What exactly are flavors? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? What is the relationship between Paleolithic art and cheese?
Ecology professor Rob Dunn joins us via livestream to offer bold new perspectives on why food is enjoyable and how the pursuit of delicious flavors has guided the course of human history. In Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human, co-written with Monica Sanchez, Dunn argues that deliciousness is an overlooked feature of the story of animal evolution. He shares stories from the book: stories about the pleasures of chimpanzees, the taste of mastodons, the mysteries of avocados, and more. He endeavors to show how a consideration of flavor and deliciousness changes the way we think about and make sense of the natural world: they shape the behavior of cats and dogs, they shape the use of tools by chimpanzees—they may even account for some of the major transitions in human evolution. Don’t miss these toothsome tales that are likely to change the way you think about flavor.
Rob Dunn is a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University and in the Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Never Home Alone.