The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Mighty Spud - Sandy Knapp, Glenn Bryan and Susan Calman

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Robin Ince and Brian Cox get out the ketchup and peel back the layers of one of the most versatile and beloved foods - potatoes. From the science of starch to the surprising role potatoes have played in history, we’re digging deep to uncover the truth behind the mighty spud. Chipping into the conversation are botanist Sandy Knapp, geneticist Glenn Bryan and potato passionate comedian Susan Calman. Susan is astonished to learn that the potatoes lining our supermarket shelves all belong to a single species and once she discovered the rich diversity of wild potato species in South America, she’s already planning her next holiday to visit them! Plus we end the episode on a tuber-powered musical note as Helen Anahita-Wilson plays the monkey cage theme song on none other than a potato keyboard!Producer: Melanie Brown Assistant Producer: Olivia Jani Executive Producer: Alexandra FeachemBBC Studios Audio Production

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. And I'm Robin Ince and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage. Now Douglas Adams has been a great influence on many of us and in fact, for instance, you'll rarely find Brian without a towel. He always has a towel, sometimes little more, as subscribers of his OnlyFans site will know. Quantums, quarks, quips and sometimes nips. You didn't go for the obvious pun then. No, originally I was going to say OnlyFans site where he answers the most difficult questions

about physics and it's known as hard... But anyway, so the art of flying is one of my favourite Douglas Adams philosophy. The art of flying is throwing yourself to the ground and missing. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way as bricks don't. And most importantly, it is a mistake to believe you can solve any problem just with potatoes. But tonight we're asking is that really a mistake? Finally at episode 204 we deal with the potato.

More specific, the science of the potato. Well they'll know it's gonna be there, we don't really. That's gonna be the science, we've been doing that for ages haven't we? But it might get philosophical as well. You burnt yourself on a chip once, do you remember? We could talk about that. That's not philosophical. Why is that philosophical?

We could talk about your ability to understand the heat death of the universe, but not the speed of the cooling of a chip. It's actually related, because we have to ask ourselves the question, what is temperature? It's a thing you can measure on a thermometer, but that doesn't tell you a deep level what it is You have to know that everything's made of atoms to really know what temperature is

It's a measure of the speed that things are jiggling around the usefulness of our stuff Yeah, when did we start eating potatoes? How and where did they evolve? Is it possible and of course the answer will be yes to fill an entire episode of the BBC's flagship? Radio science program and podcasts with the discussion an entire episode of the BBC's flagship radio science program and podcast with a discussion of the science of the potato. So to help us find out, we are joined by a Bannock Russet Botanist, a Maris Piper Molecular Geneticist and a Jersey Royal Jester. And they are?

I'm Sandy Knapp. I'm a botanist from the Natural History Museum. And my favorite vegetable, besides a potato, of course, could be a tomato, but that's a fruit. It's the Jerusalem artichoke. That is the greatest artichoke response that has ever occurred. I'm Glenn Bryan and I'm a molecular geneticist and for 30 years I studied potato genetics at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland. A root vegetable that I'm very fond of is almost as good as the potato is the parsnip, because I'm really fond of the roast parsnip.

I also love my wife's delicious curried parsnip soup. Not quite up there with artichokes. Let's see what happens next. I'm Susan Kalman, and I have absolutely no scientific qualifications to be here at all, but I do love the potato in all of its glorious forms. My other favourite root vegetable is not as classy as the artichoke, it is the humble carrot, which I believe is versatile and beautiful, but I will never accept it in a cake.

And this is our panel. I'd like to ask for a definition actually, just because you mentioned you can't use tomato because it's a fruit. So what's the definition of a vegetable? A vegetable is something that's not a fruit. That doesn't... I'm not allowed. Fruits have seeds and vegetables don't.

So an aubergine has seeds, or it used to before we did things to them to make them not have seeds. And tomatoes have seeds, but potatoes don't. So the aubergine is also a fruit? Yes. As is a cucumber and courgettes, but not carrots, or parsnips, or Jerusalem artichokes. But real artichokes are a flower bud. I don't even know what she's seeing anymore.

So what's the definition of a potato then? A potato is, Glenn's probably better at this than I am, well a potato is a growth from an underground root of a plant that's used to store starch. So potato plants use potatoes to store starch so that they can last through the long cold winters in the Andes. So they're really, potatoes are definitely not there for us, but we've really done quite a lot with them. And technically, the tuber forms on an underground stem.

