Thou Shalt Put Yourself In The Way of Magic

Come drink tea with me. I'll be enjoying the delight of Afternoon Tea in Cape Town, South Africa, and sipping my masala chai outside my ashram in Rishikesh, India. Tea is the ultimate traveler - from BC China, to Nashville today at Firepot Teas. In fact, tea could make you understand the world - from thievery, to meditation, to colonialism to the Boston Tea Party and even bubble teas... #travel

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Daniel Scheffler, and I have some strong feelings
about travel. This is everywhere today's travel commandment, thou shalt
put yourself in the way of magic. So it turns

(00:22):
out that tea is the number one consumed beverage on
the planet. Wudn't you? Apparently water just doesn't count well
t for me the brit Euros South African that I
am is the hunk essence of my multiculture, passed from
my European grandmother, who served a very formal tea every

(00:43):
day for her entire life less run. She nearly made
that century mark. Well Booby always serve tea with a
freshly baked set of tarts, cakes, or cookies, or with
a sort of ever evolving theme over tea. Bibby and
I traveled to Sri Lanka for lyrical sweets and spices

(01:04):
I'd never heard of, or we were off to Brazil
for gooey cheesy bites called pooja the Caju, and then
sometimes we were traveling to Persia for chickpe cookies with pistachio.
She understood that spice and all things nice was just
the way to her grandson's heart. So it makes sense
that I had been teaching my very American husband all

(01:26):
about beauty and especially the ritual of tea. He came
from a home where tea was made in a microwave
with a very sad tea bag from the grocery store,
or it was served very ice and from a supermarket bottle.
In fact, I think I once overheard his Italian family
say that green tea was only drunk before a colonoscopy.

(01:50):
So now, at four o'clock every day without fail, our
body clocks flick a switch, ring ring, It's tea time, darling.
And if you think about a team makes so much,
it's long after lunch, dinner feels very far away, and
Lena seems like a huge commitment. So tea it is.
When I came out to mother when I was at

(02:11):
high school, her response was not a problem, dear, let's
have some tea. And when I was doing too many
drugs and parting my head off any Betha and therefore
at some point I had to let mother know that
I had a substance abuse issue, her response was rather
the same, not worry, We'll turn the cattle on for
some tea. Even when I broke the news that I

(02:34):
would be moving to America. She ever, casually just rung
for some more tea. So many of my earliest travel
memories were made alongside tea, from special Island Black Tea
and Mauritius to fancy popotees in London. Take for instance
Cape Town, where I lived as an adult and holidayed
yearly for most of my life within without the family

(02:58):
picture it South Africa. Nelson Mandela is still in prison,
and my European parents are supporting the fall of apartheid
as Paris, as the Eiffel Tower and Rio de Janeiro
has Ipanema Beach. Cape Town has its own icon. That's
a mountain. It happens to be rather flat and looks
just like a table, hence the name table Mountain. And

(03:22):
it rises as this bonfire of the Southern world's tip,
where two opposing oceans hug each other, one warm, one cool.
You have the Winelands winking from a distance. But then
there is this man made birth of the Mother's city,
the ever faithful pink of the Mount Nelson Hotel. And

(03:42):
this is where afternoon tea was the occasion in view
from pretty much everywhere. The Hotel's pink hues are always adapting.
The Grand Old Building was first painted pink to signify
peace at the end of the First World War, and
now this ticular blush is formulated to fade to an

(04:03):
idyllic shade between its frequent coats. It is a pink
for your memories, one for the ages. You may say,
not quite as bright as a peony pink, almost that
Jackie Kennedy pink, but really much closer to my own
skin color. At age six, pink was just pink, and

(04:24):
just as soft as the motherly pink of my travel companion,
my stuffed pink panther. Also, I thought at the time,
because I was just a six year old fool. It
was one of those long, hot afternoon walks where everything
sticks to your body. The sun is no longer the

(04:46):
friendly sky queen, but the curse of the Saturday afternoon.
In the Cape Town gardens, squirrels suffer the heat, so
they just stay in the trees and ignore my acorn
laden little hands. And then I see the iconic white
stone column gates where we're given our reprieve, and I
know tea time is near. Moments later, we met with

