Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Vanilla

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Lydia Bugg (1900HOTDOG, the ‘Trailer Park Boys’ comic anthology) and comedy writer/podcaster Katie Goldin (‘Creature Feature’ podcast, @ProBirdRights) for a look at why vanilla is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Folks, you are about to hear episode number 41 of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. 4-1. That number has gotten me thinking about another number coming up. 50. 50 entire episodes of this show is around the corner. I want to celebrate that, and I want to celebrate by giving backers of this show more benefits than ever before. So we're doing a membership drive. That's what I'm telling you

before this episode starts. The full details are at sifpod.fun. The short version is that if enough listeners step up, if enough people become backers, every current and new backer will get commemorative art for episode 50. They'll get other new benefits for every week of the podcast. And if this drive works out, we'll be able to do something great for guests of this show because they, you know, deserve something for their labor. So there's never been a better time to back the podcast. Please go to SifPod.fun and do that thing. I'm thrilled about what we're building here.

I'm thrilled about the idea of you becoming a part of it. And oh yeah, I am thrilled about vanilla. Vanilla. Known for being a flavor. Famous for being a bean. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why vanilla is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there folks, welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Today I'm joined by Lydia Bug and Katie Golden. Lydia Bug is a fantastic comedy writer. You can read Lydia's columns every week on 1-900-HOT-DOG.

That is my favorite new comedy website, period. It was founded by the great Robert Brockway and the great The Internet's Sean Baby. You heard them on the ham episode of this podcast, and that site is more than just them. Lydia Bug writes there. She also writes for bunnyears.com, reductress.com, and she's a writer on the new Trailer Park Boys comic book anthology. Trailer Park Boys, a very funny TV show. That comic book comes out in June, which is very soon and a very cool thing. And then Katie Golden is my other guest. She is also far more than a mere guest. She helped get this entire podcast off the ground. She guested on the first ever taping, which became episode two about cattle. She's also the amazing comedy writer who runs the at ProBirdWrites

Twitter account. Katie also hosts and makes a fantastic animal-focused podcast called Creature Feature over on iHeartRadio. Great podcast to check out. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Lydia recorded this on the traditional land of the Shawnee, Eastern Cherokee, and Tsotsoyaha peoples. Acknowledge Katie recorded this on the traditional land

of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about vanilla. A flavor you know, a plant that will astound you. Also probably worth saying up front that the history of vanilla and the present day of vanilla, it all ties very deeply into European imperialism. So we explore that imperialism today, because that is one of the core things that has created this global dessert situation where you can get vanilla anywhere at any time. And I think most episodes of this show have some element of that kind of thing. I want to pre-mention that this one is heavy on them.

So there you go. I also think this is a fascinating topic with amazing guests. So please sit back or use a small wooden stick to change the world. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Lydia Bug and Katie Golden. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Lydia, Katie, so good to see you both. Of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about vanilla? Well, as like a basic flavor, I feel like if you asked me, would you like vanilla ice cream or like

any other flavor of ice cream? I would say anything else, please. As part of like baking, I love vanilla, especially vanilla extract. I feel like is in pretty much every baked good that I make or anyone makes. Like I was flipping through a cookbook earlier and I was like seven of the 10 recipes in it have vanilla extract. So I feel like it's a good flavor to like build other flavors on top of. Oh, yeah. I left it out of chocolate chip cookies one time and they they were ghostly pale really weird yeah you can't do that i was talking to my grandma about uh making chocolate chip cookies once and she said always add more vanilla extract it's like

there's like usually a tablespoon and then i've seen her make it she'll put in the tablespoon and then she'll just kind of eyeball it and then go like look look look throw some more in that's great yeah i love vanilla um i actually so it's true that i will of course if there's like other flavors of ice cream like i'm happy about it but like vanilla ice cream in an ice cream cone just like takes me back to my childhood i guess so i just there's about that, like you get like even one of those little cheap cones that like is basically styrofoam and you put some vanilla in it and it's just like instantly I'm taken back to my childhood, get it all over my hand and not knowing what to do. And it's great. I also love to bake and I went to a cooking class and the teacher was like listen I've got a secret to share with you guys about vanilla uh you guys have been using vanilla extract all this time

well you should be using vanilla paste and it's very expensive and it's much more expensive than vanilla extract but it's like this thick syrup with like ground up vanilla, the pods. And then it's like, and I was like, oh, she's just trying to sell us vanilla paste. But then I tried some and it was really good. So I got a bottle of it and I started adding it to my tea and everything. And it's like, oh, this is so good. Yeah. I've, i've come to really enjoy just the flavor of vanilla on its own obviously you can't like chug vanilla extract well you could has anyone you can't i haven't i remember in high school there was like a rumor that there was a kid who chugged it to try and get drunk because it has like 0.001 percent alcohol in it And I think that's the way to do it.

That's the way to do it. Yeah. Great. Good idea. Yeah. No, I mean, but yeah, I just, it's like, oh wow, this like vanilla paste is actually really good just on its own. I mean, I don't eat the vanilla paste much.

Where do you get it? Where do you find that? Cause I, I've looked at the grocery store and you can't oh okay vanilla bean isn't available like anywhere right like regular just vanilla bean i mean you can get you can get the vanilla pods i think uh sometimes in the grocery store if you have fancy spices like they're those long kind of black pod things uh but like the paste i've had trouble finding it in grocery stores so internet dodgy sites on the internet if it doesn't look dodgy it's not the good paste some some man in like a

trench coat in an alleyway called like vanilla joe opens up his trench coat it's all sorts of vanilla pastes and macaroons. At the white market. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Until researching this, I didn't know about the vanilla beans and pods. And I just knew about the flavor. So that's cool that you already are aware of the source and all the ways to get it.

