Pod Insights You're Dead to Me The Columbian Exchange (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock and comedian Desiree Burch in the 15th century to learn all about the Columbian Exchange, which is often described as the start of globalisation.
In this episode, we go beyond the expeditions of Christopher Columbus to share the bigger story of a monumental exchange of plants, foods, animals, materials, people and culture across the continents. It’s also a life lesson on why you shouldn't set sail with a couple of cougars aboard your ship!
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Research by Roxy Moore
Written by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner
Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner
Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow
Project Management: Isla Matthews
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Transcript 5,698 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:46 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are journeying all the way back to 15th century America. And Europe, and Africa, and Asia for that matter, because we are getting to grips with the Columbian exchange. It's an epoch-making moment in history, which has been described by some historians as the birth of globalisation. And joining me to spin our big old globe are two very special guests. In history corner, she's senior lecturer in international history at the University of Sheffield. Not only is she a leading historian of the Aztecs, she has branched out across the Atlantic to explore how the indigenous peoples of the Americas travelled to and discovered, inverted
2:30 Greg Jenner? commas, Europe in the 1500s. And of course, you will remember her from our Aztecs episode, it's Dr Caroline Dodds-Pennock. Welcome back Caroline.
2:38 Speaker 04 Hello, thank you for having me back.
2:40 Greg Jenner? Pleasure, we're very excited to have you back. And in comedy corner, it wouldn't be a proper You're Dead to Me series without our star alumna. She's a comedian, actor, writer and host. You've seen her all over the TV, on Taskmaster, Frankie Boar's New World Order, The Horn Section, and you'll know her from multiple episodes of this very podcast, including recent highlights, History of Timekeeping and Paul Robeson, two of my faves, it's Desiree Birch. Welcome back Desiree.
3:04 Speaker 05 Thank you so much.
3:05 Greg Jenner? What do you know of the Columbian exchange? Is it a phrase you've heard before?
3:09 Speaker 05 No, it sounds very sexy, but I, if it's about Columbus, like, not sexy at all. You know, as an American, you learn, it's like, in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and you find out that he actually landed in the Caribbean and called it India because he got real mixed up somewhere about what direction he was heading. But like, he's Italian, right?
3:35 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
3:36 Speaker 05 So how did he, how did, how did he was like, I'm gonna leave my nation, go rock up in some other one and be like, hey, I'm gonna do all of this like, bad stuff for you and bring back a lot of gold and you're gonna love me and I'm gonna do it in your name, you're welcome, I'm out?
3:52 Greg Jenner? He was a freelancer, he was a jobbing freelancer, he was, you know.
3:55 Speaker 05 Okay, he was, he was working his hustle, so for that, we can give him credit.
4:00 Greg Jenner? So, what do you know?
4:07 Greg Jenner? This is where I guess what our listener might know about today's subject, and I do not think the Columbian exchange is a phrase people are knowing. But even if the phrase is unfamiliar, you will recognise the stuff that we're talking about today, because the consequences of 1492 shaped the modern world. And that's no understatement. We're talking people, animals, food, plants, even microbes. We're all introduced to new lands where they are now considered so normal that we don't even realise they are imports. So it's a massive moment in world history. And in terms of pop culture, the key player is Christopher Columbus himself, who you might recall from The Night of the Museum movie, which ironically was produced by a man called Chris Columbus. But what do we need to know about the Columbian exchange? Well, let's find out, shall we? Dr Caroline, let's start with the basics.
4:51 Greg Jenner? Who was this Columbus fellow? And why was he Italian?
4:54 Speaker 04 He was Genoese, he was Italian, and he leads expeditions funded by the Spanish Crown that in history have been credited with discovering America, even though he actually arrived in the Bahamas. He has four expeditions in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502. And in the beginning, he certainly thinks he's discovered India, which is why we call it the Indies, or they called it the Indies. And the term the Columbian exchange is invented in the 1970s by a scholar called Alfred Crosby to describe this big exchange, as Greg said. And it's a really Eurocentric term, because of course, it puts all the emphasis on Columbus, as usual, and white men going out and exploring
5:38 Speaker 04 things, as opposed to the exchange. But it's really important to realise that this is a reciprocal exchange.
