5: You would think that would be two articles anyway. So

921
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 5: this article reads, two explosions roared through the Pittsburgh district today.

922
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 5: One blamed on accumulated gas blew a man through a

923
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:16,520
Speaker 5: brick wall at the Pittsburgh Banana Company, Oh, Pittsburgh Banana

924
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 5: Company building in the Strip and reached a damage estimated

925
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:23,840
Speaker 5: by fireman at fifty thousand dollars and then under the

926
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,720
Speaker 5: header buried under debris. It says in the Banana Company

927
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:31,560
Speaker 5: storehouse Peter K. Covenanic A twenty four of and then

928
00:53:31,560 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 5: it gives his address. Alone in the building, turned on

929
00:53:34,640 --> 00:53:37,840
Speaker 5: a power switch which controlled the fans. He saw a

930
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:40,879
Speaker 5: blinding flash. The next thing he remembered he was being

931
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 5: dug from a pile of debris. A Kavnanick's life was

932
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 5: saved Fireman believe by a cushion of hundreds of bananas,

933
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 5: which covered his body and protected him from falling bricks

934
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 5: and debris.

935
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 4: That's cool, Okay, this sounds like a superhero origin story

936
00:53:57,040 --> 00:53:57,479
Speaker 4: right here.

937
00:53:57,600 --> 00:54:00,440
Speaker 3: Banana Yeah, yeah, Banana man born.

938
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 5: So they say he's treated at the hospital for burns

939
00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:06,279
Speaker 5: on his face and hands, but he survived the explosion.

940
00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:09,880
Speaker 5: The article also says, as the blast roared out, pipes

941
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:12,879
Speaker 5: were twisted from a huge ammonia tank on the roof

942
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 5: of the single story building gives the address. Acrid fumes

943
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:21,840
Speaker 5: drifted through the neighboring neighborhood in almost motionless air, mixing

944
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,960
Speaker 5: with the heavy smoke and fog. Sounds nasty, but anyway.

945
00:54:26,200 --> 00:54:30,560
Speaker 5: I was reading a retrospective about this event in Pittsburgh

946
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,640
Speaker 5: Magazine from twenty twenty four. This article is written by

947
00:54:33,680 --> 00:54:38,680
Speaker 5: Soney Ecucole Sonay, and this writer talks about how one

948
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:43,400
Speaker 5: hypothesis about the cause of the explosion is accidental ignition

949
00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:47,800
Speaker 5: of concentrated ethylene gas that had accumulated in the heated

950
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 5: room where the bananas that had been shipped in or

951
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 5: undergoing controlled ripening. Now That's not the only possibility. It

952
00:54:55,440 --> 00:54:57,839
Speaker 5: could also have been ignition of a leak from like

953
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:01,360
Speaker 5: the gas that supplied the heaters more stand gas leak explosion.

954
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:05,759
Speaker 5: But of course ethylene gas, as we know, is flammable,

955
00:55:05,800 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 5: and if it becomes highly concentrated, that could be dangerous.

956
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 5: I have no evidence anything like this ever happened on

957
00:55:12,640 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 5: the ocean or on a boat, but at least makes

958
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:18,600
Speaker 5: you wonder. You know, somebody at sometime could have been like, oh,

959
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 5: explosion in the banana room. Don't want that to happen

960
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 5: on my boat.

961
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:22,720
Speaker 2: Yeah.

962
00:55:22,800 --> 00:55:25,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I say, just knowledge that it happened in

963
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:29,920
Speaker 4: a ripening facility could potentially be enough to stir a

964
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:34,880
Speaker 4: superstition concerning ocean going vessels and you know, green bananas.

965
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:36,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

966
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:38,520
Speaker 5: Now, another question. I was looking at some of those

967
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:40,719
Speaker 5: Merino websites you talked about. Some of them are like,

968
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:44,840
Speaker 5: fishermen say that the bananas repel fish because of the

969
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 5: ethylene gas they produce. I don't think that's true. I

970
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:51,320
Speaker 5: went looking for that. I couldn't find anything looked credible

971
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 5: about that being true, And I don't know what the

972
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:55,960
Speaker 5: mechanism for that would be. I don't think that the

973
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:59,319
Speaker 5: amount of gas put out by a banana or even

974
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 5: a bunch of nanas is really going to be you know,

975
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 5: detectable enough. And there are other natural sources of ethylene gas.

976
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 5: I just don't think that's true.

977
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:10,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, it seems like there were, certainly, if it's

978
00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:13,920
Speaker 4: competing with the other things that are going to be

979
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 4: like you know, leached out into the environment by a

980
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:18,879
Speaker 4: fisherman's boat and so forth. Like there's so many other

981
00:56:18,920 --> 00:56:21,640
Speaker 4: factors involved, and there's so many just general factors involved

982
00:56:22,040 --> 00:56:24,800
Speaker 4: in going out to catch fish anyway, the right spot,

983
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:27,680
Speaker 4: the right time, seasonal availability, and so forth.

984
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:30,239
Speaker 5: I mean, if you were I could believe something more,

985
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:35,320
Speaker 5: if you were like injecting huge, like highly concentrated ethylene

986
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:38,920
Speaker 5: gas into the water or something that wouldn't be happening,

987
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 5: Like why would small little amounts of it degassing from

988
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 5: a banana on top of a boat above the water

989
00:56:44,719 --> 00:56:46,240
Speaker 5: affect the fish that doesn't?

