Thou Shalt Put Yourself In The Way of Magic

day for her entire life less run. She nearly made that century mark. Well Booby always serve tea with a freshly baked set of tarts, cakes, or cookies, or with a sort of ever evolving theme over tea. Bibby and I traveled to Sri Lanka for lyrical sweets and spices I'd never heard of, or we were off to Brazil for gooey cheesy bites called pooja the Caju, and then sometimes we were traveling to Persia for chickpe cookies with pistachio. She understood that spice and all things nice was just

the way to her grandson's heart. So it makes sense that I had been teaching my very American husband all about beauty and especially the ritual of tea. He came from a home where tea was made in a microwave with a very sad tea bag from the grocery store, or it was served very ice and from a supermarket bottle. In fact, I think I once overheard his Italian family say that green tea was only drunk before a colonoscopy.

So now, at four o'clock every day without fail, our body clocks flick a switch, ring ring, It's tea time, darling. And if you think about a team makes so much, it's long after lunch, dinner feels very far away, and Lena seems like a huge commitment. So tea it is. When I came out to mother when I was at high school, her response was not a problem, dear, let's

have some tea. And when I was doing too many drugs and parting my head off any Betha and therefore at some point I had to let mother know that I had a substance abuse issue, her response was rather the same, not worry, We'll turn the cattle on for some tea. Even when I broke the news that I would be moving to America. She ever, casually just rung for some more tea. So many of my earliest travel memories were made alongside tea, from special Island Black Tea

and Mauritius to fancy popotees in London. Take for instance Cape Town, where I lived as an adult and holidayed yearly for most of my life within without the family picture it South Africa. Nelson Mandela is still in prison, and my European parents are supporting the fall of apartheid as Paris, as the Eiffel Tower and Rio de Janeiro has Ipanema Beach. Cape Town has its own icon. That's a mountain. It happens to be rather flat and looks

just like a table, hence the name table Mountain. And it rises as this bonfire of the Southern world's tip, where two opposing oceans hug each other, one warm, one cool. You have the Winelands winking from a distance. But then there is this man made birth of the Mother's city, the ever faithful pink of the Mount Nelson Hotel. And this is where afternoon tea was the occasion in view from pretty much everywhere. The Hotel's pink hues are always adapting.

The Grand Old Building was first painted pink to signify peace at the end of the First World War, and now this ticular blush is formulated to fade to an idyllic shade between its frequent coats. It is a pink for your memories, one for the ages. You may say, not quite as bright as a peony pink, almost that Jackie Kennedy pink, but really much closer to my own skin color. At age six, pink was just pink, and just as soft as the motherly pink of my travel companion,

my stuffed pink panther. Also, I thought at the time, because I was just a six year old fool. It was one of those long, hot afternoon walks where everything sticks to your body. The sun is no longer the friendly sky queen, but the curse of the Saturday afternoon. In the Cape Town gardens, squirrels suffer the heat, so they just stay in the trees and ignore my acorn laden little hands. And then I see the iconic white stone column gates where we're given our reprieve, and I

know tea time is near. Moments later, we met with this meaty smell of freshly cut grass, and a picnic blanket is shaken out. I watched as the exhibition of delights unfold on these great lawns of the Mount Nelson. Uniformed staff perform their ceremony, and a little piece of England reveals itself. Mother's rosy hands hold her parson cup and saucer quietly for a poor of tea milk. First,

she always reminds whomevers within ear shot. The burly silver trays show me my own reflection, as many white gloves zippili passed them around our silky white picnic blankets, surrounded by all kinds of sweetness, A little cloud of paradise that recalled right under these gigantic African skies, the heat is all but forgotten. I am at a mad Hasse's tea party, and I am Alice, ready to fall down a rabbit hole and feast a wonderland of familiar surprises.