5:43 Greg Jenner? Some historians would say 1492 is the beginning of globalisation. Some would say it starts earlier. Desiree, out of curiosity, how would you define the word globalisation?
5:54 Speaker 05 The way I think of globalisation is that, I hate to say one big happy family, because loads of people are not happy about it, but that essentially, we're no longer smaller, distinct cultures, countries, we're all sort of bleeding into one. Imperialism exported a lot of language and other stuff, and then there were goods taken. But then suddenly, Europe gets, I don't know, a banana or a pineapple or something. And everyone's like, woo! I don't know, mosh pit. It's global mosh pit.
6:20 Greg Jenner? Global mosh pit is a lovely line. I mean, Caroline, in a sentence, is global mosh pit a useful summary?
6:27 Speaker 04 It's not the one I would have gone for. But yeah, it's pretty fair. I think globalization is to do with the beginnings of global networks. And so some people locate it earlier with things like the Silk Roads. But if you look at 1492, networks tend to be within continents, even if they're quite big or within Africa and Asia. And by the time you get to 100 years later, the trade networks absolutely span the entire world.
6:52 Greg Jenner? So today, I mean, we are a comedy show and we're looking here for laughs and a little bit of energy. Obviously, this story has a huge amount of cruelty and horror when you look at the kind of grand scale of it. We're talking here about tens of millions of indigenous Americans dying. It's a story of colonial violence, of genocide, of devastating pandemics. It is not fun. It is not laugh out loud stuff. So we're deciding today not to focus on that. We're going to look instead on how the wider world was changed by the Columbian exchange. This sort of two-way spread of animals, foods, plants coming in and out of the Americas. And we're going to start with the cutest of all, which is the animals. If you were running your own ethical zoo, and we were going to call it Desiree's Menagerie, what lovely animals would you have in your little zoo?
7:36 Speaker 05 Oh, my goodness, that would be great. Okay, all the cats, giraffes, because I love giraffes. A bunch of different birds, just as many birds as we could get to stick around. All of the different colors, because I love birds. I mean, what else? I don't know. You want like a rhino there. And you want like random things that you forget are animals, like the aardvark and the capybara.
7:59 Greg Jenner? Caroline, Desiree's Menagerie sounds quite tricky to source.
8:05 Greg Jenner? But in 1492, or rather, pre-1492, in the Americas, how many of those animals are available on that landmass? I mean, birds, I'm guessing, giraffes, no?
8:16 Speaker 04 Well, if you think of the area that the Spanish arrived in, the Caribbean, the lands controlled by the Aztec Michica, what's now Mexico, there are very few large animals that you would put in a zoo. You're talking about mostly small animals like dogs, guinea pigs, turkeys and parrots being domesticated. There's some wild games, some deer. There's bison in the north, what's often called the American buffalo, which is pretty big. But apart from that, it's mostly small animals, small dogs like the chihuahua, for example.
8:45 Greg Jenner? Lovely.
8:46 Speaker 04 You have little dogs, but not big dogs. But then, of course, things like jaguars, you do have, I completely.
8:53 Speaker 05 Guinea pigs, voles, and then a jaguar.
8:56 Greg Jenner? Terrifying jungle cats.
9:00 Greg Jenner? And in terms of agriculture, what animals are pulling the ploughs? Because you've talked about small animals, so I'm guessing chihuahuas and guinea pigs are not the ones pulling the ploughs.
9:08 Speaker 04 They don't have ploughs. They use a digging stick is what there would be the English translation. So you have mixed agriculture where you have beans and corn or squash, things like that, together in one field. So instead, you have a human digging around them. You use manpower essentially. And if you want to move something, you don't use a large animal, you use water or people.
