Episode 71 - Complex Cultural Cravings

Could your morning coffee be more than just a pick-me-up? Join us for a captivating deep dive into the complex interplay between Christianity and coffee, a relationship that has evolved from suspicion to acceptance. We promise you'll uncover the surprising journey of this beloved beverage as it transformed from a feared substance linked to pagan rituals and sorcery to a staple of modern Christian culture. Our guest, PJ from the Global Church History Project, offers profound insights into how coffee's reputation shifted, enlightening us on its fascinating past and its place in religious history today.

We'll transport you back to a time when coffee sparked cultural clashes and faced fierce opposition from both religious and societal leaders. From Ethiopian bans on British travelers over coffee consumption to the Ottoman Empire's severe penalties for indulging in the drink, this episode uncovers the rich tapestry of coffee's tumultuous past. With stories of Sufi mystics enhancing spiritual experiences with coffee and Venetian traders bringing it to Europe, you'll gain a newfound appreciation for how societal attitudes toward coffee and similar substances have evolved over time. 

Finally, we tackle the darker threads of coffee's history, including its ties to slavery and ethical concerns surrounding modern production methods. We confront the normalization of coffee as a performance-enhancing substance in professional settings, questioning the implications of this mindset. As we conclude, we challenge you to ponder the ethical considerations of our coffee-fueled work ethic and suggest savoring a simpler pleasure—a refreshing drink of water.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Chapters

• 0:00 Christian Views on Coffee Throughout History
• 6:35 Coffee's Role in Religious History
• 11:38 Christian Opposition to Coffee Consumption
• 24:23 Coffee's Dark Historical Connections
• 31:04 Work Ethic and Coffee Consumption

Transcript

Paul Blackham: 0:00

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization. And we're going to look at something different today. We're going to look at the problem of drugs in a way and we looked at it when we looked at Pharmacon and the issue of pharmacology and how the Bible addresses it really as a kind of idolatry issue and that if we look to the Lord, god, for what we need, then his help comes through all kinds of creatures, including things we eat and drink and so on. But if we look to the creatures themselves as the source of help, that becomes a problem and all sorts of difficulties arise. Now let's apply that to a specific issue of a substance that now is quite commonly used as a drug, um, and many people feel that they require it every day in in many communities it's it's like very common usage and as you walk through those communities you'll smell, smell it quite openly and see people just consuming it, you know, brazenly on the streets, and it's become such a part of those cultures that even children are introduced to it. And even children are introduced to it and I say that cautiously because it's obviously a disturbing thing but even children are introduced to its consumption and even it's kind of liked if even the children become dependent upon it, and parents might even buy equipment for the children to help them get into the becoming dependent upon it.

Paul Blackham: 2:10

But it's something that our Christian ancestors were generally quite horrified about and even made illegal, as we'll hear, and preached against it and so on. But now I don't think there's very, very few Christian. There are some Christians still preaching against it even today, but very few. It's become so. It's like, why bother? It's legalized, well, effectively legalized everywhere. What are we talking about? We're talking about coffee, of course, uh, something which our christian ancestors were horrified by, um, but now they're not. And uh, even quite mature christians that I know boast about their dependence on this drug and how they just can't function without it.

Paul Blackham: 3:08

And even ministers I know like not I was going to say furtively converse with other ministers about their preferences and they know dealers who can get them better of the drug and how to prepare it better, and they have very expensive equipment to prepare it and so on. I was going to say they do that furtively because you would assume they would, but actually no, I've even seen ministers posting quite openly. No, I've even seen ministers posting quite openly about their dependence on this drug and their enthusiastic usage of it. And I wasn't going to say this, but I think I need to. Churches actually uh, feature offering this drug at church events.

Paul Blackham: 4:08

Just recently I heard, um, I was at a church service and at the conclusion of it, the worship leader and I I it's maybe the wrong use of words to title to give to such a person, but they literally just said, please go and collect your coffee at the desk at the end of it, as if, like, just openly said that. Now I admit, like many of us, I feel, have become compromised on this and perhaps don't see the problem of it. What we're going to do is ask pj from the global church history project to give us, uh, some therapy on this really, and and help us to understand where the coffee usage, where that originates from what, how it, how it was perceived by our christian ancestors and something about, um, how christians resisted it and and when they stopped doing that right.

