Can You Patent a Pizza?
Close your eyes and imagine this: a world without stuffed crust pizza. We know!—but that was the dismal state of the Italian flatbread scene before 1985, when Anthony Mongiello, aka The Big Cheese, ca...
5 Mar 202450min
Super Fry: The Fight for the Golden Frite (encore)
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 Americ...
27 Feb 202444min
Dining at the (Other) Top of the World: Hunger, Fruitcake, and the Race to Reach the South Pole
In contrast to the abundance of the Arctic, in Antarctica, "once you leave the coast, you're basically heading to the moon." Jason Anthony, who spent several summers on the seventh continent, told us ...
20 Feb 202444min
Dining at the Top of the World: Arctic Adaptation, Abundance, and...Ice Cream
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...
6 Feb 202452min
Cork Dork: Inside the Weird World of Wine Appreciation (encore)
“There’s the faintest soupçon of asparagus and just a flutter of Edam cheese,” says Paul Giamatti in the movie Sideways. Believe it or not, he's describing pinot noir, not quiche. The world of sommeli...
23 Jan 202445min
It's Tea Time: Pirates, Polyphenols, and a Proper Cuppa (encore)
This week, Gastropod tells the story of two countries and their shared obsession with a plant: Camellia sinensis, otherwise known as the tea bush. The Chinese domesticated tea over thousands of years,...
9 Jan 202445min
The Case of the Confusing Bitter Beverages: Vermouth, Amaro, Aperitivos, and Other Botanical Schnapps
When it comes to booze, it’s fun to be bitter: an Aperol spritz has been the drink of summer for about five years, vermouth and soda was apparentlythe "hot girl" drink of 2023, and amaro is having "a ...
19 Des 202351min
Rice, Rice Baby
Though rice might not feature in a hit 1990s Vanilla Ice rap, this grain tops the charts in other ways: it's the staple food for more than half the global population, and it's grown by more farmers th...
5 Des 202351min
