Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Today on the show, one of our very most favorite episodes

from the archive, it's called The Most Interesting Fruit in the World. If you remember it,

I think you will like hearing it again. If you have never heard it, you are in for a treat.

This episode first ran in 2019. We have updated facts and figures where relevant. Thanks

for listening and we'll be back next week with a new episode.

In 1876, the city of Philadelphia commemorated 100 years of American independence with a

centennial exposition. It was a big trade fair, it was like a world fair, and there was

a horticultural exhibit and they had a banana plant with bananas growing on it.

It's Virginia Scott Jenkins, she's a cultural historian in the author of Bananas, an American

history. And they had to put a guard on it because people wanted to, you know, pick a leaf

or poke at it because people hadn't seen one of these things.

The banana plant, and yes, it's a plant technically not a tree and the banana is technically

a berry. Anyway, this banana plant had stiff competition for attention at the centennial

expo. Also on display were the right arm and flame of the Statue of Liberty, which hadn't

yet been erected in New York Harbor. There were the first public demonstrations of the

typewriter and of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone and an appearance by the president

of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. Still, the humble banana plant caused a stir thanks

to its novelty.

They're not native to the Americas at all. And in North America, bananas weren't even

possible. Well, they'd take about 18 months from sprouting to fruit and acclimat in different

ecological zones in the United States. You don't get frost free that long.

The banana was one of the first fruits cultivated by humans, the earliest written accounts

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