9:29 Greg Jenner? I mean, when we talk about indigenous peoples, I mean, you've talked about the Mexica, who we might call the Aztecs, and then there's the Inca in Peru. Obviously, there are many indigenous peoples in what we might call North America, who we would also sometimes say native Americans is a phrase sometimes used. They're all different from each other. It's not like this one great big body of people who agree on stuff.
9:47 Speaker 04 Absolutely. I mean, it's a vast number of peoples with infinite different kinds of beliefs and attitudes. In Mexico alone, you still have more than 60 indigenous languages spoken today. And hundreds of languages have been wiped out. Hundreds of tribes in North America and Canada. It's an infinite variety of people. But even though they're very different, they do tend to share a slightly different attitude to nature than Europeans do. They see themselves as more interdependent with nature, more alongside animals and other natural forces, rather than simply owning them and exploiting them.
10:22 Greg Jenner? We do have the Spanish introducing new animals, though. So we're talking today about an exchange. So we have the Spanish arriving in the early 1500s, I suppose, after Columbus, and they're bringing animals with them.
10:31 Speaker 04 So what you have is most of the large animals that we think of as things like cattle. So cows, sheep, goats, pigs, also big dogs, which they use for war, donkeys, as you said. All of these domestic animals that are seen as essential to European society are imported really early on. Cows are really key, and they make big changes to what happens in the landscape. You have reports as early as the 1520s of herds of like 500 cows on places like Hispaniola, maybe even 8,000. Then you have cattle ranches in Mexico from immediately after the conquest in 1521. And this has devastating effects on the landscape.
11:11 Speaker 05 Well, of course, because they were putting all their cow farts into the air already.
11:15 Greg Jenner? And they're eating, aren't they? They're sort of, I guess if you're grazing cattle, they're going to change the landscape and the ecology of an area. And the other thing, of course, is when you get that many cattle and you get ranches, what happens when you get ranches, Desiree? Who shows up then?
11:26 Speaker 05 I mean, people to rob the ranches. Like, you know, like, once you're there and you're stuck, you're sitting duck, you know?
11:34 Greg Jenner? It's true. Well, we get, this is the arrival of, I guess, chaps in chaps, by which I mean cowboys. Some ranches had 150,000 cattle.
11:42 Speaker 05 What does that even look like?
11:43 Greg Jenner? Or smell like, yeah. We've taken animals out into the Americas from Europe, and now let's do the reverse. So what other species, Desiree, are crossing back to Europe from the Americas?
11:55 Speaker 05 Interesting. Maybe the bison. If there's anything else that we haven't named that plows, like the llama, or that like will pull something, probably that. I can't imagine why you'd be like, let's get all these guinea pigs on a boat. Like, that is the weirdest version of Noah's Ark I can fathom.
12:11 Greg Jenner? I mean, Caroline, the most obvious one is birds, right? Very keen. I guess because birds are small, you can put them in cages. But birds are a real hit in Europe, aren't they?
12:19 Speaker 04 That's right. A lot of the things that you mentioned, Desiree, do get brought back just as curiosities, really, because they want to see these new animals. And it's a period of scientific interest. And one of the things that's most appealing in terms of its appearance is birds. And they have birds of amazing colors. They're thought really beautiful and vibrant and clever. You often see parrots in particular, trained parrots. Parrots are also a big thing. And other kinds of bird, like the quetzal, among indigenous people who use their feathers for clothing and for ritual decorations.
12:48 Speaker 05 Is this how pirates got parrots?
12:51 Speaker 04 I cannot pretend to be an expert in the pirate-parrot kind of conjunction. But, but yeah, I imagine so, because parrots are being trained really early on and brought across the Atlantic. So they're among the first things to be traded. Columbus has parrots in October 1492 on his first voyage. They start appearing on maps in the 16th century, and they start appearing in Renaissance paintings. In 1532, a French ship seized by the Portuguese had a cargo that supposedly included all these monkeys and jaguar skins and 600 parrots that supposedly could all speak French.
13:23 Greg Jenner? Oh, bonjour!
