Greetings Gastropod listeners. As always, I'm Nicola Twilly. And I'm Cynthia Craber, and we here at

Gastropod headquarters are hard at work digging out fascinating tales for your listening delight.

But while we polish up some sparkly new nuggets of culinary science and history for your future

audio enjoyment, we wanted to share this super fascinating guest episode to

tide you over. It is about food in a way, or at least eating something, but in this case it's

about eating something I would have thought would be a horrible idea, and that's the plant

poison oak. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, this is a pretty common North American

shrub that if you accidentally touch

it while you're out hiking, you will not be happy at all. It is one of the itiest things known to

humanity. So why in the world would you eat something like this? I'm uncomfortable just thinking about it,

but all will be revealed. Listen on to Unexplainable to find out, and then of course find

unexplainable wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand

new episode. Meanwhile, if you're still short of listening material, we have another new podcast for

you. It's a new podcast from the Food and Environment Reporting Network called Forked. Every two weeks,

host Theodore Ross and Helena Bottomiller-Evich

take on the politics and policy that are turning the American food system on its head.

Forked is for anyone who cares about what they eat and where their food comes from. It's informed,

incisive, and fun, and hopefully won't leave you feeling too forked.

Forked is available wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube at Fern News.

And now a nice big bowl of poison oak.

Support for this show comes in part from Vitamix. Here's a quick kitchen history lesson.

Electric blenders were first introduced in 1920, and they were invented to make milkshakes. What followed was iconic Americana, the era of teenagers hanging out in checkered floor soda fountains and drugstores, jiving to jukeboxes,

...