So this is what we ate, petite white sandwiches with crusts evenly cut off, sickly sweet, wondrous cook sisters. And I dare you to google that oversized milk tarts with little rain flecks of cinnama on top, oversized pink fairy cakes that are soft to the bite, and then oozy white chocolate. Declares there was even a mini fat cook, which a direct translation would wield fat cake. As I lie on the grass with ants climbing on and over

my toes, I count nearby palm trees. My hands are sticky from the clotted cream and strawberry jam I shmeared on my scone, and I'm still nibbling on. I resorted doing lazy, small somersaults on the picnic blanket. The Great Pink Hotel is Topsy turns e and upside Downsy with me, and I'm write down this sugary rabbit hole, and it's all curious and curious. So the refilled shiny trays circle and pirouett mother. She sits ladylike on a low cane chair,

her eyes smiling from under her dark glasses. Something about the light, or the sun, or just the moment of sugary beauty makes me notice my skin color against the shade of the hotel. I am just as pink as the hotel, almost one and the same. But we're in Africa, where most people I've seen around me aren't the shade of pink. And it's in this moment, the simple, silly garden lawn moment, where I sat for the first time in my daft, short life thinking about the color of

my skin. How a hotel's paint job and a semi formal afternoon tea could make me aware of not only my extreme privilege but also my very pinkness. But that's exactly my elaborate relationship with the tea. It's some how always with me through the heartache, some heartbreak, those joys

and the delights. It's a bringer of truths, like after a particularly dire two years of living in Paris, falling off a bicycle, nearly drowning in an Amsterdam canal and then washing up on Cape Town shores to sober up, eat, pray, Love came out and I was on a plane to India. I know I wasn't even that original. Julia Roberts just pushed me right over the edge. What can I say but judge all you like. Sometimes it's the silliest things that open up the world, maybe even save your life.

So a few flights later, an overnight train journey with live chickens and delicious curries, going around for tastings in my carriage, plus a squeezed rickshall ride. There I am. I'd found myself at the foothills of the Himalayas, walking over a giant swing bridge cautiously as I follow signs that read Parmenikitan Ashram, founded in nineteen forty two by Puya Shwami. Shook Davinanji Maharaji said that five times past,

the Ashram attracts anyone and everyone. Every country imaginable is represented here, plus locals wanting to take stock of their lives also show up. And so I went, with many years in between, from one pink palace to another. The world here was different to Africa, but in the end, some things are just the same, like the gentle cycle of familiarity and that happy routine that happens all too fast. Mornings started in a very basic room, and I shower

in this darkness, washing away all kinds of bullshit. And then long before dawn, I'm in a yoga class with a man who's older than a century and a whole lot more flexible than I am. After yoga, in a sort of semi darkness, I would prance around these icy floors on the Ashram's great halls. Setting up my meditation mat for class, I would light some candles, and that's when I would think about losing my religion, as if

I ever had one. But first the boy must concentrate on eating, and so I do my other savor, which is an act of service that's not about you. Just imagine that it involves me serving breakfast in the pink palace. I eat only once everyone's been fed and smiling food at the Ushram. Besides, for the beige breakfast porridge tends to be yellow from all the termineric. Eventually you forget that food isn't always sunshine colored, right about the same

time as your hands start to turn yellow too. After food, it's time for class, and first up other readings from the Bakaba Ghita, a Hindu scripture where there is Prince Arjina and his guide, Lord Krishna, and they are chatting heavily on the battlefield. I said carefully on a tiny cushion and peeled over these old books with drawings of this very theater of war, and I think about chivalry and how to obtain liberation, not dissimilar to our Prince Argana.

And then some meditation, enchanting. All in Hindi are practiced to learn to shut off the senses and go straight to the heart. The head conveniently absent. The hardest part of my day is here. Afternoons are for sleeping, and the mountains all around rise into the blue sky with a way of holding you close. The days don't very much, and that is the point. Your day, without your phone or even a book, becomes the simple wave of a rhythm. Your body carries you. Nothing is done with the tricks

to mind. Eventually my heart starts to open like a flower waiting for a bee to come to its work. My mind is clear. Thoughts deviating into any insecurity just washes away into this great river, never to be seen again. I spent several weeks of finding my pleasures in small, almost menial things. My daily work of washing yoga mats and sweeping the floors offered me a deep sense of peace.

