Learn about the surprising Medieval history of almond milk. Then, learn how some basic physics principles can help us understand why good teams kill great ideas, with physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how almond milk was a gourmet luxury in the Middle Ages: https://curiosity.com/topics/almond-milk-was-a-gourmet-luxury-in-the-middle-ages-curiosity Additional resources from Safi Bahcall: Pick up “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Follow @SafiBahcall on Twitter — https://twitter.com/safibahcall Official Website — https://www.bahcall.com/ Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the surprising Medieval history of almond milk. Then, learn how some basic physics principles can help us understand why good teams kill great ideas, with physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about how almond milk was a gourmet luxury in the Middle Ages: https://curiosity.com/topics/almond-milk-was-a-gourmet-luxury-in-the-middle-ages-curiosity
Additional resources from Safi Bahcall:
Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-good-teams-kill-great-ideas-w-safi-bahcall-and-the-medieval-history-of-almond-milk
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the surprising early history of almond milk. Then, you’ll learn about some basic physics principles that can help us understand why good teams kill great ideas, with physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Almond Milk Was a Gourmet Luxury in the Middle Ages — https://curiosity.com/topics/almond-milk-was-a-gourmet-luxury-in-the-middle-ages-curiosity (Ashley)
When you think of almond milk, you probably envision vegans ordering dairy-free lattes at Starbucks, or something the lactose intolerant pour on their cereal. Either way, it's a pretty recent invention, right? Wrong: Almond milk has been around since at least the 12th century. And it was a staple of the Medieval diet.
When it comes to life in Europe in the Middle Ages, you can attribute many facets of life to religious demands — and almond milk is no different. Much of the medieval Christian diet was restricted by the church. And importantly, that includes “fish days,” when you weren't allowed to consume meat — or any product of a warm-blooded animal, for that matter.
So it's pretty easy to see how almond milk would fit into that context: it was a substitute for those days that you're weren’t allowed to pour cow's milk on your medieval Froot Loops.
Medieval doctors were also aware of the medical benefits. Specifically, they thought the little nuts were particularly good for the brains of young scholars. So that explains why cookbooks and medical texts going back to the 12th century prominently feature almond milk recipes.
But the more you look at recipes from the period, the more you find items like blancmanger, a kind of pudding made with almond milk, stewed chicken, and lots of sugar. Almond milk or no, that's one meal that's not gonna fly during Lent.
In reality, almond milk probably became a favorite ingredient of the upper classes because it was expensive and exotic. Plus, it takes on coloring quite well, and medieval Gordon Ramsays loved to liven up their meals by mixing in coloring agents like violets, beets, and cornflowers. That all adds up to a must-have ingredient for any fancy 14th-century pantry.
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Safi Bahcall 2 — Glass of water analogy, 2 opposing forces [4:42] (2 segments) (Cody)
Would you believe that basic principles of physics can teach us a lot about teamwork and entrepreneurship? Well you will once you’ve heard from today’s guest, author Safi Bahcall. He’s a physicist and a biotech CEO who took his company public, and among many other accomplishments worked for President Obama’s council of science advisors. Safi is also the author of the new book “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.” Last week, he explained that “loonshots” are people who take us to places we’ve never been before. But big ideas like modern rockets don’t always “take off,” even though sometimes it feels like it should be an obvious choice that we encourage them. Here’s Safi with some science to illustrate why this happens.
[CLIP 4:42]
I really liked this part of our conversation with Safi because it’s cool to look at things through the lense of phase transitions in physics. Scientists have actually applied the phase transition idea to systems like cars on a highway, and even humans at rock concerts. And just like how you can use a set of equations to look at a phase transition, Safi offers what he calls “The Innovation Equation” at the end of his new book, “Loonshots” — an actual mathematical way to design more innovative companies. Like he told us: you just have to understand the forces at work whenever you organize people into a group. As for what those forces ARE and how to deal with them, you’ll have to tune in next Tuesday when Safi joins us again for a master class in group psychology.
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CODY: Today’s first story was written by Reuben Westmas, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!