You have a favorite Matthew Lillard film or TV performance. It might be SLC Punk, the Scream franchise, Scooby Doo, Hackers, She's All That, Twin Peaks: The Return, or the new Stephen King and Mike Flanagan movie The Life of Chuck. He's been working in Hollywood for over 30 years, and has a reputation for being kind to fans. But connecting with people is exactly why he got into acting as a kid — the community that comes from putting on a play together and hashing it all out at the diner afterward. It's what drew him to Dungeons & Dragons, and then a spirits company celebrating fantasy and horror fandoms. Lillard joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about growing up not fitting in, the thrill of finding your people, the punk rock high school movie he directed, his wedding cheese wheel, and so much more.

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Season 3 of the smash hit FX/Hulu show “The Bear” roared to life just days ago, but Will Poulter (the actor who plays fan-favorite Luca) and 2014 F&W Best New Chef Dave Beran had been prepping for weeks. Poulter — like his co-star Jeremy Allen White — staged with Beran at his Santa Monica restaurant Pasjoli to learn how to accurately portray a professional chef onscreen. The lessons went so well, Beran says he’d hire Poulter as a cook — even despite a messy mishap with a pastry bag. The two dished all about getting kitchen culture right on and offscreen, what it takes to be at the top of your craft, and the pure magic of a great restaurant service.

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The first food memory Curtis Stone has is getting in trouble for eating too much butter. Then again, the Australian chef and TV host has never been one for restraint. Once he realized he wasn't going to be a professional athlete, he went to work for Marco Pierre White — notoriously one of the most hard-driving chefs of all time, then hosted 140 episodes of Take Home Chef, and then back into the fray, opening restaurants on his own without investors. The brand new James Beard Award nominee joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about his ham bathroom, the exhilaration and exhaustion of running a restaurant, how he wooed his wife — the actress Lindsay Price — with whiskey, the naked prank Joel McHale played on him, and so much more.

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When Hawa Hassan was five years old, she was living in a refugee camp in Kenya. By seven, she was resettled in Seattle with a few other refugees from Somalia, and waiting for her family to join her. Then the political climate changed, and she came to realize that they were never coming; she was on her own. The thing to know about Hawa Hassan is that she will always find the light in any situation, and use it to guide the way forward for others. The author, host, entrepreneur, and chef joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about her stunning new cookbook celebrating the lives of refugees, surviving as a kid far away from the world and family she'd known, how Doritos shaped her life, and the scent that transports her to her mother's kitchen.

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Romy Gill puts in the work — always. Growing up in India, the chef, TV host, and author dreamed of being a cricket player and directed all her effort into that — and into lightly fibbing her way into her neighbors' homes to try different dishes than the ones she ate in her Punjabi household. It's this hunger and curiosity about other people and their foodways that has made her such a beloved presence on the BBC and ITV, as well as amassing a devoted audience for her award-winning cookbooks that explore regional Indian food and the people who keep these delicious traditions alive for generations to come. She joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about her passion for teaching, her evolving relationship with perfection and anger, dealing with dyslexia, and the celebrity she's dying to take on a train trip.

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When Vikas Khanna was growing up in a small town in India, the world was stacked against him. He was bullied by other children for wearing braces on his legs and not being able to play like them. But his grandmother and sister saw him for who he truly was: a lion. They brought him into the kitchen, and he roared to life. An extraordinary life at that, where he makes movies, writes books, feeds millions of hungry people, and runs Bungalow, the most watched Indian restaurant on the planet. He joined Tinfoil Swans for a truly moving conversation about the power of people believing in you, why he wants to "unrestaurant" himself, and why he feels driven to feed the world.

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Laurie Woolever has worked for chefs you've definitely heard of, most notably Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali. Those two men are notorious for their outsized appetites, but in her new memoir, "Care and Feeding," Woolever gets raw and real about her own insatiable need for drugs, alcohol, and extramarital affairs while navigating the grossness and glamour of the food world in their orbits. She joined the Tinfoil Swans podcast to talk about getting sober, managing complicated men, and the shock of needing spirituality.

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Growing up as an immigrant latchkey kid, Roy Choi spent a lot of time wandering the streets of Los Angeles alone, thinking he'd never fit in anywhere. He had a scar on his face from cleft palate surgery, and he thought of himself as an alley cat, slipping through the world unnoticed and he took in every detail of the way people interacted, especially at restaurants. It's this nuanced and empathetic view of humanity that's made the 2010 Food & Wine Best New Chef such a force in the hospitality world. He joined Tinfoil Swans to talk about going through life feeling unwelcome, how that's informed every business decision he's ever made, his new cookbook, and why he sometimes feels like a baked potato.

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Byron Gomez and his family arrived in the United States from Costa Rica when he was eight years old, and he was in for the shock of his young life. He spoke Spanish at home, he'd never seen snow or even a winter coat, and he had to find his place in a world that didn't always want him there. But at age 15, he found restaurants. He put in the very hard work, let himself dream, and the success followed. The Top Chef contestant spoke about his path from Burger King to cooking in Michelin-starred restaurants, being a DACA recipient, getting sober, and all the battle scars he earned along the way.

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The award-winning Tinfoil Swans podcast from Food & Wine is back on April 8. We're bringing you even more intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry and beyond, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made them who they are today. In Season 3, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Byron Gomez, Roy Choi, Karen Akunowicz, Vikas Khanna, Matthew Lillard, Romy Gill, Laurie Woolever, Ana and Lydia Castro, Curtis Stone, and others going deep on their joys, inspirations, doubts, and dreams, and what's still on the menu for them. Tune in every Tuesday for a feast that'll feed your mind and soul.

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