The main stem of the potato plant grows up and the stolons come off of the stem below the ground and the tubers form at the end of those stolons. So the stolon is really an underground stem, not strictly a root. So that's why when you plant potatoes in plastic bags, which is actually the tried and true way to plant potatoes in a small London garden, is you put potatoes in the bottom and you put a bit of soil on and you wait till they come up and then you put more soil on because that makes them make all those things, the underground stones to the side. I take my chitting very seriously and I'm saying the word chit by the way before anyone

writes in. Very, very good Susan. I chit my potatoes in old egg boxes until they're ready to put in. Ready to go. Chitting is because... Well chitting is the process, but listen to me. So you chit them so they're ready to plant, because when you buy the potatoes,

if you're going to grow your own potatoes, you don't just put the potatoes on the ground, you have to let them, you know, chit. And so if you put them in egg cups, it's perfect, and then all the things. I mean, I'm surmising what he's about to say more, until the bits come out. And then when the bits come out mean I'm surmising what he's about to say more until the bits come out and then when the bits come out they're ready to go in and you put the earth on it.

Yeah, that's good. And then eventually when you take it all out there's more potatoes. Which is actually different. One more clarification because Glenn you said something that you said it's not technically a root. Which so the question is what is the difference between a stem and a root how is the potato not technically on because it looks like it's on a root doesn't it but isn't it's not it's different from say a sweet potato a sweet potato is it's also a tuber but it forms on a root it's part of the root you know the root swells and forms a sweet potato but with a potato

they have roots which are like normal roots, and they have these underground stolons which come off of the main stem, and they're like a rhizome, and then at the end of those stolons, the tubers, you know, they swell, and then the tubers form. So they're separate from the roots. So a stolon is an underground stem.

It's an underground stem, and it usually runs kind of parallel to the substrate, you know, so it grows kind of outwards just under the ground. And they will come out of the ground sometimes. If you put them in pots, for example, the stolons will wander, so they'll come out of the pot and then they will start to grow a new plant. So instead of growing a tuber, they'll grow a new plant once they get into the light. And they will wander into the next pot.

So you have to be very careful when you're growing potatoes for research that you don't get these wandering stolons, because you might end up with tubers in the next pot that come from the pot next door. But what's great is you can have wandering stolons in the garden. Susan, do you have wandering stolons? But you can also cut through. Yes, I think I probably do. You can cut through the stems and the roots and they look different, so it's pretty easy.

What I love is I thought, I wonder if we'll be able to fill 43 minutes with this. And now I'm wondering if we'll even get to the potato out of the ground. I mean, did you think that you said? Well, out of the egg box. And also the roots have very specific functions. You know, they absorb all the nutrients and the water out of the soil.

Whereas the stolons don't really do that. Although they do have small roots of their own. So the stolons will form little small roots. This is complicated. It is quite complicated. You thought physics was hard? Well, no, you didn't. But I did. The first question we had written down here, we should get to the first question. No, let's not worry about things like that.

I want to know from you, because you said 30 years, you've been studying genetic and potato, and when you first started that, did you think you would be doing it for three decades? When you first approached the subject? Well, I'd worked on wheat for a while, a place called the John Innes Centre in Norwich, and I'd heard that there was going to be a permanent position coming up in Scotland to do genetics on crops. And then when I saw that it was a potato job, I was kind of crestfallen. A potato job. Potato genetics is notoriously complicated because cultivated potato, the potatoes we

buy are tetraploid. So they have four sets of chromosomes instead of two, like we do. Now we have two of each chromosome and potatoes have four. And that makes doing genetics very complicated. Breeding is much more complicated for potatoes so it takes longer to breed a new potato variety than it does to breed say a variety of wheat or rice. Is that uncommon to have the four sets of chromosomes? It's not that uncommon no I mean you tend to get

bigger more vigorous plants when they're polyploid but it does make the genetics much more complicated. So no I didn't think I'd be doing it for 30 years because I thought, you know, I'm going to do this for a few years and see how it goes. But then it just got, it's kind of a vocation working on potatoes. Well they draw you in, the potatoes. It draws you in, yeah, and it's very interesting and the the history of potatoes is very interesting and it's a real challenge to do potato genetics. And also the the advances in the last sort of 15 years in genomics, you know, sequencing and all that sort of thing has

actually made the genetics much easier than it used to be, you know, so it's possible to do things now that you could not think about doing 20 years ago. Before I ask what those things are, Sandy, you wanted to come in on that? I think we think of potatoes as being quite variable, right? There's red ones and white ones and little pink fur apples and stuff. But those are all the same species. Those are all the species that's called selenium tuberosum. They're the common cultivated potato.