PJ : 5:15

So the history of it is that, um, really, its initial usage was entirely pagan, so there was a group of nilotic people, so that's like east african sort of people related to the masai a lot of people outside africa still know about. Like the masai. There's a group related to them called the oromo and they live in the south of ethiopia and they discovered this drug and they start using it and they it kind of is especially used by their sorcerers, and when one of their sorcerers would die they would plant a coffee bean at his burial site so that he will become a coffee tree and continue to cast sorcery through this drug. So that was the kind of history of it. So when the Oromo were kind of, they're kind of originally from Ethiopia, but then they expanded out to other parts of Ethiopia and and as they did this, they brought this drug with them and christians were horrified by it.

PJ : 6:11

So quite uh, quickly after this was introduced there was all kinds of uh laws totally prohibiting, prohibiting planting it and cultivating it, like previously we thought about all the christian laws which made basically weed totally extinct in the vast majority of Europe. It was only in places where they needed rope, close to the coast really that still had it. They were hoping they could stamp out coffee with similar sort of measures, but they sadly weren't so successful. Because then basically some sufis you'll know they're like kind of a sect of islam that are very into ecstatic stuff a kind of mystical form of islam, isn't it?

Paul Blackham: 6:56

and the and the idea is to whip yourself up, either through physical activities, like the concept of whirling around sometimes, but mostly it's a. It's like a mystical form of islam. Yeah, carry on.

PJ : 7:09

Yeah, so they had already tried to normalize weed, which, um, obviously, in most forms of islam that is totally prohibited. But they had said actually no, it's really cool because it feels like you're getting to know god a bit more.

Paul Blackham: 7:21

And then they so they would actually believe that that drug, a bit like um the doors guy, where he would believe that taking drugs would open the doors of perception and enable him to be more spiritual. This goes right back to the coffee use by the sufis.

PJ : 7:38

Yeah yeah, yeah. So they had, yeah. So then they kind of like at one point almost abandoned we. Just they were like, wow, coffee is where it's at, and so they just get it, loads of it. And so they kind of like at one point almost abandoned Ouija's. They were like, wow, coffee is where it's at, and so they just get loads of it. And so they kind of established themselves in Yemen and there's this port of Mocha where they get Mocha. Yeah, yeah, they get all this coffee imported. So the Ethiopian Empire is actually unable to stamp out coffee in its regions because there's so much interest in basically smuggling this drug out of the country that, um, it becomes a massive business and these cartels are too powerful to just totally stamp out, so it gets proliferated, and really at that time only in the south, where the oromo people are still, uh, most popular. And so that that was basically what happened, that this christian empire had this massive cartel operating for hundreds of years the christian empire were running it, or were they doing?

PJ : 8:36

they were battling, they were war on drugs, really, and they were trying to fight against the cartel, yeah, yeah, and so this cartel was supplying Sufists with, uh, the coffee they needed for their ecstatic experiences. But, yeah, if you read, um some Ethiopian fathers from that time, they talk in absolute horror because they're, like, it seemed like someone's possessed by a demon and to this day there's a sort of category of demon they refer to as a Buddha, b-u-d-a and that's the word they have for coffee. It's the same word. So even now, so like sadly, even in modern Ethiopia there's been a lot of so like you can't go to holy sites of Michael if you're high on coffee.

Paul Blackham: 9:21

Is that even today? Yeah, you can't, so they certainly wouldn't be serving coffee at that even today. Yeah, you can't, so they certainly wouldn't be serving coffee at that church site.

PJ : 9:27

Yeah, but I've known, and Ethiopian was just telling me the other day, that he went to a monastery and they had coffee there. What yeah?

Paul Blackham: 9:36

So the cartel had even managed to get into an Ethiopian monastery. Were the leadership of the monastery aware that there was a coffee dealer inside the monastery?

PJ : 9:48

Well, he wasn't going into too much detail.

Paul Blackham: 9:50

I think he only saw a monk. I bet he didn't go into detail.

PJ : 9:55

Too sordid stuff. So, yeah, there's all this and then, yeah, so there's a holy spring of Michael and there's still a belief that Michael will not tolerate people who are on this substance.

Paul Blackham: 10:06

The Archangel Michael will have nothing to do with such drug users.