990
00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:47,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't buy it.

991
00:56:48,480 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 4: I'm not buying it either, all right. So that's an

992
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 4: exploration of one of the ideas wrapped up in a superstition,

993
00:57:04,840 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 4: one attempt that is often made to explain it. And

994
00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 4: I don't know, I guess, like I say, we kind

995
00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:11,840
Speaker 4: of we can point to some areas of potential correlation

996
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:15,240
Speaker 4: in other areas that really don't line up. But another

997
00:57:16,000 --> 00:57:18,439
Speaker 4: thing that is often brought up, and this really gets

998
00:57:18,480 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 4: into some very pervasive, really sort of myths about bananas,

999
00:57:23,120 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 4: I think, is that is that bananas might be seen

1000
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 4: as a bad luck cargo if there was even a

1001
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 4: perceived possibility that that cargo might contain dangerous stowaway animals.

1002
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so I'm thinking of spiders on bananas. Does

1003
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 5: that really happen?

1004
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:47,400
Speaker 4: I don't know, spiders and snakes. Historically, it happened, and

1005
00:57:48,320 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 4: it happened with bananas, and it absolutely still is happening

1006
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 4: right now all over the world. It's absolutely the sort

1007
00:57:56,480 --> 00:57:59,920
Speaker 4: of thing that regularly gets picked up by the news media,

1008
00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 4: you know, such as just last month there was exotic

1009
00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:06,480
Speaker 4: tree frog found in bunch of bananas published by BBC

1010
00:58:06,640 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 4: News concerning a species of frog from the West Indies

1011
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 4: that showed up at a ripening facility in Luton, Bedfordshire.

1012
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:18,760
Speaker 4: Quote some two hundred and fifty miles or six eight

1013
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:21,000
Speaker 4: hundred and thirty nine kilometers from its home.

1014
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 5: Wow, I mean that's a well traveled frog.

1015
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:24,680
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1016
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 4: But this article is really good. It's not just, you know,

1017
00:58:27,200 --> 00:58:29,200
Speaker 4: kind of a freak show, sort of an article saying, hey,

1018
00:58:29,200 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 4: look at this, a frog showed up in the grocery store.

1019
00:58:32,520 --> 00:58:34,800
Speaker 4: Now that you know that gets into the into it

1020
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 4: a bit and points out that this is just one

1021
00:58:36,480 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 4: of hundreds of cases like this from the previous year.

1022
00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 4: It's a common reality of international fruit trade, in the

1023
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:48,479
Speaker 4: international trade of botanical goods. It's not just bananas. And yet,

1024
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 4: I mean, outside of any concerns about maritime traditions of

1025
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:57,000
Speaker 4: the past. I mean when people think if you if

1026
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 4: you were to just ask a person on the street, like, hey,

1027
00:58:59,160 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 4: what what fruit cargo is liable to have spiders in it?

1028
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:06,000
Speaker 4: People might say bananas, just because that's the two are

1029
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 4: kind of like heap together in our minds.

1030
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 5: I guess in my mind, I'm thinking, why does it

1031
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:14,920
Speaker 5: seem more like a spider could come in on bananas

1032
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 5: than other fruits. I'm thinking of a bunch of bananas,

1033
00:59:18,200 --> 00:59:20,440
Speaker 5: or even like a whole stem of bananas, having a

1034
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 5: lot of nooks and crannies, just a lot of space

1035
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 5: for little things to crawl around in.

1036
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:27,560
Speaker 4: And that is worth keeping in mind as we get

1037
00:59:27,600 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 4: into one of the examples of a particular organism that

1038
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 4: does sometimes pop up in banana crops and banana cargo,

1039
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:39,480
Speaker 4: because you know, cute little frogs are one thing. But yeah,

1040
00:59:39,520 --> 00:59:44,160
Speaker 4: what's really going to animate the imaginations of a semen

1041
00:59:44,520 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 4: or just an average person on the street. It's going

1042
00:59:47,000 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 4: to be the scarier looking, if not actually dangerous specimens.

1043
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 4: It's going to be spiders and snakes, two types of

1044
00:59:54,160 --> 00:59:57,120
Speaker 4: creatures that are pretty much hardwired into the human mind,

1045
00:59:57,200 --> 01:00:02,440
Speaker 4: into the human imagination as potential threats. And yeah, I'm

1046
01:00:02,480 --> 01:00:07,560
Speaker 4: to understand that in general, serpentine stowaways are maybe less

1047
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:10,280
Speaker 4: common today than they would have been on some of

1048
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:15,400
Speaker 4: these historic voyages. I was looking around for some old

1049
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:18,960
Speaker 4: examples of this, and I did find an interesting nineteen

1050
01:00:19,000 --> 01:00:22,520
Speaker 4: thirty nine New York Times article titled fruit boats bring

1051
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:27,440
Speaker 4: rare Snakes, fine hiding places, grotesque and bizarre most frequent

1052
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 4: stowaway by one Archie McMillan, And there's a quote from

1053
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,200
Speaker 4: it I own to read here. When a Steve Adore,

1054
01:00:37,320 --> 01:00:40,080
Speaker 4: unloading cargo from the banana boats in New York Harbor,

1055
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:42,520
Speaker 4: gives a shout of alarm, his coworkers know in a

1056
01:00:42,600 --> 01:00:45,920
Speaker 4: flash what has happened. The gang rushes to his assistants,

1057
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 4: and they're coiled neatly in a bunch of bananas and

1058
01:00:49,080 --> 01:00:52,919
Speaker 4: glaring at his disturbers with a beady and belligerent eye. Will,

1059
01:00:52,960 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 4: in all probability be a boa constrictor or some other

1060
01:00:56,440 --> 01:00:58,240
Speaker 4: species of tropical reptile.