(05:10):
this meaty smell of freshly cut grass, and a picnic
blanket is shaken out. I watched as the exhibition of
delights unfold on these great lawns of the Mount Nelson.
Uniformed staff perform their ceremony, and a little piece of
England reveals itself. Mother's rosy hands hold her parson cup
and saucer quietly for a poor of tea milk. First,

(05:33):
she always reminds whomevers within ear shot. The burly silver
trays show me my own reflection, as many white gloves
zippili passed them around our silky white picnic blankets, surrounded
by all kinds of sweetness, A little cloud of paradise
that recalled right under these gigantic African skies, the heat

(05:53):
is all but forgotten. I am at a mad Hasse's
tea party, and I am Alice, ready to fall down
a rabbit hole and feast a wonderland of familiar surprises.
So this is what we ate, petite white sandwiches with
crusts evenly cut off, sickly sweet, wondrous cook sisters. And

(06:15):
I dare you to google that oversized milk tarts with
little rain flecks of cinnama on top, oversized pink fairy
cakes that are soft to the bite, and then oozy
white chocolate. Declares there was even a mini fat cook,
which a direct translation would wield fat cake. As I

(06:35):
lie on the grass with ants climbing on and over
my toes, I count nearby palm trees. My hands are
sticky from the clotted cream and strawberry jam I shmeared
on my scone, and I'm still nibbling on. I resorted
doing lazy, small somersaults on the picnic blanket. The Great
Pink Hotel is Topsy turns e and upside Downsy with me,

(06:58):
and I'm write down this sugary rabbit hole, and it's
all curious and curious. So the refilled shiny trays circle
and pirouett mother. She sits ladylike on a low cane chair,
her eyes smiling from under her dark glasses. Something about
the light, or the sun, or just the moment of

(07:20):
sugary beauty makes me notice my skin color against the
shade of the hotel. I am just as pink as
the hotel, almost one and the same. But we're in Africa,
where most people I've seen around me aren't the shade
of pink. And it's in this moment, the simple, silly
garden lawn moment, where I sat for the first time

(07:40):
in my daft, short life thinking about the color of
my skin. How a hotel's paint job and a semi
formal afternoon tea could make me aware of not only
my extreme privilege but also my very pinkness. But that's
exactly my elaborate relationship with the tea. It's some how
always with me through the heartache, some heartbreak, those joys

(08:05):
and the delights. It's a bringer of truths, like after
a particularly dire two years of living in Paris, falling
off a bicycle, nearly drowning in an Amsterdam canal and
then washing up on Cape Town shores to sober up, eat, pray,
Love came out and I was on a plane to India.

(08:27):
I know I wasn't even that original. Julia Roberts just
pushed me right over the edge. What can I say
but judge all you like. Sometimes it's the silliest things
that open up the world, maybe even save your life.
So a few flights later, an overnight train journey with
live chickens and delicious curries, going around for tastings in

(08:49):
my carriage, plus a squeezed rickshall ride. There I am.
I'd found myself at the foothills of the Himalayas, walking
over a giant swing bridge cautiously as I follow signs
that read Parmenikitan Ashram, founded in nineteen forty two by
Puya Shwami. Shook Davinanji Maharaji said that five times past,

(09:12):
the Ashram attracts anyone and everyone. Every country imaginable is
represented here, plus locals wanting to take stock of their
lives also show up. And so I went, with many
years in between, from one pink palace to another. The
world here was different to Africa, but in the end,
some things are just the same, like the gentle cycle

(09:36):
of familiarity and that happy routine that happens all too fast.
Mornings started in a very basic room, and I shower
in this darkness, washing away all kinds of bullshit. And
then long before dawn, I'm in a yoga class with
a man who's older than a century and a whole
lot more flexible than I am. After yoga, in a

(09:58):
sort of semi darkness, I would prance around these icy
floors on the Ashram's great halls. Setting up my meditation
mat for class, I would light some candles, and that's
when I would think about losing my religion, as if
I ever had one. But first the boy must concentrate
on eating, and so I do my other savor, which
is an act of service that's not about you. Just