That's right. I'm an expert. I've seen them use the beans on cooking shows that's when they're like being fancy on a cooking show they're like oh you have to use like whole vanilla bean and they get it out and they like scrape the inside out of it and then like chop it up is what it looks like and i've always kind of wanted to try that um but you can't get it anywhere so i was like okay well i'll just be basic and use the vanilla extract, I guess. I love that on like cooking and baking shows where it's like, you're not doing it right unless you're using fresh, whole vanilla. And you're like, okay, I'll do that.

It's like, no, this isn't for you. This is the forbidden peon. Yeah, the forbidden flavor. You cooking serf. You gotta go to Vanilla Joe or you're not doing it. They're getting a kickback from the white market that's what i think i think it's all it's it's turtles all the way down of this conspiracy yeah big vanilla as far as my vanilla feelings it was i think i was a pretty picky kid but it was one of my absolute favorite flavors as a kid.

I would just want a carton of vanilla ice cream from the store, and that was dessert. That was plenty. And I also really liked, especially in times when money was low, just the McDonald's soft-serve vanilla cone as a treat on the street. That was especially New York summers when I was briefly there. That was great. That was the way to go. That's so funny to me that you guys both enjoyed that. Cause to me, when I got a vanilla cone as a kid, I would just like swat it out of somebody's hand to the floor and be like,

where's the chocolate cone? This is unacceptable. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I think for some people vanilla is default. It's no flavor. It's like not a flavor. It's sort of like giving like a vanilla ice cream is like a blank canvas. And it's like, where's all the chocolate and, you know, marshmallows and stuff. But like, yeah, I mean, it's definitely a distinct flavor. If you have just like milk that you turn into ice cream with no vanilla in it.

It tastes weird. It's not going to taste like vanilla ice cream. Yeah. It's going to taste like ice milk. Milk water. Milk. And it's milk color. Like I think that's, I think I thought that's what you get if you just put milk and the

other elements of ice cream together. You get vanilla ice cream. Right. And then like if you add chunks of stuff, you're Ben and Jerry. But until then, it's just vanilla. Right. That's when you, yeah, you become Ben and Jerry. Like it's sort of a, it's sort of like the title of Spider-Man or Batman.

Like when you start mixing things in ice cream, it's like, now I'm the Ben and Jerry. You're both like the wonder twins all their flavors they put two rigs together in vermont when you mix like pretzels and and reese's pieces into ice cream the spirits of ben and jerry move through you and the world becomes a better place luke you turned off your targeting computer it's okay and then ben and jerry are just And the world becomes a better place. Luke, you turned off your targeting computer. It's okay.

And then Ben and Jerry are just force ghosts helping him target the ice cream. Have you tried a Maricone dream? Well, I think from here we can get into the first chunk of info in the show. Because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics and that's in a segment called never gonna add you up never gonna subtract you never gonna multiply or divide you wow that was a really good Rick Astley. Wow. Wow. Like you transformed before our eyes. Yes. You threw like an oversized shoulder padded trench coat. It was freaky.

I thought he hired Rick Astley to come in and sing that. Right. I could smell hairspray. That was from Emily Brown. Thank you, Emily Brown. We have a new name for this every week. Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. And the first number here is two, or at least like number two in the world.

It's two because vanilla is the second most expensive spice by weight in the entire world. It's number two. That makes sense to me, I think. Right. What's number one? It's always in tiny amounts. And number one is saffron. Okay.

Which is those little filaments. They're extremely tiny by weight. So if I have saffron and vanilla ice cream, I'm basically a queen, right? You're the fanciest person on earth. Yeah. The fanciest person on earth. Yeah. The fanciest person on earth. Like it just comes with a crown in the box. Like, oh, hey, cool.

Like in the spice aisle, I feel like vanilla extract is one of the most expensive things. Usually it's like $11 for a bottle. I mean, it's a big bottle and it'll last you a long time. But I know that it's more expensive than almost any other thing there, right? Yeah. And that's part of why also, I guess you just get sick if you try to do it, but it's part of why you don't want to be like that kid who tried to get drunk on it and just slam it because it's very expensive. It doesn't work financially. Yeah. That's like worse than the New York Times Applebee's trying to get drunk there. If you're trying to get drunk off a bottle of vanilla extract.

Don't you tell me how to live my life. Yeah, Katie's taping this from the Times Square Applebee's and she's very upset that you're saying that. Listen, I'm double fisting bottle of vanilla extract from New York Times Applebees and I don't appreciate your judgment right now, alright? It's crazy that you had to get the New York Times Applebees to sell you the vanilla extract. That's an extra step. Jealousy is not a nice color on you, Lydia, alright? You're right. I'm so sorry. Live your life, girl.

Live your dreams. That's right. That's right. Don't nobody tell me what to do. Also, I think next number here, this fits in with being a queen. The next number is 1602, the year 1602. That's when Queen Elizabeth I asked for all of her food and all of her beverages to be flavored with vanilla. Wow, that's a lot.

Yeah, all food and beverages, vanilla, she wanted that. Although, even chicken though, like, or I guess she'd be eating pheasant or something. But even pheasant though, like eating pheasant or something. But even pheasant, though? Like, vanilla pheasant? Was there salad back then? Was she using it as salad dressing on her garden salad? That doesn't sound good. Yeah, I guess you never have vanilla extract on the table as a condiment, huh? That just really doesn't work with anything at all, huh?

Wow. Vanilla fries? No. I don't know. Now that you say that, I'm kind of like, vanilla fries? Maybe like, yeah. Have you dunked fries in a vanilla milkshake? Like, that's good.

Oh, yeah. That is right. Remember when Taco Bell used to have the cinnamon curly fries or something? Yeah. Like vanilla and cinnamon curly fries might be kind of actually good. I'm changing my mind on Elizabeth I. I think she might have been onto something. Yeah, far be it from us to disagree with a queen. Right.

