The Sporkful

Music producer and artist benny blanco has credits on 29 number one songs, working with stars such as Katy Perry, SZA, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Halsey, and more. But he’s long been as obsessed with food as he is with music. Now, benny’s releasing Open Wide: A Cookbook for Friends. It’s not just a collection of recipes, it’s also a manual for throwing a great party -- a topic that benny takes very seriously. He dishes with Dan on his affection for the George Foreman grill, the dessert that endeared him to SZA, and why he’s like a duck on a pond.

The food-obsessed comic discusses eating with his five children, navigating birthday parties and buffets, his dad's steaks, and when it's OK to lie to your kids. Plus he explains why he's the Jean-Claude Van Damme of eating on television.

Cookbook author Priya Krishna was a world traveler as a kid. Because of her mom’s job in the airline industry, Priya was able to go to China, Egypt, France, and more, chronicling all of the new foods she tried on her travels in her journal. Now, as an adult, she’s turning her childhood travelogs into the cookbook she wishes she had growing up — Priya’s Kitchen Adventures.

Dips are having a moment — from a dips-only restaurant in Atlanta to Martin Short playing a character who only eats dips. But TV host and Cosmo columnist Alyse Whitney was a self-described Dip Queen long before they got hot, and she proves it in her new cookbook, Big Dip Energy: 88 Parties in a Bowl for Snacking, Dinner, Dessert, and Beyond.

You may think you know LeVar Burton. After starring in the seminal 1977 mini-series Roots, he hosted Reading Rainbow and starred alongside Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation. These days he hosts the podcasts LeVar Burton Reads, in which he reads his favorite short fiction, and Sound Detectives, for kids who want to explore the magic and mystery of sound.

Naama Shefi remembers visiting her husband’s grandmother for the first time, and being astonished by the stories tucked into each dish on the dinner table. That moment led her to start the Jewish Food Society, an organization that preserves and celebrates the diversity of Jewish food from around the world, which as Naama is quick to point out, goes far beyond Eastern European classics like brisket, kugel, smoked fish, and potato knishes.

Laura and Beth Winters are fraternal twins who come from a family of proud picky eaters. But after high school, Laura left home for college and started exploring new foods, while Beth stayed close to home and continued to eat the same way she did growing up. What does their story tell us about nature vs. nurture, and the kinds of judgments we make about picky eating?

You probably know Guy Fieri from his TV shows: Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and Guy's Grocery Games. Or maybe you remember Pete Wells's epically scathing review of Guy's restaurant in New York City. But what you don’t know: The real Guy Fieri wants to open an all-organic restaurant

In the final episode of “Anything’s Pastable,” the recipes are done — but they’re all in Google Docs. Now Dan has to bring them together into an actual book, with a cohesive visual style. So he hires an art director who scours flea markets for just the right props to bring the book’s personality to life. Then Dan heads to the Bay Area for the photo shoot, which means cooking nearly every recipe from the book one last time.

As Dan’s cookbook deadline approaches, recipe testing kicks into high gear — and he attempts to develop a few recipes on his own. But scorched pans and sauce spills lead to frayed nerves. Can he rediscover the creative spark that got him excited about this project in the first place?

In part two of “Anything’s Pastable,” Dan embarks on an epic trip across Italy in search of lesser-known pasta dishes — and to learn about the evolution of pasta more broadly. He starts in Rome, where food writer Katie Parla reveals a shocking truth about pasta. Then an Italian food historian challenges Dan’s thinking about carbonara.

After Dan’s pasta shape, cascatelli, went viral, people everywhere were cooking with it and sending him photos of what they were making. As exciting as that was, he was disappointed that most folks were only making a handful of well-worn dishes with this new shape. So Dan decided to write a cookbook to show the world that there’s so much more you can and should be putting on all your pasta shapes, cascatelli and beyond!

Gary Gulman did so many food bits early in his stand-up career that he joked he was "a strictly food-based comic." But as his comedy started to evolve in new directions, the role of food in his act changed, too. Instead of observational humor, Gary now uses food in a more personal way — from talking about ice cream as a window into his clinical depression, to skewering income inequality through a discussion of Pop-Tarts.

Violence, death threats, and bagels, oh my! In this final episode of Deep Dish season one, Sohla and Ham explore the origins of bagels, and the tough-as-nails Eastern Europe immigrants who created a thriving bagel business in New York. When the mafia tried to muscle its way into the bagel business, the bagel bakers fought back — but in the process, they failed to see a bigger threat.

One table in New York's Adda Indian Canteen is underperforming the others. And in a business with razor-thin margins, that's a real problem. In this special collaboration with Sally Helm and NPR's Planet Money, we enlist the help of a tape measure-wielding professor to try to turn the loser table into a winner.

Stanley cups are all the rage, but did you know they’ve been around for decades? So what happened to make them go viral? We chat about that and much more, including the internet’s love affair with Josh wines, competitive hot pepper eating, and a food-based test of true love, in this edition of the Salad Spinner.

Tacos al pastor are an iconic Mexico City dish — but a relatively new addition to Mexican cuisine. And they only came to be with influences from halfway around the world. Ham and Sohla share the surprising story of al pastor’s origins, then Ham visits Taquería Ramírez, one of the most talked about taco spots in Brooklyn, to learn their unique method.

New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells has been called the most feared food writer in America. He can make or break a restaurant with the power of one of his reviews. When he goes out, he does so in secret, making reservations under fake names because he doesn't want restaurants to know that he's coming. This week Pete takes Dan on an undercover mission to a New York restaurant.

In 1964 Rocky Aoki, a Japanese immigrant, created hibachi restaurants in America when he opened his first Benihana. Rocky later said that he based his concept on the idea that "Americans enjoy eating in exotic surroundings, but are deeply mistrustful of exotic foods.” The restaurant took off, but Rocky's legacy is complicated.

Today on Deep Dish, Sohla and Ham explore the history of Korea through the story of a rice cake. Tteokbokki (Korean rice cakes) are as popular in Korea as hot dogs are in the U.S. Ji Hye Kim, the chef and owner of Miss Kim in Ann Arbor, Michigan, fell in love with tteokbokki as a kid in South Korea.

Introducing Deep Dish, a new podcast from The Sporkful hosted by Sohla and Ham El-Waylly! Sohla and Ham are chefs, recipe developers, YouTube stars — and they’re married. In each episode, Sohla and Ham uncover the surprising story behind a dish, then go back to their kitchen to see what they’re inspired to cook up.

Over the past few years there has been an explosion in new products in grocery stores, from barbecue sauces to nut butters to seltzers. Big brands have dominated the shelves for decades, but small startups have elbowed their way in thanks to a surprising strategy, which reveals something about how supermarkets actually make money.

Ben Abbott wants to pair his meals with drinks, but as a Mormon, he doesn't drink alcohol. So Dan journeys to Galco’s Soda Pop Stop, an offbeat soda shop in Los Angeles, to find Ben some beverages. Plus, linguist John McWhorter explains why some people say soda, coke, or pop.

The most common New Year’s resolution Americans make is to lose weight. For many years, that was Aubrey Gordon’s resolution, too. But one conversation with a friend led Aubrey to rethink the way we talk about fat people and weight loss.

From tortilla chips to tree bark, from fancy cheese to toe cheese, there’s a world of smells all around us that tells us a lot about food, drink, and everything else. So says legendary food scientist Harold McGee in his new book, Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells. Harold joins us to explain the connection between wet dog smell and fermented cabbage, and why we should have more “smell empathy” for others.

What foods do Sporkful listeners resolve to eat more of in the new year, and why? And what’s Dan’s New Year’s food resolution for 2024? All is revealed in our annual year-end spectacular.

Samin Nosrat, author of the bestselling cookbook "Salt Fat Acid Heat," joins Dan to talk about feeling like an outsider, sexism and pretentiousness in food, and the finer points of toast.

Since the Michelin Guide was created in 1926, it has awarded about 3,000 stars to select restaurants around the world. And while Michelin has a ton of brand recognition, the system it uses to rate restaurants is also famously secretive. Today on The Sporkful, we pull back the curtain on the guide and speak with a former Michelin inspector about his experience handing out stars.

We are back with another Salad Spinner, and this time it’s our year end edition! Remember when Starbucks debuted olive oil coffee? Or when Grimace, the McDonald’s mascot that looks like a purple blob, became a queer icon?

The native Minnesotan explains why a little internal bleeding can't keep her from a treat, and why the way she eats salad is like the way she deals with depression.

Fuchsia Dunlop has written some of the best known English-language books on Chinese cooking, spending years at a time immersing herself in different regions of China in order to learn the area’s dialect and culinary specialties. But as she tells Dan, that wasn’t her original plan.

When Jody Scaravella lost his grandma, his mom, and his sister within a few years, he opened a restaurant in their honor, as a way of dealing with his grief. But the restaurant, Enoteca Maria on Staten Island, NY, had a twist: the chefs were all Italian grandmas, or nonnas.

Starting this week we're pulling one classic Sporkful from the deep freezer every other Friday and sharing it with you! We're calling these episodes "Reheats." If you have one you want to hear, email us at hello@sporkful.com! This week to kick things off: We discuss the beauty and tyranny of tradition, as well as the Wheel Of Infinite Thanksgiving Anxiety, with legendary food writer Mimi Sheraton, Milk Street Kitchen's Christopher Kimball, and cookbook author Kian Lam Kho. And yes, we're serious.

Tiffanie Barriere is an award-winning bartender and cocktail educator who goes by the title “The Drinking Coach.” As the holidays approach, Tiffanie joins us to share some cocktail inspiration, talking with Dan about drinks for every season. She’s also created a cocktail perfect for this season -- find it on Dan’s Instagram and in our newsletter!

How did the U.S. military create a pizza that soldiers could eat on the battlefield? Our friends at the podcast Proof from America’s Test Kitchen follow the five-year journey to create the world's most shelf-stable pizza.

Sohla El-Waylly — chef, recipe developer, YouTube star — just released her first cookbook, Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook. She sees the book as an antidote to the pitfalls of culinary school (which she calls “a scam”), and she wrote it to help home cooks learn in their own kitchens.

Major announcement! Dan’s first cookbook, Anything’s Pastable, is available for preorder wherever books are sold starting today! This collection of non-traditional pasta sauces is not your nonna’s cookbook.

Back in 2018, we talked with chef and recipe developer Yewande Komolafe about her experience as an undocumented immigrant. She grew up in Nigeria, but after immigrating legally to the U.S. a clerical error led to her losing her immigration status. For years she felt she had to hide parts of herself, for fear of being outed as undocumented.

We are back with the Salad Spinner! This is our rapid fire roundtable discussion of the latest food news, from significant to silly, surprising to strange. And in the Spinner this week are Amanda Mull, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Doug Mack, who writes the newsletter Snack Stack.

Curtis Chin was practically raised at Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, his family’s restaurant in Detroit. It was a restaurant that served everybody, from the mayor (who was a regular) to sex workers to business executives. Within the walls of the restaurant, the Chin family saw the rise of Detroit as a multicultural, industrial city, and its decline in the wake of white flight and the crack epidemic.

School is back in session. And for kids, lunch period is the closest you get to being on your own at school. So what do kids actually talk about at lunch?

Husband-and-wife comedians and podcast hosts Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher often perform standup together. In their Netflix special they offer couples relationship advice, and the occasional roast.

Back in 2017, a far-right politician in France angered his supporters and caused a small scandal. The faux pas? Enjoying a plate of couscous. Couscous is one of the most popular dishes in France, and it’s also a symbol of North African immigration.

On today’s show, we’re featuring two new cookbooks that we’re excited about, and the stories of the authors behind them. James Park’s new cookbook Chili Crisp: 50+ Recipes To Satisfy Your Spicy, Crunchy, Garlicky Cravings is a testament to how he’s never really followed the rules — and why that’s his secret weapon. Then we talk with Adeena Sussman, whose new book is Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals From My Table To Yours.

Breeders at Washington State University spent 20 years developing a completely new variety of apple: Cosmic Crisp. What exactly does it take to create a new kind of apple? And how do they come up with a name for it?

We asked for your food fights and hot takes, and you delivered! We hear about a 20-year dispute over a garlic aversion (with unsavory origins), get to the bottom of the best way to eat a pint of ice cream, and challenge Dan’s long-standing feud with spaghetti.

Foraged ingredients have become all the rage in high end restaurants, part of the move toward hyperlocal, farm-to-table ingredients. Of course, we humans have been foraging pretty much forever. And though it’s less common in America today, Jay Marion’s family never really stopped.

While the villages to the east and west have charming Main Streets, the small town of Greenlawn, sandwiched in between, has pickles. Dan stops by the annual Pickle Festival before diving into the story of Samuel Ballton, the formerly enslaved man who became Greenlawn’s Pickle King.

Today we tackle news in the world of food that’s at turns substantive, silly, and surprising in a new series we’re calling Salad Spinner! Take a spin with us as Dan chats with journalists Amanda Mull (The Atlantic) and Dennis Lee (The Takeout) about Instant Pot’s parent company declaring bankruptcy, Burger King’s rollout of a cheese sandwich monstrosity in Thailand, and what it means that the World Health Organization now deems aspartame “possibly carcinogenic.”

A few years ago, Tommy Pico, a queer indigenous American poet, and lover of junk food, set out to learn how to cook. He wanted to get healthier, but also, he wanted a food culture to replace the one that was wiped out when the federal government forced his ancestors onto a reservation. Rather than turn to the past to connect with that culture, Tommy turned to friends to build a new one.

When the first Barbie Dreamhouse came out in 1962, it didn’t have a kitchen. Fast forward to today and there are a dozen chef Barbies. What does that say about Barbie, and about American food culture?

Once known for its glacial pace, ice news today is breaking. In the wake of Starbucks’ recent announcement that they’re changing their ice, we’re devoting an entire episode to the drink chiller in all its forms: pellet ice, giant ice cubes, bagged ice, and more.

It’s time for our annual game show, 2 Chefs And A Lie! The game is simple. Dan talks with three “chefs.” Two are real, and one is an actor with a made-up resume.

This week in honor of July 4th, we’re exploring an important part of American history – the contributions of enslaved Black chefs, whose work influences American cuisine to this day. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson brought the enslaved chef James Hemings, brother of Sally Hemings, with him to France to train under the French culinary masters of the day.

How do you feed yourself on a hike that’s more than 2,200 miles long and takes six months to complete? Every summer, hundreds of people attempting to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine, are faced with that question. This week senior producer Emma Morgenstern heads to Pine Grove General Store, the trail’s halfway point, and enters a world where most typical rules of eating seem not to apply.

The stand-up comedian Zarna Garg spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom. Now she sells out shows across the country and has her own special on Prime Video. In her stand-up and her social media videos, food is often a main character.

Remember that time you bought an apple in Canada or a piece of cheese in France and “forgot” to declare it when you crossed the border into the U.S.? That makes you a food smuggler. It can feel pretty innocent, but sometimes, food smuggling can have big consequences.

Top Chef judge Gail Simmons never thought she’d have a career in food. Sure, her mom ran a cooking school in their home growing up. Yes, she worked in the kitchen on a kibbutz in Israel.

In the 1980s, six women on an island off the coast of Massachusetts began selling lobster rolls as a church fundraiser. Today people travel by car, boat, and plane just to taste these hallowed summer treats. This week, one of those people is Dan.

Comedian and podcaster Jamie Loftus set out on a cross-country road trip to try to figure out: Why do hot dogs have such a hold on American culture? And why does she continue to find them so damn delicious? Over the course of her Hot Dog Summer, she tried all kinds of regional American dogs, from a bacon-wrapped Sonoran dog in Tucson, to a bologna-wrapped dog in Baltimore, to one that involved SpaghettiOs.

When the California government stepped in to try to prevent abalone from going extinct, it also criminalized the food traditions of indigenous people in the region. In this collaboration with our friends at the podcast Copper and Heat, we look into the history of this now luxury ingredient — a tale that involves San Francisco bohemians, Japanese fishermen, and a Pomo-Paiute woman who has risked jail time and fines in order to keep these food traditions alive.

This week we're exploring the musical history of jelly, from the Harlem Renaissance to Beyoncé and beyond. Along the way, we hear the story of a famous moment in internet history, explore depictions of Black women in music, and learn how jelly became an affirmation for LGBTQIA+ identity. And then, for our grand finale, we write an original song about JELLY!

ChatGPT can use artificial intelligence to generate high school essays, emails, cover letters, and a lot more. But can it write an episode of The Sporkful? Eater senior reporter Bettina Makalintal joins us to discuss, and to tell us what happened when she asked ChatGPT to write a “stinky lunchbox immigrant memoir.”

Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen helped change the tone of Vietnamese cookbooks when she published her first in 2006. “They had these long, long ingredient lists that kind of exoticized the cuisine,” Andrea tells Dan. “But we're here in America. Why can't we talk about Vietnamese food in America?”

Crunchy, creamy, squishy, slimy… the list goes on. Texture might not be the first thing you think of when describing your favorite foods, but it plays a big role in the foods you love and the foods you hate. And it’s not just an individual preference; culture can help determine whether you love crunchy or squishy foods.

Bill Nye is a goofball nerd to the core, and he’s built a career on making science fun and accessible for everyone. So can Bill give Dan some satisfying answers to big, and small, food science questions? Like what’s the deal with the five second rule?

How do you eat ice cream on a first date? When should you start meal prepping when you’re in a new relationship? What’s the perfect tailgating food?

Hip hop records as placemats. A sneaker chandelier, reminiscent of shoes hanging on telephone lines. A bouillabaisse overflowing with seafood from the south of France. That was the scene at one of the high-end events put on by Ghetto Gastro, a Bronx-based culinary collective.

Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women are legally required to wear hijabs and alcohol is banned.

Mandy Naglich is an award-winning home brewer who also writes and teaches about beer. Now she wants to become a Master Cicerone — basically the beer equivalent of a master sommelier. There are only 19 in the world, and just three are women.

A year ago we spoke with a young woman we’re calling Raina, who felt she was on the verge of developing an eating disorder. For context and perspective, we spoke with comedian Margaret Cho, who's struggled with eating disorders much of her life. This week, we get an update on how Raina is doing one year later.

The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has consistently topped lists of best restaurants in the world. People fly in from all over the globe to pay $500 per person for the hyperlocal tasting menus dreamed up by chef/owner Rene Redzepi. But a couple months ago, Redzepi announced the restaurant will close next year because it had become unsustainable, “financially and emotionally.”

When Alexandra Yingst plopped down at a bar in Reykjavik after a 10-hour drive through a blizzard, she saw something unexpected: a Big Mac, in seemingly perfect condition, under a glass dome. It turns out that Big Mac tells us a lot about Iceland’s economy and national identity. Our friends at the Atlas Obscura podcast explore the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places — and this week they’re bringing us two of their best food stories.

"Flirting over food is really the best way to flirt," says actor Alan Alda, and he would know. He met his wife, Arlene, at a dinner party in college. A rum cake fell off the top of a refrigerator, and Arlene and Alan were the only ones to grab a fork and eat it off the floor.

When the French chef Jean-Robert de Cavel died in December, hundreds of chefs wore their white coats to his memorial service in downtown Cincinnati. It was a testament to how many people Jean-Robert had inspired in the thirty years he lived in the city. So how did this fancy French chef end up in Cincinnati — and why did he stay?

When cascatelli first went viral, Dan heard from dozens of listeners who wanted to try it, but couldn’t because they were gluten-free. Well, challenge accepted: Dan sets out to make a version of cascatelli without gluten, a project that’s now nearly a year in the making.

We’re back with the latest on Cascatelli, the new pasta shape that Dan invented. Now that the chaos around Cascatelli’s launch has died down, Dan has to make some big decisions about what to do next — with help from his cousin Carrie and die maker Chris Maldari.

The first run of cascatelli sold out almost immediately. In the weeks that followed, the pasta basically went viral. In this update, you’ll hear how Dan and his family reacted. Then, Dan weighs his options for the future of cascatelli. For help, he turns to die maker Chris Maldari, and Cara Nicoletti and Ariel Hauptman from Seemore Meats & Veggies. For more information on cascatelli ordering and shipping, check out these FAQs from Sfoglini. // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

After months of revisions, Dan thinks he’s got his shape. But he’s been working on this for so long, he’s not sure he knows what’s good anymore. So he brings in an all-star panel of taste testers, including Sohla El-Waylly, Francis Lam, Dorie Greenspan, Christopher Kimball, Claire Saffitz, Jet Tila, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Then J. Kenji López-Alt, Justin Warner, and Samin Nosrat help Dan pick a name for his shape before, finally, it’s production day!  The shape is on sale right now! Get it at Sfoglini, and use promo code SPORKFUL for 15% off your whole order.  Want to see photos and videos from Dan’s journey? Follow @thesporkful on Instagram! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

The first test batch of Dan’s pasta rolls off the presses, but problems crop up almost immediately. In order to save his shape, Dan has to make some big decisions that come with a high price tag. Then just as things start coming together, a die redesign goes very wrong.  Want to see photos and videos from Dan’s journey? Follow The Sporkful on Instagram! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Dan dusts himself off and goes on the hunt for a pasta company to partner with. Plus, he edges closer to a design for his shape. But the real challenge is convincing pasta industry insiders to take him seriously.  Want to see photos and videos from Dan’s journey? Follow The Sporkful on Instagram! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Dan seeks inspiration for the design of his new pasta shape, a process that includes an epic pasta tasting and a chat with an architect who points him to a very radical concept. But after a meeting with a pasta maker, Dan learns exactly how much these big ideas will cost him. Want to see photos and videos from Dan’s journey? Follow The Sporkful on Instagram! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

Spaghetti doesn’t hold sauce. Angel hair goes from zero to mush. Wagon wheels are gimmicks. These are just a few of Dan’s many frustrations with classic pasta shapes. Three years ago he set out to do better when he embarked on a quest to invent a new pasta shape, actually get it made, and actually sell it. And things have not gone as planned. Starting today, we’re telling the story of Dan’s quest in a five-part series; part 2 is also up now. Will the world have a new pasta shape? Or will Dan’s dreams fall as flat as an overcooked rigatoni? Want to see photos and videos from Dan’s journey? Follow The Sporkful on Instagram! // Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

For the last three years, Dan has been on a quest to invent a new pasta shape, actually get it made, and actually sell it. And things have not gone as planned. Starting this Monday, March 1, we’re telling the story of this quest in a five-part series.// Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

When the spotlight goes away… In the wake of allegations about systemic racism at Bon Appétit, people of color there were hopeful things would change. Nearly two months later, are they changing? How are Bon Appétit and its parent company, Condé Nast, dealing with this turmoil — employees speaking out, a refusal to produce videos until negotiations are settled, and an internal investigation into pay equity? We spoke with six people at BA, all of whom asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, to find out. After the headline-grabbing scandal comes the time when people have to make real change. Those in power have to act. UPDATE: We published this episode Monday morning, August 3rd. On Thursday, three stars of the BA Test Kitchen— Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, and Sohla El-Waylly—announced that they would no longer be participating in videos for Bon Appétit. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

A beloved brand with a toxic workplace... The videos shot in the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen are among the most popular food videos on YouTube, beloved for their depiction of a workplace that feels cool, fun, and diverse, full of chummy editors who have become celebrities. But that all changed this week when a photo of Bon Appetit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport in brownface was posted to Twitter. It brought to the fore long-simmering anger about a lack of diversity among the staff and the cuisines that get highlighted, as well as pay inequities and hostile treatment for people of color at BA. We speak with reporter Rachel Premack, former staffer Nikita Richardson, and current BA assistant editor Sohla El-Waylly to find out what it’s like to work at Bon Appetit, and what it will take to change it. Get 500+ more great Sporkful episodes from our catalog and lots of other Stitcher goodness when you sign up for Stitcher Premium: www.StitcherPremium.com/Sporkful (promo code: SPORKFUL). Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

The word "plantation" pops up a lot in the food world – Plantation Mint Tea, Plantation Chicken, Plantation Rum. But it's not a culinary term. It doesn't indicate certain spices or cooking methods. So what are white people in food who use this word trying to evoke? Inspired by a piece by food writer Osayi Endolyn, we go on a mission to find out. In the process, we try to learn something about whiteness in America.  Transcript available at www.sporkful.com. This episode is from The Sporkful's archives. Normally, this episode and hundreds like it are only available with Stitcher Premium. But in these difficult times, we're releasing it for free — both to help our listeners through quarantine, and to say thanks for continuing to support our show. If you'd like to have access to our entire archive, you can sign up for Stitcher Premium at www.stitcherpremium.com/SPORKFUL, and use the promo code SPORKFUL for a special discount.

This podcast isn’t for foodies, it’s for eaters. We have a ton of fun obsessing about food to learn more about culture, science, history, and most importantly—people. In every episode of The Sporkful you’re going to learn something, feel something, and laugh. Winner of the James Beard and Webby Award for Best Food Podcast. Hosted by Dan Pashman, inventor of the pasta shape cascatelli. Subscribe, follow, or favorite now and join us!