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.

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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.

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

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

Hello, you're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me,

Matt Pintus. Today, the Mercky Today the murky autocratic origins of one of the most popular dishes in Southeast Asian cooking.

For millions of people around the world, a meal that symbolizes Thai cuisine.

It just means Thai stir-fry.

It's, I guess it's the first dish that that I know everyone in the world

will know what it is. It's it's kind of shorthand for oh I know Thailand,

Pud Thai. But who came up with it?

And why?

As with all things that are old, everybody has a different version of history.

It's the same thing with Pod-Thai.

That's Thai Food Expert and author Chawidi Nolkare. Was it created in a contest by a minister's wife or was it altered over time and brought to prominence by a patriotic general who knows but what

what we can agree on is that there was a version of Paday in a Ram of the fifth

period that is nothing like the version that we see today and

...