13:28 Speaker 05 I mean, worse than having the French mock you is having French parrots mock you because they'll just keep at it.
13:37 Greg Jenner? But let's move to a much smaller animal. Have you heard of the humble cochineal?
13:41 Speaker 05 No, but I can't wait to.
13:44 Greg Jenner? It makes a big impact, or rather a bug impact. Because it's a little insect, sometimes called a beetle. I don't think it is a beetle, but Caroline, what's a cochineal for?
13:53 Speaker 04 Well, cochineal is a tiny insect that lives on a kind of cactus. And it's native to the Americas. And if you squish it, it creates a red dye, a really vibrant red dye. Maya people and Aztec machika people have been using that from at least as early as the second century BCE that we know of. It colors ceremonial textiles, things for special events. It colors maps, Aztec paintings. The people who draw them are called the painters in red and black because of the red is such a big color in the paintings. And the Spanish really admire it, and so they start copying the usage. It's also known as carmine in Europe. People, so you might have heard it called carmine dye. And it sets really well on wool, so those two things together.
14:34 Speaker 04 And cochineal becomes such a huge thing that dyes are actually the second most valuable export from the Americas after silver. Because of course, they're very light, easy to transport, you can make a lot of money with them. And it transforms indigenous ways of life again because they start growing cacti rather than foodstuffs. So we have records of indigenous councils complaining about this basically nouveau riche class of ordinary people who've started making a lot of money and why aren't they growing the maize like they're supposed to?
15:02 Greg Jenner? Ah. Let's talk now about plants. Desiree, what do you think is the kind of number one plant exports?
15:10 Speaker 05 For me and my diet, I would say it's got to be the banana. I am fairly certain that Europe didn't have bananas because they're very, to me, associated with Costa Rica, Central America, whatever. I imagine that's where they came from, but in my head, that would be it because I find them so yummy. But I bet you it's something a lot more practical, like rice, maybe. No, did that come from China? I don't know. I just want it to be bananas.
15:35 Speaker 04 I don't think bananas are from the Americas. I think they're from... Indonesia and the Malay kind of. Okay, makes sense, makes sense. In terms of plant exports, probably the most important is particular kinds of wood, especially Brazil wood in the early period and then rubber later. So Brazil wood, the fact it's called Brazil wood tells you where it comes from. And it's exported partly because it's a very hard wood, but also it makes amazing red dye again. We are really addicted to red dye. I know. So the Spanish export cochineal and the French export Brazil wood.
16:12 Greg Jenner? But let's move on. What product is named after the 17th century French diplomat and scholar Jean Nicot?
16:19 Speaker 04 Nicot. I had no idea, man.
16:23 Greg Jenner? N I C O T.
16:25 Speaker 04 Nic- uh, N I C O- nicotine.
16:27 Greg Jenner? Yeah, there we go. Nicotine, so tobacco. So it's a huge part of indigenous life in the Americas. And after the Columbian exchange, it is farmed and grown in the Virginia colony. And it becomes one of the most consumed substances in the world, Caroline, doesn't it?
16:42 Speaker 04 That's absolutely right. And people, I think, forget that whenever anybody is smoking or chewing tobacco, a pipe, cigarettes, it's an indigenous practice that's been exported around the world. Tobacco in the Americas is seen by various indigenous cultures as essential to a physical, social, spiritual wellbeing. The earliest archaeological evidence for the use of tobacco seeds is around 2,500 to 1800 BCE in Peru. And it's used in really different ways by different indigenous communities. So in Mesoamerica, in ceremonial practice, in an elite practice, you tended to inhale smoke through pipes and cigars. Workers chewed tobacco laced with lime, which alleviated tiredness and thirst and hunger supposedly.
17:27 Speaker 04 You can use it in symbolic ceremonies. Europeans arriving were often made part of tobacco ceremonies. And it's one of the first indigenous things that Columbus encounters. He's presented with dried tobacco leaves in 1492 on the 12th of October, I think it is. And they're a ceremonial gift and then he throws them away.
