The Sweetest Thing

Radiolab•18 de septiembre de 2026•00:31:02•

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Descripción del Episodio

“What is the sweetest thing in the world?” After co-host Latif Nasser’s sons ask him this deceptively simple question, he goes on a quest to find it. Is it a West African Katemfe berry? Or an industrial sugar substitute cooked up in a lab? Or an ingredient hiding in plain sight in all of our pantries? A simple mystery that will make you question what sweetness even is, how our tongues (and other body parts you wouldn’t expect) determine what we like, and how far you would go to taste something sweeter than anyone has ever experienced.

Thank you to Latif’s sons for indulging us, to Nicola Twilley and Cynthia Graber at Gastropod, to Anni Laffitte, Nazli Parvizi at Museum of Food and Drink, to food icons Claire Saffitz and Sam Seneveratne who did a live show version of this episode with us at the Tribeca Festival. And thank you to Davy Gardner and his wonderful team of audio folks at the Tribeca Festival.

Thank you to Jialin Deng who composed the song that was our ‘sonic seasoning’. And to Laura Rickman and everyone else at Columbia University’s Mortimer B Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute for hosting us.

And big thanks to experimental psychologist Charles Spence at Oxford, sweetness chemist Grant DuBois, Danielle Reed at Monell Chemical Senses Center, and nutritional scientist Sarah Berry at King’s College London who all talked to us about their research. And Brian Everett of Honest Organic Farms.

And a very special thanks to Sean Oomens, inventor of producer Jess Yung’s favorite candy, nerd gummy clusters

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser
with help from - Jessica Yung, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Jessica Yung, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, and Natalia Ramirez
Produced by - Jessica Yung
with help from - Mona Madgavkar, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Gabby Santas, and Maia Appleby Melamed
with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom
Fact-checking by - Sophie Samiee
and Edited by - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos:

Youtuber Chemiolis tried to make Luguduname himself (https://zpr.io/MmUbGfwwFrFH)

Articles -

Race to Redesign Sugar (https://zpr.io/VpsMxfPRbxaz) by Nicola Twilley
The Search for Sweet (https://zpr.io/JmeDkVhrd2dK) by Burkhard Bilger
How My Trip to Quit Sugar Became A Journey Into Hell (https://zpr.io/ni6xgC38Qmyf) by Caity Wever
How Much of Our Existence Do We Owe to Sugar? (https://zpr.io/M2py48SxnQAT) by Jackie Flynn Mogensen
Scientists Find Sugar In Space (https://zpr.io/e94UtUuhPtbT) by Rebecca Dzombak

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