Gastropod

Gastropod

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.

Episodes

Yes, You Really Can Make Food From Thin Air—And We Tried It

November 4, 2025 • 48 mins
Every second of every day, plants on earth do something miraculous: they take the carbon dioxide from air and turn it into food. With very few exceptions, everything we eat starts out that way. But what if we wanted to cut out the middlemen, re-wild all those fields full of wheat and corn, and manufacture dinner directly from the atmosphere ourselves? Scientists began dreaming of turning air into food back into the 1800s, but it's ...
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Pizza Pizza!

October 21, 2025 • 46 mins
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, herbs, anchovies, or whatever else was on hand. Even after these first pizzas met the tomato, the dish was a local peculiarity—most Italians thought pizza was gross and weird until just a few d...
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Everything You Know About Metabolism Is Wrong

October 7, 2025 • 48 mins
If you’ve heard of metabolism, you’ve probably heard endless tips and tricks to boost it, from working out to drinking green tea. The idea is that a slow metabolism leads to weight gain, and speeding it up makes it easier to shed pounds. But what if we told you that metabolic rate doesn't really have anything to do with why so many of us in the developed world are heavy? This episode, nutrition scientist Kevin Hall and science jour...
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Durian Delight and Feijoa Fun: Adventures in Banned, Forgotten, and Unusual Fruit

September 23, 2025 • 50 mins
This week on Gastropod, a feast of fruits! Specifically, feijoa and durian—and, if you haven’t heard of either, you’re not alone. Unlike the ubiquitous strawberry or banana, durian and feijoa are only popular in a handful of countries and almost unknown in the US, and we wanted to know why—especially because the people who love them really love them. For New Zealanders, like journalist Kate Evans, feijoa is *the* taste of home, eve...
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Talking Taco

September 9, 2025 • 43 mins
Whether or not it's Tuesday, tacos pretty much always hit the spot—and not just in their homeland in Mexico. These days, the taco can be found all over the world, although it's acquired some strange new fillings along the way, from French fries to canned corn. It's hard to imagine something so universal having to be invented—but, in fact, the taco as we know it only emerged in the 1800s. In this episode, Gastropod talks taco with t...
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Tomatoes: A Love Story

August 19, 2025 • 50 mins
The tomato is Gastropod’s favorite flavor of summer, and we’re not alone: today, it’s the most popular vegetable on the planet, despite the fact that it's technically a fruit. But, until a couple of hundred years ago, the tomato wasn't really anyone's favorite. In South America, where the tomato originates, no one even bothered to domesticate it; in Mexico, the Aztecs seem to have preferred tomatillos; Renaissance Europeans thought...
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The Most Dangerous Fruit in America

August 5, 2025 • 45 mins
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. This episode, we scour Egyptian tombs, decaying DNA, and ancient literature in search of watermelon's origins. The quest for tasty watermelon continues into modern times, with the rediscovery of a lo...
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The Colorful Tale of Mexico's A-maize-ing Grain

July 22, 2025 • 50 mins
This might sound corny, but the relationship between maize and humanity is essential. We rely on corn—globally, more maize is grown than wheat or rice—and, in turn, corn is utterly dependent on us, to the extent that it's lost the ability to reproduce without our help. But corn's wild ancestor is such an unappetizing weed that, for decades, archaeologists couldn't believe today's juicy cobs were all descended from it. From this unp...
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Should You Be Eating Poison Oak?

July 8, 2025 • 31 mins
Probably not. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz decided to try it anyway, putting his body — and specifically his butt — on the line to answer a seemingly straightforward question: Is it possible to build up a tolerance to poison oak by eating it? (Guest episode) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Ask Gastropod: Bubblegum, Meal Kits, and the Real Truth About Rooibos

June 24, 2025 • 46 mins
What do bubblegum, rooibos tea, and meal kits have in common? They’re all topics that puzzle and fascinate you, dear Gastropod listeners. This episode, we're getting to the bottom of your most pressing culinary questions! Such as: Are meal kits really better for the planet than buying and cooking dinner from scratch? Can all the rooibos tea in the world reallycome from one mountain range in South Africa? And what the heck is bubble...
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Feasting With Montezuma: Food and Farming in a Floating City

