Nicola Twilley

2 days ago | thepodcastplayground.com | Cynthia Graber |Nicola Twilley

GastropodDo We Really Have Beer to Thank for the First Writing and Cities? Humanity’s love affair with beer goes *way* back: 5,000 years ago, the civilization that arose in Mesopotamia invented writing, and one of the very first things they wrote about was… beer! But where was beer itself invented?

2 weeks ago | thepodcastplayground.com | Cynthia Graber |Nicola Twilley

GastropodSeed Oil Scare: The Curious Case of CanolaIf you’ve been hearing that canola is a killer, you’re not alone. It’s one of the so-called “hateful eight” seed oils: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says it’s among the most deadly things you can eat, and Joe Rogan agrees. But is it true? This episode, we get to the bottom of the debate over the plant formerly (and still, in some places) known as rapeseed.

4 weeks ago | thepodcastplayground.com | Cynthia Graber |Nicola Twilley

GastropodNutrition Advice Decoded: What Foods Are Actually Good For Us, What Should We Avoid, and Why Is It All SO Confusing? Are eggs going to give you high cholesterol, or are they the base of a great protein-rich meal? Will coffee give you cancer, or will it help you live longer?  If you’re confused about what nutrition science has to say about which foods are healthy and which are not, you’re not alone.

1 month ago | thepodcastplayground.com | Cynthia Graber |Nicola Twilley

GastropodThe Rise and Fall of Quinoa: From Incan "Superfood" to Buddha Bowl BasicQuinoa is everywhere these days, the base for a million salads and grain bowls. But, until recently, barely anyone outside the nutritious seed’s ancient’s homeland—the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes—had ever heard of it.

1 month ago | thepodcastplayground.com | Cynthia Graber |Nicola Twilley

GastropodThe Shocking True Story of the World's First Seed Bank—And The Scientists Who Sacrificed Their Lives to Save ItDuring World War II, the Soviet city of Leningrad was surrounded, cut off from food supplies for nearly two and a half years. People were desperate: they ate boiled leather, machine oil, toothpaste, and wallpaper paste just to stay alive.