I run into the Ashrams director one morning. I call her Guru almost g as she would be the one taking over from the current Guru, and I beam as I tell her how content I feel and just how happy I am. She smiles quietly at me. Well, she says, it's easy here at the Ashram. What else are you going to do? At first I was stunned easy this, And then she says, when you leave next week and go into the real world, that's when the work starts

off with my ego's head. So in between all this activity, the hours of meditation and not thinking just of myself, I did find one tiny, rebellious act of hedonism, a massala chai. Just outside the gates of the Ashram was this tiniest little store where a lovely man behind a stove with cats sleeping all around him, was brewing some spicy tea. He loved, making it strong and throaty, with black tea as the base, extra cardamon and cinnamon. He'd

say it was good for my soul. He'd add in some fresh milk and honey, and I'm sure there were secret family recipe spices in there too. It was here I would sneak to every afternoon to come have the smallest shot glass of tea. So simple, so nothing, but so everything. Let's pause here and we'll be right back with my friend Holly Fry to give us a little historical context. Right after the break you've just been somewhere. What say we go everywhere? Now I'd like to tea

up my friend Holly to talk with me about tea. Hi, Holly, I feel like I should issue you demerits for that dad joke, but I love you, so I won't. I don't have a dad bond, so I can dad joke. It's one or the other, but not both. No, I'm Ella's dad, Ella my dog, so I'm a dad. No dad bond. Ellasie had today and studio with us always, She's the best co host on the planet. So let me tell you a little something about Ella and tea. Yes, Ella has learned to drink good tea, and I think

the antioxidants so good for her. So I'll make her a green tea and she'll lap it up. Interesting. Now, do you research what tea leaves are appropriate not for dogs? I would presume. Well, my friend Sarah, who you met in Nashville, who knows every single thing you could possibly imagine about tea, she told me what tea's good for doggies? Perfect. Yeah. In fact, I make an iced tea for Ella with ice cube, so you put it the hot tea in ice cube trade and oh, refreshing. Yeah, and green tea

ice cube for ella. So you have spent significant amounts of time drinking tea, drinking tea and also in one of the country's most famed for drinking tea, right Britain. You know te do? Do you know that it's estimated that a hundred and sixty five million cups of tea are consuming Great Britain every day. I think it's like pg tips, which we call build His Tea in England.

I think that's what they consuming. Probably it's not always the good stuff, but it's a big part of I mean, if you go to Epcots, which takes bits and pieces of each country and puts them together in a little world, there is a tea shop in Epcot because that's like the representative of Great Britain. There's an interesting story about how Great Britain became so tea obsessed and moreover, how

they started producing their own tea. And it's not super great because it involves some theft com Yes, so as a quick run down. So, Catherine of Braganza, who was the Portuguese wife of King Charles the Second, is often credited with bringing tea to England in the sixteen hundreds. There is actually a reference in the diary of Samuel Peeps from two years before she got there of tea, so it's actually a little unclear when he really hit

the British Isles. But the East India Company figures into this story that was established in sixteen hundred and as tea became more popular in England, that company was like, we should be monetizing this, and so eventually the East India's monopoly on tea trade, particularly to the colonies, also shaped Britain's history. The passing of the Tea Act in seventeen seventies three shaped American history because it led to

the Boston Tea Party. But during this time all tea was still coming exclusively from China, and the East India Company was not cool with this because they felt like they were forced into a business relations ship that they did not want. They did some dicey things, including starting to export a lot of opium to China. This eventually led to the first opium more which could be its own whole discussion. But what they eventually started doing is they found a man who was a scientist who studied

plants named Robert Fortune. He had gone to China in eighty two on a plant finding expedition, and he spent a lot of time there. He kind of pushed into the edges of where foreigners were allowed to go. And then he went back to London and then a few years later the East India Company said you have to go back, and this time you have to steal tea, and so he went for several several years he hired locals that were experts in the tea trade and that

new people. At one point he allegedly disguised himself as a local, which seems weird because he was very tall and very British looking, so I can't imagine how he blended in. But he ended up stealing a variety of seedling seeds, etcetera, shipping them to India where they started production. There's a cool glass case that was invented just for

this purpose, called a Wardian case. It was invented by doctor Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward and it was like, essentially like a little seedling terrarium where like a seed could be planted and it could live out its life cycle in that little box, and they could ship them that way so that when the plants got to where they were going could open it up and they would be ready to transplant into soil after a hardening off period for

all of my gardeners out in the herd. But fortune in the end, when he died, which was in eighteen eighty, he had introduced about two hundred and eighty different plants species to the Western world from China. That is how many plants he yanked out of that country and put elsewhere.