Yes, here we respect monarchy. We respect monarchy. The story with Queen Elizabeth I here, and one big source for this episode, will be the book Vanilla, A Global History by Rosa Abreu-Runkle. She's an assistant professor of hospitality management at New York City College of Technology. But Dr. Abreu-Runkle says, quote, Elizabeth I came to believe vanilla was an aphrodisiac and had a mystical way of improving one's health. End quote. Oh, really? An aphrodisiac, you say?

Well, Elizabeth I, she was a little bit of a little bit of a freaky queen, wasn't she? Yeah, she was like, this is an aphrodisiac and I want to be horny all the time. Right, and never act on it, ever. That's my plan as queen. Sir Higgins, please put the horny sauce onto my pheasants. If even a single dish does not make me horny, I'm going to be so mad at my chef. Like, that's what she's doing, essentially. So mad at my chef. Like that's what she's saying, essentially.

Thou must make me constantly jonesing for that D, chef, or I shall have your head and not the one you're thinking of. And the other thing is, this was the year 1602. And at that time, Queen Elizabeth I was in her late 60s. She also died the following year. So from a health perspective, apparently this did not work. She passed away. Or you could look at it as she had a great raunchy time that last year of her life. Yeah.

Of just, you know, look, old people can have sex too. I'm sorry to break it to you guys. She went out with a bang. Like, yeah, like, you know, and I mean, back then, this was a pretty old age because people were constantly falling off the face of the earth at young ages because they kept eating like rat water and stuff. But like, you know, hey, look, I think it's great. I think it's great that she could come into her own and her old age and just decide to

be a freak 24-7. Yeah, good for her. Good for her. Good for her. Well, and I love the idea that she just kind of decided herself that it was healthy and was like, I'm going to eat this constantly. I've decided this is healthy. And then she died.

Like, what a cell phone. Yeah. Like, I want to wake up one day and just be like, I think Cheetos are healthy. I'm going to eat Cheetos every single day and then be really mad when I die in a year. But was it the vanilla or was it like the drinking rat water that did it? Because they did a lot of weird stuff. I don't know if she was one of the ones one of the queens that like rubbed mercury over her face like it could

have been a lot of things that killed her true yeah yeah it's as late 60s for the 1600s is like pretty good you were supposed to pass away like in your field at 25 so you know late 60s all right hey yeah they were like brushing their teeth with lead so you know congratulations for living that's like a hundred in in 1600 years also isn't it like when you get older your taste buds don't work as well so it could be that she if she was like actually super old for for that age that's why she liked the vanilla so much she was like oh i can taste this right and, I think like brushing your teeth with lead might have had some problems with the whole tongue situation. But yeah, no, that's a good point. Right. I'm tasting a lot less stuff ever since my tongue fell off. I wonder why. That's a weird

situation going on. The doctor said to put tin leeches in my mouth and I'd like to spice it up with some vanilla, please. And the next number here is this modern stuff. It's about 80%. And about 80% is the approximate amount of world vanilla that is grown on the island of Madagascar. Oh, wow. It's coming from the NPR Goats and Soda blog, and that number varies year to year, but it's Madagascar at about 80%, and then the next biggest source is an island called La Reunion, and La Reunion is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. We'll talk about both those places a lot more later.

But yeah, most natural vanilla comes from there. 80 percent wow yeah yeah that's a very um so so is i guess we're going to talk about it later but i guess like these these plants the vanilla plants are pretty like endemic to these regions where they just don't necessarily grow elsewhere yeah that's a perfect question for later, because it's yes and no. It's kind of both. I look forward to hearing the answer. I wonder how good that island

smells. I bet it smells really good. Like flying over to get somewhere, like, put us down there, am I right? Hey, other people on the plane? Come on. Who's in? Let's just pop into it people are like that guy in 10e has a great idea wow cool it's my seat on the plane that is 10e and that's how the that's how the plane hijackings happen because people smell a really good island they're like we'll just pop by we'll just pop by real quick take her down i'm glad i brought a gun on this plane

otherwise we couldn't stop at all right geez really really lucky and now we're on a lift now now seat 10e is removed from all planes and last number here is 1889 this is another year 1889 is the year of the launch of a perfume that was called Géki and Géki is significant because it is considered the first modern perfume

because it incorporated an artificial ingredient, which was artificial vanilla. So vanilla kind of launched the modern perfume industry, beyond just putting natural stuff together. Yeah, I don't think that I've any perfumes like being like vanilla perfume but yeah uh I guess I don't know what perfume flavor is at all I mean I know there's like floral ones but then when it's like ah this is like perfume and it's like I don't know what this smell is it's nice but I don't know what it is you You can't figure out that name? It was pretty clear in the name, I think. It seems like they...

Yeah. And also, if people want to get this perfume, they can. It was made by Amé Guerlain in 1889. He was the son of another perfumier. And their business is still going. It's the world's oldest perfume in continuous production. Oh, that's cool. It's the scent Géki, if you want to have history perfume that is mostly lavender and vanilla. Yeah, maybe I'll check it out, because my signature scent right now is sweat and chocolate. Chocolate ice cream and sweat.

Chocolate? Gross. Get off of the podcast. What if I had made a rule, though, talking about chocolate on the Vanilla podcast? They can't mix. No way. I'd be devastated. Don't even use the C word. I think I could pull a big thing of chocolate out of my desk right now and just start. Yeah, I have chocolate covered pecans right here on hand.

I'm going to protest eat it. Well, we have three big takeaways for this one. I think we can get into them. I'm starting with takeaway number one. Vanilla comes from the fruits of an orchid. Maybe a lot of people know this and I just didn't. I didn't. But those vanilla beans are fruits and they come from an orchid specifically.

What? I knew they were like part of a plant and that's all I knew. I didn't know they came from an orchid. That's fascinating. Yeah. So like a flower? Are they part of the flower then? Yeah, they're a fruit that grows out of the orchid. And this is super unique in a few ways because there are thousands of orchid species in the world, most of them tropical. Dan Nosowitz in Atlas Obscura, he says, quote, Of all the world's orchid species, vanilla is the only one that has a fruit that's considered edible, or at least that's regularly eaten.

