The Sporkful

By Dan Pashman and Stitcher

Arts

What's The Sporkful about?

We obsess about food to learn more about people. The Sporkful isn't for foodies, it's for eaters. Hosted by Dan Pashman, who's also the inventor of the new pasta shape cascatelli. James Beard and Webby Award winner for Best Food Podcast. A Stitcher Production.

4.6

2,881 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Natasha Leggero And Moshe K...

09.25.2023

Husband-and-wife comedians and podcast hosts Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher often perform standup together. In their Netflix special they offer couples relationship advice, and the occasional roast.

The Sporkful episodes:

09.25.2023 Natasha Leggero And Moshe Kasher Give Dan Marriage Advice Husband-and-wife comedians and podcast hosts Natasha Leggero and Moshe Kasher often perform standup together. In their Netflix special they offer couples relationship advice, and the occasional roast.
09.18.2023 What “Couscousgate” Tells Us About French Food Back in 2017, a far-right politician in France angered his supporters and caused a small scandal. The faux pas? Enjoying a plate of couscous. Couscous is one of the most popular dishes in France, and it’s also a symbol of ...
09.11.2023 A Chili Crisp Cookbook And An Ode To Shabbat On today’s show, we’re featuring two new cookbooks that we’re excited about, and the stories of the authors behind them. James Park’s new cookbook Chili Crisp: 50+ Recipes To Satisfy Your Spicy, Crunchy, Garlicky Cravings is a testament to how ...
09.04.2023 How To Create A New Apple Breeders at Washington State University spent 20 years developing a completely new variety of apple: Cosmic Crisp. What exactly does it take to create a new kind of apple? And how do they come up with a name for it?
08.28.2023 A Garlic Dispute 20 Years In The Making We asked for your food fights and hot takes, and you delivered! We hear about a 20-year dispute over a garlic aversion (with unsavory origins), get to the bottom of the best way to eat a pint of ice cream, ...
08.21.2023 A Forager's Life In Virginia Foraged ingredients have become all the rage in high end restaurants, part of the move toward hyperlocal, farm-to-table ingredients. Of course, we humans have been foraging pretty much forever. And though it’s less common in America today, Jay Marion’s family ...
08.14.2023 Searching For The Pickle King While the villages to the east and west have charming Main Streets, the small town of Greenlawn, sandwiched in between, has pickles. Dan stops by the annual Pickle Festival before diving into the story of Samuel Ballton, the formerly enslaved ...
08.07.2023 Instant Pot’s Bankruptcy And Thai Cheese “Burgers” Today we tackle news in the world of food that’s at turns substantive, silly, and surprising in a new series we’re calling Salad Spinner! Take a spin with us as Dan chats with journalists Amanda Mull (The Atlantic) and Dennis ...
07.31.2023 Tommy Pico’s Food History Wasn’t Lost. It Was Stolen. A few years ago, Tommy Pico, a queer indigenous American poet, and lover of junk food, set out to learn how to cook. He wanted to get healthier, but also, he wanted a food culture to replace the one that ...
07.21.2023 Why Barbie’s First Dreamhouse Didn’t Have A Kitchen When the first Barbie Dreamhouse came out in 1962, it didn’t have a kitchen. Fast forward to today and there are a dozen chef Barbies. What does that say about Barbie, and about American food culture?
07.17.2023 Why Ice Is This Summer's Hottest Trend Once known for its glacial pace, ice news today is breaking. In the wake of Starbucks’ recent announcement that they’re changing their ice, we’re devoting an entire episode to the drink chiller in all its forms: pellet ice, giant ice ...
07.10.2023 2 Chefs And A Lie: Name That Mustard Edition It’s time for our annual game show, 2 Chefs And A Lie! The game is simple. Dan talks with three “chefs.” Two are real, and one is an actor with a made-up resume.
07.03.2023 The Enslaved Chefs At Monticello Who Created American Cuisine This week in honor of July 4th, we’re exploring an important part of American history – the contributions of enslaved Black chefs, whose work influences American cuisine to this day. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson brought the enslaved chef James Hemings, ...
06.26.2023 The Food-Obsessed Subculture Of The Appalachian Trail How do you feed yourself on a hike that’s more than 2,200 miles long and takes six months to complete? Every summer, hundreds of people attempting to hike the entire Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine, are faced with that ...
06.19.2023 Zarna Garg Had To Tell Jokes For Her Supper The stand-up comedian Zarna Garg spent 16 years as a stay-at-home mom. Now she sells out shows across the country and has her own special on Prime Video. In her stand-up and her social media videos, food is often a ...
