99% Invisible - 558- The Fever Tree Hunt

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Most heists target gold, jewels or cash. This one targeted illegal seeds. As the British established their sprawling empire across the subcontinent and beyond, they encountered a formidable adversary — malaria. There was a cure — the bark of the Andean cinchona tree. The only problem? The Dutch and the French were also looking to corner the market in cinchona. And the trees themselves were under threat.This week on 99pi, we feature a story from Stuff the British Stole, a co-production of ABC Australia and CBC Podcasts. So "grab a gin and tonic and come with us to hear how a botanical empire took off — and gave birth to a quintessential cocktail." 

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff, which means a show like stuff the British stole has an almost unlimited number of stories they can tell. But a lot of the artifacts on display behind glass have the same story. People with guns came on ships and took things that didn't belong to them. And you can only tell that story so many times. Mark Fonell and his team at the ABC CBC podcast Stuff the British Doll now in its third season are geniuses at taking the amazing premise of their show

and evolving it to tell more riveting stories of empire-building and thievery that continue to surprise and infuriate and delight, forwarding the conversation they started in 2020 in cool new ways. The episode we're going to play for you is about a tree of all things, and it just knocked my socks off. So we don't play that one for you, and then play a conversation I had last week with writer, presenter, and creator, Mark Fennelano about the series and its ongoing mission.

Here's Stuff the British Stole. What is a taste like? It's pretty gross. It doesn't have a bad taste, it's just really, really bitter. Like you can try something if you want. 9 a.m. on a Friday feels like a weird time to be at a bar. It feels like I've made bad life choices. Don't get me wrong though, it is a.m. on a Friday feels like a weird time to be at a bar. Feels like I've made bad life choices. Don't get me wrong though, it is a lovely bar.

So it's a cocktail bar, very old world sort of feel. And Charlie, who you're listening to here, he's a lovely bartender. My name's Charles Cazbent, and I am a bartender. Did you really look like you really had to think about it for saying that, what am I? Yeah, and yeah, I'm about tender. I work at Moe's Juniper Lounge.

We've been open six years, and we're an old world cocktail bar with a focus on gin classics. What isn't as lovely is the fistful of wood in my hand. It looks like shredded up cinnamon bark. It's sort of dry and brown with a bit of a ready tinge. I'm going to give it a go. Here we go. Looks like shredded up cinnamon bark. Like it's sort of dry and brown with a bit of a ready tinge. I'm gonna give it a go.

Ah, here we go. Do you know what, Tayfai? Tayfai bark. Is it the end of the coming, or is it all vulgar? Yeah, once you sort of finish it, it'll be back. Oh yeah, good. Is it the end? The tune won't help.

This bark has changed the course of history. It's actually worse than I was expecting. I should probably mention that the mysterious reddish wood that I just shoved down my gullet are your not meant to eat it that way. Instead, you're meant to turn it into a liquid. You actually got me at a time. I'm bottling our tonic syrup. When you do, it becomes something that you may

the fod off. Tonic always kind of seems to people to be a lot more complicated because they don't intuitively understand what it is, like what the flavors are. It's like, oh, Tonic. It sounds fancy. Yeah, and it's so specific, it's like gin and tonic. It sounds like it's supposed to be a medicine

but I'm getting drunk with it. So, like all my favourite things. Yeah, it doesn't really add up these days to a lot of people. But the truth is, it's basically sugar syrup with incone barc, which has various different pronunciations, depending on which branch of Latin language you might subscribe to. All of them, most of them, all of them. Yeah, the pronunciation is a bit of a thing. So it can be concoctubar, concoctubar, concoctubar, concoctubar.

The C-H and the C, depending on which country you're in and which ball it follows, also to change. I tend to call it cancone a bark. And that's what we shall go with for now. So a bark of a tree native to Peru. Oh, who? It's not found anywhere else on Earth. It's something that I think most Brauvians have never seen

and will never see. So how does this Bach from Berrue end up in your gin and tonic? This is incredible story of botanical adventure of exploration. Well, it happens with a dash of malaria. White people will die. They hoped to present it as a humanitarian effort. A sweep of competing empires. That's where I think the theft is.

