Please Explain (The Leonard Lopate Show)

From the cavernous Chinatown restaurants where carts of dumplings are wheeled around, waiting to be pointed to and picked up like an eager single teenager at the prom, to foie gras, flank steak and braised duck chins, dim sum is a changing force in Chinese cuisine in this country. Dim sum takes years to master, seconds to eat, and contains within its tapioca wrapper the history of waves of Cantonese immigration.

Ed Schoenfeld, restaurateur, Chinese food aficionado and owner-operator of Red Farm, a Zagat top rated Chinese restaurant in New York, and a New York Times critics-pick.

Now that you're equipped with a variety of new egg recipes, today's Please Explain will answer all of your egg-buying questions! Omega-3, Free Range, Cage Free, Organic… What do these labels mean? Why do eggs come in different colors? Why don’t you have to put farmers market eggs in the fridge? 

Here to answer all these questions and more is Cathy Erway, Serious Eats contributor and author of The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove. She also blogs at Not Eating Out In New York and has a podcast called Eat Your Words on Heritage Radio. She wrote this article about egg labeling.

We'll also be joined by Mary Carpenter, owner and operator of Violet Hill Farm in West Winfield, NY. She keeps poultry and supplies a wide variety of eggs to the Union Square and McCaren Park greenmarkets. Matt Kaplan, who works at the Violet Hill greenmarket stalls, will stop by our studio and bring some eggs for show and tell!

This week’s Please Explain is all about trails - from the ancient nomadic paths that travelers relied on for survival, to modern hiking trails that help us find our way in the wilderness. Robert Moor began writing his book, On Trails: An Exploration, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2009. He’ll talk about animal trails (ants, buffaloes, elephants), long-lost Cherokee trails, and discuss the colonial origins of American hiking trails.  

With many people still trying to come to terms with the news from Orlando, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas, the conversations around gun control, racial profiling, and police tactics, are front and center. But one element missing from these conversations is concrete data, largely because the federal government does not collect it.

For this week’s Please Explain, we are going to discuss the data behind the high profile shootings in the news: how it’s being collected, and what it reveals. Jamiles Lartey, reporter for Guardian US will talk about their project, The Counted, which is tracking the number of people killed by law enforcement in 2015 and 2016. Ben Casselman, Senior Editor and Chief Economics Writer at 538, will discuss his site’s series “Gun Deaths in America” which goes far broader and analyzes all gun deaths in the U.S.

Sometimes it's impossible to avoid an argument. That's why on today's Please Explain, we're learning how to make a convincing case with Stanley Fish, law professor and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His latest book, Winning Arguments: What Works and Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom, is a guide to using wit, observation, logic and rhetoric to win the toughest arguments, whether at the workplace or at home. 

 Need to win an argument? Send us your questions in a comment below, or let us know on Twitter or Facebook!

Dolphins have long been regarded for their remarkable intelligence and social skills. When the dolphin genome was first sequenced in 2011, scientists learned that the beloved aquatic mammals are even more like us than we previously thought.

This week's Please Explain is all about dolphins, their remarkable intelligence and their relationship to humans, with journalist Susan Casey, author of Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins. She embarked on a two-year global adventure to explore the nature of dolphins. 

Have questions about dolphins? Send us your questions in a comment below, or let us know on Twitter or Facebook!

We’re untangling the science and cultural history of hair on this week’s Please Explain with a leading expert on the fascinating fiber, Kurt Stenn, the author of Hair: A Human History. He served for over 20 years as a Professor of Pathology and Dermatology at the Yale University School of Medicine, in addition to working as the Director of Skin Biology at Johnson & Johnson where he helped found a biotech startup on hair follicle regeneration. He’ll talk about the evolutionary history of hair, in addition to its role in art, fashion, cultural identity and even the economy. 

Do you have questions about hair? Ask us in a comment below, or let us know on Twitter or Facebook!

After the shooting in Orlando, and mass shootings in the past, there is intense focus on mental illness, and questions of whether mental illness can be linked to mass shootings. On this week's Please Explain, David Kessler, former FDA Commissioner of 20 years, will discuss mental illness and emotional anxiety, and explain how certain stimuli can capture our attention, and even control our actions. Dr. Kessler’s latest book is “Capture: Unraveling the Mystery of Mental Suffering.” He'll reveal how the psychological phenomenon of "capture" influences addiction, abuse, and can even lead to violence, like mass shootings.

For the past 2000 years, paper has been the essential object that fuels education, art, commerce, dissemination of ideas… and the list goes on and on. In his new book, Paper: Paging Through History, the bestselling author of Cod and Salt, Mark Kurlansky writes, “Studying the history of paper exposes a number of historical misconceptions, the most important of which is this technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society. It is exactly the reverse. Society develops technology to address the changes that are taking place within it.”  He joins us to talk about the history of paper on today's Please Explain. We'll also be joined by paper-maker Donna Koretsky, co-founder and owner of Carriage House Paper in Brooklyn, as well as co-curator of the International Paper Museum in Boston.

Have questions about paper? Give us a call at 646-829-3985!

New research reveals that some birds rival primates in terms of intelligence, according to science writer Jennifer Ackerman. She joins us for today's Please Explain, which is all about birds and their remarkable intelligence! Her new book The Genius of Birds uncovers little-known facts about the powerful bird brain. She traveled the globe for her research -- from laboratories in Barbados and New Caledonia, to the mountains of central Virginia.

Do you have questions about birds? Send us your questions in a comment below, or let us know on Twitter or Facebook!

Events:  Jennifer Ackerman will be participating in this year’s World Science Festival from June 1 through 5. She'll be speaking at the Science Story and Café at the NYU Kimmel Center  on June 4th from 12:30 p.m.- 4:00 p.m. She'll also speak at Science and Story on June 4 from 8:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at the NYU Kimmel Center, Eisner & Lubin Auditorium.