(10:20):
imagine that it involves me serving breakfast in the pink palace.
I eat only once everyone's been fed and smiling food
at the Ushram. Besides, for the beige breakfast porridge tends
to be yellow from all the termineric. Eventually you forget
that food isn't always sunshine colored, right about the same

(10:41):
time as your hands start to turn yellow too. After food,
it's time for class, and first up other readings from
the Bakaba Ghita, a Hindu scripture where there is Prince
Arjina and his guide, Lord Krishna, and they are chatting
heavily on the battlefield. I said carefully on a tiny
cushion and peeled over these old books with drawings of
this very theater of war, and I think about chivalry

(11:05):
and how to obtain liberation, not dissimilar to our Prince Argana.
And then some meditation, enchanting. All in Hindi are practiced
to learn to shut off the senses and go straight
to the heart. The head conveniently absent. The hardest part
of my day is here. Afternoons are for sleeping, and

(11:26):
the mountains all around rise into the blue sky with
a way of holding you close. The days don't very much,
and that is the point. Your day, without your phone
or even a book, becomes the simple wave of a rhythm.
Your body carries you. Nothing is done with the tricks
to mind. Eventually my heart starts to open like a

(11:48):
flower waiting for a bee to come to its work.
My mind is clear. Thoughts deviating into any insecurity just
washes away into this great river, never to be seen again.
I spent several weeks of finding my pleasures in small,
almost menial things. My daily work of washing yoga mats

(12:11):
and sweeping the floors offered me a deep sense of peace.
I run into the Ashrams director one morning. I call
her Guru almost g as she would be the one
taking over from the current Guru, and I beam as
I tell her how content I feel and just how
happy I am. She smiles quietly at me. Well, she says,

(12:34):
it's easy here at the Ashram. What else are you
going to do? At first I was stunned easy this,
And then she says, when you leave next week and
go into the real world, that's when the work starts
off with my ego's head. So in between all this activity,

(12:57):
the hours of meditation and not thinking just of myself,
I did find one tiny, rebellious act of hedonism, a
massala chai. Just outside the gates of the Ashram was
this tiniest little store where a lovely man behind a
stove with cats sleeping all around him, was brewing some
spicy tea. He loved, making it strong and throaty, with

(13:21):
black tea as the base, extra cardamon and cinnamon. He'd
say it was good for my soul. He'd add in
some fresh milk and honey, and I'm sure there were
secret family recipe spices in there too. It was here
I would sneak to every afternoon to come have the
smallest shot glass of tea. So simple, so nothing, but

(13:42):
so everything. Let's pause here and we'll be right back
with my friend Holly Fry to give us a little
historical context. Right after the break you've just been somewhere.
What say we go everywhere? Now I'd like to tea

(14:02):
up my friend Holly to talk with me about tea. Hi, Holly,
I feel like I should issue you demerits for that
dad joke, but I love you, so I won't. I
don't have a dad bond, so I can dad joke.
It's one or the other, but not both. No, I'm
Ella's dad, Ella my dog, so I'm a dad. No
dad bond. Ellasie had today and studio with us always,

(14:24):
She's the best co host on the planet. So let
me tell you a little something about Ella and tea. Yes,
Ella has learned to drink good tea, and I think
the antioxidants so good for her. So I'll make her
a green tea and she'll lap it up. Interesting. Now,
do you research what tea leaves are appropriate not for dogs?
I would presume. Well, my friend Sarah, who you met

(14:45):
in Nashville, who knows every single thing you could possibly
imagine about tea, she told me what tea's good for doggies? Perfect. Yeah.
In fact, I make an iced tea for Ella with
ice cube, so you put it the hot tea in
ice cube trade and oh, refreshing. Yeah, and green tea
ice cube for ella. So you have spent significant amounts

(15:08):
of time drinking tea, drinking tea and also in one
of the country's most famed for drinking tea, right Britain.
You know te do? Do you know that it's estimated
that a hundred and sixty five million cups of tea
are consuming Great Britain every day. I think it's like
pg tips, which we call build His Tea in England.
I think that's what they consuming. Probably it's not always

(15:31):
the good stuff, but it's a big part of I mean,
if you go to Epcots, which takes bits and pieces
of each country and puts them together in a little world,
there is a tea shop in Epcot because that's like
the representative of Great Britain. There's an interesting story about
how Great Britain became so tea obsessed and moreover, how