1061
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 5: This was absolutely written by the journalist guy from Doctor X.

1062
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:04,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1063
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:07,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, came right after he finished his story on the

1064
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:09,360
Speaker 5: synthetic flesh incident.

1065
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:14,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, so again this is really overselling it. I think

1066
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:16,840
Speaker 4: the idea that they're just going to be enormous boa

1067
01:01:16,920 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 4: constrictors just absolute monsters dwelling in the coming aboard from

1068
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:27,040
Speaker 4: the banana boat. But you know, there are plenty of

1069
01:01:27,040 --> 01:01:30,760
Speaker 4: incidents even today where you'll have snakes, even venomous snakes

1070
01:01:30,760 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 4: in some cases making this John making this accidental journey

1071
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:39,440
Speaker 4: from the from you know, place of origin for bananas

1072
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 4: or some other botanical cargo, and then popping up somewhere,

1073
01:01:43,320 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 4: you know, halfway around the world. There was a for instance,

1074
01:01:46,800 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 4: there was a twenty twenty five incident that I was

1075
01:01:48,640 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 4: reading about in the media in which a mildly venomous

1076
01:01:53,520 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 4: ornate cat eyed snake from Ecuador popped up in New Zealand,

1077
01:01:58,240 --> 01:02:01,360
Speaker 4: and so everyone was like, wow, look that the snake

1078
01:02:01,440 --> 01:02:04,680
Speaker 4: really really made the journey and technically, you know, a

1079
01:02:04,840 --> 01:02:06,200
Speaker 4: venomous organism.

1080
01:02:06,760 --> 01:02:09,720
Speaker 5: Now, why is it that in my brain the spider

1081
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 5: species I associate with traveling on bananas is the spider

1082
01:02:13,640 --> 01:02:14,560
Speaker 5: that says it's good.

1083
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 3: You know what I'm talking about? It puts his front

1084
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:17,520
Speaker 3: legs up.

1085
01:02:18,080 --> 01:02:21,280
Speaker 4: Uh, you mean, like, I'm not sure which particular spider

1086
01:02:21,320 --> 01:02:23,240
Speaker 4: you're talking about, like a hunting spider in general, like

1087
01:02:23,280 --> 01:02:25,160
Speaker 4: a jumping spider, or are you talking about it?

1088
01:02:25,320 --> 01:02:28,800
Speaker 5: Is this the hold on? Is this the Brazilian wandering spider?

1089
01:02:29,040 --> 01:02:33,240
Speaker 4: Yes, the Brazilian wandering spider is in fact one of

1090
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:38,760
Speaker 4: the main spiders that is singled out on generally on

1091
01:02:38,800 --> 01:02:41,920
Speaker 4: the spider front. I was reading the Golden silk Orb

1092
01:02:41,960 --> 01:02:44,280
Speaker 4: weavers are going to be the ones that more often

1093
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:48,120
Speaker 4: make the journey and these are harmless. But the Brazilian

1094
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:52,080
Speaker 4: wandering spider, which I wasn't aware of, its soccer fandom.

1095
01:02:52,120 --> 01:02:53,880
Speaker 4: But you know, I hate World Cup, so it makes sense.

1096
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:56,320
Speaker 5: Oh No, I meant the American kind of football. You

1097
01:02:56,360 --> 01:02:58,760
Speaker 5: know it does though, like it puts its arms up

1098
01:02:58,800 --> 01:03:01,480
Speaker 5: when it's threatened. I think you've seen that posture.

1099
01:03:01,080 --> 01:03:03,959
Speaker 4: All right, I was like goal, Like that's maybe maybe

1100
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:05,200
Speaker 4: that's the same as soccer goal.

1101
01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:06,720
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe it's the same thing.

1102
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 5: No field goal, that's what the referee does.

1103
01:03:09,240 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 4: Okay, fair enough, fair, But the Brazilian wandering spider does

1104
01:03:14,160 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 4: occasionally pop up, does occasionally make the jahnt for a

1105
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:21,800
Speaker 4: number of reasons. Uh, it's kind of susceptible to this

1106
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:26,040
Speaker 4: sort of thing and the genus here of Brazilian wandering spiders.

1107
01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 4: It does feature spiders that have venom, that are venomous.

1108
01:03:30,960 --> 01:03:33,640
Speaker 4: But as I was reading in a really nice myth

1109
01:03:33,720 --> 01:03:37,000
Speaker 4: busting article from the Curator of Arachnids and Related Research

1110
01:03:37,080 --> 01:03:41,520
Speaker 4: Collections at the Burke Museum in Seattle. This is by

1111
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:46,440
Speaker 4: Rod Crawford. He does this regularly occurring segment called Spider Myths.

