Read: The last of its kind

But the passenger pigeon wasn’t our first culinary extinction. In this episode, Newman takes us on a tour through the foods we have eaten to their end, such as the Pleistocene megafauna, which early humans destroyed as our numbers spread around the world, and the leek-flavored silphium that was so valuable that its last stalks were hoarded, alongside gold and jewels, by Roman emperors. In each case, we sift through the evidence that points to human appetite as the leading cause of extinction, and unpack the response of a bewildered, bereft humanity.

The Romans clung to the belief that their beloved silphium could perhaps spontaneously reappear someday; the idea that something could be gone forever was simply, at the time, inconceivable. The concept of extinction—along with its mirror, evolution—wasn’t formulated until the end of the 18th century, and it finally gave humans a framework within which to understand their actions. But, as Newman describes, the pace of culinary loss has only increased since then, with thousands and thousands of varieties of plants and breeds of animals vanishing in the early 20th century.

Why have we allowed so many of the foods we love to vanish? What impact has their disappearance had—and what lessons can it teach us for the future? Listen in this episode as Newman helps us tackle these morbid questions, leaving us with some hope, as well as a whole new perspective on chicken.

This post appears courtesy of Gastropod.

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Nicola Twilley is a co-host of the podcast Gastropod and a contributor to The New Yorker. She is at work on two books: one about refrigeration and the other about quarantine.

, and Cynthia Graber is a writer and audio journalist based in Somerville, Massachusettsand a co-host of the podcast Gastropod. H er work has appeared in Scientific American and The New Yorker . Scientific AmericanThe New Yorker