Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

Julia Collin Davidson, of America's Test Kitchen, talks about the versatility of the slow cooker. It’s not just for beef stew anymore. On this week’s Please Explain she talks about how to roast, poach, and even make cakes and custards in the slow cooker. Julia Collin Davidson is one of the editors of America’s Test Kitchen’s Slow Cooker Revolution.

Just in time for Halloween, this week’s Please Explain is all about candy! Samira Kawash tells the story of how candy evolved from a luxury good to a cheap, everyday snack. In Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure she explores the history and cultural history of candy and examines how candy became the most loved and loathed of processed foods.

Humans have been drinking wine for 8,000 years. On this week’s Please Explain Paul Lukacs tells us all about wine and its long, rich history. He’s the author of Inventing Wine: A New History of One of the World’s Most Ancient Pleasures.

Ron Nixon, New York Times reporter, talks about the Farm Bill—what it means for farmers, how it shapes food and nutrition policy in this country, and why it’s taken so long to pass and updated bill.

Marjorie Shaffer, author of Pepper, and Andrew Smith, food historian, discuss pepper, the world’s most popular spice—from pepper’s role in bringing the Europeans, and later the Americans, to Asia to the many ways to use pepper to enhance your cooking!

Food is measured in calories. People sometimes count calories and cut calories, and this week’s Please Explain is all about what calories are, how they’re measured, how we burn them, and if they differ from food to food. Joining us are: Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy at Duke University. And Russell Rising, Research Associate in the Metabolic Laboratory at the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital.

Chutzpah, glitch, klutz, schlep, and tchotchke are all Yiddish words that have entered into everyday usage. On this week’s Please Explain, we’ll find out all about the Yiddish language—where it comes from, how it’s influenced our culture, and its resurgence. We’re joined by Jonathan Brent, Executive Director at YIVO Institute For Jewish Research, and  Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor at YIVO Institute For Jewish Research.

This week's Please Explain is about the largest mammals on earth: whales. Joining us are: Dr. John J. Flynn, the Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History and the Dean of the Museum's Richard Gilder Graduate School. He's also the curator of the exhibition "Whales: Giants of the Deep," on view at the museum through January 5. And Dr. Mark Baumgartner, Marine Biologist and Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

There are more ticks in more places than ever before, and over the past two decades tick-borne illness has increased, especially in the northeast. Dr. Thomas Mather, director of the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Vector-Borne Disease and its TickEncounter Resource Center, and Dr. Thomas Daniels, Associate Research Scientist and Co-Director of the Vector Ecology Laboratory at Fordham University’s Louis Calder Center, tell us all about ticks, the blood-sucking arachnids that can spread disease and how to protect against tick bites and prevent tick-borne disease.

This week we're following up on Please Explain: Pain to find out more about pain killers. Barry Meier, New York Times reporter and author of A World of Hurt: Fixing Pain Medicine’s Biggest Mistake, talks about how pain medications work, how over the counter analgesics compare to prescription pain killers, and the problems of pain killer addiction.