Turmeric tasted, dolmens and brain surgery

First, stop spices. Now this is a feature that we've actually been planning for awhile before even recording the podcast where Anton is going to taste different spices and kind of give his thoughts of them. Then I will give a bit of a run down of the history. So what I've prepared is 2 little bowls with a spice in which antennas doesn't know what it is yet. So let's begin the Charlie. I'm going to reveal.

The Mary exercises.

Do you want to have a smell?

What do you got don't.

Really recognise it.

But I should.

It's quite well says that like sweets and I actually or maybe slightly Korean injury.

Okay, do another taste of this on this. Got a little bit of oil here just to help the flavour come out, yeah?

Let's see if you know it.

Is have a guess.

I don't know.

Okay, and then they just have a little.

Bit you could try that one too.

And what colour is it? What's it look like?

A pale, very pale orange, actually.

Yes, quite strong colour, isn't it?

You know what it is?

So I got the taste and I'm not sure is it a Curry.

I use it in Currys.

Koeman no.

Turmeric.

Turmeric yes.

So I go into some history of the spice. Turmeric is actually a member of the Ginger family of plants, and I've got a picture of it here and I think it was quite like a pot plant got large broad leaves and lots of Flowers and.

Bright orange Flowers.

Nice leaves as well actually.

Yeah, I could manage that somebody's house.

It's been used for over 5000 years in various ways, but this place is actually made from the roots, which are boiled and rise, then ground into fine powder. It can also be used fresh and what's funny is that there actually ginger and ginger.

The plant raised in the Indian subcontinent and also in South East Asia, says Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Christmas Island, ET cetera. That's where Santa goes on holiday.

But the exact origin is unknown, but probably in India. But there are many related species of plant growing throughout the area.

One of the most distinctive features of Tamric is its amazing bright orange colour.

So it's not only used as a flavouring in cooking but also for free calling and it's actually one of the numbers which are saying it's even 100, which is the very very thirsty number. And I've got samara. Eminem, tears, probably hear rustling around, so by implementing MUP.

Of course, some out. Imagine it's used in the orange ones. Maybe the yellow ones Patch the red ones.

And so even used for drying clothes. So if you look at the photo I've got here on time of some Buddhists. I mean what colour their rapes?

A all time record.

They are they quite similar army. The problem is it doesn't actually make a particularly good die because the colour washes out.

Like many herbs and spices is also believed to have had medicinal qualities and has long been used in high robotic medicine and it was first developed about 2500 years ago in India. They say that suppressing natural urges or desires can lead to illness and if you search online, notify lots of articles and blogs, save that turmeric is some kind of wondering Regents and believe everything brain functioning. Lower the risk of heart disease out, prevent cancer, ET cetera. Now all of these are bold claims, but there isn't really that much technical evidence to back them up.

I use it mostly for its culinary qualities, such as when I'm making Currys. It's got slightly earthy. Musty flavour, doesn't that?

Yeah, it was. Actually, it's like like it's the roots of the ginger.

It's not just used in Currys please. I mean due to strong colour is also used in ice cream, cakes, popcorn sources and way more things. Yeah, so maybe just to you know you have that so yellow we colour and some popcorn. Yeah yeah. So it's using loads and loads of different things and it would have been spread.

And carried far and wide smile the spice rate. It reached China by about 700 CE. Then the East Africa 100 years later and then West Africa 500 years later. So why do you think it took so long to spread across Africa compared to reaching China?

Baby was it because it's dry or?

The lands or the train.

Yes, Brodie from the train because back then it was much faster and easier to travel by sea and it would be able and it came to Europe at 1300 thanks to Arab traders and is also mentioned by Marco Polo and he was an Italian merchant in Explorer and in the 1200s he went all the way to China. Probably won the first Westerners to make that trip became packed with lots of amazing storeys, some of which are thought to be more myth than fact, wow.

Yeah, and he was actually really impressed with turmeric and he compared it to saffron man. It was also named for a while as Indian saffron is currently in the news but not for good reasons. Its latest chapter is not such a happy one.

It was discovered in a 2014 Stanford University study that turmeric in Bangladesh contains very high levels of lead.

You know what lettuce, yeah, it's like a poison.

Yes, metal it's poisonous and some people say that leads responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire can have very serious health effects.

Now, the researchers who discovered this thought that the lead must have been getting into the plant naturally, but it seems that is being put there deliberately is actually being added to the spice who buy. Well, guess that in a minute, so got quite hear from Jenna Forsyth who won the researchers and I'm going to put my quitting voice now.