PJ : 10:10

Yeah, but then, yeah, it was only in like the 1880s that it started to become normalised in Ethiopia. And in the early 19th century you get these British travellers and they are actually barred from holy sites because they say we know what the Britishish are like they're always high on coffee, so like we're just not going to risk it, we're not going to let you into these holy sites for that reason.

Paul Blackham: 10:33

So because just british people in general were perceived as coffee drinkers.

PJ : 10:37

Yeah, and therefore don't let any british in yeah, well, coffee and tobacco, that was the other thing they felt. Yeah right.

Paul Blackham: 10:44

But it's funny because quite a lot of Christians are today quite antagonistic to the use of tobacco but not coffee. So that's an interesting one. They've accepted one but rejected the other, but anyway, yeah, carry on on that. So the british were banned for the coffee use yeah and then.

PJ : 11:12

but then what happens towards the end of the 19th century? Partly because the ethiopians do. Even before that point they loved the british. They were just disappointed that we'd um given up on this particular fight, Because earlier on in the reign of King Charles, the Martyr coffee was banned and there was all sorts of leaflets going around telling people about the dangers of coffee and all of this People were really trying to wake them up.

Paul Blackham: 11:38

Oh yeah, wake them up. Yeah, that's the problem. Wake them up to the dangers of coffee. So that's in the early 17th century then. So we're really looking at 400 years ago, king Charles the Martyr, nearly 400 years ago, king Charles the Martyr's really saying or people like godly people in his time they recognised the danger of it. Is that when coffee was first really Well, it's really. Is it in the 16th century that it starts to get into Europe? Yeah, and then? So by the 17th century, the mature Christians in England at that time saw the threat of it and attempted to. Was it banned, did you say?

PJ : 12:22

Yeah, yeah, king Charles of Matta did make it illegal, not as much as that. Murad. The Ottoman emperor made it on pain of death. Murad, did he? Yeah, murad IV.

Paul Blackham: 12:32

So he could see that it had obviously become widespread in the Ottoman Empire because Muslims were using it, I mean the Sufis. Obviously it was core to their religious practices. It was almost like a sacrament kind of. But I suppose Muslims in general were using it, were they?

PJ : 12:50

Beginning to Beginning to.

PJ : 12:52

It was worrying because it's just like there's these Hadiths that are saying, oh, you can't use any drugs, similar. You know how we've thought about the scriptures that say that. And so then they were worried like, well, there's this one drug which is just massively taking off, and so he had it on pain of death, like drug possession, really trying to crack down on this drug possession. So there were similar laws there, but then Venice was trading. They had all these trading rights with the Ottoman Empire and so they were bringing it into Europe. So they're the ones who introduced it in the 16th century.

Paul Blackham: 13:25

Via Venice.

PJ : 13:26

Yeah. So they were kind of acting as a cartel. Obviously within the Ottoman Empire They'd be able to trade things around, and then they brought it into Europe and then they really pushed hard to normalize it. And it's this quite disappointing thing where you have so much of the Catholic clergy were trying to fight the good fight against this drug, and then at one point you just have a pope saying, oh, but it smells so delicious. And then so then he says, oh, it's OK then, and then it's like, oh, you feel like there needed to be a more thorough process of investigation.

PJ : 14:03

And um, and I feel similarly with ethiopia, the arguments that um, like, uh, ethiopia, at the time when they normalized it, it was that well, the coptic pope used coffee because he was part of the ottoman empire, so they knew some coptic popes that did it, so that normalized it. And then the british, they like the British, they were doing it. And then at one point you get the emperor of Ethiopia, menelik II, and not only did he drink coffee but his cousin, I believe, called Walden Michael, was one of the main coffee dealers in the country. So then, because Menelik was so highly thought of country, so then, because menelik was so highly thought of and it became normalized and then in the 1880s, I believe it, they suspended all the laws against, uh, coffee ownership use, the whole lot.

PJ : 14:58

So that's the kind of history there and I suppose the very disappointing thing for christian is like, well, you could, we've thought about how, like some things you could think of as drugs. But then we think, oh, we should think of it as medicine because it's for this and you know, and paul describes alcohol that way, you know, he says timothy should have some wine for his stomach. But then there's a careful process of like examining it and thinking what's it for, how's it used as medicine, and then was just saying, oh, it smells so yummy is like that.