(15:53):
they started producing their own tea. And it's not super
great because it involves some theft com Yes, so as
a quick run down. So, Catherine of Braganza, who was
the Portuguese wife of King Charles the Second, is often
credited with bringing tea to England in the sixteen hundreds.
There is actually a reference in the diary of Samuel

(16:14):
Peeps from two years before she got there of tea,
so it's actually a little unclear when he really hit
the British Isles. But the East India Company figures into
this story that was established in sixteen hundred and as
tea became more popular in England, that company was like,
we should be monetizing this, and so eventually the East

(16:36):
India's monopoly on tea trade, particularly to the colonies, also
shaped Britain's history. The passing of the Tea Act in
seventeen seventies three shaped American history because it led to
the Boston Tea Party. But during this time all tea
was still coming exclusively from China, and the East India
Company was not cool with this because they felt like

(16:57):
they were forced into a business relations ship that they
did not want. They did some dicey things, including starting
to export a lot of opium to China. This eventually
led to the first opium more which could be its
own whole discussion. But what they eventually started doing is
they found a man who was a scientist who studied
plants named Robert Fortune. He had gone to China in

(17:20):
eighty two on a plant finding expedition, and he spent
a lot of time there. He kind of pushed into
the edges of where foreigners were allowed to go. And
then he went back to London and then a few
years later the East India Company said you have to
go back, and this time you have to steal tea,
and so he went for several several years he hired

(17:44):
locals that were experts in the tea trade and that
new people. At one point he allegedly disguised himself as
a local, which seems weird because he was very tall
and very British looking, so I can't imagine how he
blended in. But he ended up stealing a variety of
seedling seeds, etcetera, shipping them to India where they started production.

(18:06):
There's a cool glass case that was invented just for
this purpose, called a Wardian case. It was invented by
doctor Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward and it was like, essentially like
a little seedling terrarium where like a seed could be
planted and it could live out its life cycle in
that little box, and they could ship them that way
so that when the plants got to where they were
going could open it up and they would be ready

(18:27):
to transplant into soil after a hardening off period for
all of my gardeners out in the herd. But fortune
in the end, when he died, which was in eighteen eighty,
he had introduced about two hundred and eighty different plants
species to the Western world from China. That is how
many plants he yanked out of that country and put elsewhere.
But moreover, India's production became so massive that it took

(18:52):
market share away from China, where he had originated, and
China spent the next hundred years trying to catch back
up and become the able leader, which it finally became
the largest exporter of tea again in the nineteen fifties.
It's an interesting story about how this beautiful plant that we,
you know, have come to associate with so many daily rituals.

(19:14):
But there is also this underbelly to the story that
China literally was robbed of its tea culture so that
the rest of us could have whatever we wanted whenever
we wanted it. But that's the beauty of tea, right.
So Sarah and I went to Thailand Vietnam, and we
discovered these ancient tea trees that they say a thousands

(19:35):
of years old and carry the wisdom of thousands of years.
And you know from the tea party you and I
went to with Sarah in Nashville. She talked about the
wisdom of tea and the beauty of tea and the
togetherness of tea, and how the Moroccan culture has spread
it in the way that it's all day that you
can drink this beautiful tea. I mean, I'm a big

(19:57):
fan of beverages all day long. So I've seen you
with a bridge. Do you ever see me without some
sort of beverage in my hand? Never coffee tea. I've
seen you take a beverage to the restaurant, cocktail Like
I'm not going to leave my cocktail here at the bar.
I'm just gonna take it with me. I do usually
have a beverage with me even when I shower that

(20:17):
I know, I'll put coffee in a travel mug first
thing in the morning so I can take it in
the shower. So I'm a big fan of this idea
of drinking tea all day. So the other thing that
I would love to talk about when it comes to
tea is Americans call rent tea black tea. So what
do you know, Lipton tea is actually red tea because

(20:37):
black tea is fermented tea called puer and it's from
an area in China called Lijng, which is in fact
where the tea trade and where the tea caravan started.
So tea moved first east into China, south into Thailand,
main mar Vietnam and Cambodia, and event actually made its