06.12.2023 Inside The World Of Food Smuggling Remember that time you bought an apple in Canada or a piece of cheese in France and “forgot” to declare it when you crossed the border into the U.S.? That makes you a food smuggler. It can feel pretty innocent, ...
06.05.2023 After A Lifetime Of Eating, Gail Simmons Is Still Hungry Top Chef judge Gail Simmons never thought she’d have a career in food. Sure, her mom ran a cooking school in their home growing up. Yes, she worked in the kitchen on a kibbutz in Israel.
05.29.2023 The Secret To Grace Church’s Lobster Rolls In the 1980s, six women on an island off the coast of Massachusetts began selling lobster rolls as a church fundraiser. Today people travel by car, boat, and plane just to taste these hallowed summer treats. This week, one of ...
05.22.2023 Comic Jamie Loftus’s Hot Dog Summer Comedian and podcaster Jamie Loftus set out on a cross-country road trip to try to figure out: Why do hot dogs have such a hold on American culture? And why does she continue to find them so damn delicious? Over ...
05.15.2023 Is Protecting Abalone Also Destroying A Native Tradition? When the California government stepped in to try to prevent abalone from going extinct, it also criminalized the food traditions of indigenous people in the region. In this collaboration with our friends at the podcast Copper and Heat, we look ...
05.08.2023 The Musical History Of Jelly This week we're exploring the musical history of jelly, from the Harlem Renaissance to Beyoncé and beyond. Along the way, we hear the story of a famous moment in internet history, explore depictions of Black women in music, and learn ...
05.01.2023 Can ChatGPT Write An Episode Of The Sporkful? ChatGPT can use artificial intelligence to generate high school essays, emails, cover letters, and a lot more. But can it write an episode of The Sporkful? Eater senior reporter Bettina Makalintal joins us to discuss, and to tell us what ...
04.24.2023 Meet The Banh Mi Innovators Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen helped change the tone of Vietnamese cookbooks when she published her first in 2006. “They had these long, long ingredient lists that kind of exoticized the cuisine,” Andrea tells Dan. “But we're here in America. Why ...
04.17.2023 Squishy Or Crunchy? Why Texture Matters Crunchy, creamy, squishy, slimy… the list goes on. Texture might not be the first thing you think of when describing your favorite foods, but it plays a big role in the foods you love and the foods you hate. And ...
04.10.2023 Bill Nye, The FOOD Science Guy! Bill Nye is a goofball nerd to the core, and he’s built a career on making science fun and accessible for everyone. So can Bill give Dan some satisfying answers to big, and small, food science questions? Like what’s the ...
04.03.2023 Are You Eating Chipotle Bowls Wrong? How do you eat ice cream on a first date? When should you start meal prepping when you’re in a new relationship? What’s the perfect tailgating food?
03.27.2023 For Ghetto Gastro, Food Is A Weapon Hip hop records as placemats. A sneaker chandelier, reminiscent of shoes hanging on telephone lines. A bouillabaisse overflowing with seafood from the south of France. That was the scene at one of the high-end events put on by Ghetto Gastro, ...
03.20.2023 The Brewer Rewriting The Story of Beer In Iran Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the ...
03.13.2023 Raina’s Disordered Eating, One Year Later A year ago we spoke with a young woman we’re calling Raina, who felt she was on the verge of developing an eating disorder. For context and perspective, we spoke with comedian Margaret Cho, who's struggled with eating disorders much ...
03.06.2023 Should Fine Dining Exist? The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has consistently topped lists of best restaurants in the world. People fly in from all over the globe to pay $500 per person for the hyperlocal tasting menus dreamed up by chef/owner Rene Redzepi. But a ...
02.27.2023 The Last Big Mac In Iceland When Alexandra Yingst plopped down at a bar in Reykjavik after a 10-hour drive through a blizzard, she saw something unexpected: a Big Mac, in seemingly perfect condition, under a glass dome. It turns out that Big Mac tells us ...
02.13.2023 Alan And Arlene Alda Bonded Over A Fallen Rum Cake "Flirting over food is really the best way to flirt," says actor Alan Alda, and he would know. He met his wife, Arlene, at a dinner party in college. A rum cake fell off the top of a refrigerator, and ...
02.06.2023 A French Chef And Cincinnati: A Love Story When the French chef Jean-Robert de Cavel died in December, hundreds of chefs wore their white coats to his memorial service in downtown Cincinnati. It was a testament to how many people Jean-Robert had inspired in the thirty years he ...
