André Hueston Mack is one of America’s best known sommeliers. But for most of his career, he’s felt like an outsider. In the rarefied wine world, he likes to wear Air Jordans and a Mickey Mouse watch.

Allie Rowbottom’s great-great-great uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor in 1899 for $450, then sold it in the 1920s for $67 million — nearly a billion dollars in today’s money. Lately, Allie’s been obsessed with how all that Jell-O money shaped America, and her own family. It’s funded generations of Rowbottom women, including Allie, but it’s also been a shadow they can't escape.

After two years of recording interviews from his basement, Dan is taking The Sporkful back on the road! Chef, YouTuber, and cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt joins Dan on stage in San Francisco to celebrate the release of Kenji's new book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques.

Many of us grew up with rules or customs around food. For Aymann Ismail, a practicing Muslim, that meant not eating pork. But as he got older, he became curious about why eating pork was a line that even less observant Muslims wouldn’t cross.

Do you actually need to heat the oil in the pan before adding onions? Are fresh vegetables always better than frozen? And what’s so special about a shallot?

When cascatelli first went viral, Dan heard from dozens of listeners who wanted to try it, but couldn’t because they were gluten-free. Well, challenge accepted: Dan sets out to make a version of cascatelli without gluten, a project that’s now nearly a year in the making. Along the way, he learns about the science of starch with an Italian pasta researcher; he cold messages pasta execs on LinkedIn; and he meets a kindred spirit pasta maker who tries to make his gluten-free dreams come true. If you thought regular ruffles were a challenge, just wait until you try to make them gluten-free.

Buy Banza cascatelli made from chickpeas here! 

The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Johanna Mayer, Tracey Samuelson, and Jared O'Connell, with help this week from Mary Diduch, Gianna Palmer, and Nora Ritchie.

Transcript available at www.sporkful.com.

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When cascatelli first went viral, Dan heard from dozens of listeners who wanted to try it, but couldn’t because they were gluten-free. Well, challenge accepted: Dan sets out to make a version of cascatelli without gluten, a project that’s now nearly a year in the making.

Why does eating alligator seem more manly than eating chicken? Is coffee more “masculine” than tea? This week, comedian Michael Ian Black talks with Dan about manliness.

In the 1930s, after a disastrous famine killed millions of Soviet citizens, Joseph Stalin made an abrupt turn in his approach to food. He ditched the idea that his countrymen could live on bread alone, and decided they should eat more joyously instead. The result of this campaign was "The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food" — one of the only cookbooks to exist in the Soviet Union.

Jacques Pépin has spent his career defying expectations. By 1958, at the age of 23, he had cooked for three French presidents. But he left that life to work at a high-end restaurant in New York, then gave that up to cook at Howard Johnson's, making food for the masses.