Gastropod

By Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Arts History Food

What's Gastropod about?

Food with a Side of Science & History

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The Most Dangerous Fruit in...

08.03.2020

It's the epitome of summertime: there’s nothing like a cold, juicy slice of red watermelon on a swelteringly hot day. But, once upon a time, watermelons were neither red nor sweet—the wild watermelon has white flesh and a bitter taste. ...

Gastropod episodes:

08.03.2020 The Most Dangerous Fruit in America It's the epitome of summertime: there’s nothing like a cold, juicy slice of red watermelon on a swelteringly hot day. But, once upon a time, watermelons were neither red nor sweet—the wild watermelon has white flesh and a bitter taste. ...
06.16.2020 Dig for Victory You’ve seen the news: vegetable seeds are selling out. All that quarantine ennui has combined with anxiety about the gaps on supermarket shelves to create a whole new population of city farmers in backyards and windowsills across America. And everyone ...
06.03.2020 Shared Plates: How Eating Together Makes Us Human We love eating dinner together with friends and extended family, and we miss it! But why does sharing a meal mean so much—and can we ever recreate that on Zoom? As we wait for the dinner parties, cookouts, and potlucks ...
05.19.2020 Pizza Pizza! At last, an episode on pizza! But that raises a tricky question: what exactly is pizza? As it turns out, the original pizzas from eighteenth-century Naples looked nothing like a standard slice—they were more like a focaccia, topped with oil, ...
05.05.2020 Eating the Wild: Bushmeat, Game, and the Fuzzy Line Between Them It's a safe bet that your recent media diet has included the words "wet market," "zoonotic disease," and "pangolin," as experts take a pause from discussing COVID-19's spread and impact to speculate on the virus's origins. This episode, we're digging ...
04.21.2020 Eating the Rainbow: Or, the Mystery of the Orange Oranges, the Red M&Ms, and the Blue Raspberry From stripy fuchsia beets to unicorn doughnuts, the foods available today on grocery store shelves and in cafe displays are more brightly colored than ever. But this hasn't always been the case. This episode of Gastropod, we offer three stories ...
04.07.2020 A Tale To Warm The Cockles Of Your Heart You might have heard of Molly Malone, selling cockles from a wheelbarrow in Dublin, or of Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, with her cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row—but the chances are most Gastropod listeners have never actually ...
03.24.2020 White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries White or whole wheat: while today the question is most frequently asked at the sandwich counter, the debate over the correct answer goes back literally thousands of years. In the past century, though, as white flour and thus white bread ...
03.10.2020 Licorice: A Dark and Salty Stranger Licorice is a polarizing candy: there are those who pick out the black jelly beans, those who think Twizzlers are better than Red Vines, and those who won't travel without a supply of salty dark lozenges. The dark and chewy ...
02.25.2020 To Fight Climate Change, Bank on Soil Our glaciers are melting, our forests are on fire, our harvests are increasingly decimated by either floods and drought. We are in a climate emergency that threatens our very survival, and it is, frankly, incredibly depressing. But this episode,
02.11.2020 Move Over Gin, We’ve Got Tonic Fever Just a few decades ago, gin & tonics were considered rather stodgy and boring, the drink of suburbanites at the golf club. Today, the century-old drink is hot again. In part, that’s due to a boom in craft gin distilling—a ...
01.28.2020 The United States of McDonald’s McDonald’s is mind-boggling. According to Adam Chandler, author of the recent book, Drive-Thru Dreams, it sells roughly 75 burgers every second and serves 68 million people every day—equivalent to 1 percent of the entire world’s population.
01.13.2020 Dinner Plate Invasion: Lionfish, Tiger Shrimp, and Feral Pigs, Oh My! Across America, feral pigs are on the rampage, wrecking fields of crops, hunting local wildlife to extinction, and even attacking humans. In the United Kingdom, Japanese knotweed is taking over the landscape: banks deny mortgages to infested properties...
12.17.2019 Meet the Queen of Kiwi: the 96-Year-Old Woman Who Transformed America’s Produce Aisle The produce section of most American supermarkets in the 1950s was minimal to a fault, with only a few dozen fruits and vegetables to choose from: perhaps one kind of apple, one kind of lettuce, a yellow onion, a pile ...
12.03.2019 Are Insect Guts the Secret to the Most Delicious Kimchi? This side dish of spicy, bubbly, funky pickled vegetables is such a staple in Korea that no meal is considered complete without it—but, recently, kimchi has found its way into burgers, pasta, grilled cheese, and even tacos. This episode,
