You're Dead to Me - History of Spices (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr David Veevers and comedian and quizzer Paul Sinha to learn all about the global history of spices and the spice trade.Nowadays, we take spices for granted, and our kitchen cabinets are full of ginger and cinnamon, cumin and coriander, pepper and nutmeg. But despite their contemporary status as a staple of diets around the world, the majority of spices are native only to Asia (barring notable exceptions like chilli peppers). In this episode, we tell the story of how spices went global, from the very earliest days of the spice trade within Asia, through the empires of Alexander the Great and Rome as spices made their way into Europe, and into the colonial period, as the Dutch and British East India Companies vied to monopolise this lucrative trade. Along the way, we focus on five of the most commonly traded spices – pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and chilli – asking how their use changed across time, and as they were traded from place to place. From pharaohs possibly being embalmed with cinnamon, to medieval kings demanding rent in peppercorns, and nutmeg as a cure for plague, we look at the varied uses to which people all over the world have put these precious and expensive commodities.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Emma Mitchell and Adam Simcox Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The Signal Awards recognise the podcast that define culture and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team and stand out.

The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. and today we're rummaging in the kitchen cupboards and learning all about the history of spices and the spice trade. And to help us, we have two very special dining companions.

In History Corner, he's a lecturer in early modern history at Bangor University in Wales, where he specialises in the early modern British Empire and the East India Company. He might have read his wonderful book, The Great Defiance. How the world took on the British Empire is Dr David Thievers. Welcome, David. Thank you. Thank you to having me. I'm super excited. delighted to have you here.

And in Comedy Corner, he's a stand-up comedian and renowned. quizer. You'll have seen him on Taskmaster, QI, would I lie to you and heard him on all over Radio 4 with his various wonderful series about general knowledge, but he's surely best known as a formidable chaser on the TV game show The Chase. Yes, it's the Cynerman himself. Paul Sinner, welcome Paul. It's a delight to be here, thank you very much. Paul, your first time on the show, but you are a professional quizer. There's only about 20 of us in the country in history, so that's a nice description. I'm proud of that one. That's a great description. Where are you with spices and spicy food. Are you a spicy food lover?

On the scale of naught to 10, I'm sort of 7 slash 8. That's quite... Which means I don't like to show off, like the drunk in the curry house. Okay. Making a bad decision on the Vindaloo or the Ful. But I don't like my food too mild either. Okay. Spices are good. Spices are good. I am not particularly good on the spices.

I'm probably a kind of five to six out of ten, spicy me. Is that right? David, where are you on the spice index? I'm lower. I write about spices, but I'm probably like a two. A corn, I need a big glass of water. Okay. This is the equivalent of me discussing keeping up with the Kardashians.

That's right. So, what do you know? This is the so what do you know? This is where I have it going, guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you might know, of course, that spices famously come in five varieties. You've got ginger, baby, scary, sport. Hang on, no, that's not right. My bad.

Anyway, you've all heard of spices. They turn our food from drab to fab. They're a key ingredient in England's national dish, which, of course, is chicken teeka masala. And every autumn, pumpkin spice objects conquer the shops, from lattes to cat litter. But what other uses have people found for spices? How did they make their way into our global spice rack? Let's find out. Dr David, what is a spice?

There wasn't a clear definition of what a spice was for a long time. Traditionally, medieval, early, modern period, a spice is a kind of blanket term for anything. It's unusual, expensive, smells a bit funny. Technically, a spice is a part of a tropical plant, like the bark. or the flower or the seed. And then there are some like vanilla that is actually the flower of a tropical plant. So the most common ones that we talk about

really are from Asia, they're native to Asia, with a few exceptions. So saffron from Greece, for example, Chili's from South America. But it's predominantly Asia we're talking about. And it's important that we do because the geography of spices really shapes their history and the history

we've had in trading with them. So saffrons from Greece? Yes, yeah. This is new to me. Did you know? No, I didn't know that. I always assumed it was from India, but it's... Vanilla, chili, all spice, they're South American.

So we're predominantly talking about Asia, but not exclusively. Vanilla. Vanilla. Yeah. It's not Madagascan. No. But some of these spices are transplanted around the world. Okay.