The Dutch and the English discovered that they could just steal it. A daring heist. The British justified these expeditions in the name of science. Lost their soldiers to drink it and continue their conquering ways. And just a hit. There's something much worse. As many people saw it, an act of colonial piracy. My name is Mark Vannell,

and this is Stuff, the British, Stone. Sincena is a tree that only few peruvians, including myself, know how it looks like or where it grows. It is an unknown tree. To find it in its natural ecosystem, we have to travel long distance. If you look at the Peruvian flag, it has this hidden data that at least according to these two Peruvians, well according to them most other Peruvians don't know this surreptitious gem of history is on their flag. And like Maloo and I we discovered things about this national emblem that we hadn't even

thought about. They hadn't until both of these two started working together on a collaboration called the Fever Tree Project. Hi, my name is Irene Arce, I'm a researcher. My name is Maluca Bello, I am a provian visual artist. You see on that flag, sandwich between thick red and white bands is a shield. Then the top right hand corner of that shield appears to be a generic tree logo. You see it's not a generic tree. It's a very special, very hard-to-find tree.

It grows in a specific area, cloud forest, in an area between the Andes and the Amazon. Yes, between the Amazon and the Andes mountains, high above sea level, among the clouds. That is where that infamous Sinchonetry with its delicious bark and wild history. This is where it grows. It's very difficult to see that Sinchonetry. You need to travel extensively for many hours. It's like high mountains, very steep, you know, through dirt rolls. This area is largely cut off from the rest of Peruvian life.

The indigenous people here, they speak their own dialect, they have their own ways of doing things. And yet the tree from here is somehow considered nationally important enough to go on the flag. What is strange about this tree is that we see it like in a school you know that takes walks in sort of forth but like it's almost mythological it's something that I think most probably else have never seen and will never see. It's an imaginary and we didn't know about the history of this tree. That history stretches through the centuries and right around the globe.

But according to these two and many many other Brauvians, this is the story of crime. Both of us would consider it theft because they were taking illegally. Well, no, not illegally, unethically. They took it, it was theft. British got away with many things they couldn't have done today. So how exactly do you steal a plant? And why would you steal a plant? I'll tell you this for nothing. It actually has nothing to do with gin and tonics. This is about a brutal

disease and soldiers at war and a stunning garden, almost 10,000 miles, way. When you're bitten by an anopheles mosquito, you will start to shiver, you'll have high temperatures, you'll have hallucinations, these parasites will live in your body. You will be left with sometimes a permanent infection for years after you first get bitten. I'm Kavita Philip and I am at UBC, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. For generations of European colonists and soldiers, they ventured out around the world into Asia, and India, and beyond.

One of the biggest fears was a disease, malaria. You could not travel in the tropical regions, if you were the British military, if you were anybody, really, without succumbing to malaria. When military folks mostly, you know, working-class British people who were conscripted into the military or told to work for Empire, they came up against this almost invisible enemy. And Kaveta has seen the impacts of malaria up close. You said your dad had it five times. What was that like to witness him going through that?

It's a strange disease because people can't really talk much. They're sort of, they're shivering, they're under blankets, but it would severely compromise your ability to function. And certainly for the British Empire, a non-functioning military was out of the question. And that was a very real threat facing the global British Empire, which remember at its peak, dominated a quarter of the world's population and land. The mosquito almost brings the British Empire to its needs.

The British could not travel to the tropics without dying in the millions. And it's a particularly big problem for them in India. When Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India, as they say, they need to put down the revolt in India, the 1857 First War of Independence, that nationalist call it. It had a few different names, but it was a huge violent uprising in India. And for the British, it was a key turning point. The revolt showed the British that they needed more troops.

