Ever wonder how a tiny, tooth-breaking wild grass became the buttery popcorn you enjoy at the movies? Or why a squishy "mutant" fruit might be the real reason humans stopped chasing mammoths and started building cities?

In this episode of Brain Blast, hosts Alex and Jordan dig into the fascinating "great makeover" of the plants that shaped human history. We travel back 11,000 years to the Jordan Valley to uncover evidence that figs—specifically a variety that couldn't reproduce without human help—were likely our first farmed crop. Then, we fast-forward to ancient Mexico to see how early farmers acted as the world’s first genetic engineers, using selective breeding to transform a wild grass called teosinte into the towering, golden corn we know today.

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