(21:00):
way to Taiwan where it was totally changed. And then
the Japanese took tea and refined it into the most beautiful, incredible,
artful thing. Whereas the rest of tea became much more commercial,
the Japanese took tea into a high art of tea.
So there's all these incredible misnomers. And when you travel

(21:21):
and you drink tea and you ordity and you start
learning this stuff, it's such a beautiful way into a
local culture. Like South Africans drink Roybal's tea, which is
actually a herb. South America has no tea. Marte is
not a tea. It's a herb, right, and a delicious
one at that, and a delicious exactly um Europe has

(21:42):
very little tea. It's mostly tisan except for Portugal. They
have the Azores, which is the only coffee growing area
and tea growing area in all of Europe. But now
with global warming, the real thing, global warming, all these
regions are changing. So they used to be like the
coffee and tea be all that is changing because you coffee,

(22:03):
for instance, needs higher and higher elevation to grow promptly,
so all these coffee plantations are going up and up
the mountains like in Colombia. And tea needs proper drainage,
and because of global warming and all this stuff changing,
there isn't enough drainage now for these tea regions, so
they're changing. And for instance, China now has like a

(22:24):
completely new region of tea in the north as the
one that lives in Georgia. Peaches don't grow there very
well anymore. Too hot. Yeah, they've shifted up north into
the Carolina's peaches do much better now. Similarly, we have
picked up some of the citrus trade from Florida. So
should I call you the Georgia orange now a post

(22:46):
to Georgia peach If that feels correct to you, go crazy? No, wait,
what about the Georgia tangerine. All right, all right, all right,
uh yeah, it fascinates me to think about. There was
also in in Robert Fortune's travels through China. He did
discover that early on the Chinese realized that English people

(23:08):
were not all that bright, and they were actually coloring
some of their teas to make them a more uniform color.
As a consequence, they were adding an awful lot of
toxicity to it. But it was one of those things
where they were like, English people don't really understand this.
We'll just make it pretty for them and they'll keep
drinking it. Um. So again, it's one of those things

(23:28):
where the nomenclature is not universal because it's been shifted
in all of these export and then people adopting it
in their own way. But also from the beginning, China
kind of realized other people don't get this, but it
is our main export, so we will cater to them
in whatever way seems to work. I love talking about
tea with pretty much everyone because he's such a beautiful

(23:49):
pot of my life and it always has been. But
I love the idea that you can travel and find
small ways of connecting with people on the road with tea.
And something about travel, and it's hard to get tea
and coffee done in the right way. I always travel
with a bag of tea and a bag of coffee
with a grind and a whole set up so that

(24:12):
wherever I'm traveling in the world, I can make a
cup of tea that's real and amazing. Your bag is
filled with Star Wars things like, I know that you're
not traveling with I'm not traveling a tea paraphernalia, but
you could. I think I'm too lazy. Also, when it
comes to coffee at the end of the day, I've
seen I'm a junkie, not a connoisseur, right Like, I'll

(24:32):
take it anyway I can get it, and I'm just
pick put it in my anus. I like it. No,
I mean, I love a good cup of coffee, but
if it's not so good, I'll still drink it because
I need this. I've seen you dump bad coffee when
I give you better coffee, which I appreciate. But if
I didn't come along with the better coffee, drinked the
mediocre coffee. Happily you say mediocre, but I would downgrade that.

(24:55):
You know, if it's pencil shaving soaked in water. I
might not drink it, but that's maybe. How did you
know the difference I've seen you consume my do. I
like a lot of coffee. Speaking of which, I think
it's time we go have a cup. That sounds great,
you can have tea, I will Okay, great, Thanks for
hanging with me today. Again, it's always like a treat

(25:16):
for me. I feel like the spoiled child. Great, I'll
ring a bell. This is a great moment for us
to travel to advertising land and we'll be right back
with everywhere. Welcome once again to everywhere. Let's hop back
to it. Welcome back. I'm with my best friend Sarah Scarborough,

(25:39):
tea huntress and founder of Fire Parties. We recently went
to Thailand and Vietnam to find thousand year old tea trees.
Let's talk about that. It's interesting wherever you go in

(26:00):
a world, they have tea and it always looks different,
tastes different in whichever culture that you're in. But the
one common thread that runs throughout the world of t
is that t is always about connecting with other people
and connecting with yourself and just taking a minute to
slow down and connect with people. So coffee in many

(26:24):
ways is to alert and T is the opposite. It's
to slow down. Give me a little thought about that. Well,
T is interesting. So it does have caffeine, so there
is an alert state associated with it. But it's also
so it has a you know, acid called alfening in it,
and alfening is what people take to sleep and to relax.

