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Hello, friends. It's Chuck here on a Saturday. I just had my bowl of cereal. I just watched my morning cartoons and now I'm slogging into the studio to intro my pick for the Saturday Select for March 12, 2015. How Tea Works is a really good one, but my teeth. Right, give it a listen. Welcome to stuff you should know the production of Radio's HowStuffWorks.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark with Charles Zewe, Chuck Bright, Jerry, in Studio 1A, you just pointed out to each other as if I was going to be like, who is Jerry? And it was me, Jerry. So I'm Chuck here, Chuck. OK, that's Jerry. All right. I was a little confused right there. Gotcha. Here's a lady. I'm a dude. Yeah. All right.

Now that we have that sorted this talk to us or we could change the name of the podcast, the two dudes in a lady. Yeah, we could.

Maybe that'll be our side castes where we talk about this podcast, right? Sidecars. That's right. Coined by Josh Clark circa 2015. So now you own that.

I just put it on wax. Pretty. Pretty sweet. Yeah. Pretty slick. Yeah.

So, Chuck. Yeah. You ever drink tea? I just finished up some green tea. You still a green tea drinker? Yeah. I mean I like all kinds of tea, but I drank some green because I was studying for this and it just was like, yeah, sure.

You used to drink it by like the mini pitcher for. Yeah, I used to drink it cold. Yeah. You don't do that. I had this hot. Well it is wintertime. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you like to see. I like green tea. Yeah I like green tea the most. Um I like chilled green tea. Sure. I don't like Wolong which until I guess today or yesterday I thought was oolong. Did you know it was too long.

I had no idea and I've never had it. I have. It's very woody. It's almost like roots. Like you put some roots in some water.

Yeah. Um warm water. Well seep for a while or steep.

Steep. I don't know why I always have trouble with that. It's clearly steep. Seip is different. Yeah. It's different here.

But I for my whole life of confused steepen sleep when it comes. Oh really. Yeah. Interesting.

Anyway Wolong not the biggest fan. I like green tea and I like it chilled black tea. I'm not really big on. Yeah I like a good English breakfast. He loves you or Earl Grey. You like those two. Shermann little cream. Little sugar. Yeah. And then of course you've got your herbal teas like I don't like this.

Oh you don't know.

I've been drinking Celestial Seasonings tension. Taimur So that's not actually tea, right.

Well, well, that was the big reveal that I was working up to as this plodding along. But now that you've asked me, I will agree with, you know, not all of those are right.

Sorry, but that those aren't.

Here's the really big reveal. OK, English breakfast, tea, green tea.

Woo, long white European. You remember that Snapple ad where that old man shows the backpacker dude?

No.

Oh, it's like a Snapple white tea. And he goes because we plucked the top. It's like, that's it. And he goes, that's it. That's why it take all of those are the same thing.

They're all the same. They come from the same plant, one plant. Did you know that?

Um, I did not know that until I researched.

It's a camellia sinensis. Is the tea plant. The tea bush. Yes.

And now we have to say there are different varieties of Camellia sinensis. See sinensis is what those in the know call it. Oh yeah. Well horticulturist, sure. But the plant itself there's one species of tea plant. Yeah. And that's what it's, that's what it all comes from.

It's how the tea is made that that explains explains the differences. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then you know, you add some stuff like apparently Earl Grey has the essential oil of the bergamot orange mixed in. Yeah. Which is nice. Sure.

But that's still tea. It is tea.

Yes. Right. It's got something added to it.

Now if you just took bergamot orange, dried it out, put it in a tea bag and so that is herbal tea as like orange dream. We wouldn't have tea. No. The tension.

Taimur It's not tea, it's a dried herb that you steep or steep depending on your preference and warm water. Yeah.

It's a steep hot beverage beverage. That's a good way of saying it because it's exactly what it is.

So the cat's out of the bag, which means now that we've done that, we have to explain everything there is to know about tea.

That is right. And I guess there is no better place to start than the twenty seven thirty seven B.C., of course, and the Emperor of China.

No one knows if this story is true.

Of course, it's a pretty good story, but it's a good story because we don't know the exact origin of tea.

It's been around for a long time, but some people say Chinese Emperor Shen Neng, um, who ruled about five thousand years ago, was traveling through China and he was big into sanitation. Yeah, smart guy. Like, boil your water kind of sanitation.

This is thousands of years before germ theory. Yeah, totally. Which is a couple hundred years old. I wonder what led him to that conclusion, which was spot on. You know, I don't know.

I don't know. We get in the Wayback Machine and ask him. Yeah, that's right.

OK, so a lot of fuel for that one question, but it's a pretty good question because. Yeah, you're right. It's spot on. How do you know that boiling water kills germs if you don't know what germs are exactly?

Uh, so he was traveling through China and reportedly stopped to rest and was preparing some boiled water, some delicious boiled water.

And a gust of wind blew some leaves from a bush into the water, changing the color. And he was like, hey, this is a different color. Now let me try it. Well, and it's delicious.

He was renowned as a scientist. Yeah, sure. He was definitely the very least curious fella. And yeah, he decided to try it. He's like different colored boiled water. Of course, I'm going to try that and see what it's like.

I bet he had his right hand try it first slide. It was like, oh yeah. Yeah exactly. He didn't die. I think that's what all the fat cats did back then. Sure. So it turns out that that was debris, detritus from the Camellia sinensis, right seat.

He was born he was born in China.

No one knows that that story is true, I think, like you said. But it's a pretty great story. And since we don't know the true virginity, why not?

Yeah, I'll go with that.

It's not that far fetched when the Western XAO Dynasty was around, the time was a religious offering and during the Han dynasty it was pretty limited.

So it was safe for royalty. By the time the Tang Dynasty came around, which was six, six, eight to nine and seven, they found a bunch they found discovered a lot of more tea plants.

And that ironic that tea became from Tang established during the Tang Dynasty. Yeah, that's pretty funny.

Um, because Tang is the opposite of tea, right? Yeah. I guess some ways.

I mean, they're both water based, so probably not the opposite, right. I don't know.

It'd be the opposite of tea.

Um, so like I said, they found a bunch more plants in the Tang Dynasty and the Chinese government actually said, you know what, everyone should drink tea because it's good for you. Yeah. And so and we can make money off of it, of course.

And then from the Tang Dynasty, it spread to Japan by priests. Yeah. You were studying in China.

They also brought Buddhism at the same.

Time, yeah, both of them took root, the Japanese said, we like this, let's try making some other stuff out of it, and that they actually created the tea ceremony, which is a big deal in Japan still to this day.

Yeah. Have you taken part in one of those? I have not.

You mean took some classes when she taught in Japan? Yeah, years back. But apparently it's one of these things where you you're just constantly learning. It's never you never like I'm a I'm a master at tea. Right. You're you're always learning more. You're always trying to be perfect in the thing that's so elusive about it. Is it supposed to be utterly simple? Yeah, it's a it's elaborate, but the the steps are meant to be simple.

Like it's a very simple plain form thing, like the sushi rice.

It's like. Right. Why are the Japanese obsessed with doing things really well?

They really are. You know, they don't want it in. All right.

But the the whole thing behind the tea ceremony and the Japanese adoption of it is that there's this idea that t shirt sitting down and sharing ceremonially in a ritual ritual manicure, a cup of tea can bring peace between people.

Yeah. What's the, uh, the tea ceremony? Chanoyu.

You know, there's a there's a saying chanoyu.

There's another saying.

Yeah, it's, uh, a cup of tea with me. Ichi, go easy.

Go easy. One time, one meeting, which is the idea that every encounter is unique and can't be duplicated. Right. It's very nice. That is nice.

So in Europe, you know, I think a lot of people associate tea, of course, with England and Europe.

The UK and Britain took a little while, though. All those places there is a lag.

Yeah, there was, uh, we're in like the seventeenth century now. And the Portuguese were the first people to, uh, not import tea but drink tea in England.

Yeah, they were they were trading in the East Indies, specifically Java. Yes. And the Dutch, if you remember from did we ever do a full nutmeg episode?

I think we did, yeah. Cinnamon to this all this showed up back then in the seventeenth century in the East Indies around Indonesia. Java. Yeah. Um, the Portuguese just had the place on lockdown until the Dutch came in. And we're like, we're taking over.

You know, one of the things that came out of that was the import or the introduction of tea to Europe through the Dutch.

Yeah, they pretty much horned in on their trading routes and, um, brought tea to Holland from China and then from Holland. Of course, it spread throughout Europe. Uh, and I think the king of England at one point married a Portuguese, uh, woman and a princess.

Yeah. Princess. That had a lot to do with it, too, of course. Charles, the second did Mary Catherine of Berganza, who was it says in this article a tea addict. And she was like, let's drink some tea, man. And all of Great Britain kind of followed suit because back then, once a princess did something. Sure. You know, everybody wanted to do that. Yeah. Even if she was a fiend of some sort.

Like a caffeine fiend.

Mm hmm. Um, so the end of the East India Company's monopoly on trade in China, which happened in 1834, was a really big deal because basically they you know, everything was coming from China until then.

And then at that point, the East India Company said, hey.

We could grow our own tea in India.

Yeah, and we're going to start doing it and they did and by 1839 they had enough cultivation going on that they had the first auction of Assam tea in Britain, which is a big deal.

That's the variety that they used to make Darjeeling tea, was it?

And I think they're number two in production today, right?

Yeah. India, China, Kenya and Sri Lanka are the big four tea producers. Yeah, Indonesia, I think it's fifth. And they're like, can you just say top five? Right. You know, produce. Well, they do produce a lot, but not nearly as much.

The other thing, too, that happened during that, uh, the monopoly was, um, the tea clipper was born. Yeah.

Which is pretty neat. Uh, when the company had the monopoly, there was basically no rush to get it there because they had the monopoly.

Right. You'll get the tea, will sail over there will all be good.

You ever heard a slow boat to China? Is that where it came from? Kind of. What about Highroad to China with your boy?

Tom Selleck, well, oh, yeah, I remember that movie, I never saw it. Yeah, I wasn't very good. That was his brief foray into a major motion pictures. Yeah, did he play like the king of Spain and one of the Columbus pictures back in the early 90s?

Oh, I think I remember that, yeah. What was that? Well, either 92 or Columbus. Yeah. I can't remember. So the tea clipper, yes, there was no rush, but until it when that monopoly ended, it was basically like the fastest boat to get there. The fastest ship will be the one that gets the sail. So they started making these these new ships that were had huge sails and tamasha could go a lot faster.

And it started the era of the Tea Clipper races. Um, basically you would leave the Canton River in China, go down the China Sea across the Indian Ocean, slink around the Cape of Good, hope up the Atlantic, pass the Azores and into the English Channel. Then you were towed up the River Thames by a tugboat and the first boat to throw their their load up on the docks would be the winner. And which is pretty neat until they built the Suez Canal.

And then I was like, oh well.

Oh, well, I took all the fun out of that. It sounds like a pretty great race, though. Yeah, it was.

Yeah. I wonder how long that took. I think they were it is Holland, but the whole time, too. Yeah, but even still had to take weeks. Oh sure. You know, I would think so. And this we should say, this is the that was the mid 19th century. The we would be remiss to do an episode on tea and not mention the Boston Tea Party, which is a thing everybody knows about the Boston Tea Party.

What I didn't realize is that the British royalty, the British crown, still, even after losing the colonies in part over taxes.

Yeah. Still continue to just tax that the heck out of tea for for at least a decade afterward before they finally relented and started to, like, drastically reduce it. Yeah. In the face of tons and tons of piracy and smuggling, apparently in the late 18th century, the seven million pounds of tea were smuggled into Britain. Oh, wow. And five million pounds were legally imported. So the smuggling there was more smuggled tea than legal tea in Great Britain in the late 18th century.

Right.

But apparently, despite all this, it wasn't until 1964 that the Brits, the British government finally said, you know what, we're going to stop fiddling with the tea tax and just not tax tea. And when was this 1960s? Yeah, 1960. Crazy. Yeah. Wow. Tea is huge in Britain.

Yeah. And at this point in the late 19th century is when I think the average Briton was consuming about six pounds a year per person.

That's a lot of tea. Yeah. I wonder what that would be today.

I mean, to look that up there. What harvester's dry harvester. I mean, is that a Seipp tea bag? It's not seeped.

That's a lot of tea. Yeah, man.

So, Chuck, we get the history under our belt. We'll move into how tea is actually made after this.

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Ever wondered why there are two ways to spell doughnut's or why some people think you can find water underground just by wandering around with a stick? Believe it or not, this is stuff you should know. You know the podcast with over a billion listeners. It's now for your eyes so you can read it. Stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things covers everything from the origin of the Murphy bed to why people get lost preorder at stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

OK, buddy, we were talking about the history, and then before that, we mentioned that there were four main types of tea.

Yeah, green, black, Wolong, Wu Tang and white tea. I just don't understand how o l o n g is Wolong.

It's Ulong gets the W is both. It's invisible but not silent. Yeah.

You know, and like we said, all those teas come from Camellia Sinensis and there's different varieties of them like the Assam makes Darjeeling. But the way that you process the leaves is where the differences come about, right? That's right. What's interesting to me is Alti, almost all in the whole wide world is harvested by hand.

Yeah. Like, I think what was the spice we were talking about? Nutmeg, saffron, saffron. Yeah, I think nutmeg too.

When we talk about saffron, I think I mentioned it in the cinnamon podcast's. It's expensive because it can only be harvested. Right. Right. And any time you're involving people it's going to cost more than some big stupid machine. Yeah. That can do tons of it at once. And that is certainly the case with TI because there are only a couple of harvests a year. The first flush and early spring. Yeah, the second flush and the summer.

And they, they really care for the TI plant, they pick and prune at them year round. Yeah. But they only choose what, a couple of leaves from each plant when they're actually harvesting.

Yeah. So the, the top two leaves and the bud in between. Ozon that's your tea. Everything else is just basically the home for the tea that's harvested like the rest of the plant. Yeah. This huge enormous plant. Yeah. Bush Shrub is just there to like sprout out these little bits and the little sprouts or the tea that we drink. That's amazing. And that's all the tea. That's the Ulong. That's the black tea. That's the white tea.

That's the green tea. That's all of them. It's from these. Yeah. Shrubs just the top two little leaves in the bud.

That's right. And from there, once they're picked by hand, they are taken to the factory, which is on the plantation because something starts to happen as soon as you pick it. And that's called oxidation. Yeah. And oxidation is needs to be very controlled because it's not necessarily a bad thing, because it actually is partially why you get certain varieties of tea, right? Yeah.

Depending on the kind of tea you want, you either want oxidation or you want to prevent oxidation. And we should probably say oxidation basically is when any kind of molecule, but specifically an oxygen molecule. Yeah. Or O2 interacts with something like the metal in a car or the inside of an apple. Yeah. The, the leaf off of a t shrub. Once the oxygen interacts with it, it starts a chain reaction inside where these oxygen molecules that have to pair are too unstable or unpaired electrons.

Once the oxygen interacts with some other atoms in the cells of these things, it robs those atoms of their electrons. Right, because it wants to pair up. And when it does this, it starts the process of oxidation.

Yeah, which is actually John Fuller, our old buddy, wrote this one and he was a big TI guy. Big imagine he still is. Um, he's he he's characterized it is actually burning it. So like when you eat your apple bite and you go to your desk and you leave it there and then you go to the bathroom for an hour or so, you come back.

The reason you're Apple is Brown now is because you've exposed that inside to the to the O2 and it's burning it.

Yeah, because normally the apple, the inside of the apple is protected from the oxygen in the air. We breathe in the atmosphere by the skin. When you puncture, that's going to break the skin. It's exposed to oxygen and that process of oxidation takes place. Same thing happens with a leaf from a tree shrub. When it's attached to the shrub, it's protected from the outside air. Yeah. Once you pluck it from there and especially once you like, break it or tear it apart or do something with it, it's exposed to the air and oxidation takes place and it withers in very much the same way that a leaf on a tree, a dead leaf in the fall withers and changes color.

That's oxidation as well.

Yeah, the same, like you said to the same thing like that can happen to your car if you don't get that true coat.

Yeah. It's why you pay thousands and thousands of dollars more at the dealership for that truck.

That's right.

Uh, Black Tea is the leader of all these accounts for about seventy five percent of production. And like you said, the Earl Grey or the English breakfast tea. That's black tea. Right. And it's not always I mean, it doesn't necessarily look black. It's kind of a reddish brown, right, when you see it. Yeah. FDCPA. That's right, yeah, I'm not going to help out your problem, I know I'm just going to confuse you.

I thought I might knock it out today, but now it's gotten worse, I think, actually.

Yeah. You've also said long. A couple of times. Yeah, that's kind of by choice. OK, so with black tea in particular, that's like the, um, the the oxidation master. That's right. That's the one you want oxidation for.

So with the actual process of making tea of processing tea leaves into black tea, you're actually inviting oxidation and you're doing that all you want to talk about, how you how you make black tea.

Yeah, it's a five step process. I mean, there's a couple of methods, but they both include generally these five steps.

Yeah. One is by robot and the other is by the human hand.

Pretty much the orthodox method in the CTC or the tear curl method. Yeah. Which sounds cool, but it's not um because orthodoxy is, you know, by hand. Sure. Which means it's better.

And all of this again is it takes place in the factory on the plantation grounds after the human hands of harvested the tea leaves and brought them to the factory a couple of fields over.

OK, the first step is weathering and that's when you're going to spread it out and let them wither like we're talking about with the leaf that falls. It's just basically losing moisture. Yes.

After that, you've got rolling where if you're using the Orthodox method, the human hand method. Yeah. You're actually rolling out, compressing the leaves so that you're kind of pressing the moisture out. But you're also simultaneously pressing some of the oils, those beneficial oils inside the tea leaf out so that they stick to the outside of the leaf. So they're kind of retained and dehydrated.

Yeah. And if you're doing the hand method, you it's a gentle process. You trying not to break the leaf, right. With the KTK method, they're just chopping it up.

And, you know, because it's a big drum machine. Right.

And with with, say, other types of tea, you wouldn't use that method because when you do chop it up, you're exposing it to oxidation. Yeah. Even more. Right. You're right. Which is part of the part of the process. That's actually the third step is oxidation. So after the leaves are either pressed by the Orthodox method or cut by robots, it's left out in a kind of a damp, cool space to basically oxidize even further to turn copper, turn brown, wither and then lose the rest of their moisture.

That's right. Which is a good thing. In the case of black tea. Yes. From here, you're going to dry it out with some hot air and the colour is going to change even more from that copper that came from the green. And now you've got your brown and your black colouring going on. Yeah.

And then you put the leaves by size and by quality. Or if it's going to become, say, tea or something, it's chopped up almost into like a powder. Yeah. Just little tiny bits and then bagged and all that stuff. But if it's just loose leaf then it's sorted by, by size and quality.

That's right. And you're going to pay more for it. Yeah. And that's black tea and that's 75 percent of the tea produced in the world goes through that process either by human hand or by robot hand.

Green tea is next. And that, like we said a million times, is from the same plant. So it is very cool. But basically what happens here is it's pretty much the same process, but you're just not oxidizing it as long because you're going to steam it or I didn't know this. You could pan for it.

I guess if you're just growing your own tea and doing it in your house. Jon Favreau, you just saw Chef. Right.

And that was a good movie. Very good. Way better than Birdman. The only thing I didn't like a spoiler. Yeah. About Chef was the whole the whole social media thing.

I thought, oh, yeah. It was like also a little weird underwritten by Twitter. Yeah, it didn't.

It was a little weird. I thought it was just strange that they're like willing to date the movie totally that much.

Exactly what I was. You could see it in ten years.

You'd be like, yeah, this is so 2014.

Yeah. I thought it was not necessary either. But anyway, good movie. It was a great movie and I thought it still fit. It's just thinking ten years down the road, it's going to be odd.

Right. Like the movies that talk about MySpace. Yeah. You know, sad, sad movies. Um, but where were we.

We were drying out. We were.

Well you were claiming you were saying this is the point of steaming is it stops oxidation. Yeah. And keeps it green. Hence the name green tea. And it's not just the the tea leaves themselves are green or greenish. They're supposed to be, but also it imparts a green issue to the actual brewed tea as well. Yeah. And the way that the green from the original green color of the leaves is, is kept from preventing oxidation. And that's, that's done by steaming.

And I looked everywhere to see. How steaming prevented oxidation? Yeah, I couldn't find it. I think it's one of those things where people are just like it does everyone's content to basically stop right there.

And I'm like, no how. And I tried to reword it a couple of different ways. And I'm like, OK, how does he prevent oxidation? Couldn't find that either. But apparently that's what it does.

So I don't know if it's seale's the cells off maybe a bit. Some cauterizes them somehow and it prevents the oxygen from getting to it. Yeah. We'll hear from someone. Yeah. If you know how steam prevents oxidation, please let us know. But as far as, as far as we can tell, it actually does.

That's right. And we should point out here that it's there can be a range in here that can be a yellowish hue sometimes. And there's actually something I didn't know about that you told me about yellow teeth.

Yeah. So supposedly the steaming process can go a little awry or used to back in the day more frequently the earliest days. Yeah. And it produces another type of tea. It's called yellow tea and that's like souled. You can get it now. I don't know.

I'm sure there's some specialty store that sells yellow tea.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. So basically at this point, green tea is after it's frozen in time and staying green. The process is forever young. It is. And the process from there is the same as with Black Day.

Pretty much. Yeah. You're going to sort it. You're going to cool it dried out you to sort it again and then sort of one more time. Right.

A lot of redundancy in creating a green tea. And now we're at Wolong or Ulong, which is basically like it's kind of like yellow tea. I don't think they're one in the same, but it's a it's steamed, but it's steamed after the oxidation process has taken place to to an extent. So it's oxidized, but not as much as black tea. And it's steamed, but not as early as green tea. So Oolong is between the two. What's crazy is it doesn't taste like black tea or green tea at all.

It's definitely its own thing. Yeah. Still, it's from the same plant.

I don't think I've ever had it at all. Yeah. I need to just try some and see what's all the fuss is about.

If you go to like, like a Lawsons, which is a chain of convenience stores in Japan, uh, strangely enough, OK, you go in, that is a little weird and pretty much anywhere you can buy like water, green tea and oolong tea, like in a cooler.

Yeah. Like you can get it everywhere, those three things. And you should try all of them. You have to try Oolong at least once.

Yeah, I'll try some tomorrow. OK, that's my that's my dedication to you sir.

Thanks man. Then you have your white tea and that is very much a specialty tea and somewhat rare and it is only picked two days out of the year when the buds aren't open yet. And it's um, it's less grassy, it's a little smoother, but it is similar to green tea. Yeah. And it is only been available outside of China for um, not that long.

Just a few years. Right. Snapple has only been making it for a couple of years.

Well, well that should do it immediately. Yeah. Um like Twitter dates chef.

Uh and it was reserved for Chinese nobility because of, you know, how rare it is.

Right. But now you can get it.

And we talked about other kinds of tea too, like herbal tea again, is just basically dried herbs that you sleep just like regular tea. Like Chai.

Chai is actually tea. That's right. Because it's tea. Blackboy mix with spices like cinnamon and pepper and stuff. So that's still constitutes tea. But like camomile tea, it's not really tea. Yeah, it's a tisane. Right.

And it's just again, it's just some dehydrated Camooweal flowers that you steep in hot water. Same goes for rooibos, which is a mouthful, but it means Red Bush and Afrikaans.

That's right. Same with Martey. Mm. Which is not to be confused with Moccia.

No, but we'll talk about Monceau, right. Yes. Let's talk about Mattituck because I love the stuff.

I had not been uh. Maybe you can call me a major poser or jumping on the March bandwagon. Yeah, I in that article you said it said that like it's the darling of the tea set now.

Yeah. And my friend in California, P.J. in L.A., you've met PJ.

P.J. he he is or was.

He may have bailed on it, but he was trying to make his own special march, a green tea and bottle it and sell it to me. But I don't think he got past the making it at home stage.

Well, there's a lot there's not a lot to it. But there's again, I think the Japanese tea ceremony is surrounded or surrounds Marcha. Yes. That's what you're preparing is Marcha. That's right.

And all marches is like really, really good green tea that's been ground down to a fine powder by hand, which automatically makes it more expensive than any other teacher. Most other teas. And what you have is this really fine, beautiful green powder and you put like a teaspoon of it in a bowl or a cup or something like that. And you're supposed to sift it, I think, through like a sifter. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Just to open it back up again. Sure. Make it pop.

And then you add some hot water and then you use a whisk to stir it. Yeah. And there's I don't think we mentioned the other big difference with Marcha is, is that Bushes, the bushes are covered 20 days prior to harvest from sunlight. And that's the big distinction. And that means it's going to have a lot more chlorophyll and something called el theur nine. Oh, that stuff is good. This is the amino acid that, um, apparently that's what allows you to feel both invigorated and calmed.

Yeah, it works in conjunction with caffeine, OK. And it's actually capable. It's an amino acid, like you said, that is capable of crossing the blood brain barrier. So like, when you drink it, it goes right to your brain. It doesn't have to be converted or metabolized. Right. And it supposedly has all sorts of cool benefits like cognitive enhancement. Oh, wow. You just kind of clear. It's just neat stuff.

Well, and that's what the major proponents will tell you. Like have some of this stuff, man. Hey, it's like go juice, you'll be clearheaded, take a hint of this.

Um, but much as there's a couple of forms, there's the user and the culture. Is that the creature. Probably Koichi Kohler. Yeah.

Koichi uh you suture is thingee and Koichi is Thicky and the Koichi man. That is something else that is made with half the water, twice the moccia.

Well that sounds like my kind of marcha.

Well they say by the end, by the time you're done whisking it, it's going to be like the texture of paint. Oh so serious much.

Yeah. Because Mozza has like a distinct taste. Oh yeah. I love it. I mean I'll make like I get it at the Asian market near my house and I'll just add it to my regular green tea. Oh yeah. I like I'll whisk it up and then just add it there.

But it's a suspension. It's not a you're not actually uh you're drinking the tea leaf. Right. Like if you mix up your match and then leave it there a few hours later, it's going to be separated.

Yeah, it sinks. Yeah. So it's a colloid. So that's called. I think so.

So I'm not going to repeat it because I'm not positive.

What the colloid. Yeah. Is it OK. I believe so. Like quicksand colloid is a moisture something. Yeah. Something that's like it's not actually dissolved, it's just mixed together.

I think you are right. So it's a colloid and people proponents will say that it's better for you because when you seip tea, I screw you when you sip steeped tea.

Right. You're only getting you know, I don't know the percentage, but you're only getting some of the benefits of the tea because the tea leaf is still in there with a Marcha. You're actually ingesting the tea leaves.

Oh, I see. You know what I mean. Yeah. And that jam goes right past the blood brain barrier. And it does.

And it's pretty trendy, too, because you can now go to restaurants and they'll be like moccia sprinkled on a food dish or you've been to me sushi yet.

No, I went to craft as a kite the other night, though. So where is that?

Yeah, it was really good and I actually had a cocktail. I thought about you because, you know. Oh, yeah, you don't drink cocktails that much. It was it was good.

It was bourbon and like lemon and ginger and it's Thai spice.

Like one other thing maybe, honey, it was pretty tasty, but it was good. Sounds good.

And the food was excellent. It's a little pricey, but it's, you know, like when you eat the sushi, it's you can also tell the difference.

It just melts in your mouth very, very much the same with me sushi as well. It's just just the quality between that and just about every other sushi I've had is it's just light years beyond.

Yeah. It is really evident when you taste it. I had some of the albacore and it was just like it was literally like melted butter. You've done oh so good.

Well, the point is you make sushi, makes it green tea, matches, soufflé, uh, crème anglaise that actually you me replicated once. It was amazing. It's amazing so much.

It really goes with a lot of really good stuff, man.

So even though it is trendy, it's still good. It is good. And it's like you said, it's super earthy.

It's just I recommend you try it. I like it a lot.

So if I'm getting the good stuff from that Asian market, it's probably the cheap stuff, but it's still tasty.

I honestly don't know if it's one of those things where, like, you get what you pay for if a lot of it is just jacked up price because it is matter what I don't know.

Now, this stuff's pretty inexpensive that I get. Oh, actually. For what? For the amount you're getting, it's really not that cheap now that I think about it. Yeah, OK. Yeah, it's a little canister of it. Yeah, it's pretty small and you're probably paying what you should be. All right.

We talked a little bit about the blood brain barrier, but we'll talk more about the health benefits of tea right after this.

Did you know the original Mr. Potato Head was an actual potato, did you know that all tequila's are? But not all mescal is tequila. Did you know some goats climb trees? Did you know there really was a Jones family that everyone in New York was trying to keep up with or that Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy who could draw before he could talk? You will stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Preorder now. It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

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An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Preorder now. It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.

So, Chuck, we're going to talk about the health benefits, as I said before the break, but first, let's talk about how to prepare tea. Well, yeah, there's a couple of ways. Depending on what you're you're dealing with, you can either be a loose-leaf person.

Yeah. Or a Baghdad person.

And I got the impression from this, like you said, Fuller was a tea guy and he did a very good job of trying to reserve judgment. Sure. But if I remember correctly, he was a Loose-leaf guy comes through in this, um, this article, the looseleaf is better yet.

He had a special little unit there where he poured the water in and it kept the looseleaf separate, but it was all contained in one like cup that you screw a lid on or something. Yeah.

You know, you can get those or you can just do there's all sorts of equipment you can have to make your tea, you know, so the if you're preparing tea in a bag, you just pop it in some hot water.

Well, no, not necessarily. Depends on the kind of tea for what temperature you want your water to be. That is true. And I didn't know this black tea is the only one where you want it boiling. Yeah, at 200 degrees, Wolong, you're going to is the next and that's about one ninety which is close to boiling. Yeah.

Or you know, you just use your finger to determine whether it's one ninety or two hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Uh, green and white tea is just steaming water. It's only about one hundred and seventy degrees. And your black tea I'm sorry, black and white take the longest to sleep and sleep.

Four and a half to five minutes. Yeah. Woollens about three to four and green tea. Many can get that stuff going in thirty seconds. Boom. And you're drinking it.

My attention. Taimur takes seven minutes to sleep it says on the box. Well it does it.

Can you tell the difference to tame your tension.

Yeah I actually can. That's good. It's pretty neat. I can't remember what's in it but it talks about the active ingredient, whatever the dry Iturbe is. But with, with the difference between bag tea and loosley tea has a lot to do with the benefits from it, right. Yeah. So with the CTC method which again seventy five percent of the world's tea, um, a lot of that undergoes the CTC method because it's black tea. Right.

Yeah. But you get like this powdery chopped up little bitty substance and it's put into a bag and it forms a little clump and water doesn't circulate as well. The benefit of loose leaf tea is that um the water steeps through. Yeah. Steeps through and circulates amongst the tea leaves.

More like it seeps through man. I think you're right. Yeah.

But it circulates among the tea leaves and the tea leaves, you remember, especially depending on the type of tea may have been pressed so that the oils are trapped, dehydrated on the surface of the tea leaf. Yeah. You chop those things up and turn them into dust, you're going to lose a lot of that stuff. But if you have just a dried tea leaf that is dehydrated and has the moisture on the outside and some water rehydrated that and it just kind of stirs it up and gets into the into the colloid.

Yeah.

And you drink that bam, you're going to get if there are health benefits which will explore, you're going to get them. You're more likely to get them from that loosely tea than a bag tea. Agreed.

And then of course, you also have your iced tea here in the south. Sweet, sweet iced tea. Yeah.

Which is delicious to me because I grew up here. A lot of people think it's weird. They had been drinking iced tea before. Nineteen hundred but nineteen for the St. Louis World's Fair was where it really took off because the guy was selling hot tea named Richard Black Black.

And then I know what a name I know. And he was, even if you pronounce it the other way, like Bletch and then it doesn't matter.

He sounds like a made up Mad magazine staff writer, something that's, uh, he was serving free tea, but it was hot and it was really hot. And so people were like, no, thanks. So he made it cold and they said, this is delicious.

Well, it was hot out in Saint Louis that year. Of course, that summer. That was where I think hot dogs, hamburgers and ice cream cones came from and apparently iced tea.

Man, could you imagine, like the world changing after that in St. Louis?

Uh, so that's where they credit it being born. And of course, here in the south, like I said, you don't put cup of sugar in there while you're brewing it and it makes it delicious and syrupy sweet.

Did you read this article that was linked to in here? No, I started to Scott Peacock features in it that I used to cook at Watershed. Uh, no, no, no, he's good. Yeah, good cook.

And I got as far as page two when they compared the hospitality of offering sweet tea to passing a doobie at a fish show.

And I was like, no, I'm done at this Slate article forever. What? Yeah, what a weird thing to link together.

It was that. Kind of article, it's so strange because there's like a thousand hospitable things you can mention. I know, you know, out of nowhere, it's very strange. All right. So finally, Josh, health benefits of tea.

Oh, true or not true? The jury's out, man. Yeah. So it's possible if the free radical theory of aging is correct, then it's get health benefits in ages places.

So people hear these things a lot like antioxidants, free radicals. Yeah. And I don't think a lot of people have an understanding of what it is. And it's not super complicated. No, it's not.

And I will explain it on the on the basis of you agreeing to doing Free Radicals episode a whole episode. Sure. OK, cool as easy.

Why, why would you say it like that. I'm just teasing.

OK, so Chuck with free radicals, right. We already mentioned oxidation. Yeah. That's what the free radicals are based on.

So you breathe oxygen and that O2 molecule has to unpaired electrons.

Well, those electrons want to be paired so they go into your body and mess with your cells by searching around for other molecules or atoms that they can steal an electron from and repair.

That's right. Repair, get it. Yeah, but it's actually the opposite of repairing.

It's damaging the cells because those atoms that just got their molecules stripped are now looking for their own electrons to pair with, right?

That's right. And it causes this chain reaction. Well, the whole free radical theory of aging is that this is why we age this is where disease comes from. This is how our system wears down and breaks down cellular destruction. Yeah. And we know that this is a real thing. Sure. Like that really happens. The same thing is being exposed to radiation. It's a chain reaction where molecules and atoms just go around charged, looking to neutralize themselves by pairing their electrons or charge electrons.

Right.

So what T is lousy with is antioxidants. Yeah.

And that's what people hear that word a lot and don't even know what it is. It basically it's just going to slow down that oxidation process. Yeah. Because they can give up their electrons and still be fine.

Exactly. Like Vitamin C. Yeah. Catkins, which is um which is found in high amounts and T. Yeah. Beta carotene. Yep. Vitamin C just basically anything that you see is an antioxidant, probably is an antioxidant. Again, the jury is just out now based on some recent studies that have found, uh, we don't know if this is actually a good thing.

Well, yeah. And when it comes to TI, they people think basically it's a certainly not going to hurt you. Right.

And B, it's probably helping you, but we just don't know exactly how. And it's not all super confirmed. Right. But drink tea and eat fruits and vegetables because antioxidants we think are pretty good for you. Right.

Because it is correlated with a bunch of health benefits. It's correlated with a reduction in diabetes. Yeah, it's correlated with a reduction and I think pressure. Yeah. Lung cancer. Um, the lowered risk of lung cancer. Heart disease, cholesterol. Yeah, just tons of stuff. There's all these correlations. They've never proven definitively that it's not that people who drink tea tend to also lead healthier lifestyles and that it's something else. But there's a lot of evidence there that drinking tea does have some sort of healthful benefits or at the very least, it's not going to hurt you.

Yeah, when when they say it's they associate it with good health, then that's a pretty good sign that you're doing the right thing. Yeah. They just can't say we can prove this because this does this. Yeah. And we know for sure. So.

Right. So if that free radical theory of aging is true, is correct and antioxidants are actually good for you, then the tea you want to go for to drink is the green tea, because that's the one that has the highest concentrations of catkins, which include Can Epicor Can Gallet at the Gallo, Cadigan ET Bigalow Caddick Sangalli, which is known as EDG. Yeah, has a lot of gall. I thought that was kind of funny, but black tea has these, but they actually convert to other stuff.

They're kind of like dumbed down versions. So green tea again, it sounds like if you really want health benefits, if there are health benefits. Yeah.

You want to drink looseleaf green tea with Modra.

Right. With the mustard chaser. Yeah, exactly. Uh, tea also does contain caffeine. Um, I don't know why people some people think it doesn't or that it contains very little.

Uh, I've heard people say that, but. We're like, you know, coffee, got caffeine, tea doesn't have caffeine. Yeah, he's got plenty of caffeine, sure. But generally not as much as coffee. Coffee contains about 80 to 120 milligrams for a mug. And tea is going to have 20 to 60 with black being the strongest at about 30 to 40 milligrams. All right. And a green tea and Wolong, between 10 and 20 mg white tea has like one percent of the caffeine of cup of coffee.

I want to give a shout out to my coffee, too, by the way, you know what we're on the cusp of?

Don't you know the USDA advising Americans to drink coffee, to drink up to five cups? Five cups of coffee a day, wow, in America right now, drinks less than two a day on average, and the USA is about say you need to more than double your coffee consumption because it's not only not bad for you, it's good for you.

Finally, on the cusp, everyone is realizing, well, there's a there's a group that I can't remember the name of it, but it's it's they come up with the guidelines for diets.

Yeah. And it's this panel that the USDA. Exactly.

The Star Chamber says actually we should start drinking a lot more coffee. And the USDA rarely ignores the advice of the panels. So we're on the cusp of the USDA saying good drink for coffee. Everybody and everyone will be like, Josh was right. Yep. He's the only guy drinking coffee before this announcement.

Even I don't drink five cups a day on average. Really not anymore. I'm trying to step it up. I have started drinking more coffee lately, actually, because we got a little machine here. Now that that machine is dynamite.

Yeah. What I do is I hit the regular coffee button and then I had a shot of espresso because that makes it the right size and strength.

Right. Because the regular cup of coffee is it's not even the three quarters of my mug. I know. And it's not even a big mug. Yeah, it's not like have some giant mug. No, that's your tea mug. That's pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. You can punch through a concrete wall with that coffee with the espresso shot on top.

Yeah. It's good though.

If you want to know more about tea, go drink some tea. You can also type tea d.E.A into the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. Uh and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this left handed feedback.

And boy, did we get a lot of it. I don't know why. I guess sometimes when you segment a certain part of the population, yeah.

They're going to respond, especially one that's been so mistreated for so many so many years.

Yeah, because we heard from a lot of twins and redheads when we covered that stuff. Yeah. But boy, we heard from a lot of lefties. Um, they're a proud people as it turns out. Hey guys, I am left handed.

When I was little, my mom made me use scissors with only my right hand because of my aunt, my mother's sister, who is also a left handed.

She's very into sewing and left handed sewing scissors are crazy expensive, or at least they were back then. They're not as bad now in order to avoid the same ordeal. They thought it would just be better to teach me. Kept my right hand to never buy the expensive left handed scissors of any kind to his.

I still have mixed feelings about this, but I don't think it harmed me. We did hear from a lot of people who are forced into right handedness. Yeah. From parents or teachers or whatever. Yeah, it was a thing. So it's a tough thing. It's so bizarre. I think like there is a concerted and widespread effort to eradicate left handed people.

One thing you only mentioned briefly, though, in the right hand dominance is with things like scissors and spiral bound notebooks. I'd also like to point out less obvious ones like which side the paper is on in bathrooms.

Never thought about that. Yeah, it's on the left, though, in most bathrooms, isn't it?

Yes, it is, but that makes sense. But I reach over with my right hand the chair of the paper. I know, but you're a you're different.

Yeah.

Um, doorknobs, computer mouse or mice and these marinus of pens. Um all can cause issues for lefties. Anyway, I love the podcast guys, especially ones about people like me.

So Sharon and Suwanee, Tennessee, what else about you.

Can we talk about it on a podcast.

Yeah, let us know. And if you have something about you that you think would make a cool podcast, a whole podcast, let us know.

What if she wrote back and was like, oh gosh, I love lasagna and I hate dogs and I drive a dot, then the dots and do a podcast on that on the dot and that's. And drivers. Well yeah. Let us know.

Sharon, it was Sharon, right. Sharon and if and other people out there who aren't Sharon, let us know too. If you have any ideas, you can tweet to us at Zwi as a podcast. You can post on Facebook dotcom stuff. You should know you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and you can join us at our home on the web stuff you should know dot com. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio is the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Did you know the original Mr. Potato Head was an actual potato, did you know that all tequila's are? But not all mesoscale in tequila. Did you know some goats climb trees? Did you know there really was a Jones family that everyone in New York was trying to keep up with or that Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy who could draw before he could talk? You will stuff you should know. An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Preorder now.

It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold. Did you know the original Mr. Potato Head was an actual potato? Did you know that all tequila's are Mesko, but not all mesoscale in tequila? Did you know some goats climb trees? Did you know there really was a Jones family that everyone in New York was trying to keep up with or that Pablo Picasso was a child prodigy who could draw before he could talk? You will stuff you should know.

An incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. Preorder now. It's stuff you should know dotcom or wherever books are sold.