Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for an older episode of the show. This is part two of our series on beans called Reconsider the Bean. This episode originally aired on May Enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of our talk about beans. You know, I'm thinking this one's gonna be even even it's like a two bean salad if the last episode was a one bean salad. We've got a lot of great stuff to get to today. Well, this is one I think that especially will well. I don't know if it'll make everyone think about beans in an way, but it might in m chest because I feel like, especially in that first episode, we were kind of approaching or I was certainly approaching it. Like, you know, beans are are very interesting, but they're also kind of mundane, and they're the in this the mundane nature of beings seems to run deep. You have beamed doubt well to a certain extent. But uh, in the space between recording the last episode and uh in recording this one, I found a number of new angles and then um and then leap frogged off rokoff a couple of angles you explored, And I think it really paints a picture of beans as a far weirder um part of our world and are part of our culture and myth making, even if a lot of that weirdness has largely been sort of bled out um of sort of the like popular modern understanding of the food. Yeah, I think that's right. So if you out there still have bean doubts, allow us to try to evaporate them with some with some deft parching through today's episode. So I wanted to start off today by talking about philosophers and beings and a particular bean field slaughter from Greek history slash legend. So there are actually a surprising number of stories about Greek philosophers and beings. There was one that I came across, and in the last episode I mentioned this book that I had been quoting by Ken Alba called Beans a History from Bloomsberry Publishing in and I'm going to refer back to that book a lot in this episode two. But there was one thing I came across, and that that was talking about the cynic philosopher Diogenes, who the one fact you may remember about him, if if nothing else, is that he famously lived in a jar in Athens instead of in a house like on a shelf. No, not on a shelf. I think it was like out in the out in a public square or something. It's like a turned over jar. Uh. And and this is consistent with the idea of the Cynic school of philosophy, which is not about cynicism and the modern English use of the word which means the sort of I don't know, a pessimistic suspicion of others. Uh. The Cynic school of philosophy meant rejecting unnatural social norms and conventions and sort of being true to yourself, for true to your nature. So Diogenes was famous for violating taboos and rejecting the conventional norms of Greek culture in his day. So I think he was known for being dirty, of course, living in a big ceramic jar, for hanging out with dogs. I think, for being nude, and doing inappropriate things in public like if I remember correctly, there's a story that he uh decided to defecate while in the middle of watching a play. But apparently another way that he showed contempt for society's and norms and and the normal sort of like a food valorization scale, is that he made a point of eating a type of being known as lupins. Uh. This is a being that was considered in many cases only fit for feeding to animals or for the extremely poor and starving. Now, of course this is not true. Lupins are a perfectly good food if prepared in the right way, and they're part of many uh you know, food traditions around the world. But that, like we talked about in the last episode, there are often negative cultural and especially class associations with certain types of beans. And you can't say lupin's are are a very They're a difficult being. There there are being you really got to get to know because they've got these toxic alkaloids in them that you have to get out of them by soaking the beans for a long time, and supposedly you got to do all this other stuff to make them appetizing. But so I think by eating them Diogenes was sort of doing the equivalent of saying, like, you know, look at me, I'll eat dog food. I don't give a crap. But the the Greek philosopher being connection I really want to talk about is between Beans and Pythagoras. So the ancient Greek philosopher and religious leader Pythagoras lived from about five seventy to four nine d b c E. And though he was extremely influential, it is actually hard to know all that much with certain t about the life of Pythagoras because none of his writing survives, so we have nothing from his own hand, and the earliest accounts of his life and teachings come from hundreds of years after he lived, and they often differ substantially from one another. So when exploring basically any factual claim about Pythagoras and his teachings, there's going to be disagreement within our sources and in the analysis of modern scholars. So unfortunately there's not a lot you can say about him with certainty. But with that in mind, there's a lot of stuff you can say about him that can be understood as according to some sources. Right, we have echoes of Pythagoras, uh As opposed to just Pythagoras like itself in a pure recorded form right. But in these echoes from Pythagoras some really interesting facts emerge. So a bit of basic background. Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, again some time around the year five seventy bc uh. He was said to have traveled extensively around the ancient world and youth, and he eventually founded a sort of religious commune in Croton, a place in the south of Italy. Pythagoras taught some kind of mystical beliefs that unified aspects of metaphysics about the soul and the universe with mathematics and numbers, which seem to occupy some kind of sacred position in his worldview, as well as music which tied in with the mathematical aspects, and also teachings about nutrition and politics, so like in the realm of politics. It seems that the Pythagoreans disdained tyranny, and they really disdained democracy. They favored a kind of oligarchy where the body politics would be ruled by supposedly the best of men, you know, rulers appointed for their virtues. That always works out. Yeah. And in terms of nutrition, again there's some disagreement, but the Pythagoreans were widely understood to be vegetarians, eating bread, honey, and vegetables. More on that in a bit now, as with his life and his teachings, there are a bunch of conflicting accounts of the death of Pythagoras. But I wanted to start with one of these stories about his murder at the hands of a mob, and oh god it again it's hard to keep all these straight. But I think in this account, or at least in some of these accounts, he's attacked by a mob that favors democracy. So the people have spoken and and it is time for Pythagoras to be slaughtered. So this account comes from the writing of Diogenes Laertis, who is probably writing sometime around the third century CES. So understand that it's like hundreds of yours, like seven hundred or eight hundred years after Pythagoras lived as a long time later. Oh, and this is translated by a CD younge. Diogenes writes the following Pythagoras died in this manner when he was sitting with some of his companions in Milo's house. Some one of those whom he did not think worthy of admission into it, was excited by envy to set fire to it. But some say that the people of Crotona themselves did this, being afraid lest he might aspire to tyranny, and that Pythagoras was caught as he was trying to escape and coming to a place full of beans, he stopped there, saying that it was better to be caught than to trample on the beans, and better to be slain than to speak. And so he was murdered by those who were pursuing him. And in this way also most of his companions were slain, being in number about forty, but that a very few did escape. So what I when I first read this, I was like the pigeon and moonraker that does a double take? I did that? What? What? So? According to this story, Pythagoras and his followers were running away from a violent mob, and they came to a bean field, and they decided it was better to stop running and get chopped to pieces by the crowd than to step on the beans. This is the first time I'll mention this, but I probably mentioned it again. So in the previo this episode, I made a statement about how how you know beans are less interesting compared to corn, that corn is spook here, that it's children of the corn, not children of the being that uh and and uh and likewise, you know you would you would maybe be afraid of he who lurks behind the rows in the corn field, but not