1112
01:03:47,680 --> 01:03:50,680
Speaker 4: He makes an argument the Brazilian wandering spiders actually get

1113
01:03:50,800 --> 01:03:53,920
Speaker 4: a bad rap because generally, if someone's just sort of

1114
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:58,480
Speaker 4: talking about the potential risks of stowaways amid banana plants,

1115
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:01,040
Speaker 4: they're gonna they're gonna point at the resilient wandering spider

1116
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:02,400
Speaker 4: and they're going to say, this is one of the

1117
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 4: most dangerous spiders on the planet. And it might be

1118
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 4: nestled in with your bananas. And if I did mention already,

1119
01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 4: Like one other thing to keep in mind is that

1120
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:13,960
Speaker 4: in a lot of these cases, when an organism like

1121
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 4: this is found, it is it's not found at the

1122
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:21,439
Speaker 4: level of your kitchen. It may not even be found

1123
01:04:21,440 --> 01:04:23,680
Speaker 4: at the level of your grocery store. It's going to

1124
01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:27,280
Speaker 4: be at the level of a ripening facility or unloading.

1125
01:04:27,320 --> 01:04:29,480
Speaker 4: Not to say that those other cases couldn't take place,

1126
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:33,600
Speaker 4: but again, as we've outlined here, there is just a

1127
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 4: modern miracle that takes place in getting any kind of

1128
01:04:39,600 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 4: food from say the tropics to your kitchen. There are

1129
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:45,720
Speaker 4: so many different stops along the way, so many people

1130
01:04:45,920 --> 01:04:49,400
Speaker 4: involved in bringing it to you that, yeah, there are

1131
01:04:49,440 --> 01:04:53,000
Speaker 4: a number of different places where a stowaway could be identified.

1132
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:57,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a complex operation. It's not just farmed the

1133
01:04:57,000 --> 01:04:57,760
Speaker 5: grocery store.

1134
01:04:57,880 --> 01:04:58,120
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1135
01:04:58,440 --> 01:04:59,440
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1136
01:04:59,480 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 4: But the reason and that these particular spiders, Brazilian wandering

1137
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:06,440
Speaker 4: spiders get a bad rap, he argues, is okay, he agrees, Yes,

1138
01:05:06,720 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 4: they have them them and their wandering nature does seem

1139
01:05:12,480 --> 01:05:15,880
Speaker 4: to sort of lead to them getting becoming stowaways by

1140
01:05:15,920 --> 01:05:19,760
Speaker 4: accident because they're active nocturnal hunters. They don't cast a

1141
01:05:19,800 --> 01:05:21,760
Speaker 4: web and then wait for things to jump into it.

1142
01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:25,240
Speaker 4: They're active hunters at night and during the day they'll

1143
01:05:25,240 --> 01:05:28,880
Speaker 4: seek shelter in various places, and this can include human

1144
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:32,600
Speaker 4: occupied areas, so you know, potentially something like you know,

1145
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:36,800
Speaker 4: near your shoes, and that can lead to some less

1146
01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:41,800
Speaker 4: desirable human interactions with these spiders. But of course bananas

1147
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:45,000
Speaker 4: and banana boxes also in play here. You point into

1148
01:05:45,040 --> 01:05:47,480
Speaker 4: the idea that bananas have a lot of places to hide,

1149
01:05:47,520 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 4: a lot of nooks and crannies that could certainly be

1150
01:05:49,680 --> 01:05:50,439
Speaker 4: a factor here.

1151
01:05:51,000 --> 01:05:55,880
Speaker 5: Now, my understanding was that Brazilian wandering spiders are fairly

1152
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:59,920
Speaker 5: venomous spiders, like enough that they could potentially have ven

1153
01:06:00,200 --> 01:06:01,480
Speaker 5: that's threatening to humans.

1154
01:06:02,280 --> 01:06:05,240
Speaker 4: Yes, and this is absolutely true. You know, their bites

1155
01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:09,400
Speaker 4: can and have led to human fatalities. But Crawford stresses

1156
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:13,080
Speaker 4: that despite this, these spiders on the whole account for

1157
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:16,680
Speaker 4: very few incidents and its reputation for being the world's

1158
01:06:16,680 --> 01:06:20,560
Speaker 4: most dangerous spider is overblown, in part based on a

1159
01:06:20,600 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 4: well publicized study that injected mice with its venom. But

1160
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 4: he pointed out its like sort of the obvious here

1161
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:30,680
Speaker 4: that humans are not mice, and you know, and we're

1162
01:06:30,720 --> 01:06:35,640
Speaker 4: also not being injected with hypodermic needles filled with you know,

1163
01:06:35,880 --> 01:06:41,640
Speaker 4: with examples of the venom, he states, quote, Authoritative sources

1164
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:45,280
Speaker 4: state that over seven thousand authentic cases of human bites

1165
01:06:45,320 --> 01:06:49,360
Speaker 4: from these spiders have been recorded, with only around ten

1166
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:52,880
Speaker 4: known deaths and about two percent of cases serious enough

1167
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:56,240
Speaker 4: to need anti venom. So despite the surprisingly large number

1168
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,480
Speaker 4: of bites, this spider is not exactly public Enemy number

1169
01:06:59,480 --> 01:06:59,959
Speaker 4: one either.

