Pumpkin Spice Hero: The Thrilling But Tragic True Story of Nutmeg

No pumpkin spice latte, cookie, candle, or seasonal can of Spam
(yes, really) would be the same without one of its key flavors:
nutmeg, a warm, woody spice grated from the seed of a tropical
fruit. But back in the 1600s, nutmeg wasn’t so common that you
could put it in everything from coffee to soap. In fact, nutmeg
once grew only in one place in the entire world: the Banda Islands,
a Pacific archipelago too tiny to even appear on regular maps. To
get their precious nutmeg, European sailors had to brave a
three-year journey filled with the possibility of shipwreck,
storms, scurvy, dysentery, starvation, and death—so it's not
surprising that the spice was so valuable that the crew weren't
allowed to have pockets in their clothing, in case they smuggled
some ashore for themselves! But how did one heroic Brit, Nathaniel
Courthope, end up changing the course of nutmeg history—and, with
it, the fate of not just pumpkin spice lattes, but also the city of
New York? Listen now for the spicy, swashbuckling tale behind the
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