in the bean field. Like there's something about a corn field that can be kind of creepy, especially in Stephen King's stories. But when when we look back through uh in this account, but also in other accounts that will look at later on, we really get the feeling that that the I mean certainly there were no corn fields in Italy at this at this time, like beans bean fields were that place. So if you can imagine a Stephen King's story where Solar, a fringe religious leader on the run, refuses to go into the corn, would rather face death by mob, but then go into the corn, like that makes sense in a Stephen King's story. So just sort of imagine that it's beans instead of corn in the Stephen king universe, and I feel like we get an appropriate idea of how Pythagoras and his followers are are believed to have felt at this point right, at least according to this story, But yeah, you're you're exactly right. I love it. And and and there are other versions of the story, by the way, particularly told by one author named Iamblicus, who say that it was not Pythagoras himself who died because he wouldn't cross a bean field, but that it was a cadre of his disciples who were chased to the edge of the field and then accepted this gruesome death rather than cross it. And in iamblicus version in particular, there's this detail that the last member of pythagoras Is followers who were slain was a pregnant woman named Timyka, who bit off her own tongue rather than reveal the secret of why the beans were prohibited. That's more, that's more walking behind the rose. I think, yeah, yeah, that's that's some straight up Stephen king jus right there. Now. As I mentioned, there are other accounts of the death of Pythagoras, But what we know is that either this account is in some way based on the truth, or if not, it was at least considered plausible enough to believe given what people knew about Pythagoras in the ancient world, and it seems that one of the things widely known about him was that he really disdained beans. Have come across some really good illustrations of him, you know, just saying like no to beans. Like he's standing next to a bunch of beans and he's like, uh yeah, both hands up, looking away, get away. So why on earth would anybody believe that that this ancient Greek religious leader would rather die a painful, bloody death than trespass the bean field. Well, there are a ton of possible answers, and in a way, I think they're all fascinating. But here's one of the main ones that I wanted to talk about, and we will go through a number here, as as explored by Alba in his book, But one of the main things comes down to a teaching that is consistently associated with Pythagoras in the earliest writings about his life, which is that he taught the metaphysical doctrine known as metam psychosis, which is usually translated into English as the transmigration of souls. This is actually very similar to other ideas of reincarnation that you might have encountered before. So according to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The Pythagoreans believed that there was an immaterial and immortal soul that was separate from the body. This soul would survive the death of the body, and after the death of the body, the soul would be installed in a new body, possibly the body of another human or another animal. And this probably connects to one of the other Pythagorean teachings that I mentioned before, which is that it's widely understood that the Pythagoreans preached against the eating of meat. He and his followers were said to be vegetarians. And if if he was both a vegetarian and a believer that that human souls and animal souls would transmigrate back and forth into human and animal bodies, you can kind of see how these beliefs would fit together, like if you were to eat a chicken or a cow, you might literally be cannibalizing a dead relative. Now, if this is truly what Pythagoras taught, it is not known for sure where he got this idea, though it's been speculated that he could have acquired it from Indian thought during his travels. It has has said that he traveled all over the ancient world. But where this idea comes from, we just don't know. Yeah, I mean it obviously it sounds like a in many ways, like a less robust version of of reincarnation as you encounter it in in in Buddhism and Hinduism. Uh. But yeah, so it would be interesting if this was an idea that he picked up in his travels. There are some ancient authors, like I recall reading somewhere that I think it might have been Herodotus who said that Pythagoras got this idea from the Egyptians. But I don't think there's any indication that Egyptian religion ever featured reincarnation in this way, so that seems to be probably a mistake on herodotus part. Now, a slight variation on the reasoning here is just that vegetarianism was considered consistent with a non violent way of life preached by the Pythagoreans. But so this makes sense, right. You don't know the exact reason, but it would seem to all sort of fit together if he believed in the transmigration of souls and also preached vegetarianism that you know, don't eat animals because they might have souls that you would you know, wouldn't want to be eating in them. But then there's this other strange dietary prohibition of the Pythagorean cult, which is that Pythagoras allegedly forbade his followers to eat beans, which again, modern vegetarians and vegans, you know, you know that you need the beans. Yeah, exacting, and it seems counterintuitive in several ways. Yes, this is a problem right now. At the time, within Greek culture, these would have been over overwhelmingly. This would have been referring to fava beans, like the Faziola's genus that gives rise to many of the common beans we eat today. That is a genus that comes from the America's and had not crossed the the Atlantic yet. So probably what they're talking about here are fava beans. So though I guess there could have been lentils and stuff too, but it seems they were referring to fava beans, and fava beans were a common source of food for people and for grazing animals like for cattle in the Mediterranean at the time. Of course, beans are an especially important food if you're a vegetarian, So why would Pythagoras have forbidden not only eating them, but even treading upon them, even going into a field where they're being grown. Well, here I'm want to quote from Albola's book. Quote. The simplest and perhaps most plausible explanation is that beans are part of the whole cycle of reincarnation and they house human souls. To eat a bean is thus a form of murder. This was Varros explanation, and Orphic Fragment puts it like this, eating beans and gnawing on the heads of one's parents are one and the same. I think that's a sufficiently vivid image, right, Like you you want to eat beans? How would you feel about chewing on your dad's head? It's very it's very dantee and actually it makes me think of Count Ugolino and Archbishop grou Giery. But anyway, so yeah, the idea here would be that beans contain souls, potentially human souls. Now there's more. Now I want to get into more explanation on that mode of thinking in a bit, But first I also just wanted to mention some alternative explanations offered by other writers over the centuries, which Albola sort of catalogs and discusses. Now, there are some explanations for the being prohibition that would be based in politics, So I think these would be more sort of metaphorical interpretations of the idea that the Pythagoras would would have being scorn. One idea here is that beans were a symbol of democracy, the democracy that Pythagoras hated, because beans were used to cast votes. Right, you might have a jar where if you want to vote ya, you put in a black bean, and if you want to vote nay, put in a white bean, or maybe you put in different jars. You something like that. It can be a it can be a way to tally anonymous votes. Of course in a proper oligarchy. Uh, nobody would need to vote with beans, right, that's right, the best rule. And then do you just keep your beans at home or in the field? Uh? Yeah, or you or you just keep them away. But also the idea here is that there could be a political implication, which is just that beans are the food of the working class, whereas meat was preferred by the rich elites, and probably in Pythagoras's view, the better people, the people who deserve to rule because of their virtues would have been associated with meat, while you know, whereas the people who don't know how to rule a city, that they would be the people eating beans. I guess one way the one thing we have to sort of think about with this, this idea of this being the part of the pythagora