After, since we last spoke, tell me how's your January purging and cleansing and healing going.

Okay, so I'm actually not an amazing role model for wellness right now, Peter. As you might be able to hear, I've slightly lost my voice. And it's quite apt that my approach to treating this malady, which I often get when I get sick, I get a kind of flu and a cold,

and then I lose my voice. And this time it's turned into a chesty cough. Sorry, everybody,

you're getting way too much information about my health challenges, but I have never found

a cough medicine that works for me. I don't know if you have, but I just always end up

drinking these like really sugary, disgusting, sticky liquids that do nothing. So this time, my Japanese friend told me

about her family's traditional technique, which is to get red onion, soak it in honey,

leave it in a jar for like eight hours, and then inhale the vapor.

And if you need to even like drink a spoonful, like crates are kind of like onion honey.

It sounds disgusting, but listen, my cough is gone in one night.

So I'm feeling very, very motivated to talk about, as we're going to in

this episode, food and ancient healing techniques and what their legacy might be today.

I think that's great. I'm thinking that that's basically the story of how Red Bill worked was,

you know, somebody heard about some drink in Thailand that sort of made people better. The next thing, you know, you've got a Formula One racing team. So maybe you and I are fair, we should get some red onion, some honey, and see if we're going to set up a stall in borough market, see if we can get people to come by and, you know, make us rich. We could, we could pay people to us as a podcast if it relies. I don't want to get conspiracy theorist about it, but I suspect this is why nobody is really pumping a lot of money

into advertising these natural remedies because no one has a monopoly over them. Any red onion

farmer will benefit from you trying the recipe that I've just told you. And so instead,

we get marketed these products that,

you know, somebody is incentivized to try and sell us. And I'm not anti-modern products or

modern medicine. I'm just saying sometimes very cheaply, readily available, natural remedies that

you can make at home might be just as good, if not better. I could tell you, after, when I was at school, whatever your illness was, whether you know, you've broken a leg, felt ill, you know, had a headache, whatever it was, was a dispering gargle. And basically, by the time you came back on the third day for another one, you know, Ty would have healed you or you'd be dead. So that, well, they're giving you those dissolvable aspirin and making you gargle them. I can still feel, I mean, I haven't had one of those for about 40 years. I never thought I'd be talking about that in an episode on wellness. But it's great to be back to think about ancient ideas about the body, the soul, of the mind, and to think about what wellness has meant over time. But we're going to, we're still back in the ancient world, but we're going to come forward over the course of this series

to come up to date as well.

Maybe even get to my very, very contemporary sore throat.

...