Gastropod

Food & Cooking Podcasts >

Food with a side of science and history. Every other week, co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode exploring the hidden history and surprising science behind a different food- or farming-related topic, from aquaculture to ancient feasts, from cutlery to chile peppers, and from microbes to Malbec. We interview experts, visit labs, fields, and archaeological digs, and generally have lots of fun while discovering new ways to think about and understand the world through food. Find us online at gastropod.com, follow us on Twitter @gastropodcast, and like us on Facebook at facebook.com/gastropodcast.

Food with a side of science and history. Every other week, co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode exploring the hidden history and surprising science behind a different food- or farming-related topic, from aquaculture to ancient feasts, from cutlery to chile peppers, and from microbes to Malbec. We interview experts, visit labs, fields, and archaeological digs, and generally have lots of fun while discovering new ways to think about and understand the world through food. Find us online at gastropod.com, follow us on Twitter @gastropodcast, and like us on Facebook at facebook.com/gastropodcast.

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Location:

United States

Genres:

Food & Cooking Podcasts

Food

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Language:

English

Episodes

Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story

8/13/2018

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 case you haven’t guessed, this episode, we’re talking about Jell-O! Or, to be more precise, …More → The post Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:49:58

Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan

6/19/2018

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: the invention of the pot was, after fire, one of the most important innovations in …More → The post Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:49:08

Hotbox: The Oven From Turnspit Dogs to Microwaves

6/5/2018

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 can subsequent leaps forward in heating technology tell us about cuisines and culture? This episode, …More → The post Hotbox: The Oven From Turnspit Dogs to Microwaves appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:55:16

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

5/22/2018

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 the world with a surplus to the parts of the world that are hungry. This …More → The post 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 appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:50:30

Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado

5/7/2018

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, originally named after testicles, get from its Mexican forest home to a tattoo on Miley …More → The post Ripe for Global Domination: The Story of the Avocado appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:48:18

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

4/23/2018

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 crops—and his struggles to get them back home to the United States. This episode, we …More → The post Meet the Man Who Found, Finagled, and Ferried Home the Foods We Eat Today appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:44:00

Who Faked My Cheese?

4/9/2018

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 and sweetly savory. For thousands of years, humans have been transforming animal milk into one …More → The post Who Faked My Cheese? appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:55:46

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

3/26/2018

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 food-science challenges of the last fifty years—but the struggle to perfect such dishes for the …More → The post Marching on our Stomachs: The Science and History of Feeding the Troops appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:49:35

Cooking the Books with Yotam and Nigella

3/12/2018

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, we explore the past, present, and future of cookbooks, from cuneiform tablets to Hail Marys, …More → The post Cooking the Books with Yotam and Nigella appeared first on Gastropod.

Duration:00:48:30

Cutting the Mustard

2/26/2018

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 is nothing without the punch of Colman’s. Yet few realize that this condiment has been …More →

Duration:00:47:49

Remembrance of Things Pasta: A Saucy Tale

2/12/2018

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, we bring you the saucy—and occasionally scientific—history of an Italian staple. Listen in now as …More →

Duration:00:45:49

We’ve Lost It: The Diet Episode

1/30/2018

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 of the best-seller list without fail, every January. But where does this obsession with losing …More →

Duration:00:52:30

Meet Saffron, the World’s Most Expensive Spice

1/15/2018

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 threads plucked from the center of a purple crocus flower. Listen in as we visit …More →

Duration:00:43:44

Secrets of Sourdough

12/18/2017

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 community of microbes. And yet we know surprisingly little about the microbes responsible for raising …More →

Duration:00:50:15

Green Gold: Our Love Affair with Olive Oil

12/4/2017

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 we extract from it “is, quite literally, fruit juice.” And, while we’re blowing your minds, …More →

Duration:00:52:37

Women, Food, Power … and Books!

11/21/2017

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 what can science tell us about the role our earliest female ancestors played in providing …More →

Duration:00:43:45

Crantastic: The Story of America’s Berry

11/6/2017

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 around the U.S. How did this acidic, tannic berry, so hard to love in its …More →

Duration:00:42:23

Cannibalism: From Calories to Kuru

10/24/2017

For most of us, it’s unthinkable: human is never what’s for dinner. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but this episode, we discover that not only is cannibalism widespread throughout the natural world, but it’s also much more common among our own kind than we like to think. Spiders and sharks do it; so have both …More →

Duration:00:47:06

Eataly World and the Future of Food Shopping

10/9/2017

In just over a month, the world’s first theme park devoted entirely to Italian food will open its doors—and Gastropod has the scoop! Among Eataly World‘s delights will be hunt-your-own truffles, baby lambs, beach volleyball, and custom Bianchi shopping bike-carts. But there’s a bigger story, and it’s that Oscar Farinetti, the founder of the Eataly …More →

Duration:00:39:16

What the Fluff is Marshmallow Creme?

9/25/2017

If you’re not from New England, you may never have heard of Fluff, or its legendary sandwich-based incarnation, the Fluffernutter. The sticky sweet marshmallow creme was invented exactly one hundred years ago in Somerville, Massachusetts—at the time, the Silicon Valley of candy innovation. To celebrate, we’re diving into the history of the disruptive technologies that …More →

Duration:00:38:50