and belief system is to realize too that like, it doesn't mean they were necessarily going out trying to liberate the bean fields or or necessarily trying to change the way that other groups UH consumed food. They could have been very like closed off from them and saying this is how we live, this is and then we are better for it. Um. I think that's that's kind of a distinction. I think in general we have to keep in mind when thinking about different religious religious groups in the contemporary world for sure, but also just historically, that that not every religious group is going to be about about spreading their belief system to all around them, right, and not all like religious dietary restrictions are meant to be a universal rule. Right. For example, I think there are a lot of religious scholars of say like Judaism and Islam that would say, like prohibitions on pork and other types of food that are prohibited within that religion are not meant to be universal prohibitions, but their prohibitions for the faithful. Right. But then again, I'm not sure if we That's a possibility always when you're considering dietary restrictions that are advocated by religious groups. But I do recall coming across at least one legend, though one for I don't recall the source of this, where Pythagoras was said to have tried to convince a cow not to eat fava beans. So if you're if you're preaching the cows, that's probably it probably means you want all humans to obey as well, right, But then again, that also sounds like a perfect parody of someone whose belief system you're you don't agree with, don't completely understand. You're like, oh, I bet Pathagoras is out there. What's he gonna do? Is gonna tell the cows not eat beans? Yeah? That though, that that could very well be the context there. Um, Okay, So there are other possible explanations. One is more nutritional and psychological, you know, pretty straightforward, beans give you gas, and gas prevents you from having a clear head, and a lot of ancient philosophers were really concerned about like cutting things out that would cause problems in the body, that would interfere with you having clear thinking. You gotta have a clear head to live a good life, and so you can't be going around farting. You know, this is this is interesting because I was I was thinking about this like it in terms of how we think about flatulence and plate us. We it's easy to have a very like one to one vision of that, you know, the idea of like, well, farting is distracting and you don't want to do it, that's gonna mess with your mental um outlook, or you know, we'll or we'll get into some of these ideas later where it's like, well, a fart is a ghost. You don't want ghosts coming out of your but you know that kind of thing. But uh, there's an idea that I ran across in a book that I was I was really enjoying reading through a book called Plants of Life Plants of Death by Frederick J. Simoons and We which which deals not not only with beans but various other plants entered traditions in a number of different cultures in the East and in the West, and uh in Africa, etcetera, about how there are these different ideas of life and death wrapped up in them. And in getting into the idea of of beans and flatulens and in discussing Pythagorean bean bands, uh, he discussed several of the possibilities, but but one that I hadn't really thought about was the connection between flatuns and bad dreams. And he cred it's uh Fridericus bomb in this idea. But I've also read that Diogenes touched on this in considering Pythagorean ideas quote one should abstain from fava beans since they are full of wind and take part in the soul. And if one abstains from from them, one stomach will be less noisy, and this is key, one's dreams will be less oppressive and calmer. Now, that quote attributed to uh uh two Diogenes was brought up in a l A Times article on beings from by Russ Parsons. But I thought that was that that was interesting, perhaps more telling. Yeah, if you're if your sleep is troubled, if your dreams are troubled, troubled because you're you're going to bed gassy with beans, then that that could very well darken your outlook on life or or mess with your head, especially in an age where you have, you know, maybe more supernatural ideas. Uh. Concerning dream teams and the interpretation of dreams, Yeah, that's really interesting. But I mean another way to think about it, though, I guess it's like it's kinda like the coach of the chess team is also going to be like telling all of their players, like, don't eat cookies right before you don't eat pickles when you're going to bet or something. Yeah, they're trying to keep their people in in like ship shape. Yeah. Like reading through some of the other stuff in Simons book, there's you get into a lot of their prohibitions against foods because their connection to dreams, but also prohibitions against foods that could be consumed in a dream. Like it's not not that you shouldn't eat basil before you go to bed, but you've offered basil within the dream you should abstain. Um. Now, I was looking for more as to promise I can't keep Yeah, yeah, I mean once you're in the dream, and then not to say nothing of the dream within a dream. Um. But but I was looking around it for a little bit more about this, And I found an echo of this sentiment in Iranian tried traditional medicine uh in the two thousand fourteen paper Insomnia and Iranian Traditional Medicine by face of Body at all UH. Here's the quote. Upward movement of rancid vapors towards the brain due to eating flatulent and vaporous foods beans, lintel, leak and finn of Greek cause upward movement of vapor towards the head, heavy headed, feeling headache, depraved, delusion, nightmares, and consequently awaking at night and fearing during sleep. So yeah, I think after reading that, I'm even more convinced. Yeah, if you're if you're you know, gassy and full of nightmares and flatus is waking you up in the night. Um, I could see where that could lead into some ideas that, yes, these are some foods that should be avoided, certainly before you go to bed, but maybe in general if the if the dreams are bad enough, well that makes me want to respond to to to these folk beliefs with some actual science on farting and beans. So what if we take a brief little detail here on the science of lagoons and flatulence. Yeah, let's get down to it. Okay. So the question is do beans cause flatulence? That seems to be a widely believed association, and if so, why do they cause flatulence? Well, the answer seems to be yes, they do, but maybe not as much as you might think, and that there are very good, well known reasons why they cause flatulence. So the gas produced during the digestion of beans is actually not produced by the cells of your body themselves, but by your gut microbiota, the bacteria, particularly in your large intestine that breakdown molecules that your own metabolism sort of gives up. On dried beans even after cooking, usually contain compounds known as oligo saccharides, and I found an article in the Journal of Nutrition explaining this. This was by in fact, I wonder if we have cited this article before. It may have come up in our Pardonomicon episode several years back. Um, but this is by Donna M. Wyndham and Andrea M. Hutchins from the Nutrition Journal, called Perceptions of Flatulence from being consumption among adults in three Feeding Studies. This was published in two thousand eleven, and so I just wanted to look at the relevant paragraph where they break down the metabolic pathway that causes flatulence as a result of eating dried beans. So quote, most lagoons contain relatively high amounts of both dietary fiber and resistant starches. These would be the oligosaccharides I just mentioned. The soluble oligosaccharides found in lagoons are not digestible by human intestinal enzymes alone. Instead, oligosaccharides such as raphinos and stachios are broken down by bacterial fermentation in the intestines. Although some rectal gas is due to the ingestion of air, the majority of flatulence is produced from bacterial fermentation. The byproducts of this degradation are hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and sometimes sulfur depending on the bacteria. Normal intestinal processes move these gases out of the body in the form of flat us. So the primary cause of of beans leading to farts is the action of the bacteria in the gut. I think specifically the large intestine fermenting these starches that the body can't break down on its own these oligo saccharides, and the authors also point out that while there is evidence that eating beans can increase flatulence on average, there is a