End quote. That's so interesting. So this is unique on Earth. This is the only orchid doing this. Yeah, because I know like orchids are kind of stingy when it comes to making edible byproducts. Like orchids. So a lot of flowers will produce nectar to attract pollinators, but orchids will often just try to trick pollinators to come and pollinate them without producing nectar by

like being in the shape of like a bee. producing nectar by like being in the shape of like a bee. So there are these bee orchids that they, they mimic the shape of a bee so that the bee will come and try to mate with the orchid, but oops, it's just an orchid. And then the bee leaves dejected, but pollinates it. And then that way the orchid doesn't have to produce nectar, which, you know, is, is costly. And so, yeah, that's so interesting because like, yeah, I wouldn't expect an orchid to actually create bear of fruit. Yeah.

Like, did you just basically say orchids are lazy? They're a lazy flower? They are. Yeah, it's true. I'm not afraid to say it. I'm just dropping truth bombs about orchids they're lazy except for the ones that make vanilla apparently that's apparently yeah it is it's like scientifically true because also apparently there are 110 varieties of orchid in

the genus vanilloide and then only the 20 20 that are in Central America or native to Central America produce large fragrant fruits that can be used to flavor food. So it's just this one kind of this one orchid from this one place, Central America is the only orchid that makes anything that people use. Wow. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. I am. I have a

blueberry bush. And for the first time I learned, I didn't know how like fruits worked. I didn't know they were flowers first until this year and it like flowered. And then I was waiting and waiting and waiting for it to fruit. And it like didn't for a really long time. And then my husband was like, well, you have to, there's nothing here to pollinate it. And I was like, oh, he was like, you can hand pollinate it or you can just stick it outside and a bee will do it eventually and i had to like stick it outside for like a week and then bring it in so i could get blueberries oh wow yeah yeah it's it's weird to think about plants having sex but they gotta do it yeah like that's how it works that's crazy like basically i was like i'm not

gonna get this plant pregnant myself that's too weird for me i need a bee to do it i'm not gonna hand pollinate it at least take the plant to dinner first yeah yeah so that that story will be very relevant to a lot of the rest of the show uh it was specific to vanilla um so that's amazing because the the vanilla plant is just the the rest of this takeaway is that the vanilla plant is pretty weird about reproducing or pollinating at all. For one thing, in its natural habitat, it grows as a vine. It's like a vine with orchids on it that goes up trees. It takes three years for it to start flowering. And National Geographic says each flower remains open for just 24 hours.

And then if it's not pollinated, it wilts and dies and falls to the ground. Wow. So it's an extremely specific plant. It only will pollinate this one way. That's it. That seems inconvenient. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense why vanilla is expensive then, because it seems like

it's really hard to get, apparently. Yeah, yeah, because when it's pollinated, you get these long, thin, green-colored fruits, which are seed pods and technically beans, and we call them vanilla beans. And then after some curing and drying and other stuff, they go from green to the dark color that you see in the store or on certain labels for stuff. But this very finicky orchid is our only source of natural vanilla. That's the only way we can get it. What a coy plant. Like, oh, you want to pollinate me? You'll have to do it in 24 hours.

Or else I'll die. hours or else i'll die just a really short google calendar like okay today i'm alive and then yeah that's it that's so that's such a like how does this plant there's a lot of bizarre mating strategies in the natural world but this plant seems to have some kind of death wish like how does it manage to survive with such a finicky mating strategy yeah it sounds like pandas like it's always funny to me that pandas are so bad at having sex and we continue to make them do it so they'll survive and it's like the same thing with this flower it's like i please i just want to die and we're like no you have to have sex and live.

Well, the case with pandas is interesting because them being bad at sex seems to be more in zoos and captive environments because in the wild, basically they're picky. So they like to pick their partners. So in the wild, they have basically panda tender and they get to pick their mates. But in captivity, they're like, okay, okay, Susan, here's Dennis.

He's your mate. And Susan's like, what? Dennis? And Dennis is over there like, yeah, I'm pretty much an expert at Call of Duty. And she's like, no. No, thank you. Next thing here is a big trumpet sound for a big takeaway before that we're gonna take a little break we'll be right back i'm jesse thorne i just don't want to leave a mess.

This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. the JV Club with Janet Varney is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Yeah, so pandas are notorious for like, oh, well, they just don't want to have sex. It's like, no, they just don't want to have sex with some random schlub they get thrown in the zoo with. I don't know what, like, excuse these vanilla orchids have, though. Like, have we, have they been, has their environment been changed or are they just, like, peculiar? Yeah, that takes us perfectly into takeaway number two. Takeaway number two. Vanilla relocated from Mexico all the way to Madagascar because of the brilliance of an enslaved child in a third location.

And I know that was very long, so I'll say it again. Vanilla relocated from Mexico all the way to Madagascar because of the brilliance of an enslaved child in a third location. This whole story here is a global progression of human cultivated vanilla that is amazing. I had no idea about it until looking into it. Yeah, that's a very interesting sentence. And then I'm definitely brought into the depths of despair when we get to enslaved child. Yeah. Yeah.

You know that that's not going to have a happy Yeah. Yeah, you know that that's not gonna have a happy ending, so. Yeah, it's like, let's learn about the history of vanilla. Well, can't say I'm too surprised that slavery has something to do with it. Yeah. Yeah, this is world trade in the past that tended to involve slavery,

especially if Europeans were doing it. And so, yeah, that's part of it. And it's not avoidable. Yep. But the biology part, there's an interesting story where, so these vanilla orchids are native to Central America and especially Mexico. And according to Vanilla, A Global History, they were pollinated by specific Central American bees, one species called euglossin and one called melipona, and then also occasionally by Central American hummingbirds. So those were the only animals that did it.