Where do we start our story? You know, if we're talking about the origins of the spice trade... Obviously, spices have grown on trades for millions of years, but the spice trade, when can we date that back to? Yeah, so the trade in spices, as long as human civilization. So we're talking about. really about a specific part of Asia. It's the Malacca's in East Asia. Those islands, exclusively were known as the spice islands

because that's where you would find only their nutmeg, mace, cloves, those sorts of rare spices. And they were exported by locals to the Malay Palinina and found their way out across Asia and onward. So the spice islands are, what, Indonesia? They're one of many thousands of islands. Yeah, and so there are thousands of islands

and just some of them will only cultivate. not making clothes. So it's an amazing place. Fantastic. Where are we? Back in the Bronze Age? Yes. Then from the Bronze Age, it's a story about the way they're disseminating further and further outward.

Paul, do you know the 19th century euphemism to voyage to the Spice Islands? Do you know what it means? The number of things it could be. It could be an alternate sexuality. Could. Euphemism for being gay. To voyage to the Spice Islands. But it could be just doing something unusual or exotic, I suppose.

Sure. There's a whole list of things that are. considered unusual and exotic. That list changes over the years. Okay, in the 19th century, what would be exotic and unusual? Reading. Now, according to Susie Dent, the lovely lexicographer, it meant going to the toilet. But what does Susie Dent then?

Across this period, then, we see it being traded across the Malay Peninsula over to India. Malabar then has its own pepper and spice cultivation in south-east India and then it crosses the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, into the Red Sea, and then across the Levant and North Africa and eventually the Mediterranean as well. And we know the Egyptian pharaohs are trading for them in the Arabian Peninsula. This is sort of 2,800 BCE. So it's a long history. It's a long time ago.

And there's even evidence that Mesopotamian civilizations were trading for spices with the Indus Valley, a kind of vast expanse across a long time. So Europeans, of course, would have got involved eventually. This stuff is going to spread. Paul, which spicy conqueror connected his new empire to North India in the 4th century BCE? I imagine that's the one, the only, Alexander the Great. Absolutely, yes. Alexander the Great's conquest, he storms through Persia, he storms through Egypt, he storms into North India with his army.

Does he therefore sort of connect up this Asian trade into a European world? He does. He's had consolidates that link. across the Hindukush, across the kind of Indus Valley, and connects it into a network that connects Egypt to the Indus Valley that connects the Greek world. And so he consolidates those trade links. And when it spices a big part of that story,

he literally put the mace in Macedonia. Hey, there we go. So that connection stays connected, right? When Alexander dies, the whole thing doesn't just collapse. Yeah, I think we often think that, you know, with Alexander's death, it does all just collapse and you have this struggle as a success of states. But, you know, the thing is when you establish lucrative trade

roots and spices being so covered as they are, these things endure. And so we get the city of Alexandria becomes the hub of the spice trade for the sort of North African Mediterranean axis of that network. And it flourishes partly on the back of lucrative trade in spices. Then later on, obviously, we get the Roman annexation of Egypt. And that only sort of further enlarges the spice trade, especially across the Roman Empire. But obviously, eventually, as all the empires do, the Western Roman Empire falls. Does it fall or was it pushed? Was it falling with the push? It's a good question. That's probably another show. It's a different show, yeah.

I think it's qualified to say. But we know that does disrupt, obviously, access to spices across Western Europe. So we get a big increase in maritime trade in this period. And when I say this period, I suppose we are in what we call latent antiquity, early medieval period. It's that sort of 700s sort of space. One of the reasons biggest bans is technological innovation. There are three major developments. Do you know what they might be, Paul, around this time, technological, maritime expansiony things. Sextant.

Oh, that's a good guess. So a navigation aid, you think. Sexton's a good guess. Give me two more. Astrolave. Yes, absolutely. Compass. Compass.

You've got two out of three, and sextant's a good guess. I think Sexton's a bit later. So it is. It's Astrolabe, David. Yeah, yeah. It's Astrolabe. That's a really good guess.

Magnetic compass. Yeah. That's the next one. The other one is the, what's known more commonly is the triangular cell, but the Latin cell that allows you to kind of tack to the wind and challenge the elements to go in any direction. I was never going to get that one so I'll take that.