11.18.2019 Menu Mind Control At its most basic, a menu is simply a way for a restaurant to communicate its offerings and their prices to its customers. But, perhaps even more importantly, says Alison Pearlman, author of a new book on menus called May ...
11.05.2019 Of Ghost Foods and Culinary Extinction The earliest humans favored juicy, meaty mammoth at mealtimes. Ancient Romans loved their favorite herb, silphium, so much that they sprinkled it on everything from lamb to melon. In the 19th century United States,
10.22.2019 Tiki Time! Tiki bars are hot these days: you can enjoy a fruity tropical drink while surrounded by faux-Polynesian décor in most major cities around the U.S. and elsewhere, with new tiki spots opening every month. The trend is a revival of ...
10.08.2019 What’s CRISPR Doing in our Food? You’ve probably heard the hype: CRISPR will revolutionize biotech, cure disease, resurrect extinct species, and even create new-and-(not-so)-improved humans. But what is CRISPR—and what’s it doing in our food?
09.24.2019 Happy Birthday to Us: Gastropod Turns Five We launched Gastropod in September 2014, which means we’re turning five this month, and that’s approximately 100 in podcast years. We’re celebrating our birthday with a special episode featuring highlights from the past five years’ worth of episodes,
09.10.2019 Celebrate Mexico’s True National Holiday with the Mysteries of Mole In the United States, Cinco de Mayo is an excuse for margarita-fueled partying. But in Mexico, that date—the anniversary of a military triumph over Napoleon on May 5, 1862—is marked by a parade and not much else.
08.27.2019 Running on Fumes: Strawberry’s Dirty Secret This episode, we tell an age-old tale: an innocent young berry heads west to make its fame and fortune—but sells its soul in the process. In order for our hero, the strawberry, to defeat its nemesis, a fungus called wilt,
08.13.2019 Omega 1-2-3 Based on all the hype, you’d be forgiven for believing that the fish oils known as omega-3s are solution to every problem. Heart disease, dementia, depression, even obesity—the list of ailments that experts claim a daily dose of omega-3 can ...
08.06.2019 Meet Sharbat, the Ancestor of Sorbet, Syrup, Shrub, Sherbet, and Pretty Much Everything Else Cool Many of you won’t have heard of sharbat, the delightfully tangy, refreshingly icy Persian drink. But most of you will have tasted at least one of its many descendants: sorbet, sherbet, syrup, shrub, and even the julep. So, what is ...
06.19.2019 Super Fry: The Fight for the Golden Frite Shoestring, waffle, curly, or thick-cut: however you slice it, nearly everyone loves a deep-fried, golden brown piece of potato. But that’s where the agreement ends and the battles begin. While Americans call their fries “French,
06.10.2019 Eat This, Not That: The Surprising Science of Personalized Nutrition This episode, we’ve got the exclusive on the preliminary results of the world’s largest personalized nutrition experiment. Genetic epidemiologist Tim Spector launched the study, called PREDICT, to answer a simple but important question: do we each resp...
05.21.2019 Guts and Glory What does it mean when your stomach rumbles? How do our bodies extract nutrients and vitamins from food? Does what you eat affect your mood? Digestion is an invisible, effortless, unconscious process—and one that, until recently,
05.16.2019 BONUS: Introducing Science Rules! with Bill Nye We interrupt our regular programming to bring you news of a new podcast you might like. Bill Nye is on a mission to change the world—one phone call at a time. On his new podcast, Science Rules!, he tackles your ...
05.06.2019 The Great Gastropod Pudding Off Four bakers, one evening, and one challenge: Who can steam the best spotted dick? On this week’s action-packed episode, Tom Gilliford, Selasi Gbormittah, and Yan Tsou of Great British Bake-Off fame, along with honorary Gastropod member (and Cynthia’s p...
04.23.2019 Potatoes in Space! Today, a half century after Neil Armstrong took one small step onto the surface of the Moon, there are still just three humans living in space—the crew of the International Space Station. But, after decades of talk,
04.09.2019 The Curry Chronicles Curry is, supposedly, Indian. But there is no such word in any of the country’s many official languages—and no Indian would use the term to describe their own food. So what is curry? This episode takes us to India, Britain,
03.26.2019 The Bagelization of America Today, it’s a breakfast staple, but, as recently as 1960, The New York Times had to define it for readers—as “an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.” That’s right, this episode is all about the bagel, that shiny, ring-shaped,
03.11.2019 Can Diet Stop Alzheimer’s? Every three seconds, someone in the world develops Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a devastating disease: millions of people, as well as their caretakers, spend years dealing with disabling disorientation and memory loss. Today,