But there are 104 wild species of potatoes which grow in the Andes. So the diversity of potatoes is enormous. And it's exciting. And that's the kind of potato work that I do, is collecting things in the field and looking at wild species. And they do their tubers in lots of different ways. They have some of them are like little pearls on a string. There are all kinds of variations. So when we think of the potatoes that most of us would be eating, you know, what percentage of that, you know,

if we go to the supermarket and there's normally what, I don't know, six, seven, eight different kind of forms of potato to buy sometimes, how much of that is a percentage in terms of representative of? It's one species. Just one species? One of 104. In the Andes, there's three other potatoes which are cultivated. They're cultivated way high up in very high elevations and they're

used to make freeze-dried potatoes which are called chunyo. What you do to make chunyo is you put straw on the ground. You can do this at home. You put straw on the ground. You leave the potatoes out overnight. They freeze. And then the next morning you tread on them and make all the water come out. And you do that several nights in a row. And you end up with chunyo, which looks like this. And is it right you said they're disgusting? They're not well they're not they're an acquired taste Robin. It looks like a pebble.

The chuno looks like little brown pebbles and that you use in stews and stuff and then this white one this is a white one which looks like a bit of chalk. It's called tunta and it's made in Bolivia and they basically just wipe the skin off. But it's very light. It's like a piece of styrofoam. Do you want to try one? Okay, here, you can have this one, Robin.

Here we go. I'd love to try some. What's gonna happen when... Well, you'll find out. You're gonna get Polly Ploydle before you know it. There's been a lot of discussion about chromosomes and genetic stuff, so I'm just slightly concerned as to

will it become potato-wool? It's very, very difficult and incredibly hard, Susan. So you can't- It's very hard. Yeah, it's very hard. It's potato. It's not that dissimilar to Edinburgh rock, if Edinburgh rock wasn't made of anything. Don't you start robbing us.

So the thing is that you're supposed to cook it. Oh, right. Oh right. Well we look like a couple of fools now. It's fascinating, yeah you're right that as you said the kind of polystaurine quality, the kind of you know again literally everything that we think of in terms of the moisture of you know when you have a lovely baked potato or mashed potato this is like removing everything because that's the other thing. Now that we've got this weird thing,

can you explain something to me, which is why when we used to have mashed potato at school, was it hairy? That's about the cooking of the potato, because I want, because there's the starchiness of the potato, which is part of the joy, yet part of the danger. My wife is very much in charge of the soup in the house.

I don't know if you've got a similar thing. She does the soup, I don't do the soup because I can't do the soup. Soup, whilst a simple thing, can be easily ruined. But for some reason, I don't know what had happened to me. I thought I'll do the soup. You know, you just, when you get to a certain age, you just lose your mind a bit. So I thought I'll make potato and leek soup, which I don't know where that came from because I don't like it. But you like potatoes. You like potatoes. I like potatoes. That's the thing, because I love potatoes. I thought I'll make potato and leek soup because the point of potatoes, the reason I love potatoes,

is they're omnipresent and they fill you up and they're cheap and they're affordable and they're brilliant. And as far back as I can remember, potatoes were with every single meal. And when I was at university, I lived on an entirely potato-based diet. So I made this potato and leek soup. I mean, you could have papered the house with it. It was the most disgusting. And I remember my better half sitting there, you know that where you have to go, oh, this is lovely.

You've got to make it with the right kind of potatoes. So they kind of come in two sorts. I thought you said they were all the same. They are all the same. They are all the same. They're all the same species but what people do to their crops is we modify them. This was the kind of whole point of Charles Darwin's origin of species. He started out with how people modify domesticated animals. And what we do is we change them to suit our purposes. And so in the Andes, I mean we have maybe six or eight, well actually my supermarket only has four kinds of potatoes, but in the Andes I once met a man who had a rug about the size that this is in front of us, so maybe

kind of three meters by three meters, and he and his wife had more than a thousand different kinds of potatoes on this rug. And I asked him what they were called and he's sort of reeling off names, you know, this one and this one and this one, and they all had a different name and they all have different uses. So there's potatoes to make soup with, there's potatoes to make chuno and tunta out of, there's potatoes to roast, there's potatoes to... It kind of depends on whether they're starchy, you know, like the lovely... It was a very starchy potato.