lot of individual variations, so they're not going to increase flatulence or increase it in the in the at the same rate for everybody. UH to quote from the results of their feeding studies a measuring flatulence quote, less than fifty percent reported increased flatulence from eating pinto or baked beans during the first week of each trial. Only nineteen percent had a flatulence increase. With black eyed peas a small percentage. Three to eleven percent reported increased flatulence across the three studies, even on control diets without flatulence producing components and so yes, it does appear that on average, beans do increase flatulence, but they say that people's concerns about excess farting from eating beans maybe exaggerated compared to how much difference they actually make. Now, coming back to a note that's explored an Albola's book on this mentioning that these these starches that can't be broken down by the body itself but have to be fermented by the bacteria in the gut, these oligo saccharides, they have to be fermented in the large intestine, specifically as a product of eating dried beans, not fresh beans. And this is interesting because you can see how that has um sort of it translates to the differing reputations of these vegetables. Like fresh green peas are beans that they are of the family Fabaci, and I've never heard anybody link green peas to flatulence. They're eaten fresh. Fresh green beans are beings. They're beings still in their pods. They're actually the common being Fasiolus vulgaris. And yet they don't have this association either, so they don't seem to create these oligo saccharide problems. But there's a trade off, of course, which is that by being served fresh, they have to be more they have to be served more seasonally, or they have to be frozen. They don't offer the same advantages in terms of the simplicity and durability of their storage and shelf life version that that you get from dried beans. But anyway, Okay, scientific digression on flatulence done Now, I want to move back to albola cataloging the reasons that Pythagoras might have disdained the eating of beans. So another explanation that has been given by writers over the years is, well, what if it's just because beans are too delicious, you know that this is basically a prohibition against gluttony. This is perhaps plausible, though it doesn't seem to fit with most of the other thinking of the time that looked on beans not as like a decadent luxury, but as like the exact opposite of that. Maybe maybe this was just offered by some ancient writer who personally really loved beans, or perhaps you know, the idea that it's what it's something available in bulk enough that that more people can be gluttonous about it. I don't know, maybe I mean, but but yeah, you don't see that coming up a lot like the bean is not the symbol of gluttony. You don't think of Uh well no, no, I don't think you do. You don't think of the mean like it again, it is. It is often attributed as sort of the food of the common man. Okay, now we're going to get into sexual biomagical explanations of which there are a number. So in this category we get into some really weird territory under this explanation, and this was this was again put forward by a number of ancient writers who were commenting on abstention from beings. Uh. In this explanation, beans are to be avoided because, in various ways, they either resemble human genitals or they have something to do with sex, procreation, or regenerative power. And there there are several ancient stories that compare fava beans in particular to female genitals. But there's another one that connects all the way back to the transmigration of souls explanation. And this goes from the connection to of beans to testicles. Here I want to read from Albala again. Quote Aristotle picks up this thread when he explains that beans are like testicles, but adds that they are like the gates of hades in being the only plant that has no joints. That's some great Aristotle logic. Now what would that mean? Well, Albila continues that is, bean stems are hollow and have no nodes, and thus serve as a kind of elevator shaft from the underworld, the means of exchange for souls. Actually, they are specifically compared to a ladder. And this makes sense if one has ever seen fava bean pods protruding horizontally from a plant. They do resemble a ladder. This would explain the reluctant to run through a bean field and trample the stems, as well as the ban on picking the pods or rungs of the ladder. In short order, Aristotle also claimed that the beans were avoided because they are like the form of the universe, perhaps again a veiled reference to their regenerative power. Even otter is the idea that a nibbled being leaf in the sun will smell like semen or the blood of a murdered person, which must smell different from ordinary blood. Uh. The good editorializing from all their uh. In any case, all of these notions point to the idea that beings are some transitional form of human in the great transmigration of souls. Yeah, this one is putting flatulence in my brain. The papers are floating up. This is the kind of a statement here that it can feel like like genuine madness setting in you know where, where too many connections are made between unrelated things and and then you end up seeing like the human soul in everything around you. Um, it just sounds like just falling into the philosophic deep end and sinking to the bottom. Well, we're going to sink even farther the same types of associations they keep going on. So Albola explores some linguistic connections between ancient words for beings in various languages, I think primarily in like Indo European languages, and associations between that and words for swelling or rotund nous, which could in some ways connect to ideas of swelling up with flatulence, but also to pregnancy, fertility, in the generation of life, and in the latter vein. Many ancient authors seem to make an association that seems quite bizarre, probably to most modern listeners, but an association between foods that make you fart and foods that make you sexually potent. Again. This there's basically a linguistic conceptual logic to it, especially in ancient Greek thought, and Albola explains it like this, So, so you've got numa, you know, this is where we get like the word pneumatic p n e u m A meaning air or breath or soul. The Latin equivalent would be anima, as in like animated, like an animal is. So there's already this existing linguistic association between like the breath or the gas and and what the soul is and that this is the principle that animates a being and makes it alive. So like in much ancient Greek thought, when you die, your your breath leaves you, you know, like the gas of your soul evaporates from your body. And also in the creation of life, there's a breathing of life into things as an exchange of gas. Literally. Elbow rights that the numa quote was the basic principle of life, and it is generated in the stomach in the form of gas, just as it is transferred in the act of reproduction. This also explains the bizoe our association among authors like plenty of flatulence with the libido. In other words, eating beans not only makes you fart, it helps you conceive the being actually contains the regenerative force, and so this can be applied in multiple different ways. Elbow rights that, uh that you know, you may want to eat beans to absorb the power of these souls if you're trying to like stimulate the farting and the libido part of your body. But like the pythagoreans, you might do want to do the opposite and avoid eating these beans because of the sort of like windy regenerative soul power that's contained within them. Very weird. Now, we've been exploring a lot of the explanations that lie behind this in terms of I don't know, linguistic associations and religious thinking and stuff, but there are also some biological realities that Elbola explores that could possibly have to do with beans uh and and how they could have influenced the creation of this story about byThe Aggaras. These following explanations that I'm going to mention are not things that were explored by any ancient writers. These are are modern explanations that have been offered. And the first is based on a heritable genetic condition that causes an enzyme deficiency. So most people can eat fava beans and breathe the pollen of fava bean flowers and they're just fine. But there is a very rare inherited medical condition that causes a specific enzyme deficiency in the body, which can in turn cause catastrophic reactions to the ingestion of fava beans or fava bean pollen uh. And this condition is known as favi is