Here at HRN, the month of March has become inextricably linked with Charleston, South Carolina. This weekend, for the fifth year in a row, we’re taking food radio on the road to the Charleston Wine + Food Festival. We’re hosting interviews all weekend long from the Culinary Village. It’s a winning combination of great food, great weather, and great conversations.

To celebrate HRN’s fifth year at Charleston Wine + Food, we compiled some of our favorite moments from last year featuring guests from across the Southeast. Tune in to hear from Jovan Sage, Matthew Raiford, Nate Collier, Matt & Ted Lee, Robert Stehling, Phil Rosenthal, Femi Oyediran, Miles White, and Matt Tunstall.

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This week on a special Super Tuesday-themed Meat and Three, we get ready for a big day at the polls by looking at the intersecting worlds of food and electoral politics.  We’ll bring you everywhere from Australian voting booths with a special sizzle, to a diner in New Hampshire that regularly plays host to future presidents.  

First, Rowan O’Connell-Gates takes us to the campaign trail with a story about candidates’ attempts to woo voters with food.  Kevin Chang Barnum explores Australia’s voting laws and how they created a tradition known as democracy sausage.  The Speakeasy host Sother Teague compares recent politics to the cultural climate that led to prohibition.  Finally, Ruby Walsh explains the risks of eating in public as she examines how one photo derailed a British Labor Party leader’s career.

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A dessert with many names, baked and shared around the world, the King Cake is most recognized in the U.S. for its relationship with Mardi Gras. This week on a bonus episode of Meat and Three, we learn more about its origins, and treat ourselves to the decadent King Cake, not once, but twice. 

The HRN team overnights one directly from Randazzo in New Orleans and then learns how to make our own with Jake Cohen in The FeedFeed Test Kitchen. Lastly we hear from Chef John Caluda who has been making King Cakes since the '90s.

Valentine’s Day traditions are all about showing love to those closest to us. Whether you’re a romantic or a cynic, the holiday is inescapable and it is difficult to keep from indulging in one way or another.

Our stories this week dig into some hard truths associated with Valentine’s rituals. Kevin Chang Barnum tells about the anxieties within the dairy industry. Ruby Walsh speaks to Tasha Marks, food historian and artist, about the legacy of the sugar sculpture. Jess Krainchich provides some hope in an interview with ethical chocolate company Fine and Raw. And finally, Kat Johnson travels to Alabama to bring us a story of an unusual delicacy: deer heart tartare.

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On January 31st, the United Kingdom officially withdrew from the European Union. As Britain leaps into the unknown, it leaves its population in anxious anticipation of the nation’s future. At first, this seismic shift in global politics may feel abstract. After all, most Britons resumed their usual routines on February 1st. But, slowly, citizens will see the consequences of Brexit - and, in all likelihood, food will be the first place that people will begin to notice changes. We talked to experts to find out how Brexit is shifting what the UK will eat and drink in the future.

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At its core, food is fuel. Every living organism on earth relies upon some form of sustenance to get through the day. Today, humans have a very different relationship to food than past generations. On top of having access to virtually any food we desire, our understanding of nutrition has greatly expanded.

In the olden days, it was normal for professional athletes to eat steaks and drink beers before their games. Now there's dozens of diets and nutritional ideologies wrapped up in the sports world. With all this information, the new question becomes: what information should we trust? We talked to all different types of athletes and several nutrition experts this week to find out the myriad ways that food is used to enhance physical fitness and performance.

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In this special bonus episode we're highlighting one of HRN's newest shows - The Feedfeed. The Feedfeed is the world's largest epicurean social media community, and we are so excited to partner with them on this new series.

In this episode - recipe developers, cookbook authors and food styling icons Susan Spungen and Erin McDowell sit down to chat about what goes into the process of creating the perfect recipe and making it gorgeous. We cover everything from Erin's breathtaking New York Times pie spread to Susan's experiences food styling not one, but two Meryl Streep movies.

Want to stay up to date on the latest The Feedfeed episodes? To hear more conversations with Jake Cohen, Julie & Dan Resnick and their guests innovating and disrupting Food Media, subscribe to The Feedfeed (it’s free!) on iTunes or Stitcher. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate + review us on Apple’s Podcast Store and follow The Feedfeed on thefeedfeed.com and Instagram @thefeedfeed. Thanks for tuning in!

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From still-life bowls of fruit and pastel paintings of cake – to sensually photographed peppers and iconic Campbell soup cans, food is one of our favorite things to portray and observe through the visual arts. It also plays a role in some of the earliest known artworks – where the animals painted on cave walls may have represented sources of food for early humans.

This week, we look at the evolution of how the culinary and art worlds have become tightly intertwined. Stories focus on food sculpture, bread as art, the iconic works of Wayne Thiebaud, and how instagram has changed the way we share and consume food.

You can find the entire series of Modernist Breadcrumbs here.

And you can hear more from Michael Harlan Turkell's The Food Seen here.

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On our season five finale of Meat and Three, we take you where no other podcast has gone before… into the heart of The Lettuce Club. Kat Johnson gets some help from student journalist, Heidi Stang, to tell the story of a group of students at the University of Minnesota Duluth racing to see who can eat a whole head of lettuce the fastest.

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Your host, Caity, has some big news to share!  You won’t be hearing from her as much on the upcoming season six, because she'll be on maternity leave. That's the inspiration for this week's episode: pregnant people are given a LOT of advice about what to eat, what not to eat, and how their tastes and bodies will change. There are suddenly so many rules and expectations – and a lot of conflicting recommendations –  that it can be really overwhelming.  Add to that your brain being piloted by a tiny alien, plus morning sickness, heartburn, and lots of other surprises, the act of nourishing yourself in pregnancy gets pretty complicated. This week, we tackle cravings, legends, and the myths and misunderstandings that land certain foods on the forbidden list.

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