Michael Twitty can trace his family’s food history back to the slave cabins and Antebellum kitchens of the South. Honoring his diasporic heritage — he’s both black and Jewish — lead Twitty to the practice of identity cooking. He calls it Kosher/Soul.More
Exploring the Deeper End of Ideas
Interviews By Topic
Back in 1995, Goose Island created one of the most iconic craft beers of all time — Bourbon County Stout. Which — as Chicago Tribune beer writer Josh Noel explains — was why it was such a shock when they sold the brewery to Anheuser-Busch.More
After listening to the food mavens and masters in our show on chasing "authentic" food, you might be mentally gathering tips on how to better enjoy food in your own home. So let’s gather our guests virtually for a summer party. This would be fun as a picnic, or backyard lazy afternoon brunch, or a light dinner on a hot day.More
153 flavors of ice cream. An acre of cold cereals. Why do supermarkets have so many choices? Or do they? Where we might see hundreds of flavors, varieties and brands of food, food journalist Simran Sethi sees a scary kind of sameness.More
Over time, Samin Nosrat developed her own philosophy of cooking, based on a few universal principles: Salt, fat, acid and heat. Haleema Shah wondered: Does boiling all cooking down to basic elements like that lead to more authentic food?More
Author Lucas Mann writes that calling reality TV a guilty pleasure is "the dumbest cultural cliche." We ask him about his new book Captive Audience, which is about his relationship with reality TV and the person he watches it with — his wife.More
"Dear Committee Members" author Julie Schumacher recommends Portuguese Nobel Lauaureate José Saramago's retelling of a true tale.More
Feeling regret about committing a crime matters in criminal sentencing. But if emotion isn't supposed to have a place in the law, should it matter? Susan Bandes tells us how judges and juries evaluate remorse, and why.More
In 2004, Anne Duke was in the final of the World Series of Poker. She won, but that's not the entire story. It's how she won that became legendary. More
Jason Rohrer is one of the top game designers in the world. So when the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act came out, he found a loophole. Turns out, its' not all internet gambling games that are against the law. It's only the ones that are subject to chance. He claims that his new online gambling game is all skill. More
Want to be successful at gambling? How about sports? Investments? Michael Mauboussi is the Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse and author of a book where he outlines “The Success Equation."More
Psychologists John and Julie Gottman are famous for being able to predict with 94% accuracy whether a couple will break up, stay together unhappily, or stay together happily.More
Choreographer Bill T. Jones says that while many of us are trying to put more skill into our lives, his mentor, the musician John Cage, spent his life trying to do just the opposite. Jones says Cage’s music was often based on randomness and chance.More
A lot of people feel guilty about something - diet, money, relationships or something else. Our host Anne Strainchamps and writer Devorah Baum definitely do. So we asked them to sit down to talk about how we wound up about in a giant cultural guilt trip.More
Young people seem to be feeling the pressure to be perfect more than anyone else. Social psychologist Tom Curran tells us how neoliberalism and the digital age created a generation that feels guilty about falling short of flawlessness.More
We decided to trace Western culture's fixation on guilt back to one of its earliest origins — the story of Adam and Eve. It's only a page and a half in the Bible, but literary historian Stephen Greenblatt told Steve Paulson why it has been so influential.More
Critic Ted Gioia says a new generation of young musicians have discovered an antidote to stale, formulaic pop music in the energy and ecstasy of jazz.More
Norway's acclaimed pianist Tord Gustavsen recommends another Norwegian classic, Masqualero's album "Bande a Part."More