Language and Culture

This 16-minute podcast explores the chemistry of Mesoamerica's corn tortillas, which involve a 3,500-year-old chemical process called nixtamalization that releases vitamins, including niacin, one of the essential B vitamins. This process also makes the tortillas softer and more delicious. Corn tortillas were a staple in Mesoamerica, and the archaeologist interviewed in this podcast argues cultures like the Aztecs and Maya wouldn't have thrived without nixtamalization.

Learn about and listen to metal in this interactive map that charts the course of heavy metal music since its birth in the 1960s. Metal distinguished itself from earlier music by prioritizing amplified distortion and emphatic beats, giving rise to the description that metal music was heavy and masculine. Heavy metal evolved from various types of rock—blues, psychedelic, garage, and hard—and has since inspired dozens of sub-genres, such as thrash metal and grunge. This web of metal music continues to grow with the advent of new genres, including trance metal and djent.

Named after Aztlán, a mythical land of plenty, the Aztec empire was a highly accomplished civilization, with major developments in agriculture, trade, art, and architecture. Their empire spread across most of today's central Mexico and was only growing in power when the Spanish conquistadors landed in the early 16th century, the catalyst for their eventual downfall. Read this historical overview of an empire that once dominated Mesoamerica.