You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

I want me to you to have this side. I'm living on the point in men, shall I will come,

when you, oh, well come, well come.

Each and every vanilla bean that you're eating has been hand pollinated by a pair of human hands.

And I hope people will begin to understand why vanilla is so expensive because it's incredibly labor intensive.

The pod of an orchid currently selling for 10,000 pounds a ton.

That's about a pound 50 to 250 per pod to you and me depending on the quality. It's a spice second only to

saffron in value and in complexity of production. So just come over and had a look at this box. This is where the hot blanket wrap

vanilla is coming in at 100 miles an hour and there's a chap in here with a blue and

white stripe t-shirt on he's he's

tucking up this blanket like he's putting a baby to bed. The Western

World's love affair with vanilla began in the 1500s when the Spanish ruled the waves, began their

colonization of the Americas, and under Hernando Cortez the destruction of the Aztec

Empire. It's a story that fascinated William Sitwell when he was

...