Paul Blackham: 15:26

Which pope was that? Do you remember?

PJ : 15:27

no, you can't remember no, it was in 1600, but yeah, obviously yeah yeah.

Paul Blackham: 15:32

So for him he's only. He's like, well, it is evil but smells nice. Yeah, uh. But I do feel like, if we just stay on him for a moment, that that kind of very poor theological thinking about these sorts of things and he's like let's hold him up as one of the poorest examples. That is quite typical, I think, is that people go, I like it. So he's just saying I like the smell of it. But I think generally. Just recently I was looking at Christians and coffee today and there was just a huge amount of merchandise around. You know, people like even theological podcasts and things about. You know theology with coffee and things like that, as if you're supposed to actually consume this mood-altering, mind-altering drug whilst listening to the theological podcast, and one of them even offered coffee mugs and things that you could, and presumably bongs and stuff as well.

Paul Blackham: 16:55

I assumed I didn't go on to the other tabs available on the merchandise, but presumably they did. And syringes and so on, they obviously provide that. But I only looked at the coffee mug section because maybe, maybe, maybe I should, you know, see, see the other paraphernalia they offer. But it seems strange, doesn't it, that the argument really, whenever I've told it, I like it. Whenever I've told it it's I like it, yeah, and I guess okay, but then people may like all kinds of activities and substances which may not be quite sufficient a reason to declare them good or moral Because that mind-altering like.

Paul Blackham: 17:41

I'm not absolutely sure on this, but I do have a recollection that in John Calvin's Geneva he didn't like alcohol, so he thought that was a bad, even though the scripture actually does affirm a certain amount of alcohol use. So that is positive there. But he wanted to close those down and and replace them with, I believe, coffee shops. Now think about that that like coffee is just like, overtly people who like, like it, like it for its mood altering and mind altering properties, and that there's a christian leader who is overtly attempting to set them up because he feels it's not, it's a better thing, it's a better drug to consume than like having inns or pubs or taverns and things, and I mean I can't. I mean maybe I've recalled that wrongly, presumably that can't have actually happened, but but I believe it did.

Paul Blackham: 18:52

I think there is that. That is, there was an attempt to actually have more coffee, you know, promote coffee as a sort of a better thing in Geneva, and I know that today there's a lot of coffee shops in Geneva, but nevertheless, so it's the level of argument that we're concerned about here. So in the 17th century, that's when the doors really, you know, the gates kind of, are broken really, and although, as you say, king charles, the martyrs still resist, but after him, well, goethe, you know the holy roman scholar and politician right.

PJ : 19:31

So, even though he was um like so-called free thinker and everything, so he's not that a christian fundamentalist even but he had tried to reinvigorate this anti-coffee mood because he was like, even if you're just a nominal lutheran, it was still like, well, that's, obviously christians can't be doing that. So he was still trying to crack down on it. So you didn't have to be super far down the kind of fundamentalist rabbit hole to be anti-coffee and so. But then some, like rationalists and everything, hated girter for that, because they were like, oh, isn't that ridiculous. He wants alcohol, he wants to get rid of coffee. But then it's like, well, actually that had been the christian norm since coffee had been discovered. Um, so he, he was even him, like basically a humanist, almost like a bit more christian than a humanist. But basically um was still, like you know, even if you were cultural christian, there was this feeling you can't be doing that you can't be having coffee, and I know that it's voltaire the 18th century, um uh, anti-christer Voltaire.

Paul Blackham: 20:40

It says that he would drink 40 to 50 cups of coffee a day.

PJ : 20:45

Wow Like a proper junkie.

Paul Blackham: 20:48

Yeah, like a proper junkie, and I guess that would help to explain why he ended up being an atheist and why all possible clear thoughts about the Lord Jesus Christ would be impossible to him. I know that Immanuel Kant also was quite an enthusiastic coffee drinker and that nearly all of those kind of what they themselves would be called free thinkers, they were coffee addicts. So Goethe, possibly, was like whoa, look what happens if you start consuming coffee. Yeah, okay, carry on. Sorry, yeah.

PJ : 21:28

Yeah, so that's like going all the way to, I mean, basically the 19th century, isn't it? When you think about that, there will be some sentiment that's still quite anti-coffee then. And then today, in a lot of wellness stuff, you do still have people saying, oh, you got to get rid of caffeine and everything, and so we, we see this still so.

