News Nerds

Today we hear two interviews about youth in the limelight. First an interview with the CEO of Global Citizen Year, Erin Lewellen. She grew up in rural Oregon as the daughter of a logger and schoolteacher and now heads a nonprofit that sends high school graduates around the world on a global gap year to help solve specific problems in the world. This semester is in Cape Town, South Africa where students will work with human rights protection and activism. We'll talk about Erin's early life, GCY's programs, and the public education system. In the second half of the podcast we hear from the authors of the new cookbook, Cooking With My Dad, The Chef which was published in association with America's Test Kitchen. Although the authors, Ken and his daughter Verveine Oringer, live in Boston, they are connected to the rest of the world through Ken's restaurants. Ken is a James Beard Award winning cook and when Verveine was diagnosed with Celiac disease, they decided to write a cookbook for kids that explains how to make everything from pasta to waffles without flour.

Food royalty Mark Bittman joins us today to talk about a career spanning from the late seventies and early eighties until now. Of course he’s the author of the 1998 cookbook How To Cook Everything and the series that followed, he worked with the New York Times for 30 years including at his minimalist column, and has made America aware of the systemic problems embedded in how we eat with books like Animal, Vegetable, Junk. Today we hear a reflective side of Bittman. We’ll hear about his grandparents, who settled in the U.S. after leaving Europe, how the media has changed since he joined the industry, and his take on America’s food problem.

Ezra

Rikers Island in New York City houses a complex of ten jails. Although some might think of the facility in terms of statistics and numbers, Reuven Blau and Graham Rayman's new book, Rikers: An Oral History documents Rikers' history from the 70s until today from the point of view of people that spent parts of their lives at the prison. The pair of journalists interviewed more than 130 incarcerated people, correctional officers, wardens, investigators, and commissioners to explain everything from food to violence on the island. Today we’ll talk to Blau, a reporter for The City, and Rayman, a reporter for the New York Daily News about the book and the future of Rikers.

Ezra

Have you ever thought about what New York City was like before Europeans settled the area? This is just one of the many questions answered by Michael Kimmelman’s latest small gem of a book, The Intimate City: Walking New York. The book combines Michael’s own knowledge of the city with other points of view. He invited planners, professors, and architects to join him on walks around the quiet streets of pandemic New York.  Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times and was previously the chief art critic based in Berlin. He’s  also a two time Pulitzer finalist and the founder of a new project from the Times called Headway which focuses on Global affairs. Today we’ll talk about Michael’s book, his work for the Times, and his own upbringing as the son of a leftist doctor in Greenwich Village.

Ezra

Today we’ll analyze last week’s State of the Union Address with Peter Baker. Peter is the chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Biden is the third president Baker has covered with the times. He previously covered Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the Washington Post. In between his time covering the White House at the Post, he was a Moscow Bureau Chief with his wife Susan Glasser who’s also a journalist. In addition to Biden’s State of the Union, we’ll talk about his time in Russia where he interviewed Vladimir Putin and co wrote a book about the Kremlin with his wife. They went on to co write two additional books including their latest, The Divider: Trump In The White House 2017-2021, which was published last year. Also coming up, we’ll talk about Kamala Harris’ role in the White House as Biden prepares to officially announce his bid for reelection in 2024 and the White House response to the 3 latest unidentified objects shot down late last week.

Today, we’ll sit down with acclaimed actress Glenn Close. Close has won Tonys, Golden Globes, and Emmys for her work on screen. You probably know her best from movies such as Fatal Attraction, 101 Dalmatians, The World According to Garp, Dangerous Liaisons, Albert Nobbs, The Big Chill, The Wife, and Hillbilly Elegy. She’s also possibly the most interesting actress working today. We’ll talk about how she grew up in the midst of what she calls a cult, how mental illness has touched her family and her work championing productive ways to talk about it through her organization, Bring Change 2 Mind. And of course, her renowned career. Specifically, we’ll talk about her work in Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard, where she plays Mamaw, the fierce matriarch of a scarred family, and in The Wife where Close plays a famous novelist’s wife who’s constantly shadowed and diminished.

Ezra

If last week’s show was for the history buffs today is for the people that love to eat. Today we have a gargantuan show with Christopher Kimball of Milk Street and Matt Sartwell of Kitchen Arts and Letters. First, we’ll play my recent interview with Christopher Kimball, the cook with the bowtie. You might know him for his work with America’s Test Kitchen where he founded the classic food magazine Cook’s Illustrated. The magazine famously accepts no advertising and tests every recipe until they’ve exhausted every possible combination they can think of. He left America’s Test Kitchen in 2015 and went on to found Milk Street. 

Milk Street focuses on changing the way you cook and as Chris will tell us, his exploration of other food cultures both influenced his choice to leave America’s Test Kitchen and inspired Milk Street. As he states on the Milk Street website, the company extends "an invitation to the cooks of the world to sit at the same table.” 

After my interview with Christopher, we’ll head to New York where we’ll step inside the famed bookstore, Kitchen Arts and Letters. I was fortunate to geek out about cookbooks with Matt Sartwell, who’s the managing partner at the store. We’ll talk about kitchen reference, books for beginners, and more. It’s not only a store for home cooks, because Julia Child and James Beard stopped by as well. The store was founded by Nach Waxman in 1983 and has been America’s best known culinary bookstore ever since. Nach died in 2021 but has been remembered by the culinary community for his love of cooking and sharing that love with the world.

This episode was such a joy to create for you guys, I hope you enjoy.

Ezra

Today we have a show for the history buffs out there. Nearly eighty years ago, a historic conference took place in Tehran. The three leaders fighting against the Nazis in World War II, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Iran after exhaustive planning and correspondence.  They knew that the conference would help the three nations come together and agree on key issues in the war. The three leaders didn’t know, however, that as they made their way to Tehran, Nazi sympathizers would be in the city as well. In the new book, The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch tell the story of a potential assassination plot against the leaders. The book expands on the events of the Tehran conference and answers how the leaders got to that point. It’s a complicated story and this week Josh Mensch stops by to help us understand it. Mensch is a documentary film writer, producer, and  director who’s worked with the History Channel, Nat Geo, Discovery, and PBS. This is his third book written with Meltzer.

Ezra