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Transcript

Ghost Chocolate · The Steve Harvey Morning Show

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to do the nine five. I was
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: not going to take the normal path. I'm sitting in
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a hammock in well paradise if your idea of paradise
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: is kind of the classic one. Lush rainforests, green hills,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: clear streams, too many chattering birds and monkeys to count.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: At night, the wood swarm with headlight beetles, which are
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: like giant fireflies. It feels like Pandora. I wanted to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: go see some chocolate forests, and I wanted to go
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: catch sneaks and crocodiles and stuff that I did in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the hammock. Beside me is Jacob Marlin, and this is
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: his baby. The Belize Foundation for Research and Environmental Education
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: or be Free, I one thousand acre preserve in the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Maya Mountains, dotted with thatch huts and visiting biologists who
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: come here from all over the world to study what
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: a healthy rainforest is like. Beefree is right at the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: juncture of several other huge preserves, including the Bladen Nature Reserve,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the crown jewel of Belize wilderness areas, which is why
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Jacob bought it thirty years ago and has lived here
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: as its conservator ever since. It connects all the other
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: preserves into one massive wild forest. Jacob is laid back
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: dude in his fifties. His long hair parted in the middle.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Kind of reminds me of the actor Crispin Glover. He
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: came here as the reptile guy on a team of
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: biologists that were exploring the Bladon, which is famously remote
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: and inaccessible. As he hiked his way through it, Jacob
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: felt like he'd entered a time capsule. We went to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: places that no human had been since St. Chimayah. We
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: came upon clay statues of monkey and jaguar gods. We
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: saw barrel grounds of maya stuff. Clearly no one had
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: been there. For the next two weeks, Jacob found himself
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: exploring a world straight out of a fantasy novel. You're like,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: oh my god, I think I say a cave opening,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and then you go in there, and then you walk
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: for nine hours, and then you look down and fifty
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: feet below you there's a massive river flowing. And then
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: you look over there and there's like mine pottery and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: skeletons and ship scattered over there. Then swim out the
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: cave and go over here, and then you find two
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: fifty spider monkeys swinging down. Then there's a jaguar over there.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: That's what our expedition was like. It's lost the whole time.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, we were all lost. It was madness, but
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: it was the best kind of madness, the kind he
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to devote his life too. When I came out,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I was completely blown away, and I was like, Oh
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: my god, this place is incredible. I wonder if I
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: could get involved in this place. In fact, the Blatant
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: was so full of wonders that he overlooked one of
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: them entirely. I remember passing wild cacao trees, which I
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: was like, Oh, it's a wild cocow. Who cares to Jacob,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: cocao was agriculture and he was a nature guy. So
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: he devoted his life to preserving the big nature of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the Blatant and forgot all about the cacao. But little
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: did he know that that particular cocao hiding in plain
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: sight in the Maya Mountains would end up being the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: key to protecting the very rainforest he devoted his life too,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: and possibly a whole lot more. He was living with
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: ancient ghosts that had been waiting centuries to speak their
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Peace of Kaleidoscope and i Heeart podcasts. This is Obsessions
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Wild Chocolate. I'm Roman jameson chapter five Ghost Chocolate. The
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Forest of Belieze contain more than a thousand species of trees,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: astounding diversity. To Jacob, pacat was just one of those thousands.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: But as he explored his preserved he began catching his
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: eye more and more. Some of the pods are one
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: color or another color or another color. Some are yellow
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: when they're ripe, Some are orange when they are oranges,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: purple when they're right. Some are green when they're ripe.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Some are multi colored when they're right. It's different shapes,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: a little bit different sizes. The trees had a lot
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of diversity in appearance, but they had one very important
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: thing in common. Sometimes you'd walk up to a tree
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: it's and it's a nine percent shade to the middle
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: of the forest shade, and its covered ponds. To the
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: average person that might not sound like a big deal,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: but to people who think about sustainable food production, that's
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: the holy grail. Think about every crop humans have cultivated,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: corn rice, gale, whatever, They all need full sun. Same