um, caused by an underlying glucose six phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency or G six p d D. People with G six p d D can have horrible, even deadly reactions to fava beans in their pollen, and if a person with this condition eats fresh raw fava beans, it can lead to a reaction called acute hemolytic anemia, or the sudden destruction of copious amounts of the body's red blood cells now outwardly. This can result in symptoms like fatigue, difficulty breathing, fever, yellowing of the skin, dark urine, and in extreme cases, it can even be fatal. So a question some modern scholars have posed is could Pythagoras have prohibited fava beans because he witnessed somebody having an acute reaction due to G six p d D. Interesting possibility, but it seems like one of the I mean, there are a lot of explanations like this for records of the ancient world that like fit together in interesting ways. But I didn't. I don't feel like there's any particular reason to favor this hypothesis. No, I mean, it seems plausible. You know, either he witnessed this or he heard accounts of this happening. Hey, some people have been known to eat java beans and grow, you know, extremely ill or even die. But yeah, if we don't have any specific cases for it, specific instances in in the writing, then yeah, I don't know if we should put too much emphasis on a yea. One thing is it is interesting about the idea of avoiding not just eating the beans, but avoiding running into a bean field, like if the pollen could even trigger the reaction. I mean, that's kind of interesting. You could definitely see it potentially playing into some of these ideas, especially if we get when we get more and more into this, this this realization that the bean fear and the being holiness here is by no means just uh, something that jumped out of Pythagoras's head, right, This seems to have been a cultural idea, perhaps a widespread cultural idea, but we'll get more into that in a minute. Now. Another interesting scientific observation, Again, this is not from ancient interpreters. This one might be original to all below, but at least it's it's not ancient. Um. This could complement the previous evidence that Pythagoras believed beings to contain souls, and the simple fact here is that sometimes it looks like being plants bleed yeah, there's a chain of biological causes at work here. Essentially, being roots can become infected by a bacterium known as rhizobium, and these bacteria thrive in tiny little oxygen starved chambers within the roots or nodes on the roots, and the bacteria exists in a mutualistic relationship with the bean plants. So the bacterium is, according to Albola, able to extract ammonium nitrate from the atmosphere, which it shares with the plant, which is good for the plant. And then the plant provides these little anaerobic nodes for the bacteria to live on and in, and they both create proteins that bind whatever free oxygen is available with the help of iron molecules. This might be familiar to people who an anything about animal biology or medical science. Albolo rights quote. This protein is called leg hemoglobin and functions much in the same way hemoglobin does in our blood, binding oxygen with iron for our bodies to use in cellular respiration. Moreover, when cut, the nodes are red exactly like blood. So imagine being in the ancient world. You cut open a bean plant, there are parts of it that if you cut cut open might bleed or look like they're filled with blood, and these little nodes would look red like human blood for basically the same reason that human blood is read. Now, I know a lot of you are probably thinking right now, you're thinking, well, I bet Pythagoras just hated beats then, um, And you know, actually, according to Simmons, we do see aversion to beats in some cultures. He he mentions prohibitions against quote certain plants as food or temple offer rings because their coats, flesh, or juice are similar to blood and meat in color. So he cites examples members of the Bannaya caste of the of the Punjab with meat prohibitions here extending two carrots, turnips, onions, and red lentils. Also the prohibition of beat roots and tomatoes at Brahmin meals and and Gujarat as well as Havoc Brahmin's in South India, among others. And he mentions, um, how Frasier got into this a bit as well, the idea of like similarity between things. Uh So, so that's Interating's not again not specifically talking about Pathagoras in this instance, but we do see this sort of thing in other cultures enough to realize it's you know, it's kind of a universal, uh, phenomena of of of of humans engaging with their food. Sometimes the food reminds you too much of a thing that is prohibited, and the prohibition will extend to those things. If not in an every day way, then certainly within the realm of sacred ritual. When it comes to beat specifically, I can imagine another cause for for for beat scorn, which would be possible horror at going to the bathroom after consuming beats, which can be even though it doesn't hurt you, it just visually you could be quite alarming. Yes, yeah, new parents always warn your child the first time they have a lot of beats or or blue cupcakes, either one. Now I mentioned the idea that there, you know, this idea of being weirdness and beans and death and reproduction and so forth, that it doesn't just emerge right out of Pythagoras's head, that it is perhaps more universal. That's an argument that Simmons makes in his book. Uh. He writes quote, since parallels to Pythagoraean beliefs about the fava being are found in the being beliefs involving various species of beans of widely scattered non Indo European people's in Uganda, India, Japan, New Guinea, and the New World. We are likely dealing with basic human reactions to beans or lagoons in general, which I thought was interesting. Yeah, okay, so this would be the idea that since there's there are similar kinds of being fascination and being magical beliefs in all these different cultures that don't necessarily share like say, language or cooking traditions or anything like that, it might be something more just like about the raw biology of beans that causes people to have these sort of thoughts like maybe the ways they look or things they do when you eat them, Yes, and just thinking too hard and too long about how they relate to our own worldview and magical ideas. At this point, I want to I want to run through just a few other being uh ideas that that that Frederick J. Simmons brings up in Plants of Life Plants of Death. These these are all related to so what I loosely categorized as being death folk reliefs uh sort of leaning into the Stephen king esque um world of of of beans in the bean field being a place of death, a pay, a place of connection to the underworld and potentially rebirth. Okay, so we're gonna walk behind the pods, yes, so um uh. He points out that there was a British folk belief that pregnant women should not eat beans because it could impact the child mentally. Additionally, bean blossoms have an evil reputation in Northern and Midland England in coal mining districts, because it was long held that coal mining accidents were far more likely to occur when bean plants were blossoming. He also writes that, according to German folk belief, beans and peas were quote cult foods of demons, so it was best not to eat them on nights that were quote favorable for magical divination. Now I have to admit that that all kind of sounds like a riddle to me. I'm not exactly sure what that would mean, You like, don't get down with the fava beans on vol purchase knocked. Yeah, yeah, something like that. I would imagine, um uh. Because and and certainly there's some more examples where we see beans connected to specific uh dates, specific traditional festivals. Because also in Germany there were superstitions that eating peas on the twelfth night, that's the twelfth night after Christmas. Uh that this would give you vermin infestations or leprosy, and it beans peas or lintels during this time could at least make you itch if you were to consume them. Now, there's another British folk belief that bean fields are inhabited by ghosts and spirits, and in nineteenth century Leicestershire it was said that if you slept in a bean field all night, the awful dreams and resulting desires would just drive you insane, like you would just you would not survive a night in the bean fields. Sleeping a night in the bean field would be like sleeping a night in a haunted house. Who but, due to my being love, I want to say it's gonna be like that Simpson's episode where they have to spend the night in the haunted house to discover that the tap water tastes better