1170
01:07:00,520 --> 01:07:00,800
Speaker 3: Okay.

1171
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:04,160
Speaker 5: He also wins not nothing but like one death out

1172
01:07:04,200 --> 01:07:05,400
Speaker 5: of seven hundred bytes.

1173
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:08,600
Speaker 4: Basically, yeah, like not really enough that you need, certainly

1174
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:10,480
Speaker 4: that you need to worry about checking your bananas when

1175
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:15,000
Speaker 4: they're on your kitchen counter. He also points out that,

1176
01:07:15,080 --> 01:07:18,680
Speaker 4: unlike some other spiders, Brazilian wandering spiders seem capable of

1177
01:07:18,720 --> 01:07:23,960
Speaker 4: withholding that precious venom when administering defensive bites in order

1178
01:07:24,000 --> 01:07:26,720
Speaker 4: to save it for predation, which I thought was interesting,

1179
01:07:27,680 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 4: but yeah, Crawford contends quote, although it is possible for

1180
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:32,720
Speaker 4: a spider bite to cause death, that is a very

1181
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,880
Speaker 4: unlikely outcome and does not happen in enough cases to

1182
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:40,960
Speaker 4: justify calling any spider deadly. He does acknowledge that some

1183
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 4: folks especially, he said. Australian readers will disagree with him

1184
01:07:44,840 --> 01:07:47,720
Speaker 4: on this, but it's interesting to think about because I

1185
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:50,160
Speaker 4: don't know about you, but I grew up in awe

1186
01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:52,560
Speaker 4: of and also a little bit afraid of the black

1187
01:07:52,600 --> 01:07:56,440
Speaker 4: widow spider in my own backyard. You know, you would

1188
01:07:56,560 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 4: kind of look for them, but then once you see them,

1189
01:07:58,280 --> 01:08:00,600
Speaker 4: you're like, I better not touch it because I will

1190
01:08:00,640 --> 01:08:03,280
Speaker 4: surely die. Like that is the level of fear that

1191
01:08:03,520 --> 01:08:06,600
Speaker 4: was kind of instilled in me. And you know, well

1192
01:08:06,680 --> 01:08:08,240
Speaker 4: meaning you know, if you're a parent, you know your

1193
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:13,280
Speaker 4: kid getting a bit by black widow spider. But in reality,

1194
01:08:13,680 --> 01:08:16,080
Speaker 4: there has not been a black widow related death in

1195
01:08:16,120 --> 01:08:19,400
Speaker 4: the United States since nineteen eighty three, and that's with

1196
01:08:19,520 --> 01:08:22,519
Speaker 4: more than two thousand documented something like two thousand, maybe more.

1197
01:08:22,640 --> 01:08:24,080
Speaker 2: Maybe it's more like between two.

1198
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:27,600
Speaker 4: Thousand and twenty five hundred documented black widow bites on

1199
01:08:27,760 --> 01:08:28,679
Speaker 4: humans per year.

1200
01:08:29,000 --> 01:08:31,680
Speaker 5: Okay, so you still don't want to mess around with it.

1201
01:08:31,720 --> 01:08:35,440
Speaker 5: But it's not by any means of death sentence.

1202
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:38,320
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, it can be, It absolutely can be,

1203
01:08:38,400 --> 01:08:40,840
Speaker 4: but is perhaps overblown to the point of just thinking

1204
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:42,960
Speaker 4: of it as being like a really deadly organism.

1205
01:08:43,080 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 2: Maybe not so much.

1206
01:08:44,439 --> 01:08:47,160
Speaker 4: So all of this is to say it doesn't sound

1207
01:08:47,320 --> 01:08:52,200
Speaker 4: unreasonable to think experiences with stowaway organisms might have contributed

1208
01:08:52,520 --> 01:08:57,720
Speaker 4: to Seman attitudes about bananas and treating any injuries could,

1209
01:08:57,800 --> 01:09:00,800
Speaker 4: you know, obviously prove difficult if you're at see a

1210
01:09:00,880 --> 01:09:05,320
Speaker 4: board a vessel. But again, these threats would exist with

1211
01:09:05,400 --> 01:09:10,400
Speaker 4: any botanical cargo and other infestations such as rats or

1212
01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:14,479
Speaker 4: human exoparasites. These would remain a much bigger concern if

1213
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:17,280
Speaker 4: you're thinking about things that would potentially like curse your

1214
01:09:17,360 --> 01:09:20,800
Speaker 4: voyage or bring damnation to you, or really create some

1215
01:09:20,840 --> 01:09:24,120
Speaker 4: sort of rhyme of the ancient mariner type scenario aboard

1216
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:26,519
Speaker 4: your vessel. Again, you know, look no further than the

1217
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:29,799
Speaker 4: rat that could be getting into your food stores, spreading

1218
01:09:29,840 --> 01:09:31,719
Speaker 4: disease and fouling your water supply.

1219
01:09:42,240 --> 01:09:43,160
Speaker 2: All right, we're.

