A Delicious Guide To the History and Science of Food

Exploring the science and history of food involves a lot of eating and drinking, of course—but it also offers a unique lens through which to see the landscape around us. While making this year’s episodes of our Gastropod podcast, we’ve stumbled across lots of little-known but fascinating gastronomical landmarks, from graveyards to fried chicken festivals. Below are our favorite 2016 locales, complete with audio clips.

A visit to any of these sites will open your eyes to the amazing stories that lie behind the food and drink we consume everyday: the refugee behind America’s most popular hot sauce; the bizarre efforts of one man to count calories using a human-sized box surrounded by water; and the brewer who has thrown the 500-year-old German rule book out of the window in an attempt to discover what beer used to taste like. These are the types of tales we sample twice monthly at Gastropod, so, if you like what you hear, find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Dig in—and listen up!