What happened when Joseph Banks finally put to sea - and discovery left the comfort of gardens behind? How would a voyage meant to advance science collide with storms, suspicion, imperial rivalries, and human tragedy? And what would it cost to catalogue the natural world at the far edges of the globe?

Join John and Patrick as they follow Banks aboard HMS Endeavour, from vineyards in Madeira and standoffs in Rio de Janeiro to catastrophe in Tierra del Fuego and the intoxicating promise of Tahiti. This is science under sail: plants collected at gunpoint, lives lost to ice and overconfidence, and the birth of a vision that would bind botany, empire, and exploration together - whether the world was ready for it or not.

----------

In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

1. Share this episode with your friends
2. Give a 5-star rating
3. Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

Who was Joseph Banks before he became the most powerful botanist in the British Empire? How did a wealthy, restless young man turn a childhood fascination with weeds into a scientific obsession that would reshape global agriculture? And why did one cold, miserable voyage to Newfoundland prove to be the spark that launched a world-changing career?

Join John and Patrick as they begin a brand-new multi-part series on Joseph Banks, tracing his early life from privileged English estates to the edge of the North Atlantic - and setting the stage for the voyages that would transform science, empire, and the history of fresh produce.

----------

In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

1. Share this episode with your friends
2. Give a 5-star rating
3. Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

Once, Switzerland was a land of pears.

When we picture the Swiss countryside today, we imagine tidy fields, precision farming, and alpine order. But not so long ago, vast stretches of eastern Switzerland were covered in towering pear trees - ancient giants that fed communities, sustained wildlife, and produced perry renowned across Europe.

So how did a nation famed for care, balance, and cultivation come to destroy eleven million fruit trees in the space of a generation?

Join John and Patrick as they unravel one of the strangest and most unsettling episodes in modern agricultural history: the deliberate, state-sponsored destruction of Switzerland’s perry orchards. From temperance panics and alcohol laws to bureaucrats with axes, propaganda films, and the cult of “modern” efficiency, this is a story of progress turned destructive - and of a drink, a landscape, and a culture quietly erased.

Was this modernization… or cultural vandalism? And what was lost when the last great pear trees fell?

READ MORE about Perry Pears here.

----------

In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

1. Share this episode with your friends
2. Give a 5-star rating
3. Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

As 2025 draws to a close, we also reach the midpoint of the decade. Looking back on an eventful first half of the 2020s, we’re left with a big question: what will history remember about this era in the world of fresh produce?

In this final livestream of 2025, John and Patrick will revisit the defining moments of the past five years, unpack their historical significance, and ask whether these events will endure as true turning points - or fade into the background as intriguing but fleeting milestones.

----------

In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

1. Share this episode with your friends
2. Give a 5-star rating
3. Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

What do gold, frankincense, and myrrh really tell us about the world into which Jesus was born? Who were the Magi - kings, mystics, scientists, or traders - and why did they travel vast distances carrying some of the most valuable agricultural products on Earth? How do desert trees in Arabia and the Horn of Africa connect a humble birth in Bethlehem to ancient global supply chains, imperial economics, and the earliest luxury produce markets? And what happened when symbolic gifts became engines of demand, reshaping landscapes, trade routes, and even Christian worship for centuries to come?

Join John and Patrick as they follow the scent trail of frankincense and myrrh - from wounded bark and caravan routes to temples, churches, and modern medicine - in a fresh-produce retelling of the Nativity that reveals the Three Wise Men not as fairy-tale kings, but as emissaries of the ancient global economy.

This is the Christmas story as you’ve never heard it before: rooted in trees, trade, and the fragile agricultural systems that quietly changed the world.

----------

In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

From incestuous wasps and prehistoric forests to sacred enlightenment, revolutionary resistance, and a certain square-shaped snack aisle icon - what if the fig is the most powerful fruit in human history?

Join John and Patrick as they trace the astonishing 80-million-year saga of the fig: its ancient pact with tiny wasps, its role in shaping ecosystems, feeding early humans, inspiring gods and emperors, fueling revolutions in Kenya, and conquering America as the mighty Fig Newton.

Was the fig humanity’s first domesticated plant? Did it help build civilizations, religions, and even our own hands? And how did one strange fruit manage to bridge myth, medicine, empire, and mass production?

This is the epic, unexpected history of the fig - one of the most extraordinary stories nature ever wrote.

----------

In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

"They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially colonized it. So technically, I colonized Mars. In your face , Neil Armstrong!"

As Mark Watney's line from the book and film The Martian suggests, fruits and vegetables have long played a starring role in our visions of space. Sometimes they’re subtle symbols of home; other times, they’re humanity’s only hope for survival.

But how realistic are these space gardens?

Could these crops truly grow beyond Earth - and if they could, would they be enough to sustain life?

And what lessons can we draw from history, when explorers relied on produce to survive their own journeys into the unknown?

Join John and Patrick on this month's livestream as they pull out the popcorn to talk space films, produce and history!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com

What does a thorny Mediterranean thistle have to do with the American Mafia? How did a humble vegetable — adored by Romans, cultivated by Renaissance queens, and grown lovingly by Italian immigrants — become the centerpiece of one of the strangest criminal rackets in U.S. history? And why did a fiery New York mayor decide that the only way to defeat organized crime… was to ban artichokes altogether?

Join John and Patrick as they trace the extraordinary saga of the Artichoke King — Ciro Terranova — the East Harlem mobster who turned produce into power. From the early Italian farmers of California’s coast, to the violent “Artichoke Wars” of the 1930s, to Fiorello La Guardia’s theatrical crusade against racketeering, this is the bizarre and gripping story of how food, identity, and crime became entangled in the markets of New York.

-----------

Ever see a shirt that you could just eat it? Well, this New Jersey family-run business may just be it!

Visit EatShirts here to order your favorite fruit or veggies shirt!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

-----------

Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

-----------

Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com