Gastropod is an independent podcast that looks at food through the lens of history and science. Every other week, hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley take listeners on a tour of the hidden history and surprising science behind a different food and/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 understand the world through food.

Cynthia Graber is an award-winning radio producer and print reporter who’s covered science, technology, food, agriculture, and any other stories that catch her fancy for more than 15 years. She’s reported on ancient farming techniques in Peru’s Andean mountains, a scientist uncovering the secrets of regenerating limbs, and a goat with million-dollar blood. Her work has been featured in magazines and radio shows including Fast Company, BBC Future, Slate, the Boston Globe, Studio 360, PRI’s The World, Living on Earth, and many others, and she’s a regular contributor to the podcast Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. She was a 2012-2013 Knight Fellow at MIT, and her radio and print awards include those from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the international Institute of Physics.

Nicola Twilley is author of the blog Edible Geography, a contributing writer at the New Yorker, and currently teaches a Regional Foodshed Resilience Practicum at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She is deeply obsessed with refrigeration, and is currently writing a book on the topic. She recently explored China’s coldscape for The New York Times Magazine, and, in 2013, she curated an exhibition exploring North America’s spaces of artificial refrigeration with the Center for Land Use Interpretation. From 2011 to 2013, Twilley was a Research Fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, as part of which she collaborated with Geoff Manaugh on Venue, a pop-up interview studio and mobile media rig that traveled around North America in 2012-3.