(26:45):
It increases the alpha waves in your brain. So the
combination of the althening and the caffeine gives you that
zen mind, that calm, alert focus. And another thing that's
interesting chemically that's in T is the categin which are
the antioxidants that T is so famous for. What they
do is they bind to the caffeine and so they

(27:07):
slow down the release of caffeine in your body. So
whereas coffee releases in your body over the course of
two or three hours, tea can take up to twenty
hours to release throughout your body. So you have this calm, alert, focused,
zen mind for an extended period of time, which is
a completely different feeling than when you have coffee because

(27:28):
it's an immediate up and then down. I want you
to talk to me a little bit abound how tea
started and how tea traveled and how tea is such
a beautiful metal ful foot travel right right, Well, T
is the ultimate voyager, I think. And this is something
that a lot of people don't know. But thousands and

(27:48):
thousands of years ago, there were people in you Non China,
where the tea is born, where it's from, and they
revere these old tea trees like gods, and they worship
them and they look at them as their spirit will
guide and they drink these leaves and it gives them
health and spirituality, and it was their original medicine too.
So in that lineage of t t revered as something

(28:12):
holy and something sacred. And in the British lineage, which
is more of what we're familiar with in the West,
is more about commerce and it's more about yield, and
it's the entire system was built on business. So the
East India Trading Company was built because of the tea trade.
They're drinking tea in a much different way as a beverage,

(28:34):
and still they're using though as a time to connect
with other people. So these two ways of looking at
tea and the types of tea that are being drunk,
and these two lineages are completely different and I think
that you know, wherever you go in the world, you
can find tea, and it always is a manifestation of
the culture that you're in. So it can be froth

(28:56):
macha at a temple in Japan that you're drinking in
silent and it can be a spicy sweet chi at
the stall in Calcutta on the side of the road
where people are chatting and eating samosas with it. And
it can be a sweet tea on a front porch
in Nashville and still though connecting, spending time with each other.

(29:17):
It could be a beautiful oolong at a teahouse in Taiwan.
It could be tea direct in Malaysia. Every culture has
a different tea and so in a way, you can
really travel the entire world just by having cups of tea.
And it's a great way to travel around the world
to tap into the tea culture because that cup of

(29:40):
tea will tell you everything about the culture that you're in,
so about the agriculture, about the palate of the people,
about what's important to them, the way that they connect
with each other. For example, Japanese are known for loving
the umami, the savory and so the tea from there
is often very savory and almost oily, and it's taken meditative.

(30:00):
Often the macha and the whole tea ceremony comes from there.
The Germans are known for loving the bitter taste, and
so in the tea world, Germans are famous for loving
of first flushed our jealing that's really brisk and has
those bright, kind of strong notes. In the United States
were known for loving things that are a little bit
more sweet. So our teas are generally more multi you know,

(30:24):
we like to put sugar and milk in our tease.
So it's a great way of understanding and culture. Tell
me a little bit about how tea traveled from. Tell
me where it came from and how it traveled. So
tea was born in you non province, China, probably was
being drunk and worshiped there for thousands of years before discovery.