I felt that was the obvious one, Paul. No. The Latin's not a sailor pool? You're not out on the water every weekend? No, no, no, no. That's a very different part of my life. Yeah, so the sail allows you to sail into the wind, which means you can still navigate through the trade winds.

Yeah. If they're blowing against you, you can still... Yeah, of course, we're pre-modern navigation. It's all about the wind. And this allows the trade to essentially run on its own, rather than be dictated by the elements. We get the Sassanid Empire. They always sound very saucy, the Sassanids.

It's just a good name for an empire. It is, especially like an empire that really gets rich off the back of spices. These are the successes of the Persian Empire. They're occupying a space between East and West. And so the overland route. And also the Sassanid is also the maritime routes coming through the Persian Gulf. And their successes would do the same. Control the Persian Gulf is one of the main arteries of the...

spice trade from Asia into Europe. So they become powerful and rich off the back of this spice trade. And for those of us who know, the Quran, often we get that the Prophet Muhammad was a spice trade and that his family were involved in the spice trade. As many well-to-do families were in that region, that particular period of time. So we know it's kind of one of the more elite occupations. And then following the Arab conquests of much of the Middle East, North Africa, even up into the Iberian Peninsula, today, Spain and Portugal.

They kind of bring the spice trade almost kind of to the extent that the Romans had, pushing it well into Europe and beyond. And you see this great expansion with the Muslim conquests. Paul, there is then a major medieval event which brings medieval Europeans back into the trade. Do you know what that would be? Crusade. Yeah, it absolutely is. Crusades horribly violent as they were.

They did increase access to spices in Europe and, of course, broaden tastes. They reintroduce Western Europe. to these spices that everyone has been enjoying for a long time over in Asia and in North Africa and so on. What is that moment like? Yeah, I think in some ways is that resumption of those broken links that were established a long time ago. And it's not to say that Europe was completely cut off from spices, but the Crusades reestablishes on a more firmer footing the trade links through, obviously, the horrendous violence of the Crusades,

but also the establishment of maritime and overland routes that have become disrupted or passed out of European control. So this is kind of the re-establishment of that. And we often associate that resumption of that show, introducing medieval Europe and it's bland and horrible food and it's rotting meat that was festering on, and everyone dying of the play because of it. And, you know, that big myth that spices were, you know,

held as this solution finally to Europe's kind of horrible cuisine and that they would just lash the rotting meat and conceal the horrible, smell and taste of food. Of course, that's nonsense. Yeah. Because spices cost an absolute fortune. Yeah.

It's like putting palladium on a pot noodle. It's like the spices cost way more than the meat. Yeah, that's right. And so we know that that doesn't have it. Spices are used in flavour, but they're not used to that extravagant extent of basically wasting them as a kind of preservative for food. But yeah, they are being used and consumed for their taste. And we know the sort of big players doing this

that kind of follows on the hills of the crusading states are the Italian city, maritime states, Venice is the big one, January as well. But by the end of the 1400s, we start to get European navigators going, I quite want a spice route. Do you know who these would be, Paul? Who would be the big players?

Well, Spain and Portugal. Yeah, absolutely. Isabel Ferdinand and Isabel. Very good, yeah, of Castile. Yeah, an arrogant. Henry, the Navigator. Oh, this is good knowledge. Okay, and who would be your explorers?

Who's getting on the ship and doing the hard? Well, Vasco da Gama. But I happened to do Ferdin and Magellan and Mastermind many, many, many moons ago. So I'm aware that the first circumnavigation of the globe was because of spices. Yeah. Well, I did mastermind. I knew nothing about Magellan. And it blew my mind that all of that was for spices.

Yeah. The entire, it had no other, um, purpose. purpose. But it is the Portuguese. It is Vasco da Gama, as Paul said, who really is our first great navigator in the Spice Trade. And he's going not west. He's going south. Yeah, he's going south. When the Portuguese come down the coast of Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama and into the Indian Ocean, this is the sort of first recorded European entry into the maritime route around the Cape of Good Hope. And it's in 1498, they hit the Malibuador about coast, India, which is, if you're looking for spices, it's exactly where you want to land.

You know, a bunch of peppercorn forests surrounding you, and this is what they bring back. It's black peppercorn, which is the spice that, you know, we take for granted that spice cupboard in the kitchen. But once upon a time, that drove early modern navigation trade. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture. And being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry. industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC.

Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at Signal Awards. So Portugal becomes a kind of dominant pepperer of Europe, I suppose. They found, well, they found a sort of fort. Is it Calicut? Yes, Calicut, which is in Karel Estate in southwest India. It's the first major city where they are, we say negotiating and buying spices,

but it's the Portuguese, so they're also blowing people up and blowing up parts of it. Negotiating with grenades. With grenades, yeah, a peaceful force, that kind of negotiating tactic. And they're very successful. They bring back the first holds full of peppercorn and they land in Europe. And Lisbon is almost overnight turned from mud and timber to marble. It's skyline rises and it becomes one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.

Amazing. Largely because of this spice trade. But by the end of 1500s, we get two new players in the race. They're not super renowned for their well-seasoned food. Who would they be? So when are we now? Late 1500s. Think sort of 1580s, that sort of, you know, Queen Elizabeth.

type era. Was that a clue? Might be. England? Yep. And Netherlands? Yeah, very good. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the Dutch and the English suddenly sort of go,

well, hang on a minute. Everyone else is getting rich. How do we have one of these empires? Yeah, let's throw some spice on this herring. Let's get some flavour in this stew. Yeah, so it's the North Europeans, predominantly the English and the Dutch who are looking at their muddy timber cities going, wow, we'd love some marble.

And they are. They're riding on the coattails of predominantly the Portuguese and it's really the Dutch that take the lead. And there's a, in a way, it's this great kind of interplay between the history of something like spice, a commodity, a food stuff with the emergence of modern capitalism. And they develop a joint stock company. You know, the modern joint stock corporation comes from the Netherlands

and the English developing East India companies to trade with the Indies. The English East India Company on New Year's, of 1600 is about 215 bigwigs. And they're copying the Dutch. You know, I'd love to say this is an English innovation, but it's not. Much of what made England great in the early modern period is ripped off from the Dutch.

And so they both... It's been off to football in the 17th. Exactly. They both head off to Asia. And so it's the Dutch East India company that emerges. Really is the winner of the spice trade. Interesting. There's a tactic the Dutch subsequently used

to restrict the trade and to keep spice prices high. Paul, do you know what it would be? No, I don't actually. If you've got too much of something and you want to keep the value high, what do you do with it? Store it away. Store it away is sensible,

or you could destroy it. Okay. So, I mean, David, they, I mean, back in Amsterdam, they're just burning, just burning tons of this expensive stuff that they've imported in. Yeah, oh no, we've been too successful. There's too much and the prices are dropping

and we're losing money. So to keep the value of it, they're literally just setting fire to it. Yeah. Is that the reason for the distinctive smell of the streets of Amsterdam? Yeah, I think that might be a different smell. But yeah, and it's about controlling the market and monopolising it. And, you know, when the English bring back tons of pepper, the Dutch brought it back first.

They get to a depressed market. Right. And it sits in their warehouse in London for about seven years before they can shift it and they do it at a loss. So in a way, the Dutch are maintaining profitability by just burning tons of this stuff. So that kind of lovely Christmas smell when you go to Christmas markets of nutmeg and cinnamon, That's just the smell of violent colonialism. It is. The smell of violent colonialism in the morning.

What a cologne that would be. Okay, so empires are going to empire. And the English and Dutch... Maybe that's where the word cologne comes from. Colonial, maybe. It's short for violent colonists. So the English and Dutch, they're becoming more powerful by the 1600s. And they're fighting each other, but they're also fighting the people they're trying to conquer.

I mean, we get more horrible violence here. Yeah, it's kind of that classic imperial rivalry. for the most valuable overseas trading commodity ever. It's the people of the region that suffer the most. So in collusion with the English, the Dutch essentially massacre the bandanese living on these nutmeg plantations. So hang on, in collusion, they join forces. Yeah, so essentially a war between the English and the Dutch East India companies doesn't go very well for the English. And there's really a kind of almost a corporate merger.

They agree to share the spice trade. The Dutch get two-thirds and the English are third, and they're moving in the same forts and factories and manage the trade together. It really, it sounds like an alliance. It's really a kind of Dutch corporate takeover of the ailing English company. But the victims are, the indigenous people.

