Add Passion and Stir

Omaha Mayor John Ewing, Hastings, NE organizer Sierra Edmisten, and Bellevue, NE SNAP career navigator Alicia Fremont about food insecurity, poverty, SNAP cuts, and the pressure families face when groceries, school meals, child care, and work requirements collide.

Mayor Ewing shares how Omaha mobilized after SNAP benefits were cut, raising $15 million to support food banks and pantries while investing in community gardens and weekend food programs for children. Edmisten and Fremont describe the lived reality behind the numbers: parents skipping meals, children recognizing when food is running low, families losing benefits over paperwork or income thresholds, and the lasting trauma of not knowing how to feed a family.

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Why are millions of Americans losing SNAP food assistance—even when many remain eligible?

In this episode of Add Passion and Stir, host Billy Shore speaks with Jason DeParle, poverty correspondent for The New York Times, and Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about the sharp decline in SNAP participation, new administrative barriers, and the human consequences for children, families, seniors, and people with disabilities.

DeParle shares reporting from Arizona, where SNAP participation has fallen by about half in one year and families describe hours-long waits, unanswered calls, and paperwork requirements that prevent eligible people from receiving food assistance. Parrott explains how changes in federal policy are shifting SNAP costs to states, creating new incentives to reduce enrollment and raising concerns that some states could ultimately end the program altogether.

They also discuss the connection between food insecurity and mental health, the risks to Medicaid and ACA marketplace coverage, the impact on immigrant families, and what listeners can do to make policymakers understand the stakes.

Listen to this urgent conversation about SNAP, hunger, food assistance, poverty, public policy, and the choices shaping who can afford groceries in America.

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In this very special repeat episode of Add Passion and Stir, Billy Shore and Debbie Shore speak with attorney Corey Martin and former DHS attorney Jason Thomas about immigration detention, due process, and what humane policy should look like. In the five months since this episode first aired, more than an additional 140,000 people have been detained by ICE, according to The Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Corey reveals the horrifying conditions she has seen inside the immigration detention center for families and children at Dilley, TX. Jason explains how the immigration system works from the government side, and both push for a more just, practical, and human response. To be part of the solution, learn more at the nonprofit law clinic Mass Deportation Defense.

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In this very important re-airing of Add Passion and Stir, Navyn Salem, founder and CEO of the malnutrition social enterprise Edesia, discusses our shared humanity in caring for children all over the world. Edesia produces fortified, peanut-based products like Plumpy'Nut for humanitarian agencies like UNICEF, World Food Programme, and other NGOs working in emergency and conflict zones.

“We feed children everywhere because that's what humanity is, and we do not want to lose our humanity. We are smart enough. We have enough resources. We're creative and innovative enough to feed every child on planet Earth,” Salem asserts.

Edesia has been impacted by Trump Administration decisions around foreign aid in the last seven months. “I started speaking up and explaining to people that huge parts of humanitarian assistance that the US government does are a win-win for the world and they have to be continued,” she says.

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Tony Spring, chairman and CEO of Macy’s, discusses his career path that began at Bloomingdale’s and led to more than 40 years in retail leadership. Tony reflects on the lessons he learned from Burger King, the importance of customer experience, and how Macy’s has worked to rebuild around hospitality, execution, and culture.

The conversation also explores Macy’s partnership with Share Our Strength and No Kid Hungry, including how the company uses consumer roundups, employee volunteerism, and community campaigns to help fight childhood hunger. Listen to hear how business, service, and social purpose can work together to create a better experience for customers, colleagues, and communities.

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Devon Klatell of the Rockefeller Foundation talks about the growing “Food is Medicine” movement and why it matters for health, equity, and cost savings.  

Devon explains how the Foundation’s work evolved from agriculture and production to nutrition, chronic disease prevention, and better integration between food systems and health care. 

The conversation explores:

• what Food is medicine means in practice, 
• how states and health systems are adopting it, 
• why school meals and regenerative food systems matter, and 
• what it will take to scale these programs nationally. 

Listen to hear how evidence, policy, and partnerships are turning a once-niche idea into a major public health strategy. 

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From the producers of Add Passion and Stir, here is Patriarchs — a six-part audio drama about the most consequential friendship in American history, the one between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. As we emerge from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Patriarchs invites listeners into the founding era with dramatic force, historical depth, and moral honesty, asking not only how America began, but who paid the price and what kind of republic it became.

Written by award-winning playwright Jim McGrath and featuring Stacy Keach as Thomas Jefferson and Edward Gero as John Adams, the series opens in Philadelphia in 1776 and concludes on Independence Day in 1826. Every scene is drawn from real letters, speeches, and memoirs, bringing to life the friendship, rivalry, animosity, and reconciliation that shaped the early United States.

Along the way, Patriarchs also gives voice to Abigail Adams, whose letters cut through ego and ideology, and centers Sally Hemings not as rumor but as a speaking, thinking presence whose life illuminates the brutal realities of slavery and sexual exploitation in the founding generation. This is history as drama, but it is also history as reckoning.

Listen and subscribe to Patriarchs on your favorite podcast apps:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patriarchs/id1896832143

https://open.spotify.com/show/033o4ZbOWxJjM3yHZ8cuBV

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1e3165a6-b42f-471a-b5c6-ede68b01dcbf/patriarchs

Please subscribe, rate, and review Patriarchs on your favorite podcast app so more listeners can discover the series and join the conversation.

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Noah Glass, founder and CEO of Olo and a Share Our Strength board member, shares the path that took him from pizza delivery in Newton MA to building one of the most influential technology platforms in restaurant ordering. Noah shares how early experiences in food, entrepreneurship, and international development shaped Olo’s origin story, why he burned the boats to pursue his idea, and how a long period of doubt eventually led to product-market fit and massive scale.

The conversation also explores leadership, company culture, AI, the future of restaurant hospitality, and Noah’s commitment to ending childhood hunger through No Kid Hungry and Olo’s roundup donations. Listen to hear how technology, generosity, and hospitality can work together to make a real difference.

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Riding their bicycles for 200 miles in two days, 125 culinary leaders and other supporters of the No Kid Hungry campaign raised a record-setting 1.3 million dollars. Their grit and determination over the years have helped connect more children to the bipartisan, fully-funded Summer Meals programs, increasing participation from 3 million to nearly 19 million kids.

Joining us on the site of Chefs Cycle in Bend, OR to share their personal stories of sharing and sacrifice are:

Alex Craddock, CMO of Citigroup;

Brian Morris, "B-MO", Executive Chef for Hattie B's Hot Chicken;

Cory Melanson, Chef of Splendido at the Chateau in Beaver Creek, CO; 

Micah Klasky, the Executive Chef of The Hive at the21 C Museum Hotel in Bentonville AR; and

The Father-Daughter team of 

      Ted Cizma, Executive Chef of LA Catering and Local Events by David LeFevre, and 

      Elaine Cizma, "restaurant-adjacent" health care technologist.

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Billy Shore speaks with Mayor Daniel Rickenmann of Columbia, South Carolina, Mayor Alyia Gaskins of Alexandria, Virginia, and Aaron Goldstein of Share Our Strength about how local leaders are using practical, bipartisan solutions to fight childhood hunger. 

The conversation explores why mayors are so effective at solving problems close to home, how housing, transportation, and economic insecurity affect food access, and why local innovation often moves faster than state or federal policy. 

Mayor Rickenmann shares how Columbia is using partnerships, technology, churches, and community organizations to expand food access, while Mayor Gaskins discusses Alexandria’s focus on housing, workforce issues, and the lived reality of hunger in the community. Together, they show how mayors can turn concern into action and build coalitions that make it easier for families to get the support they need.

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