You sort of... the ones that kind of explode when you roast them and you put a knife in them and they go poof. Or there's the waxy ones which turn into kind of wallpaper paste if you try to make soup with them. That might have been what happened. You get very high dry matter potatoes which you know have a lot of starch and they're used for more for like baking and roasting and then you get your salad potatoes and they tend to have a particular type of starch called a myelopectin and so the salad potatoes have more water in them and less starch overall but the starch tends to be a starch called a myelopectin whereas the other ones have a myelopctin and amylose.

So what is the history? So you mentioned the Andes, so these are native to South America. They're native to South America and there's the great myth that Walter Raleigh brought the potato to England, which is of course totally false. It was the Spanish. But what was amazing is potatoes, when they first came to Europe, didn't tuberize properly. Because in the Andes, where it's near the equator, the days and the nights are the same length all year long.

Whereas here in the Northern Hemisphere, we have very long days in the summer and very short days in the winter. And potatoes don't tuberize well in long days. So when the very first drawings of potatoes from Europe had these little teeny weeny tubers, they looked pathetic, little P-shaped things. And very soon after coming to Europe, a mutation occurred that allowed them to tuberize in our long day growing

environment. As you described it, so you said that there were hundreds of different potatoes in this, in this village that you found and this couple selling them. So does that imply that there's quite a sophisticated cuisine around them in the Andes? Very sophisticated. An incredibly sophisticated knowledge of the different varieties of potatoes and what you use them for and how to propagate them and what climates to grow them in. A potato agriculture is very, very sophisticated in the Andes. And one of the sad things is that a lot of times, which

is true with indigenous crops, is that as mechanized agriculture comes and improved crop varieties come, the indigenous varieties, which are perhaps not as disease resistant or don't have as high a yield, they disappear. And it's like a species disappearing. It's like a language disappearing. It's part of the culture disappearing. And they're incredible names as well, very descriptive names of potatoes

in the Andes. My favorite one is called kakchun wataki, and it means potato that makes the young bride weep. And basically, this potato looks like a grenade. You know a grenade, but with really big bubbles on it. And so your test before you got married was you were supposed to peel the potato without wasting anything. So I would have never ended up married in the Andes, because I would have just cut all those bubbles off.

This is genuinely mind blowing, because potatoes have been such a part of my life for such a long period of time and I had no idea any of the things that you were saying to me, either of you, regarding the species, how many of them there were. It's in a way, I think we take them for granted because they are so important and they're always there. I actually become quite upset if there aren't potatoes in the house because you know when you've got a potato in the house you know you can always have something to eat. If there's a potato in the

house you can always eat something with it and because they're just so important to us but when you talk about, it's really quite poignant to talk about losing a species of the potatoes like losing a language, but sitting and going to a supermarket in Glasgow, I don't even know anything about this. It's been, this is, when you said come and talk about potatoes, I thought, well, all right then, but this is completely unexpected.

They are wonderful. The nice thing is now, people in the supermarket in Glasgow, they go, I can't get the potatoes, there's some bloody woman who won't get out of the way. And she's just talking and talking about them. Sorry, before I buy the potatoes, yes. And it's wonderful, and you do see variety, so next time you go to the supermarket, have a look at all those different ones. Sorry, I don't mean to, pardon me. So when I go to the supermarket,

and I'm in front of the potato section. Speak to them. Tell me what I should be, because I want to appreciate the potatoes now. This is changing me as a person and I want to go to my local supermarket. I want to appreciate them. How do I appreciate a potato more than I'm currently appreciating potatoes? Think about the difference in the color of the skin and the colour of the flesh and the deepness of the eyes and there's a wonderful thing in London. Sounds quite romantic.

It is, it is romantic. But there's a wonderful thing. On the third Sunday in January there's a South London potato fair and potato fanciers from all over the South of England come and exchange potato varieties. And you can get some really interesting potatoes. Ones that cook blue or purple, ones that cook bright red. They're fantastic. I'm just wondering about becoming a potato fancier at my term of life. I think it's probably right.