01.30.2023 The Boom And Bust Of Meat Alternatives We’re entering the third wave of meat alternatives. First, there was the Gardenburger — a hockey puck-like object that made it less annoying to be a vegetarian at a barbecue. Next came the meat substitutes that really tried to replicate ...
01.23.2023 Mission: ImPASTAble 9 \| New Shapes From Old Places The number one question Dan has gotten since inventing cascatelli is: Are you going to invent another pasta shape? The answer is probably not — the sequel is never as good as the original. Instead, he gets a better idea: ...
01.13.2023 Gas Stoves Have Ignited A Firestorm This week, a federal regulator called gas stoves a “hidden hazard,” saying a ban on them was in the realm of possibility. President Biden and the Consumer Product Safety Commission quickly walked back that statement, but not before it ignited ...
01.09.2023 What ‘The Bear’ And ‘The Menu’ Say About Restaurant Culture From the show about a thirst trap chef at a Chicago Italian beef joint, to a movie about a luxury restaurant planning to kill its customers, 2022 was the year of ambitious, experimental, and downright weird food TV and movies. ...
12.19.2022 New Year’s Food Resolutions 2023 What foods do Sporkful listeners resolve to eat more of in the new year, and why? And what’s Dan’s New Year’s food resolution for 2023? All is revealed in our annual year-end spectacular.
12.12.2022 Rick Martínez Hates The Word ‘Authentic’ When Rick Martínez was growing up in Texas, he and his mom would drive across the Mexican border to go to mercados and buy dried chiles. One winter break, they spent two weeks recreating Rick’s grandma’s recipe for tamales, using ...
12.05.2022 Illyanna Maisonet Is Always Pissed Off Growing up in Sacramento, Illyanna Maisonet felt distant from her Puerto Rican roots. Eventually, through food, she found her connection to the Puerto Rican diaspora, and to the island’s rich culinary history and diversity, which she says are often overlooked ...
11.28.2022 Claire Saffitz Doesn’t Need To Defend Dessert (Live) Beloved dessert person Claire Saffitz joins Dan for a holiday baking-themed extravaganza and tackles some of the most pressing baking questions of the moment… What’s the best way to roll out pie dough into a uniform shape? How can I ...
11.21.2022 The Firehouse Chef Who Still Burns His Toast Firefighters face plenty of high-pressure situations — including cooking a lunch for their crewmates that’s hot, filling, and on time. The pressure is even greater for A.J. Fusco, a firefighter in Harrison, New York, who moonlights as a chef in ...
11.14.2022 A New Jersey Whiskey Mystery A bottle of whiskey with no online footprint. A bar that’s long been closed. An address that doesn’t exist.
11.07.2022 Wendy Osefo Is A ‘Real Housewife’ Who Actually Cooks It’s not just her three graduate degrees that set Dr. Wendy Osefo apart on "The Real Housewives of Potomac." It’s also that she loves to cook. She says her castmates see her as “the only person on this entire show ...
10.31.2022 Nigella Lawson Orders Food Like A Method Actor Nigella Lawson is a domestic goddess of the highest order. She strikes the perfect balance between aspiration — a beautiful garden, perfect lighting — and accessibility — sheet pan dinners and a disdain for pretentiousness. Nigella reveals how her own ...
10.24.2022 Southern Cooking, Via Gujarat And Oakland Today, we talk with two chefs who are putting their own stamp on Southern food, each refusing to be pigeonholed in the process. Vishwesh Bhatt was born and raised in Gujarat, India. He moved to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school ...
10.10.2022 How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 2) As civil war erupted in Yemen, Mokhtar Alkhanshali found himself imprisoned, with $5,000 stuffed in his underwear and his coffee samples confiscated. To get those samples to the biggest specialty coffee expo in North America, he’d have to survive more ...
10.03.2022 How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 1) Mokhtar Alkhanshali was a doorman in San Francisco when he saw a statue that changed his life. The statue was of an Arab man holding a cup of coffee, and it led Mokhtar to learn about the origins of coffee, ...
09.26.2022 Celebrating Shabbat At Wendy’s Shabbat — the Jewish Sabbath – begins every Friday at sundown with a meal. But in all the years that Jews have been having Shabbat dinner, there’s no record in the rabbinic texts of it happening at the fast food ...
09.19.2022 Inside The Consumer Reports Test Labs Dan goes inside Consumer Reports, the independent nonprofit that tests and rates everything from toaster ovens to frozen pizzas to luxury cars. CR takes testing very seriously, and Dan gets to see their process in action. It all starts with ...