And as early as the Olmec civilization, people there were harvesting beans from the orchids and sort of usually letting them kind of pollinate naturally. And then a later people called the Totonac did so much vanilla cultivation that they developed a cultural legend around vanilla, where two star-crossed lovers from royal families were like murdered for their love. And in the spot they were killed, the vanilla plant was created. Like this, the area that's now the Mexican state of Veracruz on the eastern coast of Mexico is the heartland of vanilla originally.

That's where it came from. Wow, that's so interesting. These dead lovers' ghosts made this delicious plant. There are lots of myths from that like all it's interesting because it seems to be sort of like all over the world like and then someone died here horribly and that's where we get this beautiful flower oh well it's really sad that they died why can't we just say nature made a beautiful flower look at the dead person's beautiful flower lydia it's full of ghosts the ghosts make it taste better the ghosts are why it's good i'm so sorry i

just like to go straight to the source and like collect ghosts and grind them up for flavoring seasoning that's what your beloved vanilla paste really is it's just ground up ghost goo it's just yeah yeah my grandma in a bottle oh god got so dark she'd love it she was she liked baking yeah and now she is baking now she's baking her spirit is in my cookies, literally. If it was like British Bake Off or something, there's like, and did you use real ghosts? It's like, no, I didn't use real ghosts. Well, there's the problem.

You're off the show. It's not good. You can always taste the imitation ghosts. You've got a bit of a soggy bottom. I think it's because you didn't use real ghosts. Oh, Mary Berry. Such a stickler. You didn't do the exorcism right, didn't you? Now you've got a soggy bottom, haven't you?

You didn't get a young priest, did you? Now we have a soggy bottom and Satan is here. And then Paul Hollywood and B. Warren is a very accurate impression. That's not real ghost, isn't it? And then he's mad. Again, perfect impression. Wow, I thought it was great.

I feel like Paul Hollywood is here with us. Yeah, I thought you had. Oh my God, no, I don't rock that ghost, do I? I didn't even try to do a British accent because it would just be nothing. That didn't stop us. Right. Me and Katie are too accurate. I agree. You're too good. Yeah. Yeah. Can't keep up. It's fair.

Also, British listeners, you have permission to impersonate me however you want great uh so i apologize british people of the world do me as a cowboy it's totally fine yeah remember that i'm the one that didn't try and do it lydia will be spared when the British people come and throw their tea at us or whatever. It's my greatest fear. Speaking of colonial powers, perfect segue. What happened is we had vanilla growing in modern day Mexico. Even when the Triple Alliance, also known as the Aztec Empire, came along, the Teutonax gave them vanilla as tribute. It was all over the area.

And then the Spanish invade the Aztec Empire in 1519, and they bring vanilla back to Europe. And so that's how Europe discovers, oh, hey, there's this amazingly delicious bean. We really have to get it. But from there, they find that they can't grow vanilla anywhere but Spanish Mexico. And they don't know why. Later, they'll learn it's these specific bees and hummingbirds need to pollinate it. But for a while, they're like, I guess Spain just has a monopoly on vanilla. I assumed it would be like the climate too would probably be too cold. Isn't England a lot colder? So it would be, I would assume that would also be part of it. England a lot colder. So it would be, I would assume that would also be part of it.

Yeah, I think I think these plants do have to be kind of somewhere tropical. They can now kind of be in any place as long as the climate's good. But yeah, you couldn't like put it up in Scotland and just get a bunch of flowers. It would be like, nope, too cold. I'm out. Forget it. Yeah, I'm a plant that's already famous for dying very quickly. And now I'm cold. So. And the next source here is a book called Eight Flavors, The Untold Story of American Cuisine by food writer Sarah Lohman. And this is the story of how it gets to Madagascar, which is that there's a third place, the island of La Reunion. Both Madagascar and La Réunion become French colonies. And I had never heard of La Réunion. I knew about Madagascar mostly for lemurs and for the animal movie. La Réunion is in the Indian Ocean. It was colonized by France in the mid-1600s, initially as a prison colony, and then as a plantation slavery colony starting in the mid-1600s.

And it's been part of France ever since, but in the 1800s, it's where they will discover the hand pollination of vanilla. So Lydia, like your husband was talking about, hand pollinating the blueberries if you want to. It took until the 1800s to discover, oh, you can just hand pollinate vanilla you don't need special central american bees to do it i like how it's we're always concerned about bees and pollination it's like oh the bees are leaving and and uh you know we need them for pollination and be just going ah do yourselves but nobody wants to nobody wants to because it's creepy because like it's it's not creepy

really when you're doing it but if you think about what you're doing, you're like, I'm touching this flower's private parts. You're whining and dining the plant. I don't know. I'd make it special. Get a little glass of wine. Play it some music. This wine is made out of plant parts, isn't that? Oh, where are you going, honey? I'm sorry. They're offended about that. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, and then also as far as the discovery of hand pollination, it was basically a heroic boy figured it out. His name was Edmund Albius. And Edmund Albius was born into slavery on La Reunion in 1829. His parents died when he was young. He was sent to another slave owner named Ferréol Bellier-Boumont. That's a slave owner name, if I've ever heard that. Big time. I'll slave over her name if I've ever heard of her. Big time. And so he loved botany, and one of his experiments was a vanilla vine that he'd been maintaining for 20 years.

So it was old enough to have flowers on it. And he apparently made this young boy, Edmund Albius, his sidekick for botanical stuff. His journal says, quote, this young black boy became my constant companion, end quote. And then in 1841... It's just an interesting way to phrase it when you, you know, have imprisoned a child, but hey. Yeah. Whatever gets you to sleep at night. My little buddy that I own. Oh. My hostage keeps hanging out with me. Can you believe it? Yeah, it's not great. He must want to be friends.

Yeah, he loves it here. So yeah, this is fine for me to do, I guess. This is what it says in the journal. Just a big header on his journal that says I'm good right and no he's not good am I going to hell no it's the children who are wrong yeah but and so Edmund Albeus is very precocious and very smart. And at the age of 12 years old in 1841, he discovers that you can hand pollinate a vanilla orchid. Sarah Lohman's description is, quote, Albius used a thin stick a bit larger than a toothpick to split the tube-like side of the flower.