03.04.2019 Seeds of Immortality When seeds first evolved, hundreds of millions of years ago, they not only revolutionized the plant world, but they also eventually sowed the path for human civilization. Today, it’s nearly impossible to eat a meal without consuming a plant embryo—or ...
02.26.2019 Pick A Pawpaw: America’s Forgotten Fruit In 1916, agricultural experts voted the pawpaw the American fruit most likely to succeed, ahead of blueberries and cranberries. But today, most people have never even heard of it, let alone tried it. What is the pawpaw, and how did ...
02.12.2019 Eating to Win: Gatorade, Muscle Milk, and… Chicken Nuggets? Ancient Greek Olympians swore by beans to give them a competitive edge. Japanese sumo wrestlers rely on a protein-rich soup called chankonabe to get into peak condition. And NBA all-stars Kevin Garnett, Carmelo Anthony,
01.28.2019 The Secret History of the Slave Behind Jack Daniel’s Whiskey Back in 1866, Jack Daniel’s became the first registered distillery in the United States; today, it’s the top-selling American whiskey in the world. For much of the brand’s 150-plus years, the story went that the young Jack Daniel learned his ...
01.15.2019 Sweet and Low (Calorie): The Story of Artificial Sweeteners For decades, ads for treats sweetened with substances like Sweet’N Low, NutraSweet, and Splenda have promised what seems like a miracle of modern science: that you can enjoy all the dessert you want, calorie-free.
12.18.2018 Dirty Tricks and Data: The Great Soda Wars, Part 2 Over the past five years, more than forty cities and countries around the world have passed a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. These soda taxes are designed to improve public health—but do they? Or have all the doom-and-gloom predictions of the ...
12.04.2018 Souring on Sweet: The Great Soda Wars, Part 1 Public health researchers agree: the evidence is clear that Americans consume way too much sugar, that sugar contributes to weight gain, and that rising rates of obesity in the U.S. will lead to significant health problems in the future.
11.19.2018 The Truth is in the Tooth: Braces, Cavities, and the Paleo Diet Brush, floss, and forget: chances are, you only think about your teeth when they cause you trouble. But teeth have tales to tell, such as how old we are, how fast we grew, and how far we’ve traveled… But, most ...
11.13.2018 Who Invented Mac and Cheese? The warm, gooey dish, a childhood staple across North America, is many things to many people: a mainstay of African-American Sunday dinners, according to soul food expert Adrian Miller; a comforting yet celebratory meal that can be jazzed up in ...
11.06.2018 How the Carrot Became Orange, and Other Stories Thousands of years ago, in what’s now Afghanistan, people unearthed the tangled, gnarled roots of Queen Anne’s Lace—a ubiquitous, hairy-stemmed plant with a spray of tiny white flowers. These fibrous, twisted roots were white and bitter-tasting,
10.23.2018 The Incredible Egg We love eggs scrambled, fried, or poached; we couldn’t enjoy a quiche, meringue, or flan without them. But for scientists and archaeologists, these perfect packages are a source of both wonder and curiosity.
10.09.2018 Espresso and Whisky: The Place of Time in Food Why does fish cook so fast? What’s the “wasabi window”? And can you really make 20-year-old aged whisky in six days? This episode, we’re looking at the role of time in food and flavor: what it does, and how we’ve ...
09.25.2018 Why These Animals? In the West, when it comes to which meat is for dinner, we nearly always choose beef, pork, or chicken. Yet cows and pigs are only two of more than five thousand of species of mammals, and chicken is one ...
09.11.2018 Mango Mania: How the American Mango Lost its Flavor—and How it Might Just Get it Back Mangoes inspire passion, particularly in India, which is home to hundreds of varieties of the fruit. They are celebrated in Indian music, poetry, and art; they are mentioned in Hindu and Buddhist religious texts as well as the Kama Sutra; ...
08.28.2018 Keeping it Fresh: Preservatives and The Poison Squad More than a century ago, enterprising manufacturers added brand-new chemical preservatives into food to keep it fresh as it traveled from the farm into rapidly growing American cities. Milk no longer went rancid! Meat no longer spoiled!
08.14.2018 Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story It’s been described as the ultimate status symbol for the wealthy, as the perfect solution for dieters and the sick, and, confusingly, as a liquid trapped in a solid that somehow remains fluid. What could this magical substance be?
06.19.2018 Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan From rainbow-hued enameled stew pots to lightweight nonstick frying pans, the metal and ceramic vessels we use to heat our food are such an everyday aspect of the kitchen that they’re easy to take for granted.

