It's Tea Time: Pirates, Polyphenols, and a Proper Cuppa (encore)

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, Gastropod tells the story of two countries and their shared obsession with a plant: Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as the tea bush. The Chinese domesticated tea over thousands of years, but they lost their near monopoly on international trade when a Scottish botanist, disguised as a Chinese nobleman, smuggled it out of China in the 1800s, in order to secure Britain's favorite beverage and prop up its empire for another century. The story involves pirates, ponytails, and hard drugs—and, to help tell the tale, Cynthia and Nicky visit Britain's one and only commercial tea plantation, tucked away in a secret garden on an aristocratic estate on the Cornish coast. While harvesting and processing tea leaves, we learn the difference between green and black tea, as well as which is better for your health. Put the kettle on, and settle in for the science and history of tea! (encore edition) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Happy New Year to all you gastropod listeners. It's cold in Boston these days and you know what I love now and really kind of every day of the year, a nice hot mug of tea.
0:11.0	If I don't start my day with a cup of tea, it doesn't really start.
0:15.5	And so we thought we would start a brand new year of Gaster pod with one of our favorite episodes
0:19.9	and that's this encore edition of tea time. Enjoy.
0:23.0	This is a brand new tea plantation.
0:28.0	And it's quite exciting because the backdrop couldn't be any more English.
0:35.6	We see we've got literally a quintessential English village right behind it.
0:40.2	Yes, you heard that correctly. A tea plantation in England.
0:47.7	I know, shocking. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.
0:51.0	But Nicky and I actually got a chance to visit Britain's one and
0:54.2	only commercial tea plantation last month it's in Cornwall a beautiful peninsula that's
0:58.8	the southwestern most corner of England and we went there in order to understand the story of two countries, Britain and China,
1:05.7	and their shared obsession with a Camilia Bush.
1:08.8	This episode will tell a swashbuckling tale.
1:11.8	I use that word literally there are even pirates involved.
1:14.6	How the British stole tea from China and transformed the world's economy at the same time.
1:19.6	And while Cynthia and I roll up our sleeves to harvest some tea, we get into the difference between
1:24.7	green and black tea and the science behind tea's health benefits.
1:28.8	But first we have to get one important thing out of the way.
1:31.7	Your mint tea is not tea. Neither is your
1:34.6	Kamomile or in fact any of your sleepy time, tension tamer, revive, herbal,
1:39.3	whatever. That's not tea either. It's an infusion.
	...

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