The History of Fresh Produce
Join John Paap and Patrick Kelly in this podcast series that explores the fascinating and often overlooked history of fresh fruits and vegetables. Each episode offers listeners a unique perspective on how produce has shaped our world, featuring in-depth interviews with top experts and historians, engaging storytelling, and a blend of historical and contemporary perspectives. Whether exploring the journey of grapes through time or the influence of produce in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, this series leaves no stone unturned. Social Channels: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyoffreshproduce/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyoffreshproduce?lang=en Threads: https://www.threads.net/@historyoffreshproduce?hl...
Latest Episodes
Why did a Māori chief ask a visiting English botanist how it was possible to live without a plant — and what does his bewilderment reveal about a civilisation built entirely around a single organism? How did European demand for rope fibre trigger the Musket Wars that reshaped the political map of Aotearoa before formal colonisation had even begun? And what does the ethics of harvesting — never cut the rito, never remove the heart — tell us about a way of relating to the natural world that almost disappeared and is now being slowly, carefully restored?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of New Zealand and harakeke — the sixty varieties, the musket trade, and the plant that is simultaneously a lily, a philosophy, and a family...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did two Syrian merchants opening a shop in Istanbul in 1554 inadvertently invent the public sphere — and how did a small copper pot of coffee produce Lloyd's of London, the French Revolution, and the Royal Society? Why did Sultan Murad IV personally execute coffeehouse owners in the streets, and why did it make absolutely no difference? And how does a drink from the Ethiopian highlands, brewed first by Sufi monks in Yemen, end up creating the conditions for the Enlightenment?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Türkiye and the kahvehane — the Ottoman coffeehouse, the meddah, and the most consequential cup in history...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did the Sumerian gods describe a land on the Persian Gulf coast as paradise — and why does the geological reality of that same land, 4,000 years later, still justify the comparison? Who were the Qarmatians, the radical sect who built a proto-communist oasis commune and then stole the Black Stone of Islam from Mecca and kept it hidden in an Eastern Arabian date palm grove for twenty-two years? And how did the water that made Al-Hasa the most fought-over oasis in the ancient world turn out to be sitting directly above the largest conventional oil field on Earth?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Saudi Arabia and Al-Hasa — the Dilmun paradise, the Khalas date, and six thousand years of civilisation built on artesian springs...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did a blacksmith hide six cocoa pods under his tools to smuggle them past Spanish customs — and how did those six pods become the foundation of an industry that today supplies sixty percent of the world's chocolate? Who was Tetteh Quarshie, the man who spent six years watching cocoa grow on a plantation island before bringing the knowledge home to Ghana, and why has the credit for what he did been contested ever since? And what does it mean that the average cocoa farmer in Ghana earns a dollar a day for producing the raw material of a chocolate bar that sells for the same price?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Ghana and cocoa — the toolbox, the Cocoa Hold-Up of 1937, and the smallholder revolution that made a country from six pods...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did 27 words buried in a Bavarian price regulation from 1516 become the most famous food law in history — and why did it take 402 years for anyone to give it the name that made it sound ancient and inevitable? What was in German beer before hops arrived, why did the Church control it, and how did switching ingredients become an act of theological protest during the Reformation? And how did Bavaria hold its entry into the German Empire hostage to the extension of its beer law — and win?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Germany and the Reinheitsgebot — the gruit monopoly, the hop revolution, and the purity commandment that forgot to mention yeast...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did the man who just conquered India weep over a melon — and what does that tell us about the fruit that travelers from Ibn Battuta to Victorian cavalry officers have been stopping their journeys to describe for seven centuries? How did the river valleys of what is now Uzbekistan become the origin point of every sweet melon on Earth, and the crossroads through which paper-making, Islam, and Buddhism all passed in different directions? And who was Babur, the tiger who lost Samarkand twice, won an empire he couldn't love, and asked to be buried in a garden in Afghanistan?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Uzbekistan and the melon — the Silk Road, the Baburnama, and the concentrated sweetness of a fruit that still makes people stop and weep...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why does the most extravagant opera house in the history of South America sit in the middle of the Amazon rainforest — and how did a wild tree, a Connecticut hardware merchant's accident, and a debt bondage system built on human misery pay for Italian marble, Murano chandeliers, and a ceiling painted in Paris to look like the underside of the Eiffel Tower? Who was Henry Wickham, the man who took 70,000 rubber tree seeds out of Brazil and ended the boom in a single generation? And what happened to the opera house when the carriages stopped coming?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Brazil and rubber — the seringueiros, the Teatro Amazonas, and the most improbable building on Earth...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did the most productive colony in the entire world — generating 40 percent of Europe's sugar from an area the size of Maryland — become the site of the only successful slave revolution in human history? How did a Vodou ceremony in a forest clearing, a Stoic-reading formerly enslaved general, and yellow fever combine to defeat Napoleon's army and reshape the political geography of North America? And why were the people who freed themselves required to compensate the people who enslaved them — and to keep paying, with interest, for 122 years?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Haiti and sugar — the Pearl of the Antilles, the Black Jacobins, and the revolution that the world has been trying to forget ever since...
----------
In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.
The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did the potato blight begin in Belgium before it reached Ireland — and why has the Flemish famine of 1845, which killed tens of thousands and stunted a generation, been almost entirely forgotten while the Irish catastrophe became the defining tragedy of a nation? What destroyed the linen industry of Flanders before the blight even arrived, and how did that earlier catastrophe turn a regional food crisis into something far worse? And what does DNA sequencing of museum specimens from 1845 reveal about where the most consequential agricultural disaster in European history actually began?
Join John and Patrick as they tell the story of Belgium and the last great peacetime famine in Western Europe — the linen crisis, the Arm Vlaanderen, and the tragedy that Belgium forgot...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce
Why did a Portuguese colonial sugar ban inadvertently create Cape Verde's national spirit — and what does it reveal about how cultures find ways through every door that's closed to them? How did ten uninhabited volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic become the birthplace of a creole language, a music of longing, and a sugarcane brandy whose flavour is specific to each valley's microbes? And what happens when the law designed to protect a traditional product becomes the mechanism that pushes out the people who made it traditional?
Join John and his special co-host as they tell the story of Cape Verde and grogue — the wild fermentation, the Barefoot Diva, the grogue wars, and the saudade that runs through all of it...
----------
In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
-----------
Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.
Support us!
- Share this episode with your friends
- Give a 5-star rating
- Write a review
-----------
Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.
-----------
Instagram, TikTok, Threads:
@historyoffreshproduce