Older episodes

Gastropod

What's Gastropod about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Gastropod episodes:

The Most Dangerous Fruit in America

Dig for Victory

Shared Plates: How Eating Together Makes Us Human

Pizza Pizza!

Eating the Wild: Bushmeat, Game, and the Fuzzy Line Between Them

Eating the Rainbow: Or, the Mystery of the Orange Oranges, the Red M&Ms, and the Blue Raspberry

A Tale To Warm The Cockles Of Your Heart

White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries

Licorice: A Dark and Salty Stranger

To Fight Climate Change, Bank on Soil

Move Over Gin, We’ve Got Tonic Fever

The United States of McDonald’s

Dinner Plate Invasion: Lionfish, Tiger Shrimp, and Feral Pigs, Oh My!

Meet the Queen of Kiwi: the 96-Year-Old Woman Who Transformed America’s Produce Aisle

Are Insect Guts the Secret to the Most Delicious Kimchi?

Menu Mind Control

Of Ghost Foods and Culinary Extinction

Tiki Time!

What’s CRISPR Doing in our Food?

Happy Birthday to Us: Gastropod Turns Five

Celebrate Mexico’s True National Holiday with the Mysteries of Mole

Running on Fumes: Strawberry’s Dirty Secret

Omega 1-2-3

Meet Sharbat, the Ancestor of Sorbet, Syrup, Shrub, Sherbet, and Pretty Much Everything Else Cool

Super Fry: The Fight for the Golden Frite

Eat This, Not That: The Surprising Science of Personalized Nutrition

Guts and Glory

BONUS: Introducing Science Rules! with Bill Nye

The Great Gastropod Pudding Off

Potatoes in Space!

The Curry Chronicles

The Bagelization of America

Can Diet Stop Alzheimer’s?

Seeds of Immortality

Pick A Pawpaw: America’s Forgotten Fruit

Eating to Win: Gatorade, Muscle Milk, and… Chicken Nuggets?

The Secret History of the Slave Behind Jack Daniel’s Whiskey

Sweet and Low (Calorie): The Story of Artificial Sweeteners

Dirty Tricks and Data: The Great Soda Wars, Part 2

Souring on Sweet: The Great Soda Wars, Part 1

The Truth is in the Tooth: Braces, Cavities, and the Paleo Diet

Who Invented Mac and Cheese?

How the Carrot Became Orange, and Other Stories

The Incredible Egg

Espresso and Whisky: The Place of Time in Food

Why These Animals?

Mango Mania: How the American Mango Lost its Flavor—and How it Might Just Get it Back

Keeping it Fresh: Preservatives and The Poison Squad

Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story

Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan

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