If they were going to send more troops to the tropics, they needed something, some prophylactic, some preventative, to stop the troops from dying of malaria. Malaria was terrifying to them. I mean, you would sort of get hallucinations. The fever could return several times, and so malaria wasn't just a one-off thing. Troops could literally spend their lives suffering from it. So Queenine was absolutely key to the British

in order to have troops on the ground, not just in India, but in Africa in different parts of the tropics. Yes, Queenine. Queenine is a medicine that is derived from a certain bark that I tried earlier with the Bhattenda Charlie, which was traditionally found to have properties that would help treat malaria. And the native Proviens were using this for centuries. And accordingly, it was only really available in some hard-to-reach corners of a handful of South American countries. So Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador know this bark,

which is the bark of the Chinchona tree, is incredibly valuable. And so they want to protect their comparative advantage in Queenine, in the bark, in the alkaloid that comes from the tree. And at the same time, they know by the 1830s, 40s and 50s that the British and Dutch really want this. Yes, the Dutch and the British, these global empires determined to protect their soldiers

from this invisible enemy of malaria, they want that bark and Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, they can see those empires are coming for them. Where the British Empire bear have an ice in the hall and that is Q Gardens. Today, Q Gardens nestled along the Thames and the east of London. It is one of the UK's most loved tourist attractions.

So Cue looks like a gorgeous garden, and it is. It's cultivated. The gardeners are kind of showing off what they can do. There are perfectly manicured lawns everywhere you'd look, and vibrant pops of colour with plants from the four corners of the globe. But you see, none of that happened by accident. If you walk around Q Gardens today, you'll see several glass and metal sort of pavilions and they're sort of like a massive greenhouses. And they represent continents.

So for example, the Palm House represents tropical plants. You know, you'll also see a temperate house. But in each of these sort of pavilions, the Palm House, the temperate house, we see plants that were native to or thrive in certain continents, if you will, that the British saw as strategic to their future. And this was going to propel the British Empire into heights of scientific control that we're still studying today.

And the British government weaponized Q Gardens in this fight. So Q Gardens helped to collect plants from the far reaches, not only of the British Empire, but of other zones, climates and nations. So, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador were recently independent. They won their independence from the Spanish in the 1820s. However, the British wanted Queenine, but seeds are the key to imperial botany.

And to get those seeds is a wild story of a race between spies and pirates. My name is Mark Honeggsbaum. I'm a medical historian and I'm a lecturer at City University of London. So how is it that you came to writing about Queen Anne, Quine Anne, there is a debate over how to pronounce it. I've realized as I've been making this in the first place. Where did that all kind of stop for you? Well, it's actually quite an extraordinary story.

So for the first 20, 25 years of my career, I was a journalist. I found myself in Zurich. I was doing investigation on a robbery. And after I had done an interview with the Zurich police and various shady lawyer types. I went to look for a restaurant where I could eat and write up my notes. So Mark guys and finds himself a painter place. Within about five minutes of sitting down, it got quite busy and they said, excuse me,

do you mind if you, would you be happy to share this table? So I said, fine, why not? And the person who sat down, I didn't know him from Adam. So just to make conversation, I said, hi, what do you do? And he said, well, I'm a Swiss botanist. And I said, well, that's interesting. And I thought, what question I can ask him. So I said, what is the most interesting plant

in the history of botany? And that's when he launched into the, what I now know to be the extraordinary story of the Sincona plant. By the 1860s, Britain has an expanding empire in India. The French are in North Africa, and the Dutch are in South-East-East Indonesia, Java, and they all realize that they need to obtain supplies of Quinni. It was the first specific drug for any disease.

It hard to quantify, but the estimates of the impact of malaria are horrific. Two million people annually were dying of malaria in India. Twenty-five million were being sickened annually. With multiple superpowers desperate for quenching, the resources growing already naturally in South America were under enormous amounts of pressure. powers desperate for quenching. The resources growing already naturally in South America were under enormous amounts of pressure. The forests where the trees grew were rapidly being cut down in the strip trees and the stands were dying, they were being replenished. This caused legitimate concern that the world might

run out and therefore efforts were made to send botanical collectors to South America with the aim of raising plantations in the colonial possessions of European countries. So in Britain the plan was to plant in what's known as Sri Lanka. The Dutch plan was Java. So what happened was there was a race essentially. Most of these explorations ran into difficulties quite quickly because there are civil wars raging throughout. So borders are closed or there are militias fighting each other. So it's very difficult to even cross the