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: for the modern strains of cacao, we've used for a century,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and that means that growing food often means wiping out
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: for us. And that's been especially true for cacao in
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: West Africa, destroying national parks. It's eradicating species. It's uh,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, fuck, caca is horrible, but not this cacao.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: This stuff is weird. It is, it's weird. The trees
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: are different. These are not hardy, robust plants. These are
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: rainforest play they want you know, don't don't put them
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: in the sun. Don't give them any sun. These trees
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: do best in shade, and if you give them, lestie
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: die good. I know, I know. It's amazing, amazing because
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: a tree that could flourish and produce fruit in the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: deep shade of the jungle that requires rainforests over its head, well,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: that could turn farming into a way to grow new
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: rainforests and pay for it. So Jacob got super curious
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: about these cocoa trees, and the first step was to
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: find out how many he had. So in two thousand
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: twelve he hired Elmer Salama, a local mind, got to
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: map them. So I did the expedition for I think
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: like two three years. Find do them white trees, new jungles,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: just wandering around. So I didn't have any GPS, just
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: my memories. And you're started cutting trialsutting trels on to leg,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: you know. And I found it about almost like three
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: on the trees wild trees here, and it's out of
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: water place phenotypes. We have harpolo orange, who have guint
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to yellow. We have um print to green. Then we
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: have multiple colors. Those are the four types of trees
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: they've identified, all named for the colors of their pods
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: as they ripen. All four are members of the same
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: shade loving variety, which Jacob hoped could be the engine
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: of his rainforest revival scheme if, of course, it produced
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: delicious chocolate. So it was like, well, shut up, man,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: let's make some chocolate because if nothing else, we could
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: chocolate here like chocolate. Yeah, why not, just as like
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a hobby. As we tore the preserve, Jacob and Elmer
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: offered to snag a couple of pods for me to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: show me their special qualities. But the pods are twenty
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: feet up, like three four five. That's like five pods, guys,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: most progress, yeah, yeah, because what we do be hardest
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: do bring along bush stick with h Yeah, gonna. Cahoons
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: are crazy palms. Their fronts could be thirty ft long,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: shooting up from the ground. And these graceful arcs walking
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: through a Calhoun grove you expect to come upon a
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Brontosaurus munging on them. The immense fronds are the go
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: to choice for roofing, and the sharp and central ribs
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: make awesome jousting lances for cutting to cow pods out
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of trees. Get a catch here, thing you like? Oh
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: I see, so you just scrape scrape up the drunk
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and got it and there it is in my hand.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: To cow with some very unusual qualities. The multicolor and
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the purple orange had close to like almost six cocoa
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: butts super high super high rich creamy chocolate. Some people
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: say it tastes like almost like milk chocolate. It's a
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: light brownish red shot, zero bitterness, there's nothing bitter about it,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't even taste that much like chocolate. What
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: you think of his chocolate Like at first, Jacob's chocolate
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: making skills were limited, but he kept dialing it in
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and so like every year about this time we go
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: out there with backpacks and and I'd bring up to
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: the station and make chocolate with him, and I'd experim him.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I'm learning, I'm trying to figure things out. People would
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: come through here and it's like that creole. You can't
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: believe that that stuff is probably really special. That word
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: creoio is a famous and sacred term in the world
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of chocolate. But Jacob was only just discovering the treasure
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: he had on his hands. I'm learning about creb I
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: don't really know much about what that meant, but it's like, okay,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: so it's it's a relic cocao. It's not prow much.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Creoa was the original cacao of the ancient mile the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: variety they cultivated all over their empire and introduced the
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Spanish and the fift hundreds. The smooth, creamy flavor of
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: creoia made chocolate a worldwide obsession. It was the only
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: chocolate anyone knew until the seventeen hundreds, when it began
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: to get wiped out by disease. Soon it was replaced
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: by hardier and more productive hybrid varieties, varieties that didn't
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: taste as good, but we're easier to draw, and those
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: varieties took over the world For decades, craft chocolate cares
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: have been scouring Central America for sources of Creoia. The