than the stuff they have at home. Now, UM, I know what a lot of you're probably thinking. You're a probably thinking, well, this is all well and good, But did beans ever march in battle bringing forth an army of the undead to march alongside it, like walking trees and Welsh smith. Well, yes they did, because Simmons points to the writings of the Welsh bard uh Talison, who described just such a scene, quoting quoting the work um the Elm trees he quotes quote stood firm in the center of the battle. Heaven and earth trembled before the advance of the oak tree. The heroic Holly and Hawthorne defended themselves with their spikes. And then meanwhile, the beans took part in battle by quote, bearing in its shade an army of phantoms. So beans and spirits again. Yeah, yeah, this idea that, like the beans, the bean field is where you find the ghosts that will drive you either you know, mad or fill you with maddening desire. And the idea that you have the trees were to to into all the plants were to rise up and march in an army, then beans would surely lead an army of phantoms into battle. I love that, Okay. I think we have a serious deficiency in the horror fiction and horror movies of today, a deficiency of bean themed horror. Right. This has got to be somebody's got to pick up on this. I feel like we have just largely abandoned our our understanding of of supernatural beings outside of like the one you know of fairy tale about magic beings that grow up gateways to the world of the giants. Now, speaking of fava beans, I was looking at a University of Copenhagen study looking into the possibility of fava beans taking over more from soybeans to meet the increasing popularity of plant based meat alternatives, specifically in Denmark. The argument here is that fava beans put less strain on the environment as a crop, and unlike soy, they can be grown locally in Denmark as opposed to having depend on soy which is largely grown in the United States and in South America. UM. And that in particularly in South America, that's where you get into some of the in the real environmental concerns about you know, what kind of land is being transitioned into soy growing land. UM. But the particular study here highlights the use of wet fraction nation to concentrate fava being protein and removed digestion inhibiting substances in the beans, and the result is dry fractionated fava being protein rich flower uh so I don't know where that will ultimately go, but it's it's an interesting, uh, interesting bit of of info there and potentially insight into the future again thinking about um you know, turning more and more to UM two artificial meats and uh and being based diets and returned to the bean fields and and perhaps returned to you know, beans, depending on beans that that grow more naturally within a given region. Now there's another great being I wanted to talk about for a bit here, and that's the black eyed pea, also known as the cow pea. And yes it's called a p but it is a proper bean. It's in the family for base And the modern species name of the cow pea is vigna on guiculata, which was once known as Vignus and insis because it was believed to have come from China, but this is now known to be incorrect. Modern botanists and archaeologists believed that these beans were first domesticated in Africa, probably originating in West Africa that I've seen the possibility of Ethiopia as well. But Albala and his book and notes that some of the archaeological evidence about their history it comes from the Chad basin, which seems to indicate that people who were originally making a living primarily through animal herding came into the area about eighteen hundred b c e. And within about six hundred years of occupying the Chad Basin, they began to convert to an agricultural civilization, with their staple crops consisting of pearl millet and black eyed peas. So again, like we see in so many places in the world, a transition to a settled farming existence based on a sort of crop package of complementary grains and lagoons. I think the examples we talked about the other episode were, say, like you might have wheats or grasses like iron corn and lentils, or you could have maize and beans in UH in the Americas. But black eyed peas have been an important part of West African agriculture ever since, and they've eventually, of course, spread all over the world. They spread north to Europe, they spread east to Asia, and they're they're popular in all these different regions. Uh And of course they eventually became part of the food traditions of enslaved people taken from Africa to the Caribbean and to the Southern US. So much like okra and rice, which were also imported from African culinary traditions, black eyed peas ended up becoming foundational elements of Southern American cooking in general. Yeah. Absolutely, I've seen some there's been some excellent cooking documentaries about this connection. Uh and uh and and I and I have to say, yeah, if if anyone out there, if you haven't add um a bean sandwich um connected to some of these African culinary traditions or at least descended from them, I highly recommended, Like it's it's so good. I love black eyed peas, and I've never had a bean sandwich, so I gotta I gotta look that up. Do you know a good place to get one in town? Um? I don't know that I've had one at a restaurant. I've just we've just followed some recipes. Uh. But but and yeah, you can find some really good recipes online. In fact, there's some form for black eyed pea based sandwiches, which which can be a way to because we have that kind of like loose New Year tradition of eat black eyed peas, right because they're they're good luck or it's part of a good luck suite of foods. That's the health part of the package, right, You eat eat pork, black eyed peas, and grains, and that's for what happiness, health and wealth? Yeah. Yeah, And so the black eyed peas, if they're cooked certain ways, can be kind of a hard sell. But I tell you, if you make a really tasty sandwich with them, you're good to go. Okay, well, I'm gonna have to try the sandwich. But but anyway, like other examples we've we've looked at, beans seem to occupy a sort of hub of religious significance in the West African context as well. And Albla mentions that, for example, in Yoruba religious practice, people would regularly offer meals, often based on black eyed peas, to the godly beings or spirits of the Oruba religion known as Orisha's and Albula quotes this interesting Yoruba proverb that goes, you do not know what black eyed peas are like for dinner? And I was like, WHOA, I wonder what that means. But he explains that it refers to a person who is so stupid and negligent that he is totally unmindful of the consequences of his actions. So like you're you're so dumb you don't know what black eyed peas are like for dinner. That's very eating. But another interesting thing about black eyed peas is um that one of the cultivars that became especially popular and I think Eastern and Southeast Asia are the so called yard long beans. These are a variety of cowpy They are Vigna anguikulata, but they are the subspecies uh Sesqua pedalists. They are not actually a yard long, despite their name. I think they're usually about half that, but they are really long. I don't know if you've ever bought these and tried to cook with them or I remember like just like kind of laughing as I was trying to like handle them one time at the farmer's market. Yeah, I don't know if you included a picture. I don't know if we've actually tried to cook with with with peas this long. But yeah, you have to like choppaman half right or or I think sometimes you you just shell them, like you get the fresh peas out of them. But but yeah, I'm not sure. I I honestly do not remember what I did with them when I got them being enthusiasts, let us know, how do you handle these things. I got another black eyed pea fact that I think is very interesting, And this picks up on something we've mentioned a couple of times on the show before. It's one of those, you know, those sort of mind opening moments that is triggered by a simple reimagination of a food item. In the past, we've talked about how avocados. You know, American audiences I think primarily are going to think of avocados as a savory food, right, you have them in salty applications or not necessarily they don't have to be salty, but you wouldn't usually think of putting avocados in sweet foods. But that is by no means universal, and it is in no way based on objective things about the food itself. That's just a cultural convention. Avocados are used in sweet applications in all kinds of food traditions. Oh absolutely, yeah. I mean, havocado