1220
01:09:42,960 --> 01:09:44,960
Speaker 4: Running out of time in this episode, and I think

1221
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:46,320
Speaker 4: this is going to be a case where we go

1222
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:49,120
Speaker 4: ahead and ride it out instead of trying to make

1223
01:09:49,160 --> 01:09:50,960
Speaker 4: it into a two parter. So I'm just going to

1224
01:09:51,040 --> 01:09:53,760
Speaker 4: go through a few of the other ideas here. And

1225
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:57,920
Speaker 4: luckily we've already really touched on a number of factors here,

1226
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:00,400
Speaker 4: because another idea that has brought up up in some

1227
01:10:00,439 --> 01:10:03,960
Speaker 4: of these explainer articles is that bananas might be seen

1228
01:10:03,960 --> 01:10:08,719
Speaker 4: as cursed because they ripen so quickly. Since they ripen

1229
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:10,920
Speaker 4: so quickly, the ship's carrying them might have to travel

1230
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:14,559
Speaker 4: really fast, you know, be a little reckless, potentially increasing

1231
01:10:14,600 --> 01:10:17,600
Speaker 4: the risk of the voyage and the risk to the

1232
01:10:17,640 --> 01:10:21,760
Speaker 4: sailors aboard the ship. And that sounds okay. You know,

1233
01:10:21,800 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 4: you're thinking, okay, that sounds feasible. But we've already touched

1234
01:10:24,240 --> 01:10:31,200
Speaker 4: on some of the ways that these banana shipping exercises

1235
01:10:31,280 --> 01:10:34,040
Speaker 4: really gain the ripening and the fruit already and kind

1236
01:10:34,040 --> 01:10:37,160
Speaker 4: of time it all out. And by the early nineteen hundreds,

1237
01:10:37,160 --> 01:10:40,120
Speaker 4: the banana trade, you know, was certainly making use of

1238
01:10:40,160 --> 01:10:43,160
Speaker 4: faster vessels, the banana boats. If you're familiar with the

1239
01:10:43,600 --> 01:10:47,719
Speaker 4: Jamaican folk song Deo. This concerns nocturnal loading of these

1240
01:10:47,840 --> 01:10:51,599
Speaker 4: vessels by laborers. But as we previously discussed, large scale

1241
01:10:51,640 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 4: international maritime banana trade doesn't really kick into high gear

1242
01:10:55,240 --> 01:10:59,200
Speaker 4: until around eighteen seventy and afterwards, and this would have

1243
01:10:59,360 --> 01:11:03,679
Speaker 4: entailed auxiliary This initial voyage would have entailed an auxiliary

1244
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:07,240
Speaker 4: steam schooner, and by the early nineteen hundreds, you have

1245
01:11:07,400 --> 01:11:10,920
Speaker 4: the United Fruit Companies quote Great White Fleet, which made

1246
01:11:11,000 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 4: use of steam powered refrigerated vessels. There were a number

1247
01:11:14,600 --> 01:11:17,960
Speaker 4: of incidents involving these vessels, but the greatest danger to

1248
01:11:18,040 --> 01:11:21,800
Speaker 4: them is it turns out happened to be German U

1249
01:11:21,800 --> 01:11:25,320
Speaker 4: boats during World War II, because again, these were fast

1250
01:11:25,320 --> 01:11:28,160
Speaker 4: moving ships to transport bananas. But then they end up

1251
01:11:28,200 --> 01:11:33,400
Speaker 4: being requisitioned by the US government through the Warshiping Administration Act,

1252
01:11:33,520 --> 01:11:37,400
Speaker 4: I believe, and this means that they were often used

1253
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:42,599
Speaker 4: to transport military personnel. There were medical transports and so forth,

1254
01:11:43,000 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 4: and therefore they were seen by the enemy as legitimate targets,

1255
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:49,920
Speaker 4: and so banana boats were targeted during that time. But

1256
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:54,240
Speaker 4: again this has it's a stretch to think that this

1257
01:11:54,320 --> 01:11:57,880
Speaker 4: has any impact on any kind of idea of a

1258
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:01,760
Speaker 4: curse involving bananas a border vessel, because certainly that's not

1259
01:12:02,400 --> 01:12:07,280
Speaker 4: the average fishermen's superstition, right, don't bring a banana on

1260
01:12:07,360 --> 01:12:11,000
Speaker 4: this pontoon boat because the Germans will sink our vessel

1261
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:11,800
Speaker 4: with a torpedo.

1262
01:12:12,720 --> 01:12:13,719
Speaker 2: I think that's a stretch.

1263
01:12:14,240 --> 01:12:17,559
Speaker 5: So, of course, you know, the superstitions can transform, they

1264
01:12:17,600 --> 01:12:21,439
Speaker 5: can leave behind their original context. But yeah, I don't

1265
01:12:21,479 --> 01:12:23,240
Speaker 5: know about this one. I don't know if I'd think

1266
01:12:23,240 --> 01:12:24,760
Speaker 5: that's really where it comes from.

1267
01:12:24,479 --> 01:12:28,800
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, it does touch on the interesting reality

1268
01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:33,200
Speaker 4: of like the timeline of getting bananas from their place

1269
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:38,519
Speaker 4: of origin to the market. But that's about it, all right.

