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Most people are familiar with the stuff in the blue box, but what might seem like a simple dish holds many nuances, from achieving that perfectly smooth cheese melt to avoiding greasiness or lumpiness. Find out why mac and cheese holds a special place in Kenji's heart and the results of Deb’s experience making Kenji’s three ingredient recipe.

Recipes Mentioned:

Deb’s Stovetop Mac and Cheese (courtesy of Smitten Kitchen)

Kenji’s Stovetop Mac and Cheese (courtesy of Serious Eats)

Hannah Goldfield is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering restaurants and food culture. Previously, she was a fact checker at The New Yorker and an editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Her writing has appeared in New York magazine and the Times, among other publications.

Recorded November 7, 2023 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University

Edited by Michele Moses

Music by Dani Lencioni

Art by Leanne Shapton

Sponsored by the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, Lit Hub, and Knopf

Brains are not cheap. It takes a lot of calories to run a brain, and the bigger your brain, the more calories it takes. So how is it that, over the last couple million years, the human brain tripled in size. How could we possibly have afforded that? Where did the extra calories come from? There's no shortage of suggestions out there. Some say it was meat; others say it was tubers; many say it was by mastering fire and learning to cook. But now there's a newer proposal on the table and—spoiler—it's a bit funky.

My guests today are Katherine Bryant, Postdoctoral Fellow at Aix-Marseille University, and Erin Hecht, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. Katherine, Erin, and another colleague are the authors of a new paper titled 'Fermentation technology as a driver of human brain expansion.' In it, they argue that fermented foods could have provided the caloric boost that allowed our brains to expand.

Here, we talk about how the human body differs from the bodies of other great apes, not just in terms of our brains but also in terms of our bowels. We discuss the different mechanisms by which fermented foods provide nutritional benefits over unfermented foods. We consider how fermentation—which basically happens whether you want it to or not—would have been cognitively easier to harness than fire. Along the way, we touch on kiviaq, chicha, makgeolli, hákarl, natto, Limburger cheese, salt-rising bread, and other arguably delectable products of fermentation. 

This is a fun one friends. But before we get to it: a friendly reminder about this summer's Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute. This a yearly event in St Andrews, Scotland; it features a rich program of lectures and events devoted to the study of cognition, mind, and intelligence in all its forms. If you have a taste for cross-disciplinary ferment and bubbly conversation, DISI may be for you. The application window is now open but is closing soon. You can find more info at DISI.org. That's D-I-S-I.org.

Alright, friends, on to my conversation with Erin Hecht and Katherine Bryant. Enjoy! 

 A transcript of this episode is available here.

Notes and links

3:00 – A popular science article about the “infectiously delicious confection” that is salt-rising bread. A recipe for the bread. 

6:00 – An article about makgeolli, a Korean rice wine. An article about chicha, the traditional corn-based fermented beverage that has been banned in some places.

11:30 – An article about the role of the arcuate fasciculus in language processing. A recent paper by Dr. Bryant and colleagues comparing the arcuate in humans and chimpanzees.

12:30 – A recent article by Dr. Hecht and colleagues on the evolutionary neuroscience of domestication.  

13:00 – For discussions of the encephalization quotient (aka EQ) and of human brain evolution, see our previous episodes here and here.

15:00 – The classic paper on the “expensive tissue hypothesis.”

22:00 – An article about the role of meat in human evolution; an article about the role of tubers. The cooking hypothesis is most strongly associated with Richard Wrangham and his book, Catching Fire. 

26:00 – A recent article on evidence for the widespread control of fire in human groups by around 400,000 years ago.

31:30 – A paper on how fermenting cassava reduces its toxicity.

38:30 – There have been various claims in the ethnographic literature that the control of fire has been lost among small groups, such as in Tasmania. See footnote 2 in this article.

44:30 – A popular article about kiviaq. 

45:00 – The article from the New Yorker, by Rebecca Mead, about the foodways of the Faroe Islands. 

53:00 – For more discussion of the so-called drunken monkey hypothesis, see our previous episode about intoxication.  

1:00:30 – A popular article about hákarl, which is fermented Greenland shark.

Recommendations

The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan

The Art of Fermentation, by Sandor Katz

Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz

“How humans evolved large brains,” by Karin Isler & Carel van Schaik

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.

Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!

We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: [email protected]. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know we’ve spent countless hours together talking about the problems of mis- and disinformation, and what to do about them. And, we’ve tried to focus on the science, on empirical research that can inform efforts to design a better media and technology environment that helps rather than hurts democracy and social cohesion. 

Today’s guests are Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson. The two have just produced a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that looks at what is known about a variety of interventions against disinformation, and provides evidence that should guide policy in governments and at technology platforms.

We visit Jerry’s Hat Museum, where a retiree has turned to an old chapel to house a collection of thousands of hats, pens, odds, ends and other artifacts from his Illinois hometown.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jerrys-hat-museum-illinois

Apple's $3500 face computer is here, and after spending far too many hours inside it, Ed Zitron has found Apple's vision of the future to be equal parts exciting and frustrating - and a dark omen for the future of tech. He also sits down with the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern to talk about her experience as one of the early reviewers of the Vision Pro.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An introduction and course overview.

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We are conscious creatures. But why? Why did consciousness evolve? Can we use biology to explain the origins of feeling and meaning? Or will consciousness forever escape the grip of the scientific method? 

Eva Jablonka has thought hard about these issues. An eminent evolutionary biologist, she became famous for her pioneering work on epigenetic inheritance. More recently, she has produced very original work on the evolution of consciousness with her colleague, neuroscientist Simona Ginsburg. So invited him on the show to discuss the evolution of consciousness, or what she beautifully calls "the sensitive soul".

In this episode, we discuss themes such as:

(03:00) What is consciousness? 

(10:45) Four links between evolution and consciousness

(27:30) Are robots conscious? Consciousness and vulnerability

(30:45) Which animals are conscious? Consciousness and the Cambrian Explosion.

(34:30) Can science fully explain consciousness?

(48:00) The future of consciousness

As always, we end with Jablonka’s reflections on humanity.

LINKS

Want to support the show? Checkout Patreon.com/OnHumans

Want to read and not just listen? Get the newsletter on OnHumans.Substack.com

MENTIONS

Books: Evolution of the Sensitive Soul, Picturing the Mind (both my Eva Jablonka & Simona Ginsburg)

Terms: Sensitive soul, phenomenal consciousness, intentionality (i.e. "aboutness"), the Cambrian explosion, cephalopods, anthropods, vertebrates

Names: Aristotle, Simona Ginsburg, Jonathan Birch, Antonio Damasio

You may feel like it's cold where you live, but in the Arctic, the average temperature is well below freezing all year round. In winter, it's also pitch black for weeks on end—not an ideal environment for growing food. Still, for thousands of years, people in the Arctic have thrived in a landscape that most outsiders would find fatally inhospitable. This episode, we point our compasses north on a journey to discover how traditional knowledge, ingenuity, and a lot of hard work—combined with genetics and microbes—have allowed the indigenous populations of the far North to not only successfully feed themselves, but also develop a distinctive and remarkable cuisine. Tune in now for the secrets of a dish that feels like Fourth of July fireworks in your mouth, the story of Iceland's second-most famous celebrity (after Björk), and the science behind how to avoid scurvy on an almost vegetable-free diet. Just don't forget your long underwear!

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In the midst of her debut Australian tour, RAYE stops by the Like A Version studio to deliver her take on a Nina Simone classic.