The Colorful Tale of Mexico's A-maize-ing Grain

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This might sound corny, but the relationship between maize and humanity is essential. We rely on corn—globally, more maize is grown than wheat or rice—and, in turn, corn is utterly dependent on us, to the extent that it's lost the ability to reproduce without our help. But corn's wild ancestor is such an unappetizing weed that, for decades, archaeologists couldn't believe today's juicy cobs were all descended from it. From this unpromising beginning, we've got a story that involves empires, vampires, and generations of women chained to the (literal) grindstone. Pass the popcorn and settle in as we explore the past, present, and future of corn—and the many delicious ways Mesoamericans have invented to get their daily dose of vitamin T(ortilla). Plus: do blue and yellow corn chips actually taste different? And what does it mean for your relationship status if you can't get a tortilla to puff? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I remember they had a toaster oven and they had corn tortillas, which felt like very authentic
0:11.2	ones, and Munster cheese.
0:13.8	And I would just put a piece of monster cheese on top of a tortilla, put it in the toaster
0:18.2	oven and make basically like toast it until it was like Dostala status with cheese on top and put some hot sauce on it. And I would have like two of those
0:26.4	to start and then I would figure out what I wanted to do after that with my life. That was
0:30.5	definitely like my routine and my first sort of like conscious relationship with a tortilla.
0:37.3	Chef Jorge Gaviria's family had fed him tortillas nearly every day before that one, but when he
0:42.1	started this routine, this was the time he claimed tortillas for himself. It was an after-school
0:47.2	snack at his grandparents' house, but it was also, as he says, a relationship. The corn tortilla
0:51.7	was the thing that helped him feel grounded after he got home from
0:54.2	school. And Jorge is not alone. Millions of people rely on corn tortillas to provide both physical
1:00.7	and emotional sustenance every day. Corn is life for a large part of the world. And corn is
1:07.9	also this episode of, yes, gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through the lens of science and history.
1:14.9	I'm Nicola Twilly.
1:15.9	And I'm Cynthia Graber.
1:16.9	This episode, we're telling the story of this essential substance.
1:20.5	How did a random grass in what's now Mexico that had a tiny hard seed head blossom into those impressive stalks with footlong cobs laden with large
1:28.5	starchy kernels. And how did that transformation leave corn utterly helpless without its human assistance?
1:35.2	Plus, why did those early Meso-Americans get so excited about this almost inedible grain in the
1:41.2	first place? How did it become the food that fueled empires and led to hundreds of different and
1:46.1	delicious variations on the all-important tortilla?
1:49.2	And what does all of this have to do with vampires?
	...

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