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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Menu Mind Control

11.18.2019

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 ...

Gastropod episodes:

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, passenger pigeon pie was a cherished ...
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? The first generation of genetically modified crops, or GMOs, were labelled ...
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, as chosen ...
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. The real celebrations ...
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,” Belgians claim that they, not ...
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 respond to different foods ...
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, we knew almost nothing ...
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 partner) Tim ...
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, both government agencies ...
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, surprisingly dense ...
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, it’s the sixth leading cause of death in ...
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, and Steph Curry credit their success ...
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. No need to deprive yourself—with artificial ...
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. What’s ...
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, but they had an ...
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. Why do eggs come in such a ...
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! But some scientists ...
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? In ...
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. But make no mistake: ...
06.05.2018 Hotbox: The Oven From Turnspit Dogs to Microwaves Humans are the only animals that cook their food, an innovation that changed the course of our evolution and the trajectory of the planet. But how did we tame those early cooking fires and put them in a box—and what ...
05.22.2018 Feed the World: How the U.S. Became the World’s Biggest Food Aid Donor—And Why That Might Not be Such a Great Thing The United States is, by far, the world’s largest international food aid donor. Almost every year since the 1950s, it has been responsible for more than 50 percent of the billions of tons of food shipped from the parts of ...
05.08.2018 Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado Avocados are on a roll. More precisely, they’re on toast—a lot of toast. Last summer, British Vogue reported that more than three million new photos of avocado toast are uploaded to Instagram every day. But how did this humble fruit, ...
04.24.2018 Meet the Man Who Found, Finagled, and Ferried Home the Foods We Eat Today You’ve probably never heard of David Fairchild. But if you’ve savored kale, mango, peaches, dates, grapes, a Meyer lemon, or a glass of craft beer lately, you’ve tasted the fruits of his globe-trotting travels in search of the world’s best ...
04.10.2018 Who Faked My Cheese? Cheeeeese: that one word alone causes our stomachs to rumble and mouths to water. The sheer variety of flavors and textures created by only a few ingredients—milk, salt, enzymes, and microbes—is astounding: hard and soft, creamy and crumbly, richly umami ...
03.27.2018 Marching on our Stomachs: The Science and History of Feeding the Troops For most of us, eggs are perfect packets of portable protein, and pizza is the lazy option for dinner. For the research team at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, pizza and eggs are two of the most nightmarish ...
03.13.2018 Cooking the Books with Yotam and Nigella Who first started collecting recipes into cookbooks? Do cookbooks have a future in a world full of online recipes? And can cookbooks tell us anything about what people are actually eating, or are they simply aspirational food porn? This episode, ...
02.27.2018 Cutting the Mustard For some Americans, a trip to the ballpark isn’t complete without the bright yellow squiggle of French’s atop a hotdog. For the French, the slow burn of Dijon is a must-have complement to charcuterie. In the U.K., Sunday’s roast beef ...
02.13.2018 Remembrance of Things Pasta: A Saucy Tale It’s one of food’s most beautiful relationships: pasta and sauce. But which came first—and how on Earth are you supposed to figure out which of those hundreds of shapes to serve with your pesto? With Valentine’s Day round the corner, ...
01.30.2018 We’ve Lost It: The Diet Episode Diet dreams are splashed across magazine covers and blare from the T.V., offering tips and tricks, that will, readers and viewers are promised, make weight loss easy and fast. Diet books making similar claims can be found at the top ...
01.16.2018 Meet Saffron, the World’s Most Expensive Spice It’s the poshest spice of all, often worth its weight in gold. But saffron also has a hidden history as a dye, a luxury self-tanner, and even a serotonin stimulant. That’s right, this episode we’re all about those fragile red ...
12.18.2017 Secrets of Sourdough Today, you can find a huge variety of breads on supermarket shelves, only a few of which are called “sourdough.” For most of human history, though, any bread that wasn’t flat was sourdough—that is, it was leavened with a wild ...
12.05.2017 Green Gold: Our Love Affair with Olive Oil Olive oil is not what you think it is. According to Tom Mueller, author of Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil, an olive is a stone fruit like a plum or cherry—meaning that the green-gold liquid ...
11.21.2017 Women, Food, Power … and Books! From “The Flintstones” to Focus on the Family, the stereotype has long been that men hunt and provide, while women just stir the pot. Thankfully, today many women—and men—reject both that biological essentialism and the resulting division of labor. But ...
11.07.2017 Crantastic: The Story of America’s Berry It’s nearly Thanksgiving, which, for most Americans, marks the one time a year their dinner table is adorned with jewel-like cranberries, simmered into a delicious sauce. But hundreds of years ago, cranberry sauce was a mainstay of daily meals, all ...

Older episodes

Gastropod

What's Gastropod about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Gastropod episodes:

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

Hotbox: The Oven From Turnspit Dogs to Microwaves

Feed the World: How the U.S. Became the World’s Biggest Food Aid Donor—And Why That Might Not be Such a Great Thing

Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado

Meet the Man Who Found, Finagled, and Ferried Home the Foods We Eat Today

Who Faked My Cheese?

Marching on our Stomachs: The Science and History of Feeding the Troops

Cooking the Books with Yotam and Nigella

Cutting the Mustard

Remembrance of Things Pasta: A Saucy Tale

We’ve Lost It: The Diet Episode

Meet Saffron, the World’s Most Expensive Spice

Secrets of Sourdough

Green Gold: Our Love Affair with Olive Oil

Women, Food, Power … and Books!

Crantastic: The Story of America’s Berry

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