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: best they can usually find are hybrids that have a
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: percentage of creoo gens and a trace of that original
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: creole smoothness. Pure creoia. You never see it. But Jacob
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: began wondering about his three trees if there was anywhere
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: some old creoio strains could have escaped hybridization that was
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: in the middle of one of the most inaccessible rainforests
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: in the world. It's least explored, least disturbed, most unspoiled place.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Everything up there. It just feels like this stuff has
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: always been here, just old. So he embarked on a
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: new quest, find someone who would tell him just how
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: special this stuff was and find out if anyone cared.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I want to taste of some of this God love chocolate.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: We got you covered. Kalia Scop has joined forces with
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Louise Abram and Stetler Chocolate to make a special box
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to go along with its very podcast Taste One has
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: driven many to near madness at www dot Stetler dash
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Chocolate dot com. What I always remember is the smell,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: just the smell of my ya Ya's kitchen during the summer.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Remember Matt Capoda, the Salt Lake, Delhi guy who became
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: America's heirloom chocolate champion. Matt credits his Greek grandmother for
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: his passion for rare ingredients and unusual flavors. She had
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a tiny little plot in Salt Lake City. She grew
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: her own potatoes, dandylion greens. You know, her produce didn't
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: taste like the produce you could buy in the grocery store.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: So I became accustomed to looking for flavors that don't
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: really exist in you know what has become a pretty
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: monoculture food system. Taste and smell are some of the
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: first most important ways that we make meaning of the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: world around us. They're the raw material of experience, the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: scaffolding upon which we hang our memories. They're the way
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: each generation passes its passions to the next. No matter
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: where you're from in the world, we have beautiful traditions,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: delicious foods, incredibly rich ingredients that are disappearing at an
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: alarming rate over the years. Matt had built Caputos into
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a show house for these cultural Touchsdownes, but he'd also
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: watched in dismay. As those flavors disappeared, it was harder
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and harder to get, you know, a raw milk, pecorino, romano.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And I would see this trajectory in every category, not
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: just cheese, of things getting more and more homogenized, more
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: and more flavorless. As he watched industrial agriculture set fire
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: to the world's libraries of flavor, Matt became convinced that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: he had to be a kind of librarian, preserving as
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: many of the great flavor manuscripts as he could, and
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: cacao seemed like a special case, with some of the
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: most endangered masterpieces of all he wanted to help. Then
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: he heard about a new initiative that captured his imagination,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund. The goal of the project
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was to identify the world's great cocaws with an expert
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: tasting panel and to prove their uniqueness through genetic testing.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: That certification would be the stamp of approval, drawing the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: attention of Beam to Bar chocolate makers. The first designee
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was an easy call, Volker Lehman and his Tranquilidad beans.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Soon other designees were added, including Emily Stones my Mountain
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: cocao in sen Jacob submitted the be free beans, hoping
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: they had enough Creoo parentage to be something special, and
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: soon enough he heard back from the committee congratulations, your
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: beans have made the cut. I heard that from one
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: of their board members. Oh, We're going to be announcing
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: this your pure CREOLEO in San Francisco at this big
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: chocolate event. And I was like, you are. I mean,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: that sounds I'm coming. Thanks for not inviting me, but
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sucking going to San Francisco. God damn it.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: So he attends the awards ceremony. The audience is student
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: in fifty well dressed people in the world of chocolate,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and the m C is Ed Sege, a legend in
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the fine chocolate industry, and to Jacob's amazement, ed is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: getting all worked up over Jacob's beans and he's talking
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: about pure Creoo. It's the only pure cacao known in
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the world. The tasting parils never tasted anything quite this
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Araban before pure creator Parentidge blah blah blah, and I'm like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: what what does that even mean? And and then he's done,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and I was like, wait a minute. So I stand
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: up and I said, wait, a minute. I'm the guy
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: that submit of those means you're not gonna invite me up.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Jacob was just looking for a little love, but he
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: got a lot. After the ceremony, it was swarmed by
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: chocolate makers. Could they get some samples of those beans?