But moreover, India's production became so massive that it took market share away from China, where he had originated, and China spent the next hundred years trying to catch back up and become the able leader, which it finally became the largest exporter of tea again in the nineteen fifties. It's an interesting story about how this beautiful plant that we, you know, have come to associate with so many daily rituals.

But there is also this underbelly to the story that China literally was robbed of its tea culture so that the rest of us could have whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it. But that's the beauty of tea, right. So Sarah and I went to Thailand Vietnam, and we discovered these ancient tea trees that they say a thousands of years old and carry the wisdom of thousands of years. And you know from the tea party you and I

went to with Sarah in Nashville. She talked about the wisdom of tea and the beauty of tea and the togetherness of tea, and how the Moroccan culture has spread it in the way that it's all day that you can drink this beautiful tea. I mean, I'm a big fan of beverages all day long. So I've seen you with a bridge. Do you ever see me without some

sort of beverage in my hand? Never coffee tea. I've seen you take a beverage to the restaurant, cocktail Like I'm not going to leave my cocktail here at the bar. I'm just gonna take it with me. I do usually have a beverage with me even when I shower that I know, I'll put coffee in a travel mug first thing in the morning so I can take it in the shower. So I'm a big fan of this idea of drinking tea all day. So the other thing that I would love to talk about when it comes to

tea is Americans call rent tea black tea. So what do you know, Lipton tea is actually red tea because black tea is fermented tea called puer and it's from an area in China called Lijng, which is in fact where the tea trade and where the tea caravan started. So tea moved first east into China, south into Thailand, main mar Vietnam and Cambodia, and event actually made its way to Taiwan where it was totally changed. And then the Japanese took tea and refined it into the most beautiful, incredible,

artful thing. Whereas the rest of tea became much more commercial, the Japanese took tea into a high art of tea. So there's all these incredible misnomers. And when you travel and you drink tea and you ordity and you start learning this stuff, it's such a beautiful way into a local culture. Like South Africans drink Roybal's tea, which is actually a herb. South America has no tea. Marte is not a tea. It's a herb, right, and a delicious one at that, and a delicious exactly um Europe has

very little tea. It's mostly tisan except for Portugal. They have the Azores, which is the only coffee growing area and tea growing area in all of Europe. But now with global warming, the real thing, global warming, all these regions are changing. So they used to be like the coffee and tea be all that is changing because you coffee, for instance, needs higher and higher elevation to grow promptly, so all these coffee plantations are going up and up

the mountains like in Colombia. And tea needs proper drainage, and because of global warming and all this stuff changing, there isn't enough drainage now for these tea regions, so they're changing. And for instance, China now has like a completely new region of tea in the north as the one that lives in Georgia. Peaches don't grow there very well anymore. Too hot. Yeah, they've shifted up north into the Carolina's peaches do much better now. Similarly, we have

picked up some of the citrus trade from Florida. So should I call you the Georgia orange now a post to Georgia peach If that feels correct to you, go crazy? No, wait, what about the Georgia tangerine. All right, all right, all right, uh yeah, it fascinates me to think about. There was

also in in Robert Fortune's travels through China. He did discover that early on the Chinese realized that English people were not all that bright, and they were actually coloring some of their teas to make them a more uniform color. As a consequence, they were adding an awful lot of toxicity to it. But it was one of those things where they were like, English people don't really understand this. We'll just make it pretty for them and they'll keep

drinking it. Um. So again, it's one of those things where the nomenclature is not universal because it's been shifted in all of these export and then people adopting it in their own way. But also from the beginning, China kind of realized other people don't get this, but it is our main export, so we will cater to them in whatever way seems to work. I love talking about tea with pretty much everyone because he's such a beautiful

pot of my life and it always has been. But I love the idea that you can travel and find small ways of connecting with people on the road with tea. And something about travel, and it's hard to get tea and coffee done in the right way. I always travel with a bag of tea and a bag of coffee with a grind and a whole set up so that wherever I'm traveling in the world, I can make a

cup of tea that's real and amazing. Your bag is filled with Star Wars things like, I know that you're not traveling with I'm not traveling a tea paraphernalia, but you could. I think I'm too lazy. Also, when it comes to coffee at the end of the day, I've seen I'm a junkie, not a connoisseur, right Like, I'll take it anyway I can get it, and I'm just pick put it in my anus. I like it. No, I mean, I love a good cup of coffee, but if it's not so good, I'll still drink it because

I need this. I've seen you dump bad coffee when I give you better coffee, which I appreciate. But if I didn't come along with the better coffee, drinked the mediocre coffee. Happily you say mediocre, but I would downgrade that. You know, if it's pencil shaving soaked in water. I might not drink it, but that's maybe. How did you know the difference I've seen you consume my do. I like a lot of coffee. Speaking of which, I think

it's time we go have a cup. That sounds great, you can have tea, I will Okay, great, Thanks for hanging with me today. Again, it's always like a treat for me. I feel like the spoiled child. Great, I'll ring a bell. This is a great moment for us to travel to advertising land and we'll be right back with everywhere. Welcome once again to everywhere. Let's hop back to it. Welcome back. I'm with my best friend Sarah Scarborough,

tea huntress and founder of Fire Parties. We recently went to Thailand and Vietnam to find thousand year old tea trees. Let's talk about that. It's interesting wherever you go in a world, they have tea and it always looks different, tastes different in whichever culture that you're in. But the one common thread that runs throughout the world of t is that t is always about connecting with other people and connecting with yourself and just taking a minute to

slow down and connect with people. So coffee in many ways is to alert and T is the opposite. It's to slow down. Give me a little thought about that. Well, T is interesting. So it does have caffeine, so there is an alert state associated with it. But it's also so it has a you know, acid called alfening in it, and alfening is what people take to sleep and to relax. It increases the alpha waves in your brain. So the combination of the althening and the caffeine gives you that

zen mind, that calm, alert focus. And another thing that's interesting chemically that's in T is the categin which are the antioxidants that T is so famous for. What they do is they bind to the caffeine and so they slow down the release of caffeine in your body. So whereas coffee releases in your body over the course of two or three hours, tea can take up to twenty

hours to release throughout your body. So you have this calm, alert, focused, zen mind for an extended period of time, which is a completely different feeling than when you have coffee because it's an immediate up and then down. I want you to talk to me a little bit abound how tea started and how tea traveled and how tea is such a beautiful metal ful foot travel right right, Well, T is the ultimate voyager, I think. And this is something

that a lot of people don't know. But thousands and thousands of years ago, there were people in you Non China, where the tea is born, where it's from, and they revere these old tea trees like gods, and they worship them and they look at them as their spirit will guide and they drink these leaves and it gives them health and spirituality, and it was their original medicine too. So in that lineage of t t revered as something

holy and something sacred. And in the British lineage, which is more of what we're familiar with in the West, is more about commerce and it's more about yield, and it's the entire system was built on business. So the East India Trading Company was built because of the tea trade. They're drinking tea in a much different way as a beverage, and still they're using though as a time to connect

with other people. So these two ways of looking at tea and the types of tea that are being drunk, and these two lineages are completely different and I think that you know, wherever you go in the world, you can find tea, and it always is a manifestation of the culture that you're in. So it can be froth macha at a temple in Japan that you're drinking in silent and it can be a spicy sweet chi at the stall in Calcutta on the side of the road

where people are chatting and eating samosas with it. And it can be a sweet tea on a front porch in Nashville and still though connecting, spending time with each other. It could be a beautiful oolong at a teahouse in Taiwan. It could be tea direct in Malaysia. Every culture has a different tea and so in a way, you can really travel the entire world just by having cups of tea.

And it's a great way to travel around the world to tap into the tea culture because that cup of tea will tell you everything about the culture that you're in, so about the agriculture, about the palate of the people, about what's important to them, the way that they connect with each other. For example, Japanese are known for loving the umami, the savory and so the tea from there is often very savory and almost oily, and it's taken meditative.

Often the macha and the whole tea ceremony comes from there. The Germans are known for loving the bitter taste, and so in the tea world, Germans are famous for loving of first flushed our jealing that's really brisk and has those bright, kind of strong notes. In the United States were known for loving things that are a little bit more sweet. So our teas are generally more multi you know, we like to put sugar and milk in our tease. So it's a great way of understanding and culture. Tell

me a little bit about how tea traveled from. Tell me where it came from and how it traveled. So tea was born in you non province, China, probably was being drunk and worshiped there for thousands of years before discovery.