border let alone venture deep into these forests. The republics are aware that there are Europeans trying to steal their produce. Following the story is literally like following a spy story. The Caribbean government passed a law making it illegal for anyone to take seedlings or seeds out of the country. They are evading the Bolivian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian governments that go deep into the mountains

with indigenous guides. So the Dutch are all the blocks, the French and people, but it's really the British who of course, who do it best. Yes, the British had a very enthusiastic volunteer to lead this mission. Calls the Clemens Markham. The Clemens Markham is best known as the father of polar exploration because he sponsored expeditions to the Antarctic. But he was also a historian of South America, so he knew South America very well at least

on paper and he visited a few times. And that was his pitch for why he should be in charge. I, because you know, I've traveled in South America and I know a lot about the Incon and the history of this area, Even though I'm not a botanist and I have no knowledge at all about it, basically Clements Markham was desperate to get from out behind a desk in Westminster where he was probably bored, and he wanted the glory. He was a member of the real, he became president of the real wheelchair, graphical society. You know, looks good in a fedora. Yeah, you know, he looks good posing on a precipice,

looking out across the Amazon. And he's a master of rhetoric. He talks about how all of this exploring it's not for our benefit. We plant collectors, we do it, not even just for our country or for love of empire, but we do it for the people. So he decided to lead an expedition in person to Peru.

So the British have got their team for who's going to go in to South America and collect these seeds. And of course, at the same time, we know the French and the Dutch are hot on their heels. But he's a twist. The most important person of all though in this story, as it turned out, was someone who was not an employee of the British government, wasn't even on their radar. He was a British-born trader.

His name was Charles Ledger. He had gone to South America to seek his fortune, so he had his eye on getting Sincona bark and seeds and something to self up as a trader in Bolivia. So the British alone have multiple different expeditions going, some more official than others. In Bolivia, in Peru, in Ecuador also there's another expedition to Colombia. Markham, he goes into the Proven Amazon, he comes out with Caesar particular variety. The Proven's, once the authorities heard about it, they sent people to sort of put arsenic in the earth where the plants were, or

they drilled holes in these portable greenhouses so that air would get in and they get contaminated with fungus and other stuff in in the time to sabotage the whole expedition. So he negotiated all that. He wants to send it directly to India because that's where it's going to end up and that's where the environmental conditions are perfect for grazing this tree. Then they send it back to London to Cucardan's first of all. And then they send it from England to India via Egypt and the Suez Canal. Unfortunately, encrossing the Suez Canal in the heat of summer, all the plants get fried, No viable plants reach India.

Which for Markham sucks. But at least one of the other official expeditions also succeeded. But when it came to planting those trees, they realized they had a certain variety that did have quinine in it, but not in very high amounts. Some bark is very high in the alkaloid you need to produce quinine, and some bark is very low. The levels of quinine were so low that it wasn't really viable commercially. But then you get our mate, Leisure. We have to return now to Charles Leisure.

So Charles Leisure. He's a lot more common. He was born in the A stand. Doesn't have the high contacts with the British government that Markham does. He writes to people, London asked them, you know, I've heard that, you know, the British are after this. Can you tell them that I'm here? I mean, the advantage ledger had was that he'd spent many years in Bolivia, right, as a tradesman. He'd seen all the different varieties of the synconetry. More importantly, he had befriended a horticulturalist called manual Inchre Mamani. Mamani was indigenous to the area. All his life had spent going into the forest. Mamani knew where the trees grew. Ledger says, can you get me these seeds, offices, some money?

