Did you put some cinnamon in your coffee this morning? A little black pepper on your eggs? The spices we take for granted today were once upon a time the single most valuable material in the world. From ancient Egypt, to Columbus and right up to today - Dawn and special guest, Wayne Wilderson - take a us on a journey good enough to eat... and fuck.
Welcome to a particularly delicious romp through the history of the Spice trade with my guest, 'television's own' Wayne Wilderson. His IMDB Credits read like a CVS receipt and you'll find he is as effortless on the microphone as he is on camera.
00:04:55 - After telling you a little bit about where we are (and why I'm wearing my daughter's Hello Kitty Headphones) Wayne tells us a little bit about when he came to Hollywood and some of his favorite jobs... and there have been so many. Among his gigs was a 12-year run as the purple grapes in the Fruit of the Loom campaign.
00:07:52 - Wayne and Dawn get into the HILF.
00:08:51 - Dawn Lays out her sources and research:
00:11:10 - The plan for this episode is to cover not only the history of cinnamon and the other spices that originated in the same time and place - but also why humanity has been so intrigued by them for so long.
00:14:40 - Let's fuck.
00:16:23 - Columbus sails the ocean blue in search of India and her elusive spices and accidentally bumps into the Bahamas. He has a bad reputation now, but it wasn't much better in his lifetime on account of the total lack of familiar spices in the 'New World.'
00:20:25 - The Pope, in an effort to cool tensions between Spain and Portugal, divides the world between them. The Treaty of Tordesillas established that everything 'non-christian' discovered West belonged to Spain and everything East belonged to Portugal. And thus began the race to see how far East was West and who - in the end - would claim the Spice Islands.
00:21:20 - The Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama sets sail South around the Cape of Good Hope and successfully crosses the Indian ocean to arrive in Calcut, India. It's an extraordinary encounter.
00:25:58 - The Portuguese in an effort to establish domination over the islands, leave Francisco Serrao as a representative to await their return. He has a string of wild adventures, eventually becoming BFF's and advisor to an Island sultan. He marries and never returns to Portugal... He does however, write a few letters to a guy named Ferdinand Magellan.
00:23:40 - Magellan sets sail on his history-making journey. The books say he circumnavigated the globe, but the details will reveal he - in fact died in the Philippines - and his exhausted, scurvy-laden crew had to hump one leaking boat back to Spain on their own. But, the Spanish still made a profit on the journey so...
00:32:18 - The Dutch arrive in the Spice Islands and after pushing the Portuguese and the English out - prove to be brutal overlords.
...But this is not the beginning of the story. It can't be. There was a love and value placed on Spice that inspired all of this exploration and exploitation. In Part II, we take the road even further up the annals of history to the ancients.
PART II
00:35:33 - Welcome back!
00:36:28 - The first known consumer of spice in history did not eat it. It was Ramses II and he had it shoved up his nose during his mummification.
00:38:45 - The first known myth about cinnamon predated Ramses II - it is the story of the Phoenix who is is resurrected from its ashes. Ashes that were, in the original legend, mixed with cinnamon.
00:40:00 - The Roman's loved spice too much? It is argued that it at least contributed to the Fall the empire. It was because their growing obsession with exotic spices sent a wave of gold East; while what they got in return was primarily burned, and if eaten, supplied no nutritional value.
00:41:43 - When the later European Christians dominated, they at first rejected spices as a uniquely pagan tradition. In later centuries, however, they embraced them and in much the same way, and with much the same results as the Romans.
00:45:18 - Dawn covers the many varied uses and applications for spices over the centuries. From medicine, to ritual, to sex aide.
00:50:00 - Constantine the Great was a sex expert - he literally wrote the book on it - and there are some gems.
00:52:00 - It turns out, however, our timeless obsession with spice - cinnamon in particular - is justified! Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago has proven it!
00:54:00 - The various spices pursued during the The Spice Trade fit nicely with the flawed medical wisdom of the time - that of The 4 Humors. It hinged on the idea that the health of a human being was tied to it's balance among being Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry. They were fairly arbitrary delineations that doctors - with both good and bad intensions - exploited for centuries.
00:56:30 - The end of the age, not too surprisingly, coincided with the beginning of one. The French one-armed thief, Peter Poivre, successfully stole cloves from Indonesia and successfully replanted them in France. It was 1776 and nobody cared anymore.
01:00:30 - One might be tempted to say that we as humanity have moved on from the silly ancient obsession with spices - and yet they are key ingredients in both Coca-cola and the top fragrance, Obsession by Calvin Klein... So have we?
Thanks, as ever, for listening!
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