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b'You and your ancestor from 1,000 years ago have almost nothing in common. Your clothes are different. Your worship rituals are different. Your thoughts about the opposite sex are definitely different. Almost the only similarity is that both of you are driven to obtain food. In fact, one could say that civilization itself began in the quest for food. Epicure Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said it best: \\u201cGastronomy governs the whole life of man.\\u201d

In this episode, Professor Ken Albala of the University of the Pacific puts the subject of food and its importance in history on the table. Ken has studied widely on the types of cuisine that would be featured at a Roman feast, a medieval banquet, or a Renaissance Italian civic celebration. He\\u2019s ground Italian flour to make the sort of bread one would eat in Pompeii. He\\u2019s made stewed rabbit in a homemade clay pot the way an Elizabethean peasant would. He hasn\\u2019t tried field-mouse-on-a-stick (a popular Roman delicacy) but probably not for lack of trying.

In this episode we discuss how Roman food reflected social rank, wealth, and sophistication; why the Middle Ages produced some of history\\u2019s most outlandish and theatrical presentations of food, such as gilded boars\\u2019 heads, \\u201cinvented\\u201d creatures, mixing parts of different animals; and cooked peacocks spewing flames; modern foody gastronomy; and finally, one of my favorite desserts, Turkish Chicken pudding.'