Many of those interesting coloured ones come from Scotland. You know, there's things like Shetland Blue and Congo. I've used a blue potato before. There are quite a few varieties that were bred in Scotland that had these nice colors. So can we, as you can with an animal, for example, can we trace the genetics back? Can we see from what the species, the initial species was

from which all this diversity emerged? We published some work some years ago using molecular data showing that the main sort of domestication event happened about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, somewhere near Lake Titicaca, you know, southern Peru, northern Bolivia. But, you know, that's been challenged quite a few times by other people. And there was originally a group of species,

about 30 species, the Brevicali group, which I think has been collapsed down now to just a couple. So the idea was it was domesticated from that group of wild species. They're related to the nightshade, so the indigenous species here related to them? They are related. They're like distant cousins. So we don't have any native potatoes, although there are lots of kinds of potatoes in Scotland, but we have no native potatoes, although there are lots of kinds of potatoes in Scotland, but we have no native potatoes in Europe. The only native potatoes are found from the southern United States down through Mexico

into the Andes into Brazil. So they're only in the Americas. So what is this relationship to things like the nightshade family which you find here? When did that split away? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands of years ago? Millions of years. So 20 million maybe. But now we're revising all those dates because we've just submitted. So everybody cross your fingers that this paper will get accepted. We're just describing a whole bunch of new seed fossils of Solanum, of Solanaceae, of nightshades, which are from various parts of Europe and also from the United States.

Seed fossils. I've never thought of seed fossils really before. I mean, they're quite hard seeds, really. And they fossilize quite well. So we're revising the dates of when all of this happened. Watch that space. So we could have a kind of Jurassic Park that's more potato-based eventually.

Kind of that is sort of. We could. We could. Yeah, Jurassic Park. We could. But the interesting thing is that the nightshades, the genus to which the potato belongs, the plants don't all look like potatoes. They're extraordinarily different. There are huge spiny trees and tiny plants about this big that grow way high up in the Andes. So they're hugely diverse. Potatoes are just one part

of the family tree. I always get the terminology wrong. Is it the genus? What is the? Solanum or Solanum. It comes from, well, nobody knows where it comes from. But we can make it up. I've made it up many times. That's fantastic.

The way that you very confidently went, it comes from, no, no one knows. That's massive. Solanum. Why do we end up, though, as we keep saying about the fact that we've only got one species? Why is it remained? Because it's the cultivated one.

I mean, at one point there were more cultivated species, but they've been reduced in number to four now. So would we have seen, if we went back even a few hundred years, would we have seen that some of the potatoes that were coming over here, some of the potatoes that were being eaten, some of the potatoes that are there, or we basically were still talking about that one species. No, that one species is the one that was brought to Europe. Just like, can I just ask a question? Again, I'm in the supermarket. You're saying that there is one species of potato, but they're all called different things, because

you've got your Marth Pipers and you've got all the other ones. They're different varieties. Right. So breeders... Or coltivars. Or coltivars. So they've been bred by breeders and then they get a name. People made them.

They become a variety. But they're the same species? Yeah. So genetically they're all the same? Yeah. Kind of. I mean, we're genetically not all the same, right? And we're all the same species.

So it's like dogs, really. Yeah. Yeah, basically. I think potatoes and humans, in some ways, are quite similar because this is when there's going to be a twist now. Twist to a child. Yeah, most crops, like seed crops, most seed crops are inbreeders, like wheat, rice, barley.

These crops, they're what we call homozygous genetically. So if you grow a wheat plant and collect the seeds and grow them up, they'll all be the same as the plant that you got them from. If you take a potato plant, in fact, that's how early potato breeding worked because they didn't have the ability to cross one variety with another the way that normal breeding works. They just collected seeds from a potato plant. And because it's highly heterozygous and tetraploid, all the seeds are completely different from the original plant that you got them from. So what they would do is they'd grow them up

and see what the tubers look like and say, oh, this one looks nice. We'll call this Victoria. There was one called Patterson's Victoria in Scotland. And you like the look of this particular tuber. And then that became a variety. But then from that point on, if you want to keep that variety, you have to grow it as tubers. You can't propagate it via seed. You have to propagate it

vegetatively, which makes what Sandy said about all these hundreds of varieties in South America so amazing, because they have been propagated as tubers for hundreds or even thousands of years And as soon as you lose one, it's gone, you know, because it's genetically unique So that so genetically there's so much diversity Then what you get is Not predictable, right? You're shuffling the deck every time. And it's a big deck in this case. It's a big deck, yeah, a very big deck.