And then what happens is you touch the anthersack and the stigma together. Like the orchid contains both of its own reproductive parts and so when you make those two meet it's what's known as the marriage and then immediately the thick green base of the flower swells it matures into a finger-like green seed pod that becomes a vanilla bean and that's pretty much what people do today there hasn't really been a huge advance over this, and it was discovered by a 12-year-old boy. I thought you said this was a PG-rated podcast, Alex.

Yeah, you said swells. You can't say that on a PG-rated podcast. Something about its stamen. Right. Yeah, the part where I said exposing the anther sac, we'll just bleep all that out, because boy, oh, boy. Really sorry, parrots. Yeah, he let that anther sac stuff sneak right through.

But yeah, and from there, this discovery technology, I guess, it becomes how vanilla is harvested. And also, Albius, his owner, did the positive thing of giving him credit. He brought other people to see it, but also made sure to tell all of them, this kid came up with it. He's the brilliant person. And he was freed and slavery was abolished, right? Yeah, what a happy ending, right? It's a happy ending. Right, they were like, oh, maybe slavery,

like, look at this brilliant child. Hey, maybe we shouldn't have slaves because it's horrible. And we freed him and everyone else, right? Yes? Yeah, and everyone's mind was changed and there was a big party and then there were no other problems ever again.

And he got to be a little boy and not enslaved, alex so alex why are you being so quiet alex so he he's 12 years old in 1841 and then he is freed but he's only freed about six months before France abolishes slavery. And then also, like, no one treats Albies well for the whole rest of his life. Oh, come on. Basically, he's famous and he's, like, in books and stuff. And I sent you to an illustration of him from a book at the time. Like, he was famous for figuring this out, but racism and all of the other problems of society. And so he ended up doing manual labor, getting arrested and jailed in connection with a robbery, and then he just had to live on a piece of land on Belier-Boumont's property for the

rest of his life because he didn't have any money. So yeah, so it's sad at the end. So abolishing slavery didn't instantly fix everything. Huh. That's crazy. That's the first I've heard of this. So many, we, we, when we think about geniuses, right, we think about a lot of kind of like white, old white dudes, because old white dudes were the ones who got to be recognized as geniuses. But then there are so many geniuses that were just like, not allowed to live as people. And then, you know, maybe got like, I mean, it's incredible. He even got any recognition at all um yeah obviously that didn't help him uh in his life but it's just like uh yeah just like how many

how many uh geniuses are behind so many things that we enjoy today that we don't know about because they're not old white dudes totally oh yeah for sure can you imagine how many people like looked at that orchid and were like, man, it would be so cool if we could like, you know, figure out how to hand pollinate those people that were probably like twice this kid's age and that had degrees in botany. And they were just like, too bad it'll never happen. And then this 12 year old kid comes along and figures it out.

Like that's, that's a real genius. When I was 12, I was just like watching daria a lot on aim and this kid invented an agricultural technique that we still use to this day daria was a solid show it was a good show it was it was just as good as inventing all of vanilla yeah and it is and it's truly still with us. We'll link to a Smithsonian article about the modern, again, almost all vanilla is grown in Madagascar. And they say that nearly all of it is produced by hand pollination. They interviewed Tim McCollum, who runs a direct trade chocolate and vanilla company.

And he says, quote, you can't just put vanilla seed in the ground. Hand pollination is a learned skill. Many farmers have been growing vanilla for three to four generations, and smallholder farmers have an absolute sixth sense as to when the orchids will bloom, end quote. So we don't need the bees anymore, but it's really hard and a really amazing advance that this kid made. It's an artisanal skill. Yeah, I think that's something too, like when people think about like farming, they're like, oh, it's just like, you know, I hate it when people call it unskilled labor, because it's like, no, it's a serious skill. And it keeps us alive by eating. And also cool things like vanilla. So to be dismissive of it as unskilled labor is just so wrong. Yeah, there's a lot to it.

It's a science. The reason my husband knew about pollinating the blueberry plant is because his dad's a farmer and farms several acres of land and then has his own garden too. And he's one of the smartest. My father-in-law is one of the smartest people I've ever met. That's awesome. Yeah, he's like a scientist.

I hesitate to ask, but how are the labor practices with regards to vanilla? Perfect segue. They're bad. So also, we'll link about it a lot. so also we'll we'll link about it a lot but uh apparently almost nine percent of children in madagascar are child laborers and most of them are involved in vanilla and also the like it's a real boom and bust thing if there's a cyclone the whole crop is devastated but if there's a good harvest people have so much money they're burying it in their yard instead of a bank because there's not stable banking in madagascar it's a it's a country that's coming out of French imperialism and

into independence and so there's a lot of problems from that and that's part of it uh so are there ways like do we know if there are like ways to be able to correctly source vanilla to find places where labor is more fairly treated? Or is it just kind of hard to tell? That's a good question. And I think it leads in this last takeaway, because I think the best answer for getting like real vanilla ethically is to just try to find a company that is definitely doing it ethically, like some sort of fair trade positive system. But also we can go into takeaway number three. Artificial vanilla is much, much more common than you'd think and also comes from strange places.

I'm excited about this one. I'm terrified about this one. So excited. So, so excited. Because we're talking about beaver, beaver, beaver, beavers. Right? Sorry. Yeah, we're going to get some beavers.