June 10, 2025 • 52 mins
Five centuries ago, before Spanish conquistadors arrived, what's now Mexico City was the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan—and it took the European invaders' breath away. It was built on an island threaded with canals; it was one of the largest cities in the world; and the Spanish could hardly believe the sheer volume of food sold in the city's main market, let alone the quantity and variety of dishes enjoyed by the Aztec leader, Monte...
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Bananageddon! Say Goodbye to *the* Banana, and Hello to the Weird and Wonderful World of Bananas, Plural

May 27, 2025 • 54 mins
Yes, it's true: the banana we know and love is going the way of the dodo bird. An incurable strain of the fungal Panama disease known as TR4 is currently wiping out tens of thousands of acres of banana plantations, from Malaysia to Australia and Mozambique to El Salvador. But what's bananas is that this has all happened before! Is history doomed to repeat itself? Find out in the grand finale of our banana series. It's banana-pocaly...
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Going Bananas: How a Tropical Treat Became the World's Favorite Fruit

May 13, 2025 • 46 mins
In 1870, a strange fruit arrived on the docks in New Jersey, starting an industry that would change the world. That fruit was a banana, and, although it was a staple food in tropical regions, most Americans had never tried one. Today, a century and a half later, even the most depressing gas station, corner store, or hotel breakfast buffet in the land has bananas on offer. This week, we’re exploring the story of how humans transform...
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Do We Really Have Beer to Thank for the First Writing and Cities?

April 22, 2025 • 55 mins
Humanity's love affair with beer goes *way* back: 5,000 years ago, the civilization that arose in Mesopotamia invented writing, and one of the very first things they wrote about was... beer! But where was beer itself invented? This episode, we've got the story of beer's origins, the debate over whether humanity domesticated grains for brewing or for baking, and why beer was so essential to the smooth functioning of the world's firs...
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Seed Oil Scare: The Curious Case of Canola

April 8, 2025 • 47 mins
If you've been hearing that canola is a killer, you're not alone. It's one of the so-called "hateful eight" seed oils: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says it's among the most deadly things you can eat, and Joe Rogan agrees. But is it true? This episode, we get to the bottom of the debate over the plant formerly (and still, in some places) known as rapeseed. Why does it have such an unfortunate name, and how did it transform into canola, at...
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Nutrition Advice Decoded: What Foods Are Actually Good For Us, What Should We Avoid, and Why Is It All SO Confusing?

March 25, 2025 • 56 mins
Are eggs going to give you high cholesterol, or are they the base of a great protein-rich meal? Will coffee give you cancer, or will it help you live longer?  If you're confused about what nutrition science has to say about which foods are healthy and which are not, you're not alone. But why is it so hard to figure out what's good for us, and why does the advice seem to change constantly? This week on Gastropod, we reveal the hidde...
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The Rise and Fall of Quinoa: From Incan "Superfood" to Buddha Bowl Basic

March 11, 2025 • 47 mins
Quinoa is everywhere these days, the base for a million salads and grain bowls. But, until recently, barely anyone outside the nutritious seed's ancient's homeland—the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes—had ever heard of it. This week, we're telling the story of how a gorgeous spinach-like plant traditionally grown in a remote, high-altitude region of South America was transformed into one of the hottest foods on the shelves at Whole Food...
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The Shocking True Story of the World's First Seed Bank—And The Scientists Who Sacrificed Their Lives to Save It

February 25, 2025 • 46 mins
During World War II, the Soviet city of Leningrad was surrounded, cut off from food supplies for nearly two and a half years. People were desperate: they ate boiled leather, machine oil, toothpaste, and wallpaper paste just to stay alive. But, in the center of the city, a group of botanists spent their days surrounded by food that they refused to touch—nuts, seeds, and even a basement full of potatoes—even as several of them starve...
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No Buzz Booze: The History and Science of Going Low- or No-Alcohol

February 11, 2025 • 51 mins
Dry January may be over, but, for many people, drinking less alcohol or none at all is an increasingly common choice year-round. And, unlike in the past, when dealcoholized options were few and far between—and had a well-deserved reputation for tasting bad—there’s now a booming market for non-alcoholic beers, wines, canned cocktails, and even spirits for the so-called "sober curious." But how do they get the booze out of our favori...
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Moon Rocks Wanted (guest episode)

January 28, 2025 • 36 mins
(Guest episode) On September 18, 1998, an unusual ad ran in USA Today — a company called John's Estate Sales was looking to buy a moon rock. But the phone number on the ad didn't lead to, say, a store front in a strip mall. Instead, the phone number belonged to Special Agent Joe Gutheinz at NASA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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