So potatoes are like humans. No, I didn't mean to mean that. I'm not being facetious at all. I'm still trying to understand this. I'm so sorry, you asked me to come on. No, I love this. I thought, my whole life's been a lie. You you asked me to come on When I went into the supermarket and I was choosing different potatoes I was being fancy

Just mean when you go, I've got these fancy potatoes, but they're all just potatoes. You're still being fancy. But they are fancy, Susan, because they are fancy, because they're different. I feel like one says it's a breakdown, and you're just being nice. So what you're saying is they're clones, basically. So the different varieties of potatoes are all clones.

That's why if you ever want to see potato fruits Which who's seen a potato fruit anybody seen a potato fruit? Nope, you have to grow two different varieties and then they'll cross pollinate and make a fruit They look like sort of ugly brownish green tomatoes a radically new spacecraft It had never been done before. It will revolutionize transportation into near space by

routinizing it. 13 minutes tells the inside story of the space shuttle. It was a little disconcerting to see him jet backpacking away with no safety tether. From the BBC World Service, 13 minutes presents the space shuttle. It marks minutes presents The Space Shuttle. It marks our entrance into a new era. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. The big question I want to ask you Glenn is why do potatoes explode less than they used to? Because I think in the old, you know, that bit of getting the fork and making sure it won't explode

and the two things I think now with the contemporary potato as I see it, you don't find as many... Is that going to be for Melbourne Bragg's job? Yes. Welcome to the contemporary potato. I've got my Mr. Potato Head. Turn it. No, because when I was growing up, very often when you had a potato, there would be that nasty little, you know, kind of, the little black kind of eye that will be in it And the other one was that you I think it is harder to make a potato explode and I've been doing a lot of tests Maybe you just got better at preparing for for microwaving them by sticking Decline then in the explosive nature of the potato and place not that I've heard of I'm a bit worried that you said these nasty

Little eyes you mean the eyes on the outside, on the skin? No, no, I mean on the inside. You used to cut them open. Oh, hollow heart. That's called hollow heart. That's a growth defect. If you grow potatoes and they find, you know, when you're about to sell them to market and they find a lot of hollow heart in the tubers, you can often get a whole field's worth of tubers rejected because of that.

So it's a growth defect. But that used to be a lot more common I think growing up so it's something... There's been a lot of work in trying to eliminate hollow heart over the years by selective breeding. I'm hearing words like hollow hearts, I'm hearing about all of these things and I grow my own potatoes and I'm very protective of them and now I'm concerned because the thing when you grow your own potatoes is you don't know what's happening because you can't check on them all the time can you? You can't say no it's like your tomatoes. But most most contemporary potatoes have been bred to

not get diseases. I love the phrase contemporary potato. And actually, another key thing is that Sandy mentioned the 100 and odd potato species. Several of those species have been used to improve the disease resistance of Solanum tuberosum subspecies tuberosum. So when, for example, after the famine in Ireland, the late blight epidemic in Ireland in 1845, there were concerted efforts to improve the late blight epidemic in Ireland in 1845, there were concerted efforts to improve

the late blight resistance of potatoes and so people turned to the wild species of potato, which can be crossed to cultivate it to potato, especially from places like Mexico where there were a lot of wild species that were resistant to late blight and those species were crossed to cultivate the potato to bring the genes in that would give you the resistance to the labelite. This brings us nicely actually to the current research and the future. So what's the state of the art at the moment? What are we trying to do? What is the state of the art of potato at the moment?

What can we imagine for the future of the potato? Exactly. So one of the things that, you know, Glenn mentioned that potatoes are tetraploid. They have four sets of chromosomes, which makes the genetics quite difficult. So one of the things that people are trying to do is figure out how to make a diploid potato with only two sets of chromosomes, which makes the genetics much easier. A lot of Chinese scientists are working on making diploid potatoes. They just do a lot of really fancy-pants genetics, you know, really, really genome sequencing

and figuring out who's related to who and all the different varieties and where bits of wild species have gone in. What would be the advantage if you could produce such a potato, diploid potato? Some of the species that we talked about are diploids, are naturally diploids, and some of the primitive cultivated types of Solanum tuberosum are also diploid. One that we used to call Solanum fureca, which is a diploid type of cultivated potato,

and very nice, I should add, it's probably my favorite potato to eat. So what's the recommendation? What's it actually called? Fureca. Fureca. So that's what we know if you went to a supermarket. Oh, you couldn't get it in a supermarket.

