Sugar's Dark Shadow

Your pantry's sweetest ingredient has an extremely bitter history.
The sap-producing grass known as sugarcane has been grown and
enjoyed by humans for at least 10,000 years, but it was only
relatively recently that it went from a luxury to an everyday
ingredient—a change that also triggered genocide, slavery, and the
invention of modern racism. In this episode, how the Crusades got
Europeans addicted to the sweet stuff, and how that appetite
deforested southern Europe and kicked off the trade in enslaved
Africans, before decimating indigenous populations in the New World
and codifying racism into law. It's a dark story that involves
Christopher Columbus' mistress, the early human rights advocate
whose campaign to save indigenous people encouraged the horrors of
the transatlantic slave trade, and a trip to southern Louisiana,
where we met Black sugarcane farmers to explore sugar's troubling
legacy there. No sugar coating here: join us for the fascinating
and horrifying history of this household staple. Learn more about
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