And just right before we do, like, this vanilla farming is pretty rough, it seems like, most cases. And my main way of feeling okay about the vanilla I consume is that almost all of it is not from plants. And so it's outside of this farming situation. Sarah Lohman in the book Eight Flavors says 95% of the vanilla we consume is artificial. National Geographic's number says it's closer to 99. It's really overwhelming how much demand there is for vanilla. And so very, very little of it is actually like the real plant. That's very rare. So on cooking shows, when they're trying to make me feel bad, and they're like, Oh, if you don't use the real vanilla, I'm like, well, if you do

use the real vanilla, that's bad for other reasons. Like, yeah, that's kind of my takeaway from researching this. Yeah, like, I feel great about artificial vanilla. Now. I don't know if that's like a totally accurate belief to have. But I'm glad it's outside of this system. Yeah. Like I feel great about artificial vanilla now. I don't know if that's like a totally accurate belief to have, but I'm glad it's outside of this system. Yeah. And also as far as how much is artificial, as we said, it's incredibly hard to harvest and it's these difficult orchids. We'll talk about the amazing alternative sources there are for the core thing of vanilla, but brands are trying to use as much of the artificial kind as they can because it's much cheaper. So the FDA has had to set pretty specific rules for how much vanilla is in pure vanilla extract. And also brands will do stuff like taking the flecks of spent vanilla beans,

putting it in the ice cream or whatever else, and that just looks more vanilla-y, even though that doesn't add any more flavor to it. Like the beans used up. It's just junk now. But I've eaten grocery store ice cream where there's a bunch of flecks in it. And I think that was just a trick. That was just to make me more excited.

That's what I figured. I kind of suspected that because I know like there's like the Breyers like vanilla bean and it's got these little flecks in it. Yeah, that's the one. They didn't crush up vanilla beans for this because this wouldn't cost $3. It's the illusion of vanilla rather than vanilla.

You can have vanilla or vanilla. I wish it was written that way on the box, like more A's on the end of the word. Like vanilla. And a little guy doing their arms up, you know? Yeah. You got to do the arms up, you know? Yeah. You got to do the arms. That's part of it. Vanilla.

I kind of hate when they get picky about like how much of a thing is actually the thing because to me, if it tastes like the thing, I'm fine. You know what I mean? If it tastes like vanilla, I'm fine. They're like, Velveeta isn't actually cheese. I'm like, it tastes like cheese. It's fine with me. You don't have to.

Just lie to me. Just lie to me and i'm cool when it comes to cheese though i get i get freaked out when it's like this isn't actually cheese because i'm like wait what is it then see i'm like i don't care i'll eat it i'll eat as much of it as i can thank you very much dairy based dairy based desserts like if it's not based in dairy, what is it? Who cares? Where did you find it? This is mostly plastic.

Oh, really? This plastic tastes really good. My body is temple, and all I put inside my temple is vanilla extract and New York apple beans. Thank you. If you're born in the Midwest, your body is Velveeta. That's just, it's a portion of your body.

Yeah, that's why I podcast, because nobody can see that my lower half is just mostly like spams and Velveetas and other wonderful accretions. Hot dogs. Yeah, hot dogs. You're clinking around accretions. Just stacked up. Hot dogs. Yeah, hot dogs. You're clinking around. It's just like stacked up.

Alex Schmidt is just stacked velveta. This is a whole canon that we're creating. Velveta and slim jims for your fingers. That's why I had to wear gloves on Jeopardy. They were like, no one can see these hands. That's not acceptable. My Slim Jim hands. The podium hid the rest of it.

Yeah. Well, and the flavorful chemical in vanilla is called vanillin. And in the book, A Flavors, Sarah Lohman makes a point of saying a vanilla bean has multiple flavors in it. It's not just vanillin. But that is kind of the main thing. The chemical compound was isolated in 1858 by a French biochemist named Nicolas Theodore Goblet. And so we've had the chemical version for a while. And as soon as he isolated it, a whole industry sprang up around, hey, what generates stuff that has vanilla in it or does this thing? Because then no flowers, forget it. And when I was reaching out to you guys about doing this show, Katie was immediately excited about beaver butts.

Beers! We must talk about this. And I feel the time has come to talk about beaver butts beaver butts beaver butts beaver butts butts butts i i know that yeah she said the beaver butts thing and i was like i'm gonna go on this and talk about how much i love vanilla and then am i gonna find out the vanilla extract is beaver butts i'm just like beaver butts i'm the queen of beaver butts now? That's my favorite thing? Oh, no. Lydia, you've been fooled.

It's a prank show. This is a prank show. I knew it. That's why Ashton Kutcher's been here the entire time. Yes. And his voice sounds a little like this. It's my Ashton Kutcher. Oi, in it. Perfect voice again. Oi, it's my Ashton Kutcher. Oi, innit? Oi, it's me, Ashton Kutcher.

You got punk, didn't you? I'm British Ashton Kutcher now. Oi, now check out my jipes and my jokes and my jipes. It's me, Ashton Kutcher. So with the beaver butts, the good news is this is an antique practice, and you almost definitely won't find any foods that have castoreum in it. Damn it, almost. It's maybe in perfume if you manage to find a pretty weird supplier. Just hypothetically, Alex, what are these websites hypothetically of course

look if you go in the white web you can find it but yeah i like how you said if the if it's a weird website like it's got to be freakyperfume.com i'm the weirdo that keeps the beaver butt in my perfume want to smell like beaver butt? And the thing with beavers is they have castor glands. National Geographic says the castor glands are located between the pelvis and the base of the tail of a beaver. The butt area. Also because of their close proximity to the anal glands. Castoreum often has anal gland secretions and urine Along with the castor gland secretion

And so you get something that is a fragrant brown slime About the consistency of molasses And it smells amazing It smells like vanilla and it smells really good Yeah, beaver anal secretions are delicious And no, I don't harass beavers and lick their bottoms all right you definitely can't say that on this podcast no don't pick up a beaver and try to sniff its butt they'll bite you and it'll be bad

because they got them big teeth and you'll have to get a tetanus shot the universe is so crazy that they would make beaver butt secretions something that we're like wild about like what is that what purpose does that serve us evolutionarily to be like wild about beaver butt secretions well it's interesting because i i'm sorry if you're gonna bring this up Alex, but like in medieval times, they thought that the similar to like how Queen Elizabeth thought that vanilla was a aphrodisiac. They also thought that the beaver castoreum was an aphrodisiac, but they thought that they didn't realize they were anal glands. They thought they were testicles. They are not the beaver testicles.

