Raised and Glazed: Don’t Doubt the Doughnut
Doughnuts are ubiquitous in the United States: whether you're at party, a coffee shop, or the break room at work, you’re likely to find a box of iced rings covered with sprinkles. But some kind of dee...
10 Okt 202348min
We'd Like to Teach The World to Slurp: The Weird and Wonderful Story of Ramen's Rise to Glory
Savory, chewy, and, above all, slurp-able, a delicious bowl of ramen is one of the triumphs of Japanese cuisine. That's also a bit odd, because, for most of Japanese history, heavy, meaty, wheaty nood...
26 Sep 202348min
First Foods: Learning to Eat (encore)
How do we learn to eat? It may seem like an obvious question, but it's actually quite a complicated process. Who decided that mushed-up vegetables were the perfect first food—and has that always been ...
19 Sep 202350min
All Aboard the Tuna Rollercoaster! Join the King of Fish for a Wild Ride that Involves Ernest Hemingway and (of course) Jane Fonda
A bluefin tuna can grow to the size of a car, weigh twice as much as a grand piano, swim as fast as a running lion, and keep its muscles at human body temperature even in the ocean's coldest depths. I...
5 Sep 202345min
The Keto Paradox: Fad Diet *and* Life-Saving Medical Treatment
What do some epilepsy patients have in common with tech bros, bodybuilders, and Joe Rogan? The high-fat, carb-shunning diet known as keto, whose history dates back much further than its 2010s rise to ...
22 Aug 202343min
Secrets of Sourdough (encore)
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...
8 Aug 202348min
Watch It Wiggle: The Jell-O Story (encore)
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 c...
25 Juli 202349min
Where's the Beef? Lab-Grown Meat is Finally on the Menu
Can we really have our burger, eat it—and never need to kill a cow? Growing meat outside of animals—in a lab or, these days, in shiny steel bioreactors—promises to deliver a future in which we can enj...
11 Juli 202354min