We went into this thinking that perhaps there's a source of lead in the environment. Maybe it's the soil. Maybe it's lead soldering in the pipes.

When you see that's actually lead has been added to, the food is added directly to something that's being consumed that was just shocking.

Nonetheless, that was found in the turmeric was actually part of a yellow pigment, say, presumably that was being used to improve the colour.

How can you improve the colour of the terror cause? It looks really lovely anyway.

I know that's exactly what I thought, so I don't know if it's because maybe it's a poor quality turmeric.

Maybe it's like a really dull ******.

Tell record something.

So hopefully for the sake of people in Bangladesh that be some regulations in place to actually stop this happening. Again, sorry for really.

Yeah, deliberately putting.

As poison to give it more colour.

Yeah, so they can probably sell it for more money or something, yeah?

Yeah, it's it's horrible and thoughtless, and that is the history of turmeric.

What do you think of it?

Really lazy, actually. I was not expecting that and.

I had no. I said it soon times.

But then the lead players will yeah.

On

your main takeaways from it.

But also all the while all the plants and colours and how it used to be used as Diane it's it's roots for plants.

Yes, been used for centuries.

Thousands of years thousands here.

Lilia

Anton investigates dorman's

So what is the doorman?

Well, Dahmen is megalithic structure built. Large cap SIM supported by two or more operate serves. The oldest European dorman's are found in Brittany, northern France, and date back to 5000 BC. They are also found in North Africa, Asia and vertically in Korea. There are many dormans and glancey dating back to 4000 BC, most of them in the North.

Which at the time was a separate items.

They were usually graves or teams, but sometimes places of worship day you Dolan was purchased by Jean de Havilland for Full Pounder 5 Pence.

For white pants.

I'm guessing that was purchased awhile gave him.

Yes, 1800s.

Okay, so property prices, but there are much more reasonable than they are today.

Yeah.

So have you visited any dominance?

Yes, we have actually done a live recording in one.

So let's go and have a listen.

We just walked down to the doorman, which is probably the best moment in Guernsey and look actually looks like an old kind of little Hobbit house. If you think of the Lord of the Rings, is actually lovely hot day, so Anton, what do you think of it? And your first?

Question of outside.

It's actually bigger than expected, and it's almost like a mountain away, so Big Hill.

Yes, got it.

TfL over it. It's really wow.

Yeah, so not been inside yet, but running outside. There's lots of stains. It's probably about a metre high kind of standing up all around the edges and also a stable this week. Granite like covered in lichen and there's lots of grasshoppers round, yeah?

Do you think we should go often tops and see what's there?

Yeah, let's climb up. Let's see what the views like from the top. I don't know if people would have kind of used as a look out point or something, but it's certainly the highest thing around.

Your not in.

Stone Age thing like that maybe like.

Celts, Romans.

So at the entrance now and there's a small little door, please sit Sam, which is obviously a modern fitting now it was excavated between 1830 seven 1847 and it's also reactivated in 1932 and they found a lot of discoveries here, such as old pots and things. Some dating back maybe 3 1/2 thousand years. So now we're going to go inside so after you.

This is cool.

You gonna really duck down? I mean, I'm short and I'm having to duck right down here, yeah?

It actually is actually going to that little chamber left. Really. Memory chamber here.

Creepy

is small passage. Not sure that would be useful.

And there's actually as he comes through the entrance on each side. There's several passages, say Wednesday, little rooms, then in the middle of the main passage is a standing stone. Then if you look up at the ceiling, there's large cap stains here.

And also there's some sort of.

Paintings.

Yeah, there's the face here. It's actually carved into the rock and.

It's.

It's quite crude, but it still has real character to it and it says lighting set up in here. So we concert.

Then there's also meant to be some sort of other things in half of wild animals.

Yeah, in producing here, hopefully that the acoustics are very different here to outside that's not much of an active, but there's a bit of 1.

Yeah.

So how do you feel in here? I mean, this is made thousands of years ago. I mean, what do you feel like?

Oh yes, little bit.

Yeah, if it's speaking even put the lights back on. Yeah and.

I think this is actually a burial place as well, so somewhere in here.

But two skeletons?

Think it was in that smaller chamber that we went.

Yeah, the side chambers near the entrance and actually found them buried with lots of limpet shells, so yeah.

And then they actually helped to preserve the brains. I don't know if they understood that at the time I was just lucky.

It's much cooler in here compared to outsiders. It is like a man made caves.

I'm trying to think how high is probably about less than two metres high when you're inside, but the amount of earth outside is much higher, says considerable amount of weights there.