1270
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:41,639
Speaker 4: Here's another one that I think that is floating around

1271
01:12:41,680 --> 01:12:44,880
Speaker 4: out there that I think has has no validity whatsoever,

1272
01:12:45,160 --> 01:12:47,880
Speaker 4: and that is the idea that, oh, like something bad

1273
01:12:47,960 --> 01:12:50,559
Speaker 4: happened to a ship. Well the ship's gone, it's sank,

1274
01:12:50,640 --> 01:12:52,560
Speaker 4: but all the bananas that were aboard, they're going to

1275
01:12:52,600 --> 01:12:54,800
Speaker 4: float to the surface, and that's going to be what

1276
01:12:54,840 --> 01:12:57,400
Speaker 4: the sailors pick up on and they're like, look, the bananas.

1277
01:12:58,600 --> 01:12:59,200
Speaker 3: They did it.

1278
01:12:59,439 --> 01:13:03,280
Speaker 4: They did it somehow. I mean, it sounds kind of intriguing,

1279
01:13:03,280 --> 01:13:05,800
Speaker 4: and you're like, yeah, I guess bananas do float. But

1280
01:13:06,600 --> 01:13:09,519
Speaker 4: I was able to find no actual historical mention of

1281
01:13:09,560 --> 01:13:12,160
Speaker 4: anything like this, so this seems to be just pure

1282
01:13:12,240 --> 01:13:16,000
Speaker 4: myth and something you mostly encounter in the blogging domain.

1283
01:13:16,160 --> 01:13:20,640
Speaker 4: In an attempt to explain the banana superstitions, okay, and

1284
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:24,000
Speaker 4: then finally in passing, I'm just gonna this is something

1285
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:26,960
Speaker 4: that I was thinking about on my own, and that is, well,

1286
01:13:27,320 --> 01:13:33,880
Speaker 4: you do have indigenous beliefs about bananas, and some of

1287
01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:37,960
Speaker 4: those do concern things like ghosts. We don't have time

1288
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:40,479
Speaker 4: to get into them here, but my understanding is that

1289
01:13:40,479 --> 01:13:43,960
Speaker 4: there are traditions that you'll find in places like Thailand, Cambodia,

1290
01:13:44,040 --> 01:13:48,000
Speaker 4: and Laos where banana groves are viewed as places where

1291
01:13:48,040 --> 01:13:51,920
Speaker 4: spirits dwell. And this brings to mind the various European

1292
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:55,639
Speaker 4: traditions concerning beans and the fields where the beans grow.

1293
01:13:55,800 --> 01:13:58,920
Speaker 4: So there's you know, something universal going on there. I

1294
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:00,760
Speaker 4: think with some of the like a any kind of

1295
01:14:00,800 --> 01:14:04,559
Speaker 4: like monocrop growing even in a small area, maybe it

1296
01:14:04,640 --> 01:14:07,799
Speaker 4: kind of strikes us. And certainly when you see banana

1297
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:11,200
Speaker 4: trees growing together, they do create this kind of like

1298
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:16,320
Speaker 4: cavernous environment. You know, nothing else is growing around their base. Necessarily,

1299
01:14:17,080 --> 01:14:20,040
Speaker 4: it kind of creates this feeling of little caverns and

1300
01:14:20,080 --> 01:14:21,840
Speaker 4: you can't see all the way through what could be

1301
01:14:21,920 --> 01:14:25,240
Speaker 4: dwelling in there. Maybe there is a ghost in there,

1302
01:14:25,240 --> 01:14:26,400
Speaker 4: maybe there's some presence.

1303
01:14:27,160 --> 01:14:30,439
Speaker 3: Interesting, Yeah, I would like to know more about that.

1304
01:14:30,600 --> 01:14:34,439
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I don't know that there's really I'm not

1305
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:36,760
Speaker 4: going to say that this actually explains anything, but it

1306
01:14:36,760 --> 01:14:40,360
Speaker 4: does seem possible. Chalk this up as possible that you

1307
01:14:40,400 --> 01:14:44,200
Speaker 4: could have a case where indigenous traditions about banana trees

1308
01:14:44,240 --> 01:14:47,000
Speaker 4: and some sort of supernatural nature about them could be

1309
01:14:47,120 --> 01:14:52,200
Speaker 4: picked up by sailors or certainly brought in by you know,

1310
01:14:52,760 --> 01:14:55,439
Speaker 4: by the actual laborers and the people working on the

1311
01:14:55,479 --> 01:14:58,800
Speaker 4: ships from their actual cultures, and these could be sort

1312
01:14:58,800 --> 01:15:03,400
Speaker 4: of you know, disseminate through the culture of of of

1313
01:15:03,439 --> 01:15:06,799
Speaker 4: the maritime trade. But I don't know that there's anything

1314
01:15:06,880 --> 01:15:10,800
Speaker 4: really concrete there. All fruits are spooky if you if

1315
01:15:10,800 --> 01:15:13,719
Speaker 4: you dig deep enough, there's gonna be some story about

1316
01:15:13,760 --> 01:15:17,880
Speaker 4: them being involved in some sort of ghost incident or

1317
01:15:18,560 --> 01:15:21,800
Speaker 4: I don't know that, you know, the fall of man or.

1318
01:15:21,760 --> 01:15:26,280
Speaker 5: Something universal truth. Hey what what a what are fruits

1319
01:15:26,280 --> 01:15:30,040
Speaker 5: grow from plants? Where do plants grow from the ground?