Older episodes

The Sporkful

What's The Sporkful about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Sporkful episodes:

Natasha Leggero And Moshe Kasher Give Dan Marriage Advice

What “Couscousgate” Tells Us About French Food

A Chili Crisp Cookbook And An Ode To Shabbat

How To Create A New Apple

A Garlic Dispute 20 Years In The Making

A Forager's Life In Virginia

Searching For The Pickle King

Instant Pot’s Bankruptcy And Thai Cheese “Burgers”

Tommy Pico’s Food History Wasn’t Lost. It Was Stolen.

Why Barbie’s First Dreamhouse Didn’t Have A Kitchen

Why Ice Is This Summer's Hottest Trend

2 Chefs And A Lie: Name That Mustard Edition

The Enslaved Chefs At Monticello Who Created American Cuisine

The Food-Obsessed Subculture Of The Appalachian Trail

Zarna Garg Had To Tell Jokes For Her Supper

Inside The World Of Food Smuggling

After A Lifetime Of Eating, Gail Simmons Is Still Hungry

The Secret To Grace Church’s Lobster Rolls

Comic Jamie Loftus’s Hot Dog Summer

Is Protecting Abalone Also Destroying A Native Tradition?

The Musical History Of Jelly

Can ChatGPT Write An Episode Of The Sporkful?

Meet The Banh Mi Innovators

Squishy Or Crunchy? Why Texture Matters

Bill Nye, The FOOD Science Guy!

Are You Eating Chipotle Bowls Wrong?

For Ghetto Gastro, Food Is A Weapon

The Brewer Rewriting The Story of Beer In Iran

Raina’s Disordered Eating, One Year Later

Should Fine Dining Exist?

The Last Big Mac In Iceland

Alan And Arlene Alda Bonded Over A Fallen Rum Cake

A French Chef And Cincinnati: A Love Story

The Boom And Bust Of Meat Alternatives

Mission: ImPASTAble 9 | New Shapes From Old Places

Gas Stoves Have Ignited A Firestorm

What ‘The Bear’ And ‘The Menu’ Say About Restaurant Culture

New Year’s Food Resolutions 2023

Rick Martínez Hates The Word ‘Authentic’

Illyanna Maisonet Is Always Pissed Off

Claire Saffitz Doesn’t Need To Defend Dessert (Live)

The Firehouse Chef Who Still Burns His Toast

A New Jersey Whiskey Mystery

Wendy Osefo Is A ‘Real Housewife’ Who Actually Cooks

Nigella Lawson Orders Food Like A Method Actor

Southern Cooking, Via Gujarat And Oakland

How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 2)

How To Export Coffee In A War (Pt 1)

Celebrating Shabbat At Wendy’s

Inside The Consumer Reports Test Labs

Other shows like The Sporkful: