As 2025 draws to a close, we also reach the midpoint of the decade. Looking back on an eventful first half of the 2020s, we’re left with a big question: what will history remember about this era in the world of fresh produce?

In this final livestream of 2025, John and Patrick will revisit the defining moments of the past five years, unpack their historical significance, and ask whether these events will endure as true turning points - or fade into the background as intriguing but fleeting milestones.

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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

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What do gold, frankincense, and myrrh really tell us about the world into which Jesus was born? Who were the Magi - kings, mystics, scientists, or traders - and why did they travel vast distances carrying some of the most valuable agricultural products on Earth? How do desert trees in Arabia and the Horn of Africa connect a humble birth in Bethlehem to ancient global supply chains, imperial economics, and the earliest luxury produce markets? And what happened when symbolic gifts became engines of demand, reshaping landscapes, trade routes, and even Christian worship for centuries to come?

Join John and Patrick as they follow the scent trail of frankincense and myrrh - from wounded bark and caravan routes to temples, churches, and modern medicine - in a fresh-produce retelling of the Nativity that reveals the Three Wise Men not as fairy-tale kings, but as emissaries of the ancient global economy.

This is the Christmas story as you’ve never heard it before: rooted in trees, trade, and the fragile agricultural systems that quietly changed the world.

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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

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Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

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• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

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From incestuous wasps and prehistoric forests to sacred enlightenment, revolutionary resistance, and a certain square-shaped snack aisle icon - what if the fig is the most powerful fruit in human history?

Join John and Patrick as they trace the astonishing 80-million-year saga of the fig: its ancient pact with tiny wasps, its role in shaping ecosystems, feeding early humans, inspiring gods and emperors, fueling revolutions in Kenya, and conquering America as the mighty Fig Newton.

Was the fig humanity’s first domesticated plant? Did it help build civilizations, religions, and even our own hands? And how did one strange fruit manage to bridge myth, medicine, empire, and mass production?

This is the epic, unexpected history of the fig - one of the most extraordinary stories nature ever wrote.

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In Sponsorship with J&K Fresh.

The customs broker who is your fruit and veggies’ personal bodyguard. Learn more here!

-----------

Join the History of Fresh Produce Club for ad-free listening, bonus episodes, book discounts and access to an exclusive chatroom community.

Support us!

• Share this episode with your friends
• Give a 5-star rating
• Write a review

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Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter here for extra stories related to recent episodes, book recommendations, a sneak peek of upcoming episodes and more.

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Instagram, TikTok, Threads:

@historyoffreshproduce

Email: historyoffreshproduce@gmail.com