No, you couldn't get it. You'd have to talk to somebody in the know to get some So what's the name we're to ask for the Solanum it's a variety so it's a cultivar It's a cultivar type and it's called for a ha and it's diploid and you can't cook it like a normal potato Because it falls apart if you boil it for very long you have to steam it very well explode Yes, exactly, but in a very kind of squidgy way, not very dramatic, but it's very very tasty, it has a very strong potato flavour. Suddenly this salesmanship has fallen apart, hasn't it? It's a very special potato, it tastes very potato-y. It tastes more like a potato

than a potato. But the idea with diploid breeding, I mean, it could be a game changer, partly because of this thing that you have to propagate tetraploid potatoes as tubers. If you could convert potato from a tetraploid, tuba-propagated crop to a diploid seed-propagated crop, that would be a game changer, especially in places where storage of potatoes is problematic.

So Asia, East Africa, places like that where a lot of potatoes are grown. But storage of the seed tubers that you grow to produce the following year's crop is problematic because you've got to use refrigeration and facilities to store those seeds. But if you could just store them as true seed, then you can just stick it up on your shelf. A small bag of seed will contain thousands of seeds. If you could just store them as true seed, then you can just stick it up on your shelf. A small bag of seed will contain thousands of seeds. It's a really ambitious goal. It's not going to be easy, but as Sandy said, the Chinese and there's various companies

in America and the Netherlands and other places really trying to get this diploid potato breeding. In a way, it's almost like trying to convert potato into a crop like rice where it's seed propagated and you produce these in bread lines and then you make hybrids but it's gonna take a while. And what about, I mean how much do you think the glamour of the potato has changed since it became really that I suppose one of the main character players in the film The Martian. Do you feel that's changed the kind of glamour of the potato? Yeah I've seen a bit of you know TV stars and things promoting particular varieties so I think it has achieved a little bit more

glamour than maybe it had previously. Does potato really glamour Robin? I mean the potato okay I'll just say it. I think the potato is one of the sexiest foodstuffs you can possibly get. If you can say that if you are having a romantic dinner with someone and they make proper mashed potato, right, smooth. This is the thing about the potato, and I've enjoyed listening to the genetics and the chromosomes. Fundamentally though, I think it's such, it's versatile because it can be sexy or it can be workman like oh I just need to be potato for lunch let's go right it can it fulfills every human emotion like I'm sad I'll have chips I'm happy I'll have

dauphinoise it can reflect every emotion that a human being can feel, the potato responds to that. Unlike any other food stuff, the potato can be what you want it to be at that time and can change your emotions. It can make you happier than you were before you had it. That's why I think potatoes are amazing, because they are emotionally responding to us as human beings. That was going to be the last question, why do you think potatoes are so popular? And you've answered it in a way that I could not have imagined. So I don't need to.

I thought you were going to say something about the calories and they're easy to grow and things like that. But the thing is they add. So my favourite way of eating a potato is it's a very Scottish thing. It's called a potato scone. Oh, see? That was nearly our to chose. That was nearly our to-do.

It's not potato farlet, it's a potato scone. It's flat and you have it with your square sausage roll or your bacon roll or something like that. And it is the most beautiful way to eat potato, a glistening fried potato scone. At the start of the day, you are a hero when you leave that room because it makes you feel so magnificent when you have the crunch of it with a little bit of egg yolk so to me potatoes that's my favorite way but all potatoes there is

not a single part of my life that is not made better by the addition of a potato. With that I should say that we need to go to South America. I need to go to South America. Oh yeah. Imagine having not one species to enhance your life. I don't know why two, but thousands of varieties. Thousands of varieties. Or 5,000 varieties. Imagine what that would be like. Do you know what? I can't see myself on it. My wife is going, I'm going to South America to eat potatoes. Potatoes. I'm like, I don't know. Just go, what happened?

There are expeditions out there. Potato expeditions. I do that. Can we do that? Yeah. Can we do that? Yeah, sure. No, I don't think so.

