Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

Americans complaining of "Won Ton Soup Headaches" in the late 1960s gave MSG a bad reputation. But this controversial ingredient can be useful – and delicious – in the kitchen.

Fashion expert, G. Bruce Boyer catalogs the essentials of an ideal male wardrobe, dispels myths of what men should never wear, and clarifies when to wear what in his latest book.

Our latest Please Explain is all about cockroaches! Even as our efforts to exterminate them have developed into ever more complex forms of chemical warfare, roaches’ basic design of six legs, two hypersensitive antennae, and one set of voracious mandibles has persisted unchanged for millions of years. In The Cockroach Papers: A Compendium of History and Lore, Richard Schweid explores their astonishing diversity, how they mate, what they’ll eat.

We'll take a guided tour of New York's bird life, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Octopuses are extremely complex creatures. And Sy Montgomery devoted herself to figuring them out, focusing on how they learn, problem-solve, and even love. 

The American Southwest is a land of great mystery. One of the most baffling riddles is why the ancient native tribes of the Four Corners, having occupied the region for more than 5,000 years, abandoned their homeland in the 14th century. David Roberts, an award-winning author, veteran mountain climber, and scholar of the American Southwest, will discuss the latest archaeological evidence and what we know about why these people disappeared. His latest book is The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest.

(Courtesy of the publisher)

Industrial agriculture and livestock are big contributors to greenhouse gasses. Making one hamburger requires hundreds of gallons of water. As more studies highlight the environmental impact of meat, some scientists and entrepreneurs are rethinking meat as we know it. For today's Please Explain, we'll talk to a few of them. 

Professor Mark Post is a faculty member at Maastricht University, and a leader in making Cultured Beef. He is working on a process that makes a beef hamburger using stem cells. Ethan Brown is the CEO of Beyond Meat. The company makes plant-based meat substitutes that replicate beef and chicken, attempting to make plant proteins behave nearly identically replicate meat proteins.

Ethan Brown, CEO of Beyond Meat

A burger made from Cultured Beef, which has been developed by Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands.

Why isn't New York City's tap water kosher? What makes the corner gyro stand halal? Where do the two standards agree and what sets them apart? For today's Please Explain we dive into the rules and regulations of dietary laws. We are talking to Lara Rabinovitch, food editor at GOOD Magazine and self-styled "Doctor of Pastrami," Rabbi Avrohom Marmorstein, director of Mehadrin Kashrus, and Mohammad Adil Khan, president and founder of the US Halal Association.

Knives have evolved and been domesticated over the years. Predating the fork and spoon, the earliest knives were used as weapons. But as our culture (and culinary tastes) developed over the centuries, so did the ways we use our knives, as did our knives’ shape and design. For today's Please Explain, we will be speaking to Jack Bishop, Editorial Director of America’s Test Kitchen, Sarah Coffin, Curator and Head of the Product Design and Decorative Arts Department at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Mari Sugai, sales consultant at Korin, and Moriah Cowles, knife maker and owner of Orchard Steel in Burlington, VT.

READ: The Cook's Illustrated Guide to Building the Best Knife Set

The arrival of the humble espresso marked a dramatic shift in the way people consumed caffeine across the world, and when espresso and espresso-based drinks became popular in the United States, coffee culture was forever changed. For this week’s Please Explain, we are talking all about espresso: the history of espresso, the technique of making espresso, as well as how and why it has taken off in this country. We will be talking to Erin Meister, a writer and journalist who has spent 14 years in the coffee industry, and Erin McCarthy, a technician at Counter Culture who has worked as a barista and trainer for years, and in 2013 was the first American winner of the World Brewers Cup Champion.