Feel the Beet: The Most Fascinating Woman You've Never Heard Of

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Arts, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For those who like its earthy flavor, the humble beet can do a lot for a salad or a soup. But could it help end slavery? In the 1800s, one woman believed it could—and she wasn't just any old woman. This episode, meet Lydia Maria Child, who wrote the first children's periodical magazine, the first New England historical novel, and one of America's first successful self-help books—all before she turned thirty, in an era where women were still considered property. This episode, we've got the fascinating story of why she bet big on beets, as well as how, more than a century later, Wolfgang Puck and Martha Stewart paired this much maligned vegetable with goat cheese to spark today's beet renaissance. Meanwhile, for the haters among us: is it possible to de-beet the beet, and get rid of that earthy flavor altogether? Listen in now as we meet the astonishing Lydia Maria Child, in the curious tale of the beet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, so first taste this one and see what you think.
0:10.5	This is like sort of your typical.
0:14.0	Is this going to be too painful for you to do this?
0:16.0	It's okay.
0:17.0	It's okay.
0:19.0	This is really...
0:20.0	Suffer for gastropine.
0:24.6	What are we forcing Cynthia to taste?
0:32.4	What dreadful, horrifying, repulsive thing could we possibly be making her eat for your delight and entertainment?
0:34.7	It is, dear listeners, a beat. Yes, I am one of those people who recoils from beet salad, borsed,
0:39.1	basically anything dark, red, and earthy. I am indeed, Cynthia, Cynthia Graber, and you're
0:43.9	listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history.
0:47.6	Whereas I am Nicola Twilly, lover of Beats, which I grew up calling Beatroot, but really,
0:53.2	I'll take it under any name. This episode,
0:55.9	we get into why on earth anyone would hate such a delicious vegetable, and how one beet breeder
1:02.1	is aiming to change that. We are also telling the story of one of the most inspiring and fascinating
1:07.9	women I'd never heard of before. She was an early radical abolitionist, a wildly successful novelist and children's magazine writer,
1:16.1	and America's first sugar beet farmer.
1:19.1	Yes, sugar beets are beats too, which was a surprise to me.
1:23.4	Listen on and all will be revealed.
1:25.7	This episode is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the public understanding of science, technology, and economics.
1:31.7	Gastropod is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with Eater.
	...

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