But discovery was seven BC, legendarily by the herbalist ember shen Nung, And he apparently a leaf dropped from the tree into his bowl of hot water, and he was so astounded by the health benefits and the way that this plant made him feel, that he spread the use of tea to all his people all around China, and so for thousands of years, tea was being consumed in China.

And then it was the Zen Buddhist monks that were sent from Japan to China to learn about and bring culture back to Japan, and instead they brought back tea, which I think is sort of the same thing. So they discovered tea and they fell in love with it for the zen mind that it gave them, and they brought tea back to Japan, took it to their temples

and cultivated it. And there's a saying that there would be no tea without Zen, and there would be no Zen without tea, because they are one and the same. And so from there it continued to spread through Asia, and then it was on the trading routes that went west into Europe on the Silk Root, on the Tea horse Road, which was part of the Silk Root, and these trading caravans would take tea from Asia and then

across the deserts. So like Moroccan mint, tea was because the nomadic tribes moved westward and they would pick these potent herbs, so artemisia and mint and sage from the desert and then they would blend it with green tea from China and they would add sugar that was also being traded on the route. And then from there it first came to Europe in the dowry of Catherine de Braganza, and she was a Portuguese royalty, so that's what we look at for the first time that it made its

way to Europe. I think she moved to the Netherlands and then that's when the British started to set up

tea plantations in their colony of India. And then along the around the same time, they discovered that tea was also indigenous to Aam in India, so they had indigenous plants, but they also had stolen plants from China, and then they began to call to the black tea in India and then they started the East India Trading Company and that was the genesis of the Opium Wars because there was the trade for obium, silver and tea going on, and it was all about the British not wanting to

be reliant on the Chinese monopoly of the tea trade. So that's not made its way to Europe. And then if we continue the story of tea, it went from Europe with the colonists into America. So tea then made its way, of course into society, and at the St. Louis World Fair in nineteen o four, tea was introduced in both tea bag form and an iced tea form. So that's when history notes the first tea bags and

the first iced tea. And that's also really interesting because if you think of the way that we consume historically tea in this country, it's all of it is iced tea and tea bags, and everything that goes in iced tea or tea bags is the lowest grade black tea that's grown, you know, maybe in Argentina, sometimes India, And that's so completely different than the birthplace of tea, where they're taking care of these tea trees for generations and

there birthing babies underneath these trees, and they're having weddings around these trees, and the trees are part of their family in their community. And um, black tea is great, breakfast, he's great, Chai is great, Darjeeling is amazing. It's one of my favorite teas. And I love those traditions of tea.

And you know what we do is we work a lot through fair trade and through organic production and partnerships at origin to be able to affect positive change in the origins where the British set up the industry in such a way that it has led to slavery and sex trafficking and lots of pesticiety use. I mean that was the reason that I started the company eighteen years ago, was to affect positive change, to connect tea lovers with

tea growers to improve the lives of both. And if you just only drink black tea, you're really missing out on so much of the joy of tea. There's another category of teas that we pour tea ceremony with that are called living teas, and there's a number of different criteria that they have to have to be called living teas. For example, they come from seed, not cuttings. But when you sit around and drink these teeths, you can have a magical experience. And every tea affects you in a

different way. So there's one too that I love to drink, and every time I drink it in ceremony, I have visions like real clarity on my life and my true nature and who I am. And tea taken in this way is in the category of plants called in the agans, which are god plants. The anthogens are like ayahuasca, marijuana, peyote, all the different plants that give people in sight and spiritual clarity. And tea is also in this family. It's just a lot more subtle than you know Alaska for example.

You know, tea is magic that way, it really is. And I think that's what I love to share with people, is that of what is available in the world of tea in this country is black tea. But there's this whole other world of tea out there, and it's about sitting with people and having time and a session, and it's about the vitality of this leaf. And it's the way it makes you feel and the way it opens up your heart and the way it gives you clarity, and the way that you can connect with people over it,

you know. And there's such a big world out there. There's so much more. Thank you, Sarah, Well. I had a good time. I hope you did too. If you'd like to reach us, go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram, Everywhere Part on Twitter, or the website Everywhere podcast dot com. I'm Daniel Schaffter signing off, I'll be seeing you everywhere.