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