Peanuts: Peril and Promise

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2017

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite their diminutive scale, peanuts play an outsized role in American culture. Peanut butter has long been a mainstay of the American lunchbox, with its sticky, slightly sweet nuttiness flavoring the memories of generation after generation of kids. And it’s hard to imagine ballgames without, as the song goes, peanuts and Cracker Jacks (which, of course, also contain peanuts). But today, peanuts are the source of both hope and fear: while there’s been a surprisingly steep rise of peanut allergies in recent decades that can—though rarely—lead to death, peanut butter is also the basis of a medical therapy used to save the lives of millions of children around the world. This episode, we discover how the humble peanut got to be such a big deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	On July 21st, the cinematic experience of the summer arrives.
0:06.3	Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an epic thriller about the man
0:10.3	who risked destroying the world for the one chance to save it.
0:14.1	Featuring an incredible cast, including Robert Downey Jr., Emily Bluntz, Oscar winner's
0:18.1	Matt Damon and Kenneth Brandock, Oscar nominee Florence Pugh, and Killian Murphy at J.
0:23.1	Robert Oppenheimer.
0:25.1	The author of the film, The New York Times, is also a great writer.
0:30.2	The country at Jefferson, with you!
0:38.7	This makes me feel like a kid again.
0:40.4	I ate peanut butter all the time growing up, like most kids did in the 70s and 80s in
0:44.9	America.
0:45.9	I had a year of kindergarten in the US, so I was familiar with the magic of a PB&J from
0:50.7	lunchbox trades.
0:52.0	But then I moved back to England, and I didn't have peanut butter again until I was 16.
0:56.8	I was babysitting the kid of American X-pats, they had jiff in their kitchen cupboard, and
1:01.0	I ate a spoonful.
1:03.1	And oh my god, there I was, standing there in suburban sorry, it was like proust in his
1:09.1	medallins.
1:10.1	I was basically five again.
1:12.2	Peanut butter apparently goes deep.
1:14.2	And as usual, we are going to go deep this episode all about the peanut.
1:18.5	We're listening to Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science
	...

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