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: How about a few tons? Did he need a business partner?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: He soon found out why. The expert tasting panel had
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: tasted Jacob's submission and found it to be a paragon
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: of smooth and silky chocolate. Then the genesis of the U. S.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: D A did their thing and came away and shocked.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: These beans weren't high in preoil content. They were a
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: hundred percent kreoia. In other words, this was the original
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: cow of the Maya, a direct line back to the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: one that existed before Europeans ever got involved. Somehow, it
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: had hold up in the Maya Mountains for a thousand years,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and now it was ready for re entry. The panel's
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: declaration gave Jacob all the incentive he needed to try
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to make that delicious, shade loving cow a flagship of
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: rainforest restoration, and those original three trees became sacred to him.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: You know, we all touched these trees. Yeah, I don't
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: do anything. All we do is harvest pods, collect data,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: and collect budwood. That budwood super important. Budwood is the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: newly formed tips of branches that are used to grow
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: an exact duplicate of the mother tree. When Jacob returned
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: from his trip to the States, he's set to work planting.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: We have almost ten thousand trees of this material now growing,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: ten thousand trees, ten thousand baby creas, a forest of
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: ancient mind CaCO rising up in the Belize wilds, and
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: they are just the beginning. If Jacob has his way,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: those ten thousand trees will give birth to a million more,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: not just a bee free but anywhere anyone wants to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: grow new rain forests and figure out a way to
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: pay for it. As a bonus, we'll all get to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: experience this ghost of chocolate past. Jacob also became the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: volunteer president of the air Land could Cow Preservation Fund,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: which is now designated sixteen of the world's cocaos as
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: essential cultural heritage. That's helped bring recognition and a decent
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: income to the farmers who are keeping these masterpieces alive.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: But it isn't always enough. Ironically, it couldn't save the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: very first DESIGNI Vulgar Layman. After years of dodging bullet
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: after bullet in the jungle, he was about to take
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: one right in the heart. Everything went just upside down,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and all from one moment to the other. I thought
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: I was doing the good things, and all of a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: sudden I was in turmoil. You know, the sky was
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: falling on my head. One thing I noticed right away
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: when I came back to Bolivia in was that whatever
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: romance the jungle had once held for Vulgar, it was
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: long gone. It seems like that the birds in in
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: the in the jungle, in the Amazone and in the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: tropical here, they don't know how to sing. It seems
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: like they never went to singing school. And it most
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and most of it is it's like more like shouting noise.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Uh like this, And there's one I maybe we're here.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: We're here. It's like a like a dying sound. It's
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: it's like somebody is strangling the bird while he tries
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: to sing. Like that sounded like a different guy from
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the one I had left on top of the world.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: After our visit to the euro Care, they'd agreed to
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: provide fifteen tons of cacao, which meant he'd be delivering
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: forty five tons to felsh Lean three shipping containers. But
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: he needed serious capital. He needed to build a fermentation
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: center in the jungle, He needed boats, and he had
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: to hire people to do the buying and transporting for him.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Most of all, he needed cash to pay all the harvesters,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: so he took on investors. It was a huge gamble,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: but the first year it worked great. He produced more
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: cal than ever. The quality was awesome. Felsh Lean was
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: thrilled and he made his payments. It worked the next
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: year too. He felt like the system he'd always envisioned
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: in his mind was finally up and running. But in
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: three years into his business, the rains came even harder
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: than usual. The mom Rae flooded badly. I wasn't in
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: very good terms with the people, so I trusted them
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: and I asked him, would that be cacao? Yeah? Yeah,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: there will be a lot of cacal, you know, but
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: give you us so much and repay you don't worry.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: So he flashed fifty into the jungle, expecting to get
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: twice that much in cacao out of it. For weeks later,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the harvest trickled in just twenty worth of cocao. Vulker
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: was understanding despite the knot in his stomach. He said, fine,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: whatever things get weird in the jungle, just give me
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: back the rest of the money. And his buyers said, well,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. We gave the money to the pickers
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and they spend it all. Sorry, thirty grand just evaporated
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: into the bush. What was he going to do? Bring
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: a legal case against the whole forest. He decided to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: eat the losses himself. Liked the guys and they've had
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: a good track record until then. I said, that's not
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: a problem. Okay, you owe me so for the next year. Yeah,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: next year, and so we we leveled this out. It's
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: not such a great deal. In other words, no worries.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Consider it an advance on next year's Kao. He comes
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: so close, and he just really didn't want to see