You're wrong. I don't think she quite got what I'm saying. No, can we do that. Can we do that? Yeah. Can we do that? Yeah, sure. No, I don't think so. You're on. I don't think she quite got what I'm saying. No, can we do that? Yes. I'm good to South America, guys. Well, we've a research collaboration. The markets in Cusco, well, go for it. I'll come back and every show I do will be about potatoes from now on.

That's the thing. And everyone will go, do you remember Susan Calman? She was great before the potato thing happened. And each time you'll just be metamorphosizing a little bit more into potato, that's where. If you noticed her waffly hands, I mean they're still versatile but nevertheless. So we asked the audience a question but I don't think any of the answers are going to be anywhere near what we've just heard from Susan. So what have we asked the audience? We asked if you were to give a potato a new quality what would it be? What have you got Brian? The ability to distill itself and pop

into a tumbler with a couple of ice cubes and some Indian tonic at 5 p.m. every day. Legs so it could truly become a walker's crisp. I didn't write it! Immortality on maturity of potato will now stop aging and stay fresh until cooked and eaten. That's actually a very good idea. That's very nice. The ability to regenerate its outer covering when peeled because skins can only get better. Readily infused with strong flavours like chilli or wasabi because zings can only get better. I don't know how you do it. I really don't.

I mean this is episode 204, but the D-Reme puns have never dried, have they? Thank you to our panel, Sandy Knapp, Glen Bryant, Susan Kalman. That's all. Now, we will quickly tell you what's on next week, but we do have a very different kind of ending of the show. So, anyway, next week, we are going a very different kind of ending of the show. So anyway, next week we are going to be asking the question, because we're in the middle of festival season as this goes out,

we're going to be talking about techno fossils. How much longer can middle-aged men do big fish, little fish, big fish, little fish before their grandchildren burst into tears or run away and hide? That's not it. Techno fossils, they're what technology of today might be like in millions of years time if they were buried and dug up. It's not. So there's no dancing? No. That's a relief. Anyway. But now we have a special ending. Techno potatoes! A special performance of the Monkey Cage theme tune because we're joined by sound artist Helen and Heata Wilson who is going to well she's going to answer the question what

does a potato sound like and can you make the obvious question that wasn't asked on the panel which is can you make music using potatoes so Helen could you can you describe why one would ask that question? Well, what you're about to hear is a unique sound never heard by any ears other than my own until now. It is a world premiere botanical edible musical mashup of biological information from six different types of potato and the sound itself comes from from six different types of potato. And the sound itself comes from bioelectrical data from baking potatoes, salad potatoes,

anything I could pick up in the supermarket basically. But I should say for the listeners, you're going to play by hitting potatoes with electrodes in them. I have made a keyboard out of potatoes. So the white keys are baking potatoes, the black keys are some lovely textured red potatoes. So the white keys are baking potatoes, the black keys are some lovely textured red potatoes, I don't know their names unfortunately, and I've connected all of these up with electrodes

and I'm also going to tape myself with electrodes so that the electrical current goes through all of us together. I am communing with the potatoes in this performance. Wish me luck. Hang on, just before you start, I just want to ask Susan. Yeah. How do you feel about this? I've never been more excited in my life. It's when you said that you were going to attach yourself to the potatoes.

Using electrodes. You are, you and the potato are one. This has been the best day of my life. But you too could commune with the potatoes at home. Oh don't you worry. I know what I'm doing tomorrow, don't you worry. I'm gonna strip a couple of laps, get the wires out. I'm there. Are we ready? ready. I'm going to a monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey,, in the infinite monkey cage, in the infinite monkey cage. Turned out nice again. From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously?

I'm Dara O'Brien. And I'm Izzy Suttie. And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales. What Seriously? is packed with real life strange but true stories that make you go What Seriously? and provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends. The twist is we don't know how each story unfolds and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests who each have a mysterious connection to the tale. That's right. I am your spy expert. And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story because you're making me laugh so much, but I feel like I should.

We're the only country in the world that eats the animal on our crest, like, and I never know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that. All these engineers trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space and you get Izzy taking up a balloon full of glitter. Wow! You're welcome. You're welcome with all the stuff you have. I know right? It's like I'm reading from a sheet or something but no I am! Join us for What Seriously? from BBC Radio 4.

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