1320
01:15:30,360 --> 01:15:34,160
Speaker 5: What gets buried in the ground? Yeah, that's right, yeah,

1321
01:15:34,240 --> 01:15:37,560
Speaker 5: dead people, people exactly everything. Dinosaurs.

1322
01:15:37,640 --> 01:15:40,679
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all these bananas used to be dead people.

1323
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:43,720
Speaker 4: They might be ghosts, They might be vengeful ghosts. So

1324
01:15:43,800 --> 01:15:46,400
Speaker 4: watch out. But again that goes for every plant. Why

1325
01:15:46,439 --> 01:15:48,720
Speaker 4: are we why are we picking on the banana? Why

1326
01:15:48,760 --> 01:15:51,680
Speaker 4: are we looking suspiciously at the banana when it is

1327
01:15:52,160 --> 01:15:55,040
Speaker 4: it is so delicious and so and so useful.

1328
01:15:55,439 --> 01:15:59,160
Speaker 5: Maybe the banana is more conspicuously a plant than other plants.

1329
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:00,759
Speaker 2: Hmmmm.

1330
01:16:01,200 --> 01:16:02,720
Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot to think about that though.

1331
01:16:05,160 --> 01:16:06,519
Speaker 4: I mean, there is a case to be made that

1332
01:16:06,560 --> 01:16:10,160
Speaker 4: there are other qualities about the banana that that unnerves sailors.

1333
01:16:10,160 --> 01:16:13,320
Speaker 4: I don't know, but at any rate, I think we'll

1334
01:16:13,320 --> 01:16:15,439
Speaker 4: have to leave it there for this episode. But we

1335
01:16:15,439 --> 01:16:17,559
Speaker 4: would love to hear from everyone out there, basically because

1336
01:16:17,600 --> 01:16:20,639
Speaker 4: I would love to know what form this myth may

1337
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:23,800
Speaker 4: be taking in the wild. I'm talking like not you

1338
01:16:23,880 --> 01:16:26,479
Speaker 4: read it on a website somewhere, or even a house

1339
01:16:26,479 --> 01:16:27,400
Speaker 4: stuff Works article.

1340
01:16:27,479 --> 01:16:29,120
Speaker 2: There is a house stuff Works article on this. I

1341
01:16:29,120 --> 01:16:30,479
Speaker 2: did run across that in the research.

1342
01:16:31,000 --> 01:16:34,000
Speaker 4: But have you heard it, like while you were out

1343
01:16:34,080 --> 01:16:36,479
Speaker 4: boating or were you on a ship and someone said, sir,

1344
01:16:37,120 --> 01:16:39,080
Speaker 4: is that a banana? If so, please leave it on

1345
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:41,720
Speaker 4: the dock. If this has ever happened to you or

1346
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:44,320
Speaker 4: you've heard stories about this, write in let us know.

1347
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:46,800
Speaker 4: We would love to discuss it. And also if you

1348
01:16:46,840 --> 01:16:49,040
Speaker 4: have any thoughts on just any of the way we've

1349
01:16:49,040 --> 01:16:52,320
Speaker 4: handled the way we've handled any of these possibilities here.

1350
01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:55,640
Speaker 4: If you agree with this, you disagree with us right in,

1351
01:16:55,920 --> 01:16:58,800
Speaker 4: we'd love to hear from you, all right, Just a

1352
01:16:58,840 --> 01:17:00,920
Speaker 4: reminder to everyone out there. Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1353
01:17:00,960 --> 01:17:03,400
Speaker 4: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes

1354
01:17:03,400 --> 01:17:06,320
Speaker 4: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays and

1355
01:17:06,360 --> 01:17:08,360
Speaker 4: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just

1356
01:17:08,360 --> 01:17:11,960
Speaker 4: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We

1357
01:17:12,080 --> 01:17:16,080
Speaker 4: have not covered Herbieco's Bananas, but that's the main banana

1358
01:17:16,160 --> 01:17:18,000
Speaker 4: themed movie that comes to mind.

1359
01:17:18,040 --> 01:17:19,920
Speaker 2: I guess it's weird. I don't know. We'll put it

1360
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:20,960
Speaker 2: on the list just in case.

1361
01:17:21,280 --> 01:17:21,960
Speaker 3: I don't know that one.

1362
01:17:22,000 --> 01:17:24,080
Speaker 5: I have to look it up after we're done here.

1363
01:17:24,080 --> 01:17:27,240
Speaker 4: It's an intelligent car and it goes bananas. I don't

1364
01:17:27,280 --> 01:17:30,000
Speaker 4: think it actually involves the fruit, but the fruit is prominently.

1365
01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:30,519
Speaker 2: Featured on the post farm.

1366
01:17:31,479 --> 01:17:35,120
Speaker 5: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1367
01:17:35,280 --> 01:17:36,800
Speaker 5: If you would like to get in touch with us

1368
01:17:36,800 --> 01:17:39,040
Speaker 5: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1369
01:17:39,080 --> 01:17:41,040
Speaker 5: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1370
01:17:41,160 --> 01:17:43,800
Speaker 5: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1371
01:17:43,800 --> 01:17:52,280
Speaker 5: your Mind dot com.

1372
01:17:52,439 --> 01:17:55,360
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1373
01:17:55,439 --> 01:17:58,240
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,

1374
01:17:58,400 --> 01:18:15,800
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.