What if you could tell the history of the world through the food we grow? The History of Fresh Produce explores the extraordinary stories of the fruits, vegetables and crops that have shaped human history. Join John Paap and Patrick Kelly as they uncover the surprising connections between fresh produce and some of history’s biggest events, most fascinating people and strangest moments. From the potato priests who helped transform Europe and the rabbit plague that overran Australia, to the cacao that financed revolutions, the plant that gave us the gin and tonic, and the farmer who became one of the most recognizable faces in the world — John and Patrick reveal the history hiding in plain sight in our fruit bowls, grocery stores and fields. Along the way, expect empires, exploration, science, politics, war, religion, trade, agriculture — and more than a few stories that sound far too ridiculous to be true. Because the history of fresh produce isn’t really just the history of food. It’s the history of us. Social Channels: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyoffreshproduce/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyoffreshproduce?lang=en Threads: https://www.threads.net/@historyoffreshproduce?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558921896574
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
35%
Guest openness
Selective
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Signup to Generate a PitchWhat if you could tell the history of the world through the food we grow? The History of Fresh Produce explores the extraordinary stories of the fruits, vegetables and crops that have shaped human history.
Recent episodes include "Fighting Witches to Save the Harvest" (27 October 2026, 57 minutes), "The History of Garlic" (20 October 2026, 73 minutes), and "The Farmer Everyone Wanted Dead" (13 October 2026, 63 minutes).
The History of Fresh Produce publishes roughly weekly, with episodes averaging 41 minutes.
Booking probability for The History of Fresh Produce is 35%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. The History of Fresh Produce requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. The History of Fresh Produce's contact route on record: verified email.
The strongest fits for The History of Fresh Produce are Other Crop Farming, Fruit & Nut Farming and Vegetable Farming. The History of Fresh Produce has an arts audience and around 470 subscribers on YouTube.
The History of Fresh Produce is an arts podcast.
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Episode #204
Who were the benandanti, the “good walkers” of sixteenth-century Italy who claimed their spirits left their bodies at night to battle witches, armed with stalks of fennel, in order to save the harvest? Why did the men...
Episode #202
Where did the world’s most pungent bulb actually come from? What does a 4,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablet reveal about how people cooked with it? And how did a humble kitchen ingredient end up as a weapon against...
Episode #201
Who was Edgar J. Watson, the Florida farmer shot dead by his own neighbours in 1910? Was he really the serial killer of Everglades legend, suspected in the murder of the outlaw Belle Starr and accused of murdering his...
Episode #202
Why did rural labourers burn tax records during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381? How did American wheat farmers try to seize control of the railroads in the 1890s? And why, in 1962, did French growers actually fight each...
Episode #200
Who was John Chapman, the barefoot, tin-pot-wearing nurseryman who became one of America's most beloved folk heroes? Why were his millions of apple trees destined not for eating, but for cider and applejack? And how did...
Episode #199
Why did the Suda insist a Greek comic playwright died after being struck by a pear? How did the Emperor Augustus's own precautions against poison get defeated by figs still hanging on the tree? And why could...
Episode #198
How did a plant that Victorian botanists dismissed as something you'd find growing on a rubbish heap become the sacred mother grain of the Inca Empire — and how did the Spanish nearly stamp it out of existence by...
How did a single night's frost in September 1867 kill nearly one tenth of Finland's population — proportionally worse than the Irish Famine — and why has almost nobody heard of it? Why did a...
Episode #196
How did a fruit that began as an ancient Egyptian burial canteen — a self-contained water supply buried with pharaohs — end up starting an American military intervention in Panama, getting farmers electrifying their...
Episode #195
How did a jar of pickles keep Julius Caesar's legions marching, Cleopatra beautiful, Captain Cook's sailors alive, and Napoleon's armies fed — and why does the same basic technology of salt water and a vegetable keep...
Episode #194
How did a green vegetable reduce the court of Louis XIV to what contemporaries called "a fashion and a madness" — with ladies smuggling peas to their bedrooms and the Sun King himself eating so many that his doctors...
Episode #193
How did a treaty signed in the middle of the Second World War end up with farmers seizing a dam at gunpoint, a woman shot dead by her own country's National Guard, and American lettuce growers in 2026 wondering whether...
Episode #192
How did five farms in the highlands of Guatemala end up sickening nearly a thousand people across fifteen American states and two countries — and why did California's strawberry industry lose forty million dollars for...
Episode #190
Why did the South Korean government fly in emergency cabbage from China in 2010 — and why was that decision experienced as a national humiliation as much as a practical solution? How did a fermented vegetable become the...
Episode #191
How did a Nazi food embargo, a frozen canal, and a railway strike combine to starve one of the most developed societies in Europe to below 400 calories a day? Why does the Dutch Hunger Winter still leave measurable...
Episode #188
Why did a Basque immigrant fleeing the Carlist Wars plant a vine from the Pyrenees on the banks of the Uruguay River in 1870 — and how did that single decision produce what may now be the healthiest red wine grape in...
Episode #187
Why did Parliament pass 5,245 individual Acts to enclose 6.8 million acres of English common land — and why does almost nobody in England know it happened? Who were the people who lost the right of pannage, turbary, and...
Episode #189
Why does the country that grows 45 percent of the world's cocoa receive between five and seven percent of the value of the chocolate bar it becomes? How did a single crop fund two civil wars simultaneously — with the...
Episode #184
Why did the President of the United States personally intervene to improve the yam supply of Caribbean labourers on a jungle construction site — and what does that detail reveal about the vast, brutal, and deeply...
Episode #186
How does a fruit with a two-day shelf life become one of Switzerland's great protected exports? Why does the finest kirsch come not from Germany's Black Forest but from a small lake-side canton in Central Switzerland...
Recent guests on The History of Fresh Produce. Study who booked and why before you pitch.
PitchCentric classifies The History of Fresh Produce under these industries. Guests from them are the closest fit, and each links to the best podcasts in that industry.
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
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