The money isn't nearly enough to recompense him for the danger or cost. Nevertheless, Mani seems to share in the belief of Mark Mouder people that this is important for the world and that there's a real risk that that this tree might be lost. He seems to share in that enthusiasm for that it's important to get this trail to South America and make it available to everyone. So he takes great risks himself. He travels to the region. Mimani eventually finds the elusive,

legendary red bark tree of Bolivia. But it's in a really inaccessible part of Bolivian Amazon. He first arrives there in 1862, but it's the wrong time of the year, it's the winter, so he has to wait another season, and then he has to wait a second season. He has to wait three years, and until 1865, until the trees flower and produce seeds, and he can take cutting. He then walks 1600 kilometers back from the Amazon across the Andes to where ledger is waiting for him. He does that on foot.

And then the irony of ironies is that ledger tries to find a channel to let the British know that he's got what they've been looking for. You know, they've been sent to Gleksville, let the Andes. He's now got the most valuable seeds, but nobody knows his name in England. And Ledger gives them to his brother. His brother in London is shopping these seeds around. The seeds and the saplings that come from the indigenous people of the Andes. And he sends his brother to Cue Gardens with a pack of the seeds and he gets turned away. They say, we've already got seeds.

We don't need your seeds. We've got our own explorers and so we're not buying any seeds that are knocking around the London markets. The English rejected it or something like that. Anyway, the English passed up some sweet deal. A long story short, ledger ends up having to sell those seeds cheaply to the Dutch Britain's rivals. And the Dutch then plant those seeds in Java.

And they end up producing the most commercially lucrative strain of St. Cona, which by World War I is supplying all the world's needs for Quinnon. For Maloo and Irana, who you met earlier, the Per. Yeah, there's not a lot of sympathy to the British here. At the end, the Dutch had the monopoly of the Sincena trade. They controlled 90% of all production and exports in the British were like a minority. The British got away with many things they couldn't have done today. British got away with many things they couldn't have done today. The Dutch would eventually name their inherited species, Centrona Lageriana, after Charles

Ledger. But Mamani, his faithful guide who did so much, would get no such recognition. He wouldn't get a plant named after him like Ledger, nor would he be knighted like Markham later was for his contributions to the Empire. Instead, Mamani was severely beaten by Bolivian police and died of his injuries years later during another seed collecting trip orchestrated by Ledger. and it's stories like this that so often get lost in the long view of history. It's definitely a theft. There's no doubt it was theft and the tree was lucrative, but it is also true that this was a humanitarian endeavor.

You can argue that it was self-serving, but I do believe that many of the plant collectors were motivated by their concern. There was a very real risk. The most valuable strains of the tree could be harvested to extinction, and that therefore human kind, and I stress human kind, would lose, you know, would be, you know, would be a...

a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... a... The irony is that initial fear that the tree might be harvested to extinction. Thanks to what we understand from modern genetics, it turns out that fear was well-founded. So the first time I saw a sinternet tree in the wild, it was in a trip. We had to climb a very steep mountain and when I was reaching the peak of the mountain range I heard my colleague and he was shouting hey Natalie this is your Sinjana come come and see it wow and then next thing I know I was just completely mesmerized and I was contemplating this trip for quite some time which might be five minutes or one hour. I was very overwhelmed.

So hi, I'm Natalie Ayasek-Annaales. I am original from the Peruvian Amazon. I am a geneticist. And part of Natalie Kagnallis' research is the theory that potentially, thanks to all of the over harvesting, the very DNA of the existing synchonatries has changed. 200 years ago, the super high content trees were over harvested. It could mean that the trees started producing less and less quinine.

They will survive in the wild more than the ones that don't, because the ones that have higher will get over harvested. And it's quite possible that alkaloid levels of the current trees are lower than we could find 200 years ago in natural forests. It doesn't make me feel too good about it. Maybe a bit angry, maybe. I think it's important to remind ourselves what this dream meant 200 years ago, what's this meaning now, and the rich history it has.

I suppose for most people, the meaning of it now is, well, it's going back to that drink. It's gin and tonic. The Proveans tried to guard it, the English tried to steal it, the Dutch finally did, and the English ended up basically making a syrup with it, mixed with the rations for their soldiers. So the soldiers used to all get a daily ration of gin and that kept them happy and do so.