17:45 Greg Jenner? We've also got the diplomacy history. Gift giving, which is a really important part of this story, the exchange element. And we do know of, as you said, the Maya people coming to the Spanish court. What is that moment like? How are they speaking to the Spanish king?
18:01 Speaker 04 Well, this is in 1544, when a group of Maya lords, led by a man who's become a great community hero among the Maya in his area. He leads an expedition to the Spanish court and several Maya lords come along with Spanish priests who are local and community elders. And they bring all these gifts. They bring with them, though, in relation to the Columbian exchange, all this amazing stuff. So they bring whisked chocolate, clay pots, chilies, beans, maize, ketsel feathers, loads of ketsel feathers. And these gifts have really symbolic meanings as well as practical ones. They're not just showing the riches of where they come from, but also the fact they're making cocoa.
18:46 Speaker 04 And they're the first people to make drinking chocolate in Europe that we know of. There's an earlier record of someone bringing beans, but this is the first record of drinking chocolate. And it's brought by indigenous people made at the Spanish court. And presumably that means there were women who aren't mentioned in the party because women are usually the people who make the chocolate.
19:04 Greg Jenner? Ah.
19:05 Speaker 04 They have this very successful expedition. And in return, the Spanish king gifts the delegation these huge silver bells for their church, as well as all these other objects, crosses and cloth and religious objects to spread Catholicism in the Americas.
19:19 Speaker 05 This is like when Homer gives Marge the bowling ball, right? Like, it's just like, we gave you all this, like, stuff that's important to us and useful and chocolate. And you're like, here's some Jesus stuff so we can wipe out your religion and your practices.
19:33 Speaker 04 There's a little bit more going on to it than that because actually, our pop bats is supposedly the first Maya chief to voluntarily convert to Catholicism. And he does that because he's seen what happens to other communities around.
19:45 Speaker 05 Is that voluntarily then?
19:48 Speaker 04 Well, that's the thing. Recorded as voluntarily is a careful phrasing, but it does seem like he deliberately realizes that if he acts in this particular way, it will protect his community. It's this amazing story of this incredible journey where they bring them, and the bells are so heavy, they sink into the ground on the way back. And one of them, supposedly you can still hear ringing under the ground during storms and things because they can't recover it. It's this amazing community history about that first connection.
20:17 Greg Jenner? Just a little mini quiz for you, Desiree. Which of these foods were not in European or Asian or African cuisine prior to 1492? Okay, so I'm going to list lots of foods here and you tell me which of them was not available. Okay, so tomatoes, squashes, chilies, avocados, pumpkins, papaya, potatoes, blueberries, peanuts. Which of those not available?
20:45 Speaker 05 Do you want to give me the list again?
20:48 Greg Jenner? I'm going to put you out of your misery instead. I'm going to say we've basically cheated you here. Every single one of them is from the Americas.
20:55 Speaker 05 I was going to say, where the heck did you get a papaya?
20:59 Greg Jenner? So, you know, we think about tomatoes in Italian cuisine. We think about the importance of squash in African cooking. We think about avocados.
21:06 Speaker 05 What were Italians eating before tomatoes?
21:08 Greg Jenner? Yeah, or potatoes. Imagine European food without potatoes, or Indian food without potatoes, or peanuts. I mean, these are all from the New World, as the Spanish are calling it. These are all from the Americas.
21:19 Speaker 05 So the colonialism is so woven into their identity that like they wouldn't even have the foods we consider to be Italian without that.
21:26 Greg Jenner? Exactly that. So, I mean, Caroline, do you want to talk us through some of these? And are there any ones I've missed out?
