Curated playlist
Herbal and fungal stimulants
- TobaccoChina approved the first commercial GM crop in 1993, and it was tobacco.
- CoffeePope Clement VIII declared coffee a Christian beverage in 1600, opening Europe to the drink.
- Cocoa beanThe cocoa bean, the dried and fermented seed of the cacao tree, once paid for rabbit dinners in Mesoamerica. Before the Spanish conquest, it served as common money across the region. Beans bought small items such as tamales and rabbit…
- TeaIn 2016, archaeologists found the earliest known physical evidence of tea in an emperor's tomb in Xi'an.
- Areca nutThe areca nut is chewed by around 600 million people, mainly of South and Southeast Asian origin. It leaves red stains on pavements from South Asia to the northern Philippines. This seed of a tropical palm, also called betel nut, acts as a…
- CocaCoca is a shrub native to western South America, and one of the oldest clues to its history was found in the floors of ancient houses in Peru's Nanchoc Valley. Archaeologists recovered coca leaves there together with calcite, which shows…
- Mate (drink)Mate, the caffeine-rich herbal drink of South America's Southern Cone, comes with an unwritten rule about talking too much. In Argentina, young drinkers tell a rambling friend no es un micrófono, which means "it's not a microphone." The…
- Yerba mateYerba mate is a South American plant whose accented spelling, maté, means something very different in Spanish: "I killed." That is pure coincidence, since the Spanish word is an unrelated form of the verb matar. The plant behind the drink…
- KhatKhat is a shrub from the highlands of eastern Africa, and one daily bag of its leaves takes an estimated 500 litres of water to grow. Farmers sell the fresh leaves to be chewed, and millions of people treat them as a daily ritual. The…
- Mitragyna speciosaIn Thailand, the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa were once described as "used as a snack to receive guests and was part of the ritual worship of ancestors and gods". That same leaf, known as kratom, is now restricted across much of the world.…