And you know, obviously if you mutiny the gin runs out so you don't. And so it became commonplace for the English in subcontinental Asia to have gin with this tonic syrup which just became gin and tonic. And so the word tonic now is mostly associated with the tonic beverage, but really tonic just referred to the fact that it was, you know, some sort of medicinal treatment. Would you see somebody pour a gin and tonic? When you walk past a bottle of tonic in a grocery store? What goes through your mind? Great question. Yeah, tonic to me is a result of the global

smuggling empire while many Indians will sort of drink it as an almost nationalist drink to me represents an imperial crossroads. If not for Queenine, we might have had a different kind of tropical world. The sound design and engineering is by Martin Peralta. The executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak for CBC podcasts and Amruth Asleep for ABCRN. Very special thank you to Erosemma Vega, Maxim Holland, Matthias Wolfson and Daniel Pereira. Stuff the British stole is a production of ABCRN in partnership with CBC Podcasts. After the break, my conversation with Mark Fennel. So Mark tell these fine people who you are.

Hello, my name is Mark Fennel and I seem to chase stole at artifacts around the world, which is a weird career, but here we are. I don't know how I got here, Roman, how did this happen? Well, you're on your third season of chasing artifacts around the world, third season of Stuffed Rich's Soul. So how has this idea for the show changed over the course of these seasons? And what are the new angles on British theft

that you're most interested in exploring as the show goes on? It's a few things that happen. We're on the third season of the podcast. I'm now also making the second season of a television series. Television series. Yeah. So it's become, it has started to resemble an empire, which I feel like structurally might be like thematically might be wrong, but also feels right at the same time.

I always thought I was making a niche show about, like, because it really did start with me and a microphone standing in a museum. And what I think had changed for me was the audience response. Like, I was really surprised at how people kind of took it and ran with it. When we set up the show to begin with, we set up an email address where people could just email us,

you know, ideas or things, well, even just things that they'd seen in museums that they were a bit confused by. And in every single episode, pretty much of both the podcast and the TV series has now come from the audience. But I think the big thing has been a wide of view of what was stolen. It's not just things that end up in museums. This episode in particular is probably one of the more left field objects. I always wonder if people will turn around and go, is that what this show is? Actually, people provided that it still has twists and turns. I always look for a small doorway into a big world.

So something that sort of allows this kind of chewy idea that people can latch onto and then it has to open up and tell you something bigger about how colonialism really worked or how the empire really worked and how all of our lives have been fundamentally changed by it. And I always think that provided that engine is still in action or still motoring along then it probably still works. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We have that same issue when we say we are sure about design and then we talk about you know government systems or something like that and they'll go they'll go is this really design, you know, and it's like well to us it is. So yeah. So let's talk a little bit about this story, the fever tree and how it's a little bit outside of the norm. It's not released to all an object. It's a plant, although it kind of manages to be a stolen object anyway. I mean, the reason why I was so fascinated by this episode in particular, is there's no reason why this tree has to be stolen.

It could be found and cultivated without any indigenous people actually losing anything, but the British still managed to steal it and destroy and diminish what was left behind. And that is an amazing fact pattern. In some ways, it's also about the clash of, this is going to be the most podcast thing I ever said, it's about the clash of capitalism with traditional knowledge as well, where it's like, once capitalism decides that something's a worthwhile resource, I'm anthropomorphizing

capitalism now, so deep in the way it's here. Like once capitalism decides that something's a worthwhile resource, it'm anthropomorphizing capitalism now. So we're deep in the weeds here. Like once capitalism decides that some things are worthwhile resource, it's almost like the traditional method of how something is grown and respected. They are incompatible. I don't think one necessarily kills the other, but they are incompatible. And because an industry will want to take it and make it on mass, and that will drastically reshape how it's seen in its original form. It's possibly more that with the story of rubber, because the story of rubber in places like Brazil, like there was a whole industry of rubber and, you know, these rubber barons who weren't like great people,

but that industry is completely upended when rubber plantations start getting grown and taken by, you know, the British, some say smuggled, some say traded out, and then they that industry is completely upended when Robert Plantations start getting grown and taken by the British, some say smuggled, some say traded out, and then they set up these plantations around the world. And suddenly, a whole industry in South America is changed forever. Whereas this one, in some ways, it's more great because it is still available to people in the South American countries where it's present, but it also enables a large scale colonization and invasion of other parts of the world. The British simply couldn't have achieved.

