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, but they lost their near monopoly on international tra

When it comes to booze, its fun to be bitter: an Aperol spritz has been the drink of summer for about five years, vermouth and soda wasapparentlythe "hot girl" drink of 2023, and amaro is having "a major moment." Bitter botanical beverages are everywher

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 than any other crop on Earth, from Japan to West Africa t

Is white chocolate really chocolate? What causes asparagus pee? Sprinkles or jimmieswhich do you call them, and is the term jimmies racist? Why is the heat of mustard and wasabi so different from a chile burn? This episode, Gastropod is getting to the

No pumpkin spice latte, cookie, candle, or seasonal can of Spam (yes, really) would be the same without one of its key flavors: nutmeg, a warm, woody spice grated from the seed of a tropical fruit. But back in the 1600s, nutmeg wasn’t so common that you c

Botanically, bean pods are indeed fruits, and, honestly, they are also pretty magical. And were clearly not the only ones to think that: beans are the unsung hero of history. The fact that they were domesticated an astonishing seven different times in di

Doughnuts are ubiquitous in the United States: whether you're at party, a coffee shop, or the break room at work, youre likely to find a box of iced rings covered with sprinkles. But some kind of deep-fried dough blob is a treat found in cultures around

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 noodle soup would have had no place in the archipelago's ot

How do we learn to eat? It may seemlike an obvious question, but it's actually quite acomplicated process. Who decided that mushed-up vegetables were the perfect first foodand has that always been the case? What makes us like some foods and hate others

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. It's also wildly delicious, with a sweet, briny, but mea