Podcasts

Palatable is not Potable The Taste of Water

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Water fountain with carved stone message "acqua non potabile" the water is not drinkable.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:57 — 24.8MB)

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Book cover artworkWater is tricky stuff. It can be limpid and clear but dangerous, home to harmful bacteria and parasites. It can be murky, but perfectly safe to drink. It may smell of chlorine, which puts people off, but perversely that is a sign that no bacteria are present.

So how do we judge the quality of water? That’s the subject of a new book — The Taste of Water — by Christy Spackman at Arizona State University. She looks at the history of water purification and efforts to understand the complex interplay between the quality of water from a public health standpoint and the sensory perceptions that people use (or don’t use) to decide whether they trust it.

Notes

  1. The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage is published by University of California Press. Christy Spackman’s website offers insights into her work.
  2. Wichita Falls, the town in Texas that used recycled water to cope with drought, is proud of its water purification. Scientific American had an article about the project.
  3. Lithium in spa waters? Yes! See Lithium with your tonic, Sir? in the magazine of the Geological Society of London.
  4. Here is the transcript.
  5. Banner photo by me in our local park. Cover photo by gcardinal from Norway, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Podcasts

Avocado Anxiety: how to choose what to eat They’re “not so bad”. Compared to what?

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Three photographs of avocados on toast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:42 — 22.8MB)

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Portrait of Louise Gray, a young woman with shoulder length brown hair and dark eyes wearing a white blouse.
Louise Gray
Winner of the Guild of Food Writers award for investigative work in 2024, Avocado Anxiety is about more than avocados. It offers a deep look at the implications of the choices we are faced with when deciding what to buy. Local may not always be best for the planet, but perhaps it avoids the worst abuses of labour. And air-freighted is usually terrible for greenhouse gas emissions, but may be good for communities far away.

Some universal truths did emerge from our conversation. Fruit and veg is almost always better for the planet than meat, and homegrown is generally preferable to imported. Exceptions, however, are not uncommon, and in the end questions outnumber simple answers.

Notes

  1. Avocado Anxiety: and Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From is available from Bookshop.org and elsewhere.
  2. We didn’t discuss the meaning of the word avocado, thank heavens, because the greatest service I can offer is to point out that nobody believes that words like nut or ball actually mean testicle. Let the Nawatl Scholar explain: the word guacamole does not come from the Nahuatl word for “ground testicles or avocados”..
  3. The book Louise Gray mentioned at the end is The Avocado Debate by Honor May Eldridge.
  4. Here is the transcript.
  5. Photo of Louise Gray by Nancy MacDonald. Others scraped by me from Instagram.

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