This is Gastropod as usual, but today we are sharing a bonus guest episode with you.

It's from our friends The Sporkful hosted by Dan Pashman.

The Sporkful isn't for foodies, it's for eaters.

Each week on the show, Dan and his guests obsess about food to learn more about people.

The episode you're about to hear is the first in a five-part series called Mission Impastible.

Yes, Dan makes even more dad jokes than we do.

The series follows Dan as he embarks on the most ambitious project in Sporkful history

to invent a new pasta shape, actually get it made, and actually sell it.

You might have thought after listening to our pasta shapes episode that there are enough shapes in the world already.

But Dan disagrees, so can he pull it off?

Hello! Hi! Welcome to Caviar!

Today we're kicking off something really big.

We were working on it for three years and we'll begin at the beginning.

It's June 2018 and we're at Caviar.

It's a performance-based and bar on New York's Lower East Side.

We organized this event there called the Bucatini Dialogues, a debate about pasta shapes.

After a brief intro, I get right to the point.

And I'm just going to go ahead and say it.

Spaghetti sucks.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

I said it.

It's round on the outside, that means it has a low surface area in relation to the volume.

...