(30:45):
But discovery was seven BC, legendarily by the herbalist ember
shen Nung, And he apparently a leaf dropped from the
tree into his bowl of hot water, and he was
so astounded by the health benefits and the way that
this plant made him feel, that he spread the use
of tea to all his people all around China, and

(31:08):
so for thousands of years, tea was being consumed in China.
And then it was the Zen Buddhist monks that were
sent from Japan to China to learn about and bring
culture back to Japan, and instead they brought back tea,
which I think is sort of the same thing. So
they discovered tea and they fell in love with it

(31:28):
for the zen mind that it gave them, and they
brought tea back to Japan, took it to their temples
and cultivated it. And there's a saying that there would
be no tea without Zen, and there would be no
Zen without tea, because they are one and the same.
And so from there it continued to spread through Asia,

(31:50):
and then it was on the trading routes that went
west into Europe on the Silk Root, on the Tea
horse Road, which was part of the Silk Root, and
these trading caravans would take tea from Asia and then
across the deserts. So like Moroccan mint, tea was because
the nomadic tribes moved westward and they would pick these

(32:15):
potent herbs, so artemisia and mint and sage from the
desert and then they would blend it with green tea
from China and they would add sugar that was also
being traded on the route. And then from there it
first came to Europe in the dowry of Catherine de Braganza,
and she was a Portuguese royalty, so that's what we

(32:35):
look at for the first time that it made its
way to Europe. I think she moved to the Netherlands
and then that's when the British started to set up
tea plantations in their colony of India. And then along
the around the same time, they discovered that tea was
also indigenous to Aam in India, so they had indigenous plants,

(32:56):
but they also had stolen plants from China, and then
they began to call to the black tea in India
and then they started the East India Trading Company and
that was the genesis of the Opium Wars because there
was the trade for obium, silver and tea going on,
and it was all about the British not wanting to
be reliant on the Chinese monopoly of the tea trade.

(33:19):
So that's not made its way to Europe. And then
if we continue the story of tea, it went from
Europe with the colonists into America. So tea then made
its way, of course into society, and at the St.
Louis World Fair in nineteen o four, tea was introduced
in both tea bag form and an iced tea form.

(33:40):
So that's when history notes the first tea bags and
the first iced tea. And that's also really interesting because
if you think of the way that we consume historically
tea in this country, it's all of it is iced
tea and tea bags, and everything that goes in iced
tea or tea bags is the lowest grade black tea

(34:02):
that's grown, you know, maybe in Argentina, sometimes India, And
that's so completely different than the birthplace of tea, where
they're taking care of these tea trees for generations and
there birthing babies underneath these trees, and they're having weddings
around these trees, and the trees are part of their
family in their community. And um, black tea is great, breakfast,

(34:24):
he's great, Chai is great, Darjeeling is amazing. It's one
of my favorite teas. And I love those traditions of tea.
And you know what we do is we work a
lot through fair trade and through organic production and partnerships
at origin to be able to affect positive change in
the origins where the British set up the industry in

(34:44):
such a way that it has led to slavery and
sex trafficking and lots of pesticiety use. I mean that
was the reason that I started the company eighteen years ago,
was to affect positive change, to connect tea lovers with
tea growers to improve the lives of both. And if
you just only drink black tea, you're really missing out
on so much of the joy of tea. There's another

(35:05):
category of teas that we pour tea ceremony with that
are called living teas, and there's a number of different
criteria that they have to have to be called living teas.
For example, they come from seed, not cuttings. But when
you sit around and drink these teeths, you can have
a magical experience. And every tea affects you in a
different way. So there's one too that I love to drink,

(35:28):
and every time I drink it in ceremony, I have
visions like real clarity on my life and my true
nature and who I am. And tea taken in this
way is in the category of plants called in the agans,
which are god plants. The anthogens are like ayahuasca, marijuana, peyote,

(35:50):
all the different plants that give people in sight and
spiritual clarity. And tea is also in this family. It's
just a lot more subtle than you know Alaska for example.
You know, tea is magic that way, it really is.
And I think that's what I love to share with people,
is that of what is available in the world of

(36:12):
tea in this country is black tea. But there's this
whole other world of tea out there, and it's about
sitting with people and having time and a session, and
it's about the vitality of this leaf. And it's the
way it makes you feel and the way it opens
up your heart and the way it gives you clarity,

(36:32):
and the way that you can connect with people over it,
you know. And there's such a big world out there.
There's so much more. Thank you, Sarah, Well. I had

(36:54):
a good time. I hope you did too. If you'd
like to reach us, go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram,
Everywhere Part on Twitter, or the website Everywhere podcast dot com.
I'm Daniel Schaffter signing off, I'll be seeing you everywhere.