The History of Fresh Produce

What is huitlacoche, the fungus that Indigenous farmers in Mexico gave thanks for at harvest - and that American agronomists spent a century trying to burn, quarantine, and breed out of existence? Why did two civilizations look at the same diseased corn cob and see, one, a seasonal gift, and the other, an agricultural catastrophe? And how does this strange, blackened organism open a window onto the great collision between Indigenous knowledge and colonial science; from the burning of Aztec codices to the tasting menus of New York?Join John and Patrick as they tell the extraordinary story of corn smut - the Mexican truffle, the genetics laboratory darling, the fungus that fed empires and terrified farmers - in an age when the line between disease and delicacy has never been more hotly contested...----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What is plastic, and how did a shortage of billiard balls accidentally give birth to the material that would feed the modern world? Why did a Belgian chemist rummaging through coal tar waste end up transforming the way humanity eats? And how does the unlikely journey from Victorian ivory substitutes to the clamshell of strawberries on your kitchen counter open a window onto the great forces of industrial history; from total war to the supermarket revolution?Join John and Patrick as they tell the extraordinary story of plastic's conquest of fresh produce, and the civilization it quietly built around us, in an age that made abundance the new normal...----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

How did the humble date palm become entangled in the great age of empire? Why did steamships, railways, and the opening of the Suez Canal transform an ancient oasis crop into a global commodity? And how did a handful of date palms - smuggled across deserts, nearly lost to a curious dog, and later replanted in California - come to shape the modern global date industry?Join John and Patrick for the second part of their story on the history of dates, as imperial expansion, desert espionage, and ambitious American plant hunters carry this ancient fruit from the oases of North Africa and the Middle East to the highways of Southern California, and even back from seeds two thousand years old.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

How did a humble desert fruit help build some of the world’s earliest civilizations? Why did ancient farmers in Mesopotamia become master matchmakers for palm trees? And how did the date palm come to symbolize life, victory, and divine blessing across the ancient world? Join John and Patrick as they explore the astonishing origins of the date - from prehistoric hunter-gatherers and the orchards of ancient Mesopotamia, to Roman trade networks and the sacred traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In part one of this two-part series, they uncover how a single tree helped sustain empires, shape desert societies, and become one of the most important fruits in human history.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What does a Roman emperor’s craving for cucumbers have to do with feeding eight billion people? How did a 15th-century Korean cookbook quietly invent heated agriculture centuries before Europe’s glass palaces? And how did Victorian spectacle, world wars, hydroponic ambition, and Dutch engineering transform the greenhouse from aristocratic indulgence into global infrastructure?Join John and Patrick as they trace the extraordinary history of climate control in the service of fresh produce - from Tiberius’s selenite-covered cucumber beds, to the heated ondol systems of the Joseon Dynasty, the imperial glasshouses of Palace of Versailles and Royal Botanic Gardens, and the hydroponic battlefields of the Second World War.Because this is not just a story about architecture. It is a story about anxiety, empire, science, and survival. About humanity’s refusal to let winter - or war, or geography - dictate what ends up on our plates.From Roman villas to vertical farms... this is the history of the greenhouse, and the quiet revolution that changed how the world grows its food.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What was the United States government’s first move, when it decided that what Americans ate was a matter of national concern? Why, from the depths of the Civil War to the height of the culture wars, has Washington repeatedly redrawn the nation’s plate - sometimes to fight hunger, sometimes to win wars, sometimes to battle heart disease and obesity? And how did fruits and vegetables move from quiet supporting players to nutritional protagonists, caught between science, industry, and politics?Join John and Patrick as they trace the extraordinary history of U.S. dietary guidelines - from the founding of the United States Department of Agriculture in 1862, through wartime rationing and the “Basic Seven,” to the rise and fall of the Food Pyramid and the fierce debates of today. As public health, agricultural economics, and political ideology collide at the dinner table, one question lingers: when the government tells you what to eat, who (and what) is really being served?----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What kind of fruit was designed to be swallowed whole by giant sloths? How did a sacred Mesoamerican tree become the green badge of millennial brunch culture? And how did a humble postman’s backyard seedling end up conquering global agriculture?Join John and Patrick as they trace the astonishing history of the avocado - from the forests of ancient Mexico and the courts of the Maya and Aztec, to the chandeliers of the Alexandria Hotel, the rise of Calavo, and the accidental genius of Rudolph Hass. Along the way: plant explorers, freezes that nearly wiped out an industry, marketing masterstrokes, cartel violence in Michoacán, and the birth of the Super Bowl guacamole ritual.This is not just the story of a fruit. It’s a tale of extinction and survival, empire and branding, crime and cultivation - a relic of the Pleistocene that somehow became the taste of modernity.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What becomes of a man who spent his life moving plants, people, and power across the globe - when his own body finally begins to fail? How did Joseph Banks face his final years: in pain, in controversy, and yet still at the very center of British science? And why, after four decades at the helm of the Royal Society, did his reputation wither almost as quickly as his health?In this seventh and final episode, John and Patrick follow Banks into his twilight: chairing meetings from a wheelchair, backing Arctic expeditions, sampling three-year-old tinned meat in the name of progress, and making one last pilgrimage to Kew to see a cone bloom after forty years of waiting. As grief, illness, and imperial consequence close in, the question sharpens: was Banks a visionary architect of modern science - or an overbearing relic of an older age?----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What happens when exploration gives way to administration - and adventure turns into power? How did a royal garden become the beating heart of a global botanical empire? And how did Joseph Banks, without leaving London, reshape landscapes, economies, and diets across the world?In this episode, John and Patrick move from the drama of ocean voyages to the quieter - but far more consequential - world of Kew Gardens, where Banks transforms botany into infrastructure, plants into policy, and seeds into instruments of empire. From globe-spanning networks of plant hunters to glasshouses, diplomacy, and even Britain’s first brush with cannabis, this is where Banks stops collecting plants - and starts running the system.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