And so what happens is, yeah, the Dutch kind of, once they're in position, the Bander Islands, thanks to England's weakness, is that they exterminate the people living there and instead turn the entire island over to plantations, but they often bring an enslaved labour to then manage that cultivation. Sorry, Paul. It's not

the funniest subject, is it? It's not. I've got nothing to say. I don't think you should say anything. Should I just say Alexander the Great put the mace into Macedonia? Thank you. Thank you for bringing the levity. So we get the then, once the abandonees have been exterminated, the Dutch and the English carabiding together, managing the trade. The Dutch are very jealous. They've given the English a third, but they don't really want them to have any. They want sole, exclusive monopoly,

of spices. And so they become very paranoid. And the Dutch employ a number of Japanese mercenaries in their forts and factories on the Bander Islands. And they start to believe that the English merchants and the Japanese mercenaries are colluding together to overthrow the Dutch and to take over the spice monopoly. So in 1623, the Dutch seized the Japanese and the English and they interrogate them in these all these sorts of torture methods, waterboarding, hanging them upside down to confessions of conspiracy.

And they ended up executing 10 of the English and a number of the Japanese mercenaries as known as the Amboyna Massacre. And the English

were outwaged and for decades there was litigation by the families of the English against the Dutch states that for compensation for the Dutch.

Wow. I didn't know you could sue a state in the 1650s or whatever. Yeah. And essentially King James and then his success

has had to sort of you know, mediate between the families. And eventually the families are compensated, but it's, you know, almost no one is left a line that was involved in that. And eventually the British, rather, by this point, I suppose, it's a fusion, the stewards obviously ruled Scotland and England,

so I guess we're calling them kind of British. They gave up the Spice Islands in favour of a new colony. Do you know what they got in in exchange with the Dutch? Quite a nice city. I believe the heir to the throne was James Duke of York. Yes, James Duke of York. Oh, New York. New York, well done.

I can see the cogs wearing there. Future James 2nd. Yeah, exactly. Very briefly. Very briefly. So they swapped the spice trade for New York. For Broadway. Yes, exactly.

Is that a good deal, Paul? That's a fantastic deal. Would you? Would you take New York? I've been to New York this year, and I've got to say, there's a lot of very good spice restaurants there. So you've got the whole... That's true, actually. You got the whole deal.

The sort of spice trade is the Dutch monopoly in the East. Do they hold it for long? I mean, I don't... We don't really think of the Dutch as a superpower in the 19th century, do we? You don't? But they are. they are colonial power. They're definitely not at the top of the league of European superpowers,

but they are. They do continue right up until beyond the Second World War. Oh, right. With interludes, you know, they're not exclusively in control of spices because they're grown elsewhere like in India. And that's the English East seem to come in, the British Raj eventually that takes over spice production in India. So, you know, at times it's broken and they're supplanted.

But generally, the Dutch East Indies hangs on until post-second World War after a brief Japanese occupation at 12 during the war itself. So, yeah, so it's a long and violent monopoly that carries on there. And over that time, it's eroded by other Europeans taking spices from that region and then transplanting them. Yeah. So do you know what gets moved where? By whom?

Well, I'm guessing that vanilla gets moved to Madagascar. Yeah, vanilla is a good one. Brazil becomes the great place of Portuguese colony for everything from cinnamon to clothes. Black pepper. Black pepper as well, of course. The British take clothes of the Caribbean as well. And the covariance always produce mostly sugar at this point, but also things like ginger and that. So clothes is a good kind of fit.

Any kind of tropical, similar tropical environment with good conditions. And so, yeah, by about the 20th century, you can find a lot of these spices being grown elsewhere off into an industrial scale. And we can mention France as well. Paul, have you ever heard of the Frenchman Pierre Puevre? And do you know what he planted in Mauritius? Pears. That's a good. Well, if I give you a clue,

pov means pepper in French. Oh, not pepper, pepper, yeah. What does he plant in Mauritius? No. You'd think it would be pepper. It's not pepper, which feels like a real nominative determinism fail. Yeah, he's Peter Pepper and he plants clove nutmeg. I believe they were his middle names. Peter Clove Nutmeg Pepper.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so he smuggles these out. And, you know, the Dutch did guard them jealously. we're talking in sort of late 18th century, 1770s, 80s and he smuggles into a series of French possessions and the first one is Mauritius in the Indian Ocean they go on to Madagascar and eventually East Africa Zanzibar

off the coast of East Africa and so they Zanzibar becomes in the 19th century kind of what the major slave port of that particular region but also one time it's also the largest producer of clothes Wow amazing So that's a huge sort of transition of the locus of where the spice industry is, isn't it?