And now we're going to return to the exit, so that let me just turn off the lights.

Like say it's plums it back Into Darkness and now we go past The Hobbit door and mind your heads.

So now you seen the impressive Dome and I am amazed at what people were able to build so long ago.

How did they move the stains?

How has it not collapsed? Cause there's a massive?

Almost like Boulder or ground on top of it.

It's pretty impressive, isn't it? Do you think we're down the beach and were moving at different rocks and things there? How heavy they are? Those are tiny compared to these cells. Must take a lot of people say whoever was buried here, it's presumed that they were important people, yeah?

Wonder where they came from as well.

Maybe we could try find that out.

Yeah, I imagine a lot of its lost to history. Unfortunately this was a long time ago. This is long before Rayman's would have been around and things so I didn't get any written language or nothing.

Yeah, actually.

Maybe how did they get their ideas from for the paintings? Must be what they've seen what they think you don't always get. They always do animals normally and stuff, so maybe they would have seen that, but you don't really get those animals anymore I'm gonna.

Say no anymore, but then say if it was, what was it? 4500 BC?

Yeah, it's done so that 7000 years ago, so I'd not short sea levels. Would like to see did you steal hour? We need checking our map and see what it still linked to mainland Europe at that time and big grass Plains with Buffalo and different features on rather than just being a separate island like it is today.

Maybe it wasn't even that. Yeah, maybe it wasn't an island because.

Because you know Pangea, that was just one supercontinent.

Yeah much much further ago. Yeah, longer ago, yeah.

Yeah, it's quite small, so that's been separated.

Well, you should be connected to the mainland is down at Vazon Beach. There are when the tides relay you can see old, petrified three stumps.

Yeah, for an old fart, so that would be for a future episode of curiosity of a child.

Thank you for listening to. Anton investigates and now you know what Doms are.

We all sit.

On next feature is all to do with curiosity. As we are forming brain surgery.

That's right, but sorry brain surgery.

On me, yes or?

Have you ever done this before?

No, but I do have a guide done.

Oh, the horrible science bulging brains book by Nick Arnold.

Are you confident you can do this?

Yes, okay brain surgery for beginners.

There's a checklist of everything we need here, so do you have a drill?

Yeah, yes, accents do you have a sharp scalpel for cutting through flesh?

Yeah, okay. Do you have a saw for cutting my skull implant?

And finally, have you got a cloth for mopping up late brain fluids?

Shrinking that out now K breaks.

And you've never done this before.

Never.

And this is our first episode and it could spell last ever episode if it goes wrong, yeah.

May I really want to do this?

Okay, here goes so slow down.

Yes please okay.

Thanks already.

Okay, well you're quipment yeah and I'm lying down.

Ready for the operation? Little bit nervous Anton, but I trust you okay now in this book. It's got instructions on how to perform the operation. So the first thing we need is to actually have a particular operation in mind.

Yes, we need to find where curiosity lives is at the prefrontal cortex or is it the hippopotamus?

I think you have a compass.

Okay, so we're finding the centre of curiosity in the human brain. So the first thing we need to do is scan my brain. So we need to use a PET scan or an MRI scan. We don't have much equipment here, but we do have grown in bunches cat.

Yes, I think that with PET scan, then super duper.

Great is the area clear of germs.

Yeah, apart from last week socks it's fine.

Again, you scrubbed everything down. Yeah, fantastic. Do you need to draw a line across my head where you intend to cut into my skull and need to make sure that my head shave him?

Don't need to do that. You already have votes.

So draw the line.

Thank you.

And then to get into the school you need to drill some holes into my skull. So you get the drill ready and go.

Alright 321.

Hahahaha feels weird, I usually do this properly.

Yeah.

Looks gusting okay. What's the next bit?

Okay, so.

Am I meant to be an Ethernet ised for this, do you think?

That mean.

Well, so don't feel any pain and may be sleeping.

Ohh, I might forgotten that.

OK, it doesn't say that anywhere in the book. Great. Okay, well we've done now. So let's carry on. So the next step is to you need to sort between the holes that you've drilled an lift up a flap of my skull.

Okay, this bit might tingle little bit OK.

Add more than singles, fact kind of tickles.

I've finished cussing.

Next, Unity lift a flap of this coop. There may be some slurping noise as the clear fluid that surrounds the brain at bubbles out.

Careful with my brain please. Everything goes according to plan. The brain should be posting as the blood squirts its blood vessels. Can you see that?

Yeah, right rest.

Excellent, do you know what to do next?

Nah.

Oh dear.

Hello Peanut mnms good yellow turmeric flavour.