They are anal glands. But these medieval people are like these you know like oh if these make me horny they must be beaver balls right and so they would like they would uh hunt beavers and try to get the the um these anal glands for this like this aphrodisiac and there were these like in these bestiary illustrations, there were pictures of beavers like pulling their own balls off and throwing them at hunters. Because the idea. Yeah. In this myth, the idea is that the beaver would voluntarily castrate itself to escape the hunter. And so there are these images of beavers like, you want my balls?

Just take them. Just take them. And it was like, Just get out of here. And it was sort of symbolic of by being chased, I guess by ripping your own balls off, you can escape Satan's influence. I don't know.

It was all very strange. Oh, like you can avoid temptation if you just rip your own balls off. Satan's influence. I don't know. It was all very strange. Oh, like you can avoid temptation if you just rip your own balls off. You can avoid getting hunted by Satan if you rip your own balls off. Yeah. I mean, that's just a good takeaway for folks too. Takeaway number four.

Now you said this is a family-friendly podcast, Alec. And as far as the non-beaver ways of getting vanilla flavor, Sarah Lohman says that for most of the 1900s, people turned to lignin, which is a byproduct of the wood industry and paper industry. industry and paper industry and also if you ever smell an old book and get like a hint of vanilla it's because the vanillin is breaking down as the book gets older so there might be like old books that smell that way you can enjoy that yeah i love the smell i wonder yeah i wonder if that like so beavers maybe get that from their diet right they don't necessarily eat like just wood, but they do eat sort of green parts of the branches and stuff. And so like, I wonder if they get some of that from their diet and that's why their anal secretions taste so good. Yeah, that would add up. I don't know for sure, but that like makes sense.

I'm guessing. So I'm sorry if I'm wrong. This is a total guess. But yeah, that is really interesting. It's crazy that they would like process it and it would run through their body and come out tasting like better than it did when it went in. Well, that's how bees work, right? Like they vomit up honey and taste good.

Yeah. Some animals are just little processing facilities for human food. Yeah, but that is interesting because I do love the old book smell. Like you open up an old book and you just like dive your face in and snorf it all up. So I guess I'm not weird. Maybe for other reasons, but not for sniffing books. Well, and the last thing about modern synthetic vanilla is lignin is still used, but also scientists are constantly coming up with new ways.

We'll link to The Guardian talking about gene-edited yeasts that ferment stuff and then generate vanilla now. Like, there's all kinds of new ways. And then the last way here is a story from the Royal Society of Chemistry because the Royal Society of Chemistry would like us to know that Dr. Maya Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan has found a way to synthesize vanilla from cattle poop. So we do have this available to us in our tool belt. How is it worse? Why can it never be better?

We're bringing it back finally does it say how what like what the process is at all for making it uh from cow poop yeah and this i'm i should have remembered this sooner because this might sort of confirm the beaver thing indirectly quote she realized that cow dung contained a lot of lignin from the animal's feed. And Yamamoto has also found that vanillin could probably be made from the feces of other herbivores, especially grazers and ones that eat like plants with a lot of lignin in them. We can just get it like secondhand that way. I mean, when we got to trees, we should have stopped. We got to trees and it's like, okay, I can eat part of a tree.

That's fine. No, now we're doing poop. We're all ready to poop now. Yeah. I mean, but if I had some kind, like you have some kind of science gizmo that you can turn cow poop into delicious cookies. I mean, you're not interested. Pretty good.

I don't know. I said before I'll eat anything you can lie to me. It's fine. And now I'm regretting that. I guess the you can lie to me part is the part that I really need there I need to just hand me this and say it's good eat it and I say okay and I don't know what it's never been cow poop uh well I didn't ask it's never been cow poop never okay cool thanks I'm very worried about it it's not cow poop don't worry about it that's I hope that they label it that way.

They're like, this is not cow poop at all. No cow poop here, folks. Guarantee. It's another speech bubble from the vanilla man on the box. Like, not cow poop as well. Not cow poop, question mark? Wow! Exclamation point.

Yeah. poop question mark wow exclamation point yeah folks that is the main episode for this week my thanks to lydia bug and katie golden for adding so much flavor to this one vanilla there, vanilla, there you go. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the surprisingly strange origins of vanilla-flavored Twinkies. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than three dozen other bonus shows such as Cow Tools, and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring Vanilla with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Vanilla comes from the fruits of an orchid. Takeaway number two, Vanilla relocated from Mexico all the way to Madagascar. And that is because of the brilliance of an enslaved child named Edmund Albies in La Reunion. And takeaway number three, artificial vanilla is much more common than you'd think, and it's much stranger. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests.

They're great. Lydia Bug writes great weekly humor columns for 1-900-HOT-DOG, also guests on their podcast. I'm linking that and so much more comedy writing from Lydia. That includes her work on the Trailer Park Boys comic book anthology that releases in June. And then Katie Golden tweets as at ProBirdWrites. She tweets as herself at Katie Golden.

That's G-O-L-D-I-N. And then she hosts the Creature Feature podcast weekly on iHeartRadio. An amazing show. Please get it in your ears ASAP. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones, and they include two excellent books that I just enjoyed reading, on top of them being core sources for this. One book is Eight Flavors, The Untold Story of American Cuisine, and that is by food writer

Sarah Lohman. The other book is titled Vanilla, A Global History, and that is by Rosa Abreu-Runkle, Assistant Professor of Hospitality Management at New York City College of Technology. And then many internet sources beyond those books, in particular from NPR and from The Guardian, we did not delve all the way into how bad the vanilla industry in Madagascar gets. NPR and The Guardian have done amazing coverage of it that we will link. You'll find that and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.