21:31 Speaker 04 Well, there are so many, really, that I could just list huge numbers. But some of the ones that we're less aware of are actually the most valuable in terms of contemporary global trade. So peanut oil and sunflower oil are two of the biggest things to come out of the Columbian exchange massively used in terms of modern value. Chilies are introduced to South Asian cooking by the Portuguese, and that's the beginning of a network that leads it then all across Africa and Asia, all being Except soybeans come from the Americas. You have these three plants that are so central, don't you, to indigenous cuisine, maize, beans and squash, called the three sisters that are grown together. Europeans are really, really sceptical of this kind of growing, but you remember it's
22:13 Speaker 04 only a hundred years or so later, they realise that you need to do crop rotation because of the land becoming deprived of nutrients, where the beans are putting the nutrients back into the soil. The indigenous people are doing an amazing job of farming. Tomatoes are really, really popular, of course. They are getting all across Italy and Spain and places by the end of the 16th century. The word tomato is from the Nahuahtl language, which is the Aztec language. They become really popular. Potatoes are variably introduced. Ordinary people are eating them quite early on, they recognise their potential. Plus, they're not listed as one of the things you might get taxed on. So of course, these new things start being eaten more widely because they're not in the list of things where people come and say, give me one tenth of your corn, or whatever it is.
22:58 Speaker 05 I will say from personal experience that poverty really will diversify your diet.
23:05 Greg Jenner? Let's get on to one of my favourite foods, the fanciest of all the foodstuffs, the humble, or rather not humble, pineapple. Caroline, why is the pineapple so exciting for Europeans? And can you tell us about the history of the pineapple?
23:18 Speaker 04 It just seems really, really exotic, I think. And also, it's very difficult to grow in Europe, which means that it's usually an import at the beginning, so it means you're rich enough to have one of them. Basically, it's really, really tasty and unusual for Europeans. Walter Raleigh says, "No man can express in words the excellence of that fruit. So far does it exceed all others?" He says, "They were always very understated, these Europeans." But as I say, it was very hard to grow, so it remains a luxury. And then, so you get these amazing surviving things in European houses where they've sculpted pineapples in the banisters and things. And it's a symbol of wealth and of luxury and also a conversation starter. You put it on your table and people go, "Ooh, what's that?"
24:01 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I mean, Desiree, you could actually rent a pineapple for your dinner party.
24:05 Speaker 05 Well, I've heard about this. It wasn't until I moved to the UK because I'm from California. There's pineapples. People will be having pineapples. It's just a sweet fruit. But like that, that when the pineapple came, like there were parties, like regal parties and people be like, yo, Claire got a pineapple at her house. And people will all just be like, we gotta go and look at it. And like, and I was just like, I mean, before TV happened, entertainment was sparse, was it not?
24:32 Greg Jenner? So that's a sort of huge global exchange. That's why it's called the Columbian exchange. Stuff comes in, stuff goes out and all these foods and all these plants and all these animals that are now everywhere in the world, they are being seeded into new lands, into into new fields, into new cultures and societies. It's an enormous transition. I mean, it's a really fascinating history, isn't it, Desiree?
24:54 Speaker 05 I mean, it's delicious, for sure. It's tragedy plus yummy food, which I think is a story of like all cultures.
25:03 Speaker 06 The nuance window!
25:09 Greg Jenner? This is where our expert, Dr. Caroline, talks to us for two whole uninterrupted minutes. And without much further ado, can we have the nuance window, please, Caroline?
25:18 Speaker 04 It's really easy, thinking about this topic, to end up creating this picture of a jolly cosmopolitan world, a place where Europeans and indigenous peoples exchange thoughts and goods and where their cultures and ideas entangled and where we get the roots of all the tasty things that make up our modern world. But what often gets forgotten, I think, is the human dimension in all of this. And when we do hear stories about the people involved, they're nearly always white men. Columbus, Magellan, Walter Raleigh with his tobacco and potatoes, even though he wasn't the first to bring either of those things to Europe. But indigenous people, as we've heard, also crossed the Atlantic from the very moment of first encounter. We heard about the Maya lords at the Spanish court. And it's really tempting to think of them as an exception. But what I want
26:02 Speaker 04 to point out is that in reality, tens of thousands of indigenous people came to Europe after 1492. These are the people who were smoking in the streets of Seville and preparing chocolate in family homes. They helped create the first indigenous alphabets. They demonstrated how to use Brazil wood canoes and hammocks. They transformed European languages and cultures. Some of these people, like the Maya lords, were elite ambassadors. Others were interpreters, traders, sailors, family members, servants. But the majority, and those people who most often get forgotten, were the tens of thousands of enslaved people who were sold into the slave markets of Europe after 1492. Close to 5 million indigenous
26:46 Speaker 04 people were enslaved before 1900, and many of them were shipped to Europe across the Atlantic in appalling conditions. Like many African and African descended peoples, indigenous peoples too were dragged into the brutal transatlantic slave trade. They're not always easily visible to us in these stories, but they are part of this global history and part of the Columbian exchange. And so I want people to remember to look for them when they're thinking about this story.
