Season 10 Episode 2: About Bees, Culture & Curiosity Podcast – Why is a Turkey a Turkey?
Why is a bird native to North America called a turkey?
The answer takes us from Mexico to Spain, Africa, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), France, England, and eventually back across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. Along the way, an American bird gets mistaken for an African one, the English name it after Turkey, the French send it linguistically to India, while the Turks call the Turkey the Hindi, the Indian.
With Canadian Thanksgiving approaching, I follow that strange history back to the Thanksgiving table.
We meet the Wampanoag and Massasoit, look at what probably happened at the Plymouth harvest celebration of 1621, and ask how English settlers and Indigenous people who spoke completely different languages managed to talk to each other.
We also look north. Why does Canada celebrate Thanksgiving in October while Americans wait until November? And why do the two holidays feel a little different?
Then there is the honey.
Honey on Thanksgiving buns. Honey-glazed carrots and sweet potatoes. Honey ham. Honey mustard. But enormous quantities of honey also disappear almost unnoticed into cereal, bread, crackers, granola bars and hundreds of other manufactured foods.
A Thanksgiving meal looks familiar and local. Look more closely, though, and it becomes a map of migration, agriculture, trade, language—and bees.
This podcast was
Recorded October 2026 in Calgary.
Please subscribe, like, love, and follow. We live or die by your adulation.
Podcast website: https://sites.libsyn.com/540327/site
About Ron Miksha: miksha.com
Finally: email your questions, comments, and angst: miksha@gmail.com