How did a gentleman botanist turn a vague imperial idea into a functioning colony on the far side of the world? Why did Joseph Banks’s quiet influence matter as much as any act of Parliament or naval broadside? And how did food, plants, and fragile supply lines decide whether Britain’s most audacious colonial experiment would live or die…?Join John and Patrick as Parliament finally commits to Botany Bay, Arthur Phillip sails with the First Fleet, and a penal colony teeters on the edge of starvation. From floating prisons and travelling greenhouses to shipwrecks, rum empires, and botanical lifelines, this is the moment when Banks’s vision collides with reality - on scorched soil, among hostile factions, and under the brutal pressure of survival.This is not just the founding of Australia.It’s the story of how empire is fed - or fails - one seed at a time.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

Fresh from fame and flush with ambition, Joseph Banks sets out to remake the world in his own image. But what happens when celebrity curdles into entitlement, when science collides with the Navy, and when one man’s colossal ego derails an imperial voyage before it even leaves port?Join John and Patrick as Banks plans a second South Seas expedition, throws one of the great tantrums of the eighteenth century, and quietly begins his transformation from globe-trotting naturalist into the most powerful scientific fixer in Britain.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What happens when discovery turns to disaster — and survival hangs on a sliver of luck? How close did Joseph Banks come to losing everything he had collected, and his life with it? And how did coral, disease, and chance shape one of the most important scientific voyages in history?Join John and Patrick as the Endeavour smashes onto the Great Barrier Reef, limps into Batavia, and is transformed from a ship of discovery into a floating hospital - a brutal reminder that Banks’s botanical triumphs were forged on the very edge of catastrophe.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What happened when Joseph Banks finally put to sea - and discovery left the comfort of gardens behind? How would a voyage meant to advance science collide with storms, suspicion, imperial rivalries, and human tragedy? And what would it cost to catalogue the natural world at the far edges of the globe?Join John and Patrick as they follow Banks aboard HMS Endeavour, from vineyards in Madeira and standoffs in Rio de Janeiro to catastrophe in Tierra del Fuego and the intoxicating promise of Tahiti. This is science under sail: plants collected at gunpoint, lives lost to ice and overconfidence, and the birth of a vision that would bind botany, empire, and exploration together - whether the world was ready for it or not.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