And they're not alone in this, the Dutch as well. They could not have achieved what they achieved in Southeast Asia and South Asia without these resources. Yeah. And this episode sort of starts with a genitonic. Yeah. And a lot of you just smiled when you said that. It's like 8.45 in the morning for me right now.

I have a problem room. And so, and a lot of the stories start with you interacting with the person. It's often starts small and expands wide. And what is that process for you? Like having something sort of you can touch or you can hold or a person you can talk to in an Uber or something that sort of grounds these big stories and you know about capitalism and empires and colonialism. You know what is that mission about?

I guess the end of the day, the show, if it's all sort of high-falutin empires and large movements throughout history, that's great and that can be like sweeping and beautiful and can really make you feel like you're watching a landscape picture. And I think those moments are important in the show. But at some point, either at the beginning or at the end,

at some point you need to connect with something very every day, because that's the point of the show. The point of the show is that the legacy of the British Empire never actually ended. I mean, the fact of the matter is, if you listening to this now can understand the language that you and I are speaking right now, congratulations, you have been touched by the British Empire in some way, shape or form, right?

We talk about the size of the British Empire, right? So at its peak, we're talking about a quarter of the world population, a quarter of the world's land, roughly, but its cultural impact is so much bigger than that, right? Re-shapes, you know, huge parts of the world through hard and soft power. And that's a really impossible thing for people to wrap their heads around. It's actually too big for a human brain to encapsulate.

So if you have something small like a conversation and an Uber or, you know, the clink of a gin and panic, there's always a moment where you're reminded that the legacy didn't end, and it lives and breathes in your life today, unless you don't like gin, you're more of a vodka person, in which case, just wait for stuff.

The Russian style will get that, don't you worry. Like, I think it's just about kind of connecting it to reality, more than anything. Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the other stories this season that you're most excited about? Like, is there anything to entice our listeners? This season is probably the most wild combination of objects.

Many years ago, somebody slipped into my DMs on Twitter and said that there was the mummified head of an Egyptian in a high school in country Australia. And I thought they were joking. It turns out they were not. It is actually one there. The number zero, it turns out, may have been stolen. Apparently, it comes from South Asia, but the manuscript that proves it comes from South Asia is in Britain. There's an absolutely devastating story about a prince who's from Ethiopia, who ended up being one

of Queen Victoria's favorite sort of pseudo-adopted children and history's tragic. And the other one that I've wanted to do for years is the story of Pocahontas. My daughter and I sat down and watched the Disney movie and I had this brief moment of like, ah, this is aged very weirdly. And it was the sort of story that could only really be done in audio because everyone has an image in their mind

of Pocahontas because of the Disney movie. And I wanted to kind of see if you started there, where could you go with that story? If you told the reality of what actually happened to her, and there's a whole range of voices across the US and Canada that feed into that. That's amazing. Well, thank you again so much for talking with me, and for sharing your show with me, and for continuing to do it. I just love it, and I love how it's evolved, and to enjoy it to listen to. So thanks so much. The pleasure is always mine. Thank you so much.

Stuff the British Doll is in its third season. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. You can probably also find the TV show wherever you watch TV. The conversation with Mark was produced by Sarah Baker and Delaney Hall. Our Executive Producer is Kathy too. Kurt Colstead is our digital director, the rest of the team, includes Chris Barube and Mip Fitzgerald, Martín Gonzales, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Jason Dillion, Lashma Don, Jacob Moltenado Medina, Kelly Prime, Swanriale, Joe Rosenberg, and me Roman Mars. The 99% of his belovedot was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north

in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown oakland california. You can find us on all the social media sites if you want to, but at this point I think it's become clear that social media was a big mistake. You can find links to other Stitcher shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99 PI at 99pi.org.