We told you to take everything with a grain of salt—including us. If you disagree with the history, have a question about a formulation, or want to share what your own grandmother kept in her medicine cabinet, our inbox is open. Keep it honest.

Cold-pressed olive, sesame, and linseed oil have a pre-industrial track record going back millennia — and none of it looks like the "seed oils are poison" claim currently circulating online. This episode traces how ancestral traditions actually pressed and used plant oils, from stone-milled Mediterranean olive presses to Ayurvedic sesame oil massage, and puts the modern viral panic on trial against that record.

Historian and formulator Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A. is joined by Dennis — bringing thirty years of quality-control and compliance experience to bear on his own independently-researched position on seed oil processing — for the show's first two-voice episode. Together they trace the Ancient Origin of cold-pressing, the Real Tradition of how these oils were actually used, the Viral Claim currently dominating wellness feeds, and The Gap between "seed oil bad, animal fat good" and the real distinction: cold-pressed versus industrially refined. Listeners walk away knowing exactly what to look for on a label — cold-pressed, expeller-pressed, unrefined — and why that, not the plant itself, is the real signal.

This is a history podcast about healing, not a wellness podcast. No fifteen-item lists. No synthetic quick fixes. Just the map to the territory you already occupy.

Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road is hosted by Alexandria Quinn Love, M.A. — historian, formulator, and founder of Ash & Honey Botanique.

Nothing on this show is medical advice. Talk to your licensed practitioner before making any health practice a regular part of your life.

Search Ash & Honey: The Root and The Road wherever you listen.

The road was always there. Someone always walked it. Now — so do you.