Today’s episode is with food writer, producer, and media entrepreneur Stephen Satterfield. Stephen is the host of Netflix’s critically acclaimed docuseries “High on the Hog” and the founder of Whetstone, a magazine and media company dedicated to food origins and culture from around the world. In this episode, he shares the importance of food origins as a space for reclamation and what it means to examine who and what’s being left out of the story. 

We explore Stephen’s own origin story–growing up in Atlanta in the ’80s–along with topics that range from his start as a young sommelier, the implications of citizens being divorced from food culture, and ultimately how being crushed by a series of life events propelled his career forward; leading him from self-doubt to conviction. 

Things to read

Oysters originated because of a Black man

James Hemings invented baked Mac and Cheese

Whetstone Magazine, Summer 2021

What to check out

Whetstone Media

Kara Washington and food apartheid

Environmental factors that affect a crop - Terroir

Stephen Satterfield became a Sommelier before his 21st birthday

What to listen to

Episode mentioned by Dario - The Morality of Meat

Point of Origin Podcast

Whetstone Radio Collective

Outkast - Mainstream (1996)

Who to follow

Stephen Satterfield on IG

This conversation was recorded on March 4th, 2022

Host Dario Calmese 

Producer Carmen D. Harris  

Production Assistant: Coniqua Johnson 

Visual Art Direction and Designs: 

River Wildmen, AfroVisualism

Original Music composed by Dario Calmese 

Visit us at blackimagination.com