Kamau Bell has a long and impressive resume, including hosting seven seasons of the CNN docuseries United Shades of America, winning a Peabody Award for We Need to Talk About Cosby, and winning the third season of Celebrity Jeopardy, and he’s about to take off on his “Who’s With Me” standup tour.

Kamau wore a T-shirt on TV that read, “Not All Macaroni and Cheeses are Created Equal,” a political message and “insider Black conversation” that he explains to host Rachel Belle. We’ll also learn the true history of mac & cheese in America, a narrative that took 