27:13 Greg Jenner? Thank you so much. Beautifully said. Desiree, I mean, that's a really important final thought, isn't it, from Caroline?
27:19 Speaker 05 That's huge. Thank you so much, because I think we tend to oversimplify our history, obviously, as you well know as a historian. But you don't think about indigenous people being on all of those boats, indigenous people working themselves into all of these European cultures as well. We don't hear about how important not just the goods and the products, but the people have been to the formation of global culture and European culture. So thank you.
27:46 Greg Jenner? Listener, if you want to hear more from Dr Caroline Dodds-Pennock, you can check out our episode on the Aztecs way back in series one. Or if you're desperate for more Desiree, of course you are, then you've got plenty to choose from. My personal fave, History of Timekeeping, because we had a lovely nerdy time, and I think you slightly lost your mind at one point about how timekeeping, like, rules the world.
28:04 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's overwhelming when you realise it.
28:06 Greg Jenner? It's a good episode. But if you've enjoyed today's episode, please leave a review online, tell your pals about the podcast, share it around, subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss any future episodes. But I'd like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we had the brilliant Dr Caroline Dodds-Pennock from the University of Sheffield. Thank you, Caroline.
28:24 Speaker 04 Thank you for having me on again and listening to me ramble about all of these fascinating things.
28:29 Greg Jenner? And in Comedy Corner, the Birch Queen herself, it is Desiree Birch. Thank you, Desiree.
28:33 Speaker 05 I mean, it is always a pleasure. I've learned so, so much.
28:37 Greg Jenner? So, thank you. Absolutely. It's fascinating stuff. And yeah, global history is everyone's history. So, you know, it's all interconnected. But to you, lovely listener, join us next time as we sink our teeth into more tasty historical treats. But for now, I'm off to go and see how much this pineapple is worth on eBay, because I reckon I can rent it out. Bye.
29:00 Greg Jenner? You're dead to me. It's a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4.
29:12 Speaker 07 Hello, I'm Brian Cox.
29:13 Speaker 00 I'm Robin Ince, and we're back for a new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. We have our 201st extravaganza, where we're going to talk about how animals emote when around trains and tunnels, or something like that. I'm not entirely sure.
29:27 Speaker 07 We're doing one on potatoes.
29:28 Speaker 00 Of course, we're doing one on potatoes. You love potatoes.
29:31 Speaker 07 I know, but...
29:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, you love chips, you love mash.
29:33 Speaker 07 I'll only enjoy it if it's got curry sauce on it.
29:34 Speaker 00 We've also got techno fossils, moths versus butterflies, and a history of light. That'll do, won't it?
29:40 Speaker 07 Listen first on BBC Sounds.
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30:55 Speaker 09 Ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself lost in the wild? If disaster struck, would you make the right decisions to stay alive? Real Survival Stories from the Noiser Podcast Network brings you astonishing tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations.
31:11 Speaker 10 It's the biggest tiger shark I've ever seen in my life. So I just swam. I just swam and swam as fast as I could.
31:19 Speaker 06 I realized those two parachutes tied up together is what a dead man sees. I am not going to survive.
31:26 Speaker 09 Real Survival Stories. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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