For the season finale, Eva and Maite take a bite out of the history of botanas, appetizers, and snack culture from around the world. From bar bites to late-night cravings, they explore why humans have always loved a little snack. Along the way, they reflect on an eclectic season filled with stories, history, and unexpected connections across cultures.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Eva and Maite trace the layered history of Los Angeles through four places that reveal the city’s shifting identity: the Los Angeles River, Placita Olvera, Chinatown, and Boyle Heights. Long before freeways and concrete channels, the LA River sustained Indigenous communities and shaped the city’s earliest settlements. From there, they move into the heart of Los Angeles at Olvera Street, where questions of heritage and tourism collide. They explore the displacement and reinvention of Chinatown and end in Boyle Heights, one of the most culturally rich neighborhoods in the country, where Jewish, Japanese, Mexican, and Eastern European communities once lived side by side. Together, these places tell a larger story about migration, erasure, resilience, and the many communities that built Los Angeles.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Maite is joined by artist Monica Martinez, the founder of Don Bugito, a pioneering edible insect business that blends design, sustainability, and food innovation. The conversation moves between industrial design and the realities of industrialized food systems, highlighting Monica’s work raising edible insects on an organic farm in Oakland, CA. They trace the deep culinary roots of insects in Mexico, explore flavor combinations grounded in memory, and how these traditions are being translated for U.S. audiences amid shifting cultural perceptions of food. The episode closes with a reflection on where insect-eating may be headed in the next 10 to 20 years.

Link to Don Bugito: https://www.donbugito.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.