Who was Joseph Banks before he became the most powerful botanist in the British Empire? How did a wealthy, restless young man turn a childhood fascination with weeds into a scientific obsession that would reshape global agriculture? And why did one cold, miserable voyage to Newfoundland prove to be the spark that launched a world-changing career?Join John and Patrick as they begin a brand-new multi-part series on Joseph Banks, tracing his early life from privileged English estates to the edge of the North Atlantic - and setting the stage for the voyages that would transform science, empire, and the history of fresh produce.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

Once, Switzerland was a land of pears.When we picture the Swiss countryside today, we imagine tidy fields, precision farming, and alpine order. But not so long ago, vast stretches of eastern Switzerland were covered in towering pear trees - ancient giants that fed communities, sustained wildlife, and produced perry renowned across Europe.So how did a nation famed for care, balance, and cultivation come to destroy eleven million fruit trees in the space of a generation?Join John and Patrick as they unravel one of the strangest and most unsettling episodes in modern agricultural history: the deliberate, state-sponsored destruction of Switzerland’s perry orchards. From temperance panics and alcohol laws to bureaucrats with axes, propaganda films, and the cult of “modern” efficiency, this is a story of progress turned destructive - and of a drink, a landscape, and a culture quietly erased.Was this modernization… or cultural vandalism? And what was lost when the last great pear trees fell?READ MORE about Perry Pears here. ----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

As 2025 draws to a close, we also reach the midpoint of the decade. Looking back on an eventful first half of the 2020s, we’re left with a big question: what will history remember about this era in the world of fresh produce?In this final livestream of 2025, John and Patrick will revisit the defining moments of the past five years, unpack their historical significance, and ask whether these events will endure as true turning points - or fade into the background as intriguing but fleeting milestones.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review-----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

What do gold, frankincense, and myrrh really tell us about the world into which Jesus was born? Who were the Magi - kings, mystics, scientists, or traders - and why did they travel vast distances carrying some of the most valuable agricultural products on Earth? How do desert trees in Arabia and the Horn of Africa connect a humble birth in Bethlehem to ancient global supply chains, imperial economics, and the earliest luxury produce markets? And what happened when symbolic gifts became engines of demand, reshaping landscapes, trade routes, and even Christian worship for centuries to come?Join John and Patrick as they follow the scent trail of frankincense and myrrh - from wounded bark and caravan routes to temples, churches, and modern medicine - in a fresh-produce retelling of the Nativity that reveals the Three Wise Men not as fairy-tale kings, but as emissaries of the ancient global economy. This is the Christmas story as you’ve never heard it before: rooted in trees, trade, and the fragile agricultural systems that quietly changed the world.----------In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review -----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

From incestuous wasps and prehistoric forests to sacred enlightenment, revolutionary resistance, and a certain square-shaped snack aisle icon - what if the fig is the most powerful fruit in human history? Join John and Patrick as they trace the astonishing 80-million-year saga of the fig: its ancient pact with tiny wasps, its role in shaping ecosystems, feeding early humans, inspiring gods and emperors, fueling revolutions in Kenya, and conquering America as the mighty Fig Newton. Was the fig humanity’s first domesticated plant? Did it help build civilizations, religions, and even our own hands? And how did one strange fruit manage to bridge myth, medicine, empire, and mass production? This is the epic, unexpected history of the fig - one of the most extraordinary stories nature ever wrote.----------In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review -----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]

"They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So technically, I colonized Mars. In your face , Neil Armstrong!"As Mark Watney's line from the book and film The Martian suggests, fruits and vegetables have long played a starring role in our visions of space. Sometimes they’re subtle symbols of home; other times, they’re humanity’s only hope for survival.But how realistic are these space gardens? Could these crops truly grow beyond Earth - and if they could, would they be enough to sustain life? And what lessons can we draw from history, when explorers relied on produce to survive their own journeys into the unknown?Join John and Patrick on this month's livestream as they pull out the popcorn to talk space films, produce and history!-----------Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.Support us!Share this episode with your friendsGive a 5-star ratingWrite a review -----------Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.-----------Instagram, TikTok, Threads:@historyoffreshproduceEmail: [email protected]