My guest is Clare Knivett. Clare is the last ever food editor of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie Magazine, which published its last edition in December 2017. She took some time out before setting off on her travels to talk to me about the role, what it was like to work with one of the world’s most famous chefs and shares a whole bundle of heart-warming food memories. We have only just met but she has already shown me such openness, warmth and generosity that she is rapidly becoming one of my favourite people. 

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My guest is Professor John Cryan, who is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience at University College Cork, and along with his long-time collaborator, Prof Ted Dinan, has lead much of the burgeoning field of the gut microbiome and the gut-brain axis.

In this episode we talk about what exactly is meant by the term ‘gut-brain axis’, the link between the gut and brain disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease and depression and what you can do to look after your own gut bugs.

It is a fascinating conversation full of useful information, and he also answers some questions from the audience, so make sure you have your notebooks at the ready. 

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If the last episode left you inspired to explore whether meditation might work for you, here is a free guided relaxation meditation from my guest, Meditation Coach, Ashley Hunt.

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Chronic stress underlies a whole range of physical and mental health concerns, driving depression, anxiety, sleep problems, promoting weight gain and your risk of developing type 2 diabetes. It’s not just a psychological phenomenon but has serious effects on physical health and the actual structure of the brain so anything that can help you to manage stress and reduce your exposure to chronic stress is going to be beneficial. Meditation and mindfulness can be a really helpful to have in the toolbox of brain health. In this episode I talk to meditation teacher Ashley Hunt, who works across the world with individuals and corporations such as Twitter to introduce people to meditation and help them to find space for it in their lives. In this conversation we talk about how Ashley started to use meditation as a teenager and why it was completely useless, but how she later found ways create a mindfulness practice that worked for her, the link between stress and aging and the overlap between mindfulness and therapy.

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Today, I step away from food for a moment and talk about an important issue that almost everyone will experience, but that doesn’t get very much air time. This episode is about grief. It’s a difficult and painful subject that can leave us feeling helpless and lost for words. But we will all experience grief and we will all encounter people in our lives who are grieving and so I think it is really important to think about what is happening in the grief process, what can help and what can hinder coming to terms with loss.

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In this episode I have the pleasure of breaking bread with a food hero of mine. Stella Parks, also known as Bravetart, is a pastry chef who trained at the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. In 2012 she was named one of Food and Wine’s Best New Pastry Chefs and was this year nominated for a prestigious James Beard Foundation award. Stella is the resident Pastry Guru at Serious Eats, the website renowned for its meticulously researched recipes with a generous dose of the science behind your favourite foods. I have been a fan of Stella’s for years now and really appreciate the time, effort and generosity of everything she puts out. In this episode we talk about how boxes of cake mix set her on her culinary path and the link between Oreos and time travel. Stella also troubleshoots questions from followers on US/UK baking recipes.

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In this episode I go back to visit Sheryl Hill and Ellen Carr, the directors behind the Sheryl Talks Obesity theatre production looking at the complexities of living with obesity. In this conversation we talk about some of the feedback the team have had from research and focus groups and what they have learned about how we respond to larger bodies.

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In this episode my guest is Beca Lyne-Pirkis. Many of you will know Beca as a fellow baker on my series of the Great British Bake Off, which is where we met and bonded over a shared love of personal challenges and Thai food. After the series Beca secured her own television cookery programme in her native Wales, now in its fourth series, and has another exciting project underway, which I will tell you about as soon as I am allowed to! In this conversation I talk to Beca about her food history, the role of food and cooking in her own childhood and how she passes these important life skills on to her children. We also talk about how she balances being a working mother with two young children and a husband in the military, and how food is an important part of her self-care.

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In this episode I talk to Sheryl Hill. Sheryl is an independent theatre director and her company, Ships in the Night Theatre, in January launched a new project, part-funded by Arts Council England looking in to the complexities and real-life experience of obesity in the UK. Sheryl describes herself as an obese woman and was frustrated by the way that the public discussion on obesity didn’t seem to relate to her own experience or those of other overweight people that she knew. She and her team are in the process of developing a theatre production that will highlight the varied and individual experiences of overweight and obesity with the hope of opening up a more nuanced and compassionate public conversation on the topic. Sheryl and I found some time to talk while she was in London undertaking some research for her project.

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This episode is a Food Story, where I sit down and talk to someone about what food means to them and what role it plays in their lives. So allow me to introduce you to Franceska Venzon Franceska is a pastry chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Canada before moving to London and working as a sous chef at Ottolenghi (look out for her name in the upcoming Ottolenghi baking book coming out in the autumn!). Hailing from Brazil but with roots in Italy in this episode she introduces me to the wizardry of traditional Brazilian tapioca and discusses how much of the cultural history of Brazil, can be understood by following the movement of cassava, a popular traditional root crop. In this conversation we discuss how food intersects with family and national identity, how leaving her home country made her more Brazilian, and what she considers to be ‘the best thing that England has ever made’. She’s a very funny, intelligent, warm and honest woman and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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