Historyspeaking topic
For centuries people believed tomatoes were poisonous, because the acidic fruit leached lead out of pewter plates; the poison came from the plate, not the tomato. If blaming the wrong culprit could brand a food 'dangerous' for generations, doesn't it make you ask whether the things we blame today are the real offenders or just the visible face?
— The tomato and the pewter plate poisoning myth
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Fireworks and gunpowder were discovered by accident, not for war, by alchemists trying to banish evil spirits and searching for an elixir of immortality; the weapon of death was a byproduct of the quest for eternal life. Doesn't a search for endless life producing history's deadliest invention shake our confidence that we can foresee the consequences of well-intentioned goals?
- How did Gandhi's method of passive resistance push back an empire? Let's discuss how nonviolence can be an instrument of power.
- Why was the Thirty Years' War so devastating in post-Reformation Europe? Let's discuss how a war of religion turned into a war of power.
- The invention of the elevator made skyscrapers possible, but its real quiet revolution was something else: top floors, once the cheapest and most exhausting to reach, suddenly became the most expensive penthouses. A machine flipping the value inside a building upside down shows how new and accidental the belief that 'higher means status' really is.
- Did the French Revolution triumph through Napoleon, or did Napoleon turn the revolution into an empire? Let's talk about this contested legacy.