To move it to East Africa. So there we go. We've gone around the world. We've ended our kind of global history of spices. Did you enjoy that, Paul? I thoroughly entertained by that. Wasn't too violent. Sorry.

Well, I was well aware of the violence of colonialism. You haven't taught me anything new there, but it is a bit bleak to think that everything we eat has a violent past. Yeah, I'm trying to think of something that doesn't. Deep fried Mars, boss. Yeah, maybe. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Paul and I silently rearrange our spice racks for two minutes,

while Dr David cooks up something we need to know about the history of spices. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Dr David. Today, almost every kitchen around the world has a spice rack or cupboard. Even the most exotic and rarest of spices is cheaply and readily available in supermarkets around the world. The truth is, however we use spices today, they've played a key role in the commercial, social and cultural lines. of the majority of people on this planet

across a long period of time and over a vast expanse of space. From the Moluccas to London, Tobago to Beijing, spices have permeated the history of humanity, going back millennium. From the Egyptian pharaoh in 1224 BCE, who is in barn with peppercorns up his nose,

to the UK today, where we consume well over a kilo of spices per capita every year. So how should we understand in regard to spices in human history? Well, we can highlight the role they played in cultural exchange, Chinese merchants migrated to Java, married local women, converted to Islam, all in pursuit of spices.

South Asian families migrated to the UK following decolonisation in the 20th century, where their spice-fueled food culture fused with British traditions allowing the melting pot in the kitchen to become a melting pot of wider society. Spices drove currents of economic change and helped to facilitate globalisation by contributing to the establishment of long-distance trade at sea and overland. Spice roads vied with silk roads over Central Asia and across the Indian Ocean, acting as global arteries along which people, ideas, goods, disease, war and religions travelled. Spices launched Europe's overseas empires. Spice has represented not just the greater integration of people separated by distance and nationality, for good or worse, but arguably like sugar, tobacco, textiles, enslaved people, iron manufactured goods and capital,

they established a truly global economy. Today, the mass production and dissemination of spices is another facet of 21st century global inequality where mass cheap consumption in the West is often at the expense of low-paid exploited labour in the global south. In that way, the history of the not-so-humble spice is a lens through which we can view the history of the not-so-humble human and the beautiful and destructive rhythms of the past we create.

In that way, spices contain multitudes, and within them the great saga of humanity. Amazing. Thank you so much. I mean, having something as brilliant as that on all podcasts, it's like putting palladium in a pot noodle. It is really interesting, Paul, isn't it? The history of spice, how we assume they just have always been there, but actually the story of how they got there is one of enormous change.

As I said, I was totally ignorant on it until I did Magellan on Mastermind, and it blew my mind that so much happened to make food more flavoursome. It just hadn't occurred to me. It's an amazing story. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been an absolute delight to have you here. Thank you, of course, David. A listener to learn more about the history of commodities,

check out our episodes about coffee and chocolate or for more on global trade. Of course, you can listen to our episode on the Columbian Exchange. And if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else.

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the fantastic. Dr David Vivas from Bangor University. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul. And in Comedy Corner, we have the sensational Paul Sinner. Thank you, Paul.

Thank you very much. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we cook up another flavour some feast for your ears. Can you eat feasts with your ears? I don't know. But for now, I'm off to go and steal some cinnamon sticks from my local supermarket and see if I can plant them in my garden. Bye! Greetings, malevolent munchkins, fiendish friends and devilish do-gooders.

Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius! I'm Russell Kane, and I'm delighted to be steering the ship that I'm unceremoniously wrenches historic figures from their perfect pedestals so that we can decide whether they're evil, genius, or a heavy concoction of the two. It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Yes, it's evil. Yes, it's genius. Get on board now and listen to Evil Genius on BBC sales. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture and being honored by the

Signal Awards sets your production team apart with recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit, it is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration.