Travel with us to the rolling hills of Sri Lanka and the high mountains of Taiwan to sample teas and learn about their origins. We explore how decisions like harvesting, processing and fermentation impart flavor, and how its consumption is deeply ingrained in Asian cultures. Meet our guests Elena Liao from Te Company a premium tearoom in New York City, as she discusses Oolong tea is and how Taiwan’s history plays a role in its taste, and Waris Ahluwalia, a designer and actor whose newly launched tea line, House of Waris was inspired by the traditional medicinal uses of tea.

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Point of Origin Season 2 kicks off by honoring Black History Month. We’re exploring Nigerian foodways, what Naija is and how it’s expressed through food. 

Chefs Tunde Wey, Yewande Komolafe, and Michael Ade Elebede join us to discuss the origin of Nigerian dishes, and how they champion their food to interrogate systems of power. See more.

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iHeartRadio and Whetstone Magazine's Point of Origin is back. On February 26, join host Whetstone co-founder Stephen Satterfield as he connects with the people most immersed in defining and preserving global foodways. Along the way we’re drinking natural wine in Australia, sipping tea — Taiwanese Oolong and Sri Lankan Ceylon — and eating frejon, a Nigerian staple with Brazilian origins. 

The power of food is that it has a story to tell. Each week, Point of Origin will enthusiastically uplift the voices of women and people of color. We believe that this diversity isn’t just noteworthy but part of what makes our work essential and distinguished. When the gatekeepers are diverse, so too are the stories, its tellers and their experiences.

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On matters of African Americans and farming, many narratives have centered the ways in which enslavement, and an assumed progress “off the plantation” have contributed to the apathy or absence of black folks on the land. 

In this episode we hear from black farmers and scholars who are challenging those narratives, instead centering resilience, survival and activism at the core of historical narratives around African Americans and agriculture. Featuring Gabrielle Eitienne and Dr. Monica White.

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On matters of African Americans and farming, many narratives have centered the ways in which enslavement, and an assumed progress “off the plantation” have contributed to the apathy or absence of black folks on the land. In this episode we hear from black farmers and scholars who are challenging those narratives, instead centering resilience, survival and activism at the core of historical narratives around African Americans and agriculture. 

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Cider in the United States is having an explosive moment. Bolstered by a new generation of growers in California and New York, plus a thirsty generation of millennials, it is the fastest growing among all alcoholic beverage categories. In this episode we meet the makers and protagonists of this emergent movement.

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When we think about food origins, often we talk about the movement of people, plants, animals and ideas. But the study of humans would be an incomplete one without the study of the clay and ceramic vessels, one of humankind’s earliest innovations. If pottery is a conversation with the past, archeologists are our interpreters.

Today we’re talking to a whisperer of ancient history, culinary archeologist Jerolyn Morrison. Jerolyn has a Ph.D in archeology specializing in the cooking vessels of ancient Crete.

We also talk to Naoko Takei Moore about the miracle of donabe, the ceramic pot that is one of the oldest Japan. Naoko is a food expert, and author of the Donabe cookbook and owner of Toiro Kitchen in Los Angeles, a purveyor of fine Japanese ceramic cookware.

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Ntsiki Biyela was the first black woman in South Africa to become a winemaker. Andre Mack was the first to be awarded the Best Young Sommelier in America. Keba Konte is the largest African-American owned coffee roaster in the world. In this episode of Point of Origin, we learn about the pressures and pride that go along with being the first or only one of your kind.

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The sacred wild rice that grows on the water. ​Hundreds of years ago, the people called the Anishinabek, were visited by several prophets, two of which told them that people with white faces were going to be coming across the ocean and they needed to leave their homeland and travel westward to the place where the food grows upon the water, or risk being destroyed. So they followed those prophecies, and though it took a few hundred years, they made their way down the Saint Lawrence River and then into the Great Lakes region where they found wild rice. See more.

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When we talk about terroir, it’s usually in the context of wine, and the human and environmental conditions that influence the characteristics. But on a recent visit to California, writer and cook Jasmine Lee began to ask questions about this framing, inspired by an heirloom variety of rice with a beautiful name called, Kokuho Rose. Jasmine, who comes from a lineage of rice merchants in Hong Kong, wondered  whether it was possible to think about expressions of the land; ie, terroir, without thinking of about the history and politics of land use in the United States. If this heirloom rice is an expression of the land it was grown on, it is also an expression of the trauma and perseverance with the family who worked that land. 

Next, Chef BJ Dennis tells us about his move to St. Thomas in 2004, where he encountered black folks from around the West Indies. Upon learning he was from the lowcountry, they preceded to share stories and insight about the Gullah Geechee, a distinctive culture of the  descendants of West Africa’s rice coast. The experience changed the trajectory of BJ’s career, catalyzing his calling as a chef and scholar of the culture. 

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