smoothies, for example, can be quite sweet and quite lovely. But there's another food that's like this, black eyed peas. Black eyed peas are sometimes used in sweet rather than savory dishes. If you haven't had it that can be kind of hard to imagine. But for example, I was finding a bunch of recipes for a Vietnamese dessert food that was like like variations on the idea of sweet or coconut sticky rice with black eyed peas. Yeah, I mean, I mean that reminds me that you do encounter beans in a lot of of East Asian desserts, whether it be like a bean paste or a bean filling that will be quite sweet. Another one I haven't tried, but that's going on my list. So I gotta have, uh, sweet sticky rice with black eyed peas and a black eyed peas sandwich. Yeah, and get some red bean ice cream in there as well. It's good stuff. Now. Now, speaking of of of culinary traditions in East Asia, I thought we might take a little bit of time here to discuss the soybean, a vastly important being and one of humanity's principal food crops so um. In Chinese mythology, the soybean is one of the five grains which are either sacred themselves or their history is considered sacred. I think it depends on the telling. Uh So the exact listing of five grains varies, but I think every version, at least every version I was coming across, does include soybeans, while some tellings will include the azuki bean as one of the five grains, but the soybeans tend to make the list, and the five grains are often connected to the myths of Shinong, the divine farmer who we've talked about on the show before, the culture hero and mythological ruler of ancient China often depicted in um in art is having bovine qualities to his appearance, including horns or horn like nubs on his head. Oh yeah, we love Shinnong here. I think we talked about him in the Mushroom Foraging episode, didn't we, Because there's a legend that he he sort of tested the mushrooms to see what was safe, right, because he is well he in general, he's being the father of agriculture. He said to have sought out and sampled a vast multitude of plants and you know, and that would include mushrooms in the ancient sense, in order to determine what was beneficial and what was not. And in doing so so, it's also sometimes said that he sampled seventy poisons in one day. So again he's just it's the father of of of agriculture and into a large traditional medicine. But also he's his personification of the gradual process of human entity figuring out what different plants do if they're consumed in different quantities. Now, as um Heimowitz and a Shirtlift pointed out in two thousand fives Debunking Soybean Myths and legends in the historical and popular literature, there are a lot of myths about soybeans that get passed along, and they ultimately involve everyone from Shinnong to Benjamin Franklin. While it is sometimes said that the mythical Chinong gave us the soybean as a domestic crop five thousand years ago, uh, the author's stress at the real time period is likely um eleventh century BC, or perhaps a bit earlier based on recorded history. So it's still really impressive. Yeah, Now, do we know anything about how the soybean was domesticated or does it seem like one of those things we have to infer kind of like the examples we were talking about in part one, where it was probably like an accidental process of of picking and then cultivating the ones like the pods that stayed closed the longest in the natural varieties. I believe that's the case. I was reading, Uh Robert M. Stupars Into the Wild of from and p N A. S. And the exact date uh they write is still a matter of dispute. And quote, most estimates approximate the domestication occurred somewhere between three thousand, one hundred and nine thousand years ago, so a fair amount of leeway. And you know, in in any attempt to really pinpoint when this was domesticated. Oh yeah, this is actually something I came across, uh with the number of beings referenced in Albola's book, which there are a number of cases where we really just don't know when they refers domesticated. It's just not you know, big question mark. Now I want to get things back into the magical realm here because I ran across this, this wonderful tradition, this festival known as setsubun, and it's um It's a tradition in Japan involving beans. It's a spring festival and it means changing of the seas, and it has the same energy as a number of seasonal change traditions in uh in in Eastern cultures, in cultures in general, including the expulsion of evil spirits and bad luck and the invocation of good luck and good health. Uh. And this one in particular appears to have roots in Chinese Lunar New Year traditions that took on new form in Japanese culture. So one of the activities around this time, and you know, there's several different things, it's not just one thing you do. But one of the activities involves driving the only out of one's house. So the only we've I think we've discussed them on the show before. Uh in one of our Halloween episodes. Only were evil spirits or demons thought capable of causing illness and disease. I think we may have even discussed some kind of traditions of driving the only out of your house. This sounds very familiar. Well, one way you can do it, especially at sets a bund, is by pelting them with roasted soybeans. Ah. These are these are also a traditional snack of festivities, but they symbolize purity. Oh, this makes me think of something that uh, you know, it is something that so when I grew up, I always thought of beans being cooked in a wet application. You know, they're they're cooked in water, boiled over time. Of course, you know you usually need to do that to dry beans, because this is another thing we actually haven't talked about in this episode yet, but many, many dry beans can have high levels of toxins in them if you do not boil them for before eating them. So you don't ever want to take a dry bean and then just soak it and eat it. That can give your food poisoning. You don't want to do that. You got to boil the beans or cook it with high heat somehow. But another common method in in many food traditions around the world is roasting beans, roasting them dry in some way. And I think you could probably do this with with fresher beans probably, but you can kind of pop some beans like you can make popcorn. Yeah. And and certainly if you're trying to drive only out of the house, you don't want to be thrown like handfuls of of canned beans or whole candy beans. Yeah, especially since a lot of the times you can look at pictures of this in videos. It's pretty pretty charming because apparently sometimes at schools you'll have a principle, or a teacher put on the only costume, and the and the children will be in the hallways and then they will throw the beans at the only to drive it out of the school. Now, I was reading a little bit more about this on the Japan Society website, and uh, I want to read a quote from from their web page that gets into some more answers about why you would throw these beans at an own e. They write quote, to find an answer, we must go back in time and look at Chinese numerology, where many concepts come in fives to correspond to the five elements would water, fire, metal, and earth. Soybeans were included in what we're designated the five cereals or the five most important crops. That's what we we just talked about. Uh, they continue. Soybeans or Da Dao literally the big being, were considered particularly powerful because they were believed to contain the spirits of all the serials combined. Um mommy or being is a homophone for mommy, and I'm sure I'm I'm not saying mommy correct in these these cases, but in both cases they're saying it means destroying evil. So soybeans were thought to be especially effective weapons against only demons, somewhat like garlic is believed to be powerful against vampires in the West. Wow. Okay, so the being the word being as a homophone for another word that that sounds similar but means destroying evil. Yeah yeah, so, uh, you know that's you see that connection come up time and time again when you're dealing with you know, particularly with I've seen this, you know plenty of times in um in Chinese writings where you know, something just doesn't translate, like the various ghost stories in um uh In Tales a Chinese studio, Like in translation. Uh, They're all still really amusing, but a lot of times if you were reading them in the original Mandarin, there would be there would be homophones in place that would make everything more meaningful or perhaps more funny in some cases, that sort of thing. Yeah, there's I mean, there's so many features of Chinese poetry that