THE HISTORY OF FOOD
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
HOF Episode 28: The Ancient History of Chefs
08 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows the saying about what the world’s “oldest profession” is, but you will find a very close runner up in the kitchen. Th...
HOF Episode 27: A Day in the Life (of a Peasant Farmer)
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wondered if there’s more to history than dates and major events, what some of the stories and daily lives of regular people looked...
HOF Episode 26: Factory Food (Industrial Revolution)
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Britain industrialized in the late 1700s and the rest of the western world soon followed, humans were transformed to a degree not seen for 10,000...
HOF Episode 25: The Soul of American Cooking (Colonial USA)
19 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Who founded America? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? America had founding fathers alright, but they aren’t the ones you’re thinking o...
HOF Episode 24: The Feeling of Fullness (Sub Saharan Africa)
30 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Is good cooking defined by ingredients, skill in preparation, style of cuisine, or is it something even more fundamental and deeply human? We left out...
HOF Episode 23: The Great Sobering (Coffee and Colonialism)
17 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Save this episode to go with your morning coffee. Sip that dark and bitter brew, maybe with cream and/or sugar, maybe not, and listen along as you lea...
HOF Episode 22: Melting Pots and Fusion Foods (Globalization)
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The “American Melting Pot” is far older, larger, and even more diverse than most people imagine. After Columbus reconnected Eurasia and Af...
HOF Episode 21: Umami and Kimchi (Japan and Korea)
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean for one culture to “steal” from another? How often does it happen? Is it a bad thing when it does? Listen to explore tho...
HOF Episode 20: The Columbian Exchange
20 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For millions of years, the two main hemispheres of planet earth were separated by an impassible ocean. North/South America and Eurasia/Africa, two div...
HOF Episode 19: Europe Wakes Up (The Renaissance)
09 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Did Europeans suddenly wake up one day, tired of Medieval living, and decide to change course, to rebirth themselves in modern ideas and start creatin...
HOF Episode 18: Crusades and Plagues (later Middle Ages)
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How did Europe get out of its dark ages? It’s not a wholesome story, as the secret to their success was mainly the conquest and plunder of other...
HOF Episode 17: The Power of Tradition (China revisited)
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What makes humans special? What makes us rise above all the other animals across the planet, to discover and make great things? Before you answer with...
HOF Episode 16: The Dark Bread Ages (Medieval Europe)
16 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Late Antiquity, without the Roman Empire around to control everything, forest and wilderness reclaimed Europe and its people went local. Start with...
HOF Episode 15: Princes of Flavor (India)
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Which ancient civilization made the most flavorful cuisine? Perhaps you could make a case for any of the cuisines and civilizations we’ve covere...
HOF Episode 14: People of the Book
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In what capacity can food serve a spiritual need? The answer is a whole lot! A little over two thousand years ago, the way people thought about themse...
HOF Episode 13: Empire of Shepherds (Iran)
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many great moments in civilization happened when cultures of the Far East, interacted with those in the West.  Through all those moments, there w...
HOF Episode 12: Herders of the Old World
14 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the second Season of the History of Food! To kick things off, we’ll be walking ground we’ve tread before. The history of pastor...
HOF Episode 11: Bread and Circuses, but Mostly Bread (Rome)
24 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Rome. Probably what most people think of when they think “Ancient World”. In this episode, however, we discover that in terms of the culin...
HOF Episode 10: Hombres de Maíz (Mesoamerica)
03 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Of all the food discoveries made across the ancient world, few are more impressive than the domestication and then nixtamlization of maize (corn) in t...
HOF Episode 9: Raw and Cooked (China)
23 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be a raw (barbarian) person vs. a cooked (civilized) person? To find out, our culinary and historical journey heads east. Far Eas...
HOF Episode 8: Hunger and Collapse (Mesopotamia and Bronze Age)
16 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
No civilization lasts forever.  In fact, it’s kind of a miracle any starts at all.  The conditions must be exactly right for people to...
HOF Episode 7: Age of the Aegean (Greece)
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Here we are at last, on the shores of Greece. It’s a brief retelling of Aegean history, a story you’ve heard before, though perhaps not fr...
HOF Episode 6: Lands of the Nile (Egypt)
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Egypt needs no introduction.  But here’s one anyway! The ancient people along the Nile built a civilization out of grain like Mesopotamia, ...
HOF Episode 5: Un Otro Mundo (Andean Civilization)
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sumer was the oldest urban civilization, but not by much.  Second place followed quickly, and incredibly was across the ocean in South America. P...
HOF Episode 4: How to Turn Food into Wealth (Sumer)
15 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve done it. We’ve finally crossed into the realm of written records and recorded history.  Join me on an odyssey going back 6,000 ...
HOF Episode 3: Early Farming Around the World
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Come travel around the world and follow the Neolithic cultures that spread across it, including very early farmers of Egypt, China, and Old Europe. Th...
HOF Episode 2: Gardeners of the Neolithic
11 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The second episode of our History of Food concerns the greatest turning point in human history since the taming of fire. The New Stone Age, when farmi...
HOF Episode 1: Human Ancestors and Prehistoric Foragers
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What makes us human? Humans are just animals who know how to cook. This first episode attempts to explain what humans and our hominid ancestors have b...