Paul Blackham: 21:47

That's interesting because the health benefits, uh like we thought about, uh, tobacco and coffee, and that that now Christians will say don't have tobacco because it's bad for your health. But you're right, many, many health people say coffee is bad for you, but that's not taken seriously, I presume.

PJ : 22:10

Yeah, and especially because you think about the knock-on effects of things. So you think with weed there's such a high level of psychosis. That's why there's this stigma that, like it's like that's in coffee used.

Paul Blackham: 22:24

Did you say no in weed? Oh yeah, weed, weed as well. Yeah, yeah, that's true but it's that.

PJ : 22:27

It's like. You think like, oh, it's not harming me, but it's like, well, it's harming your mind and that means you can harm other people. And then it's similar with that when you think, well, there's knock on effects. So you think, well, all it's doing is waking me up and giving me. But it also has this connection with stress and that's this big killer in it. So it's like you just narrow it down to that oh, it's not hurting me, because that's not bad, but it's like, but that can cause things. You know what I mean.

Paul Blackham: 22:51

It's like so narrowly thinking that it's quite silly really yeah and uh, like, I quite like kierkegaard, but he was a notorious coffee drinker and, uh, it's no wonder he wrote a book called fear and trembling, no wonder he was always stressed out and on his own and couldn't integrate with people.

Paul Blackham: 23:17

But let's like, um, if you think about because the ethiopians are where our hope on this really that they, they were, I mean, they were on the front line of trying to stop it ever getting out, and they war on drugs nearly always fail because people just use drugs and they want them, and that obviously the Christian Ethiopians were trying to contain it, but there were others who weren't, and then obviously this ends up becoming a global problem. But and I hesitate to say this but is it not the case that even the Ethiopians have actually given up the theological resistance to it?

Paul Blackham: 24:08

You better tell us this sad story because I know in my mind I was like oh, but at least the Oriental Orthodox are super strong on this, led by the Ethiopians. But even they, in modern times, have weakened. Is that fair to say? I think it is.

PJ : 24:23

And it's quite a sordid history related with coffee. I was reading there's a guy he's written a book called, I think, A Stranger at the Feast and it talks about the history of coffee and its relationship with the church and everything, how the church had banned it and in one particular instance he looks at at how, um yeah, the church was totally against it but then some people in the church become some of the biggest slave owners in the world in the 19th century because obviously you've got the civil war in america that abolishes that. So then, kind of the the largest owners of slaves are some of these people and they so this is.

Paul Blackham: 25:04

In East Africa there's some of the largest slave owners.

PJ : 25:07

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. So these people in the Ethiopian, like, compared to anyone in the world, they've got the most slaves really. They're like really trafficking this and then they kind of need something to do with them because they've got all these people they've enslaved and they buy all this land and then coffee's really easy to grow and because they're very profitable yeah, doing all these uh cartels to the, the ottomans and to the yemenis and so on.

PJ : 25:32

Well, and europeans and americans, yeah, by that point, yeah, and the so that all happens. And so what happens is there's like some translations of the ancient histories of these monasteries and so on that are nearby, and when they translate it from, get is the ancient language that they say enoch spoke this language and that's the liturgical language of um ethiopia. So in the histories written in get as and it, uh, they just grew hops for beer, cause that's obviously good in the Bible, and then you know they've got fruit and they've got, I think, buckthorn or something like that. And then, but then they change one of the words, cause obviously by that point everyone drinks coffee instead of beer, cause it's totally taking off. So they think let's do a dynamic translation and change hops to coffee and everything. The dynamic translation theory is the nicer thing because he mentions that it could just be a dynamic thing.

PJ : 26:28

But possibly more sinisterly, they've changed this core doctrine where it's like you can't have drugs, well, that means you can't have coffee.

PJ : 26:36

They've changed it so it's like actually coffee's fine, and they've edited these histories so all the condemnation of coffee is out and they've actually put coffee into history where it wasn't, to justify a key part of the slave trade, the east african slave trade and so that and that and anyway, and this guy in this book he looks at the continuing strife between the kind of slaves that were brought there to cultivate coffee and we think also in the European cultivating coffee. It was similarly in the New World. They had all these slaves brought over to get coffee, to make these drugs, to ship to cartels, to get people addicted. The exact same thing was happening in Ethiopia, but it only started kicking in at the end of the 19th century and then Haile Selassie puts all that slavery and everything to an end, so it doesn't last long. But it is the same impulses of cartels and money and slavery and that just gets them to say, oh no, it's okay, you can have coffee, but it's just because they needed an internal market to make things as profitable as they could be.

Paul Blackham: 27:41

So like as as often with drugs, it's driven, it's very mixed up with money and enslaving people and all of that and coffee and it'd be interesting on that, you know, for Christians who are coffee enthusiasts, coffee enthusiasts do. Would that. Would that alter the view of coffee if they knew the extent to which it's it's caused, it's been involved in uh, slave, slave slavery and slave trading and so on?

PJ : 28:11

um, and to this day you think there's all this fair trade stuff, trying to get people more fairly paid because effectively, even to this day, like most coffee will be produced in essentially slave conditions.

Paul Blackham: 28:22

Yeah, that's right, because that's why fur-traded coffee is so featured, because it's an attempt to, I suppose, in that sense, improve the image of this drug that's so widely available. Is there anything else you'd like to say about coffee, or should we?

PJ : 28:43

Well, I think, yeah, it is worth noting just as we're thinking about what are the effects of all this, and certainly the poor theology that you know, just saying, oh, but it's yummy and it's like. So the reason why Christian countries had weed as illegal and coffee as okay is because one smells disgusting, the other one's delicious and it's like that. Well, that's just terrible in terms of actual theology and the the ethiopians, when they were really strong against it, they did see it's basically like the gateway drug, whereas we think about like all the kind of damage, like weed doesn't everything, they say that's the gateway drug, but then it's like really it's copy, because it doesn't. It's not just on an individual basis as a society. Once you start saying, instead of like going for a walk or eating more healthy, something like that, I'll just have this and then I'm awake, then I'm ready to go, that means the whole idea of drug dependence.

PJ : 29:36

Dependence is now normalized. Yeah, so where it? Whereas it wasn't before, and so that, I think, is the real problem. That is a societal gateway drug, where it is just suddenly saying that line of thought where you say I'll use a substance instead of being healthy or getting out, you know, whatever it is you want to do, instead of doing that, I'll just use a substance, even if I don't need this, because you think with medicine it's like you're replacing something you need with something you have to get medicinally. That's one thing, but to think, well, you can still go for a walk, you can still. You know, you'd just rather get a substance, give it you directly. Once you've opened that, it seems like no society was ever able to shut it again and all the stuff they thought was worse. They couldn't stop, because then it just becomes a matter of hypocrisy really, because they didn't do the theology properly.

Paul Blackham: 30:29

Yeah. So once you normalise drug dependency using coffee, it's almost impossible then to draw the line at any other drug, because just the concept is is conceded. Yet it's okay to have mood altering, mind altering substances freely used, freely consumed, but we wish to draw a line at some point over which some and not others, and so on. But conceptually, the population believes that that is the right thing to do. Is it worth also just mentioning but we'll have to do this briefly is the way that this touches on work ethic, because the association with drinking coffee and being alert to work and work longer hours and work harder with greater concentration and that drug is in coffee is seen as a drug that enables people to work longer and harder greater concentration. So it is affirmed, and I think quite a lot of companies explicitly provide coffee machines in the workplace, obviously because they wish their workers to be consuming this drug throughout the work day, because they wish their minds and, uh, moods to be altered in such a way that they get more work out of them yeah, absolutely.

PJ : 32:01

I think that is a key thing going on and that's why everything else can be normalized, because it's suddenly like, well, I think working lots and doing lots of hard work is a good. So therefore I can overlook drug use if it achieves that. And you think there's loads of sectors in which people use meth and crack and so on, like loads of and crack and so on, like loads of businessmen and so on do that, because it's the same mentality, basically, that you're just like. I think this is a good. So I can overlook the evil that is drug dependence, because that, you know, because that overweighs the other and it's like, well, we can't start, you know it's like letting the devil ride, and then you'll want to drive.

Paul Blackham: 32:42

If you let the devil ride, you'll want to drive. So performance enhancing drugs are frowned on in sport but celebrated in the workplace, and maybe with that thought, we'll draw this episode to a conclusion and perhaps have a drink of water.