I've read about. It's just so difficult to capture effectively in translation. Uh. And I do love a lot of Chinese poetry in translation, But I mean that's one thing. Another thing I've read about is just that, like a lot of really good Chinese poetry has a has a quality of density that cannot really be communicated in English. Yeah. Uh, Now, this is this idea of using beings as a as a weapon against the demons, or some sort of protective amulet against demons. Ultimately, this can be found in plenty of other cultures as well. So I'd like to come back to Frederick J. Simmons Plants of Light, plants of death, because he has a number of other examples in which the beans are serving as a weapon or a protection against evil spirits. He points out that British folk belief once held that beans were associated with witches, and you could protect yourself against a witch is evil spell by spitting a bean at her u food. So yeah, I mean it's I would not I don't think you should spit beans that people you think might be witches, but clearly it was once done. All right, here's another. He also writes that at the start of the eighteenth century, on the Aisle of Harry's in Scotland, melucca beans, especially white meluca beans, were worn around the necks of children as a ward against the evil eye and also sort of witchcraft in general, and if evil magic came shooting in at the child, the bean would turn black. Whoa, which also reminds me of some of the you know, we've talked about poison detection, uh in various cultures. You know, it sounds like trying to achieve the same thing but with a bean, like your little radiation detector badge, except is for witchcraft. Yeah. Uh. Now there are other European beliefs of protective beans. The Cilian traditions held that beans had protective qualities for childbirth. So a woman in or approaching labor could eat nine black beans and that would serve as a protective Uh not really, an emulated would be a protective act. I guess there's also a tradition of stacking nine black beans and placing them on a table near a newborn child protect to protect it from evil spirits. Wait, how do you stack black beans? Um? I think it would be like a little pyramid of black beans, kind of make a structure of the black beans. Now, in Morocco, uh, an ambulance of of seven black beans could be used to protect sheep and goats from smallpox, and seven black beans could also be used by Moroccan scholars or scribes rather in order to become invisible, so you know, using black beans and some sort of essentially sorcery. Now that's the kind of spell that I would imagine is probably more like cataloged by somebody who attributes the the used to others rather than somebody who did it themselves, because you could probably quite quickly find out if you were actually trying this, that you cannot become invisible by using black beings. There are also traditions in Morocco of five black beans being used in protective amulets. So these might be for instance, sewn into fabric, so you could have have the five black beans in this piece of fabric. Then then you then wear as an amulet. And he He also makes mention in the Book of European Traditions concerning St. John's Eve. This is the um the the eve of celebration before the feast day of St. John the Baptist, but the celebration itself existed before the coming of Christianity. Um and uh it's tied. Simmons explains to summer solstice anxieties and the belief that this is a time when demons and evil spirits will rise up and must be driven back. And if this sounds a lot like Nido and Bald Mountain from Disney's Fantasia. While you are correct because the original title of of Masursky's music was St. John's Night on the Bare Mountain. Yeah, that was new to me as well, But at any rate, it's it's a time during which you have these various traditions involving fire but also medicinal plants, uh such as St. John's wart, And unfortunately it also entailed more than a little burning of black cats. But given the fava beans association with the underworld and spirits, it may have been connected as well. In Tuscany, St John's fire was lighted in a field of beans to make them ripe and faster, it's said, And in Sicily you ate your fava beans with a word of thanks to St. John. And there are other other religious and traditions of three beans that were ritually consumed, representing wealth, competence, and poverty, depending on the state of the peeling. Oh yeah, well, this ties into another thing. I guess we sort of got into this when I was mentioning uh Oogenies the Cynic Philosopher. But the in there there is also a tradition of intentionally eating beans to signal asceticism, like the ascetic life, you know, to say that I reject the pleasures of this world and I'm going to be a person of the simple virtues of the spirit, meaning that you know, I I'm not going to be eating butter and bacon every day. Instead, I'm going to be having beans. Which makes me think, of course, about the associations with John the Baptist, Right. John the Baptist lived in wilderness, and he you know, he wore rough clothes and he ate honey and locusts, which might be the equivalent of a medieval European monks saying, Okay, I mean, I mean I'm just gonna eat beans. I'm gonna be a you know, a person. I'm gonna be a man of the wild and just commune with God. Now I have one more to mention here, and this one brings us back to German celebrations of Twelfth Night. And this was the idea that Germans and uh And and other Northern Europeans once would select a king of the being and sometimes a queen of the bean as well. Uh And they would do this by by baking a cake which contained a single bean um uh, this would be like a single black bean perhaps, And basically it would be like everybody gets a piece of cake and if yours has the bean in it, then congratulations, you are the bean king. Now was it good to be the bean king? Or bad to be the bean king? Because there are a lot of traditions there's something you get a special piece of cake, and that means you're kind of like scorned. Yeah, well, this one doesn't seem particularly wicker manny, if that's what you're asking, Um, this is this is what this is what he writes. Um. Of particular interest to us is the report that the first act of a being king after he had been enthroned and congratulated, involved his being lifted three times to the ceiling of the house, where he drew white crosses of chalk on the beams and rafters to protect against evil spirits, devils, and witchcraft for the coming year. Also prominent in some places have been concerns about whether crop fertility and yield and the cake itself serving in divining good or bad things that might affect people in the ensuing year. So, I mean, I don't know what what else it necessarily entailed, but that first major act of being king of the bean doesn't sound too bad? No, no no, no, it's a no. It doesn't sound like they're about to throw them into the fire or anything. All right, Well, hopefully we have introduced a new, spooky, supernatural world of of bean fields to everyone out there. Uh and and just made you think a little bit more about your beans. And we would love to hear from you. What are your favorite beans? Uh? Do you are you privy to any uh superstitions or customs or rituals involving beans that we didn't mention here, because definitely right in and tell us about them. Also, um, are are do you own the company Rancho Gordo and want to send Joe and I free beans because we mentioned your company? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I go for it. We would. We'd love to love to be a part of that. But uh yeah, in general, we just love to hear from everybody out there, um about about beans. Beans, the the magical fruit, the mystical fruit, the supernatural fruit, but also not a fruit, not technically. In the meantime, if you would like to hear other episodes of stuff to blow your minds, you know where to find them. You can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed and you'll you'll find that wherever you get your podcast these days. I don't know, there's so many places to get podcasts, but we should be wherever that is that you're going. And if you can rate and review the show at that place, if they let you do that, uh well, then do that. That helps us out. That's uh that uh that's supposedly good, or so they tell them, Um yeah, yeah, give us five or five beans. Five out of five beans, but only the good beans, not the not the witchcraft beans, just the the demon defeating beans. So I don't know, sort them out, figure out which one's which five out of five haunted bleeding beans for sexual potency. Hugh's thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,