Guest Episode: Communal Eating With ‘Gastropod’

Science Diction

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

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4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we’re sharing an episode from an excellent food podcast, Gastropod. This show is right up our alley—co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up episodes that “look at food through the lens of science and history.” What’s not to love? This episode looks at something we’re all missing a lot these days: communal eating. We love eating dinner together with friends and extended family, and we miss it! But why does sharing a meal mean so much—and can we ever recreate that on Zoom? As we wait for the dinner parties, cookouts, and potlucks of our post-pandemic future, join us as we explore the science and history of communal dining. Scientist Ayelet Fishbach shares how and why eating together makes us better able to work together, and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar and archaeologist Brian Hayden demonstrate how it actually made us human—and led to everything from the common cow to the pyramids. Plus, we join food writers Nichola Fletcher and Samin Nosrat for the largest in-person banquet of all time, with Parisian waiters on bicycles, as well as the world’s biggest online lasagna party. Guests: Samin Nosrat is a chef, teacher and author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Ayelet Fishbach is professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago. Robin Dunbar is a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. Brian Hayden is an archaeologist and emeritus professor at Simon Fraser University. Nichola Fletcher is a food writer in Scotland and author of the book Charlemagne’s Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting. Alice Julier is a sociologist who writes about inequality, food, and everyday life. Footnotes & Further Reading: Listen to more Gastropod here. Credits: This episode of Gastropod was produced by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there. I live in New York and things are different these days, but during normal times,
0:06.5	one of my all-time favorite sensations is when the weather is just starting to cool down
0:11.6	and you haven't brought a jacket that's quite heavy enough, so you're really hustling to get
0:15.8	where you're going, and you pull open the heavy door to a restaurant, and you are just hit with this blast of warm air
0:23.8	and sound, because it is bustling inside there. There's this one restaurant that I'm thinking of,
0:30.1	in particular, where the tables are shared, so you just kind of pull up next to a stranger.
0:35.1	I thought it was sort of weird and annoying at first, but now it seems
0:38.5	cozy. This week, we're sharing an episode from an excellent podcast called Gastropod. It's a great show.
0:45.5	It's all about food through the lens of science and history, right up my alley. And this episode is
0:51.0	about something we have all been missing a lot lately.
0:55.2	Communal eating.
0:56.9	It looks at the science and the history of eating together, why it makes us better able to work together, how it makes us human.
1:04.3	And it really made me think differently about why I miss dinner parties so much.
1:09.7	It's really good stuff, and I think you'll like it. Here's
1:12.5	Gastropod. Basically, I just miss gathering with people. I miss cooking for other people. I miss
1:19.5	sitting around a dinner table and sharing a meal and I suspect you do too. So I thought together
1:27.1	we can all have a party. You got the invite,
1:32.9	right? The big lasagna party? I did. I got the invitation, as did all the readers of the New York
1:38.2	Times and everyone who follows Samin on social media. And I quickly put it on my calendar. Make lasagna,
1:43.5	join Samin Nessrette, and a few
1:44.9	thousand of her friends on Instagram live to eat said lasagna. I mean, what else is on our
1:49.6	calendars these days? Which is kind of Samin's point. Back in the good old days, I used to have
	...

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