Turkey is Both a Bird and a Country. Which Came First?

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's no coincidence that the bird we eat for Thanksgiving and a Middle Eastern country are both called Turkey. One was named after the other, and it all has to do with a 500-year-old story of emerging global trade, mistaken identity, foreign language confusion, and how the turkey took Europe by storm as a must-have status symbol for the ultra wealthy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:05.4	The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres
0:11.9	the forgotten stories that changed our world.
0:15.5	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
0:18.3	Hi everyone, happy Thanksgiving.
0:25.0	This episode is going out on Thanksgiving Day 2018.
0:27.8	You're in the United States, you're probably eating enough food for five people right now.
0:32.1	If you're outside the United States, I'm almost positive you have familiarity with the American
0:36.0	holiday of Thanksgiving through movies and everything else, and you've at least seen
0:39.6	the stereotypical image of people crowding around the table to eat an enormous amount of
0:43.8	turkey.
0:45.3	Something I want to touch on in this episode isn't the origins of Thanksgiving which are
0:49.4	somewhat well understood, even though they can also be very well misunderstood, but I
0:54.1	want to look at another aspect of Thanksgiving and that has to do with the bird itself.
1:00.0	A turkey has the same name as a country of turkey.
1:04.7	Is that a coincidence?
1:06.6	It's not a coincidence.
1:08.1	There's a similar origin for the name of these two, but the common origin that these two
1:12.5	have isn't just a small historical trivia fact, but it's actually a vast story about
1:17.9	global trade and a new age of human connection that began 500 years ago.
1:23.9	What's with this podcast episode is going to be about?
1:26.8	The idea for this episode, the commonality between the name of the bird and the country,
	...

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