In this episode of Gastropod, we trace chocolate's journey with chocolate expert Carla Martin and historian Helen Veit, and explore its shifting role from traditional medicine to potential wonder drug with historian Deanna Pucciarelli and Harvard epidemiologist Eric Ding. Along the way, Simran Sethi, author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of the Foods We Love, takes us deep into the lush, fragrant, midge-filled humidity of a chocolate forest, only to warn us that these forests, and the precious beans within them, are now facing not just one but multiple existential threats.