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: this one go down the tubes. He was now fully
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: emotionally invested. But then it was time to talk to
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: his lenders and explained that he couldn't make his payment
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: this year, and they were not emotionally invested. I said, okay,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: this year I present a loss, and they said what
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: is the loss? Um, please explain you know, I said, yeah,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: loss is when you don't have earnings. You know you
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: you're on the negative. Yeah. Negative is no good? Yeah.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Oh could we sue you? Yeah? Yeah, you have to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: give us the money back. I said, the money is
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: with the people in the jungle. I explained it again
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: to you if you want, I'm happy to explain it again.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So I gave the money. The horfus was low. So
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: now we have to recover the loss. Oh loss, no no, no, no, no,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: you have to give us a monthay, I said, I
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: have no money. Oh yeah, then we seize your as
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: it Okay. I ended up in a lawsuit, total fucking disaster,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: leans on his house and on his business. He had
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: to declare bankruptcy. His marriage crumbled. Later, as we were
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: driving around Bolivia looking for a cowdibi, Walker confessed just
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: how devastating it all was to his life and his psyche.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like it must have been hard
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: just personally to walk like when you just gotten all
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: that recognition, you knew you were making one of the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: best chocolates in the world. It took me, um, you know,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: from basically from fourteen to until last year actually to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: recover um financially or personally, spiritually entirely. Yeah, everything, everything
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit because everything is interlinked, and you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and and I wanted to save ton Kilda, and I
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to save at least you know this part. Yes,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: his creditors were coming for his glove and the cow
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: forest man. You must have been furious at a lot
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of people. I had a little it was a section
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: of rage and now a pure rage. I would now
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: with a gun in my hand, I would have killed
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: some people. Maybe. Fortunately he didn't. In fact, at the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: moment of maximum rage, when he thought he might explode,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: he just let it all go. The lawsuits, the frustration,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the fury gone. The guys who just lost all his
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: money in the jungle. He knew they were hard up,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: so we said, why don't you just live in my
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: house and trided ad for free until you get back
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: on your feet. Ever since, I'm calm. I'm much calm,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: was than be far much more. Oh off, Budda is
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: is nothing. You know. I'm more calm than the river
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Sitata was sitting at. Have you ever been in touch
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: with those guys? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I saw. Yeah. Yeah, once in a while I remind
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: them to pay me and then they laugh and say, yeah, yeah,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: we do. Is that just kind of how things work here? Yeah? Yeah,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Just forget about it and go off. It's like a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: pant divorce. You know, you cannot suffer forever, you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: you have to go on with your life. And he did.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, he pulled a full Siddartha. He just decided
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to walk away from Tranquila Dad, from Bolivia, from Cacao,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: from everything, a new start. But he did need to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: make good on his debts, so he took a job
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: as a consultant with Conservation International in Costa Rica, living
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: like a hermit, saving every penny. And with that, it
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: seemed like the dream of wild Cacao had died. Perhaps
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: it was just too hard, too remote, too iffy. A
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: successful coco business requires predictability, and Amazon eats predictability for breakfast.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: But unbeknownst to Vulcar, even as he struggled to put
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Coco out of his mind for good, the seeds were
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: taking hold on new ground, and the next crop of
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: cocaw lenders was about to blossom the same year he
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: was walking away from the Amazon Louisa Abraham was plunging
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: in year by year, just coming and just showing them
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: that I was not gonna be defeated, like I was
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: going to persist, And she wasn't going to let European
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: chocolate makers or loan sharks tell her how to operate.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: She was going to do it all on her own terms.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: A new hope next week on Obsessions Wild Chocolate. Wild
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Chocolate is a Kaleidoscope production with I Heeart Podcasts, hosted
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and reported by me Rowan Jacobson and produced by Shane
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: McKeon at Nice Marmot Media, Edited by Kate Osborne and
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: my Guest out of Kudor. Sound design and mixing by Soundboard.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Original music composition by NCER Stevenson, a k a Botany
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: production help from Baheeny Shorty from My Heart. Our executive
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: producers are Katrina Norbelle and Nikki Etre. Special thanks to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Laura Mayor, Costaslinos Ozwalash and Aaron Kaufman, Will Pearson, codel Burn,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: Bob Pittman, Daria Daniel and the team at Stetler who
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: are helping us make a very special chocolate of our own.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: That's right, we're working with Louisa and others to protect
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: the rainforest and make delicious Amazonian chocolate. Visit www Dot
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Stetler dash Chocolate dot com to taste it for yourself.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: That's www. Dot Stetler Dash Chocolate dot com And if
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: you want to hear more of this type of content.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Nothing is more important to the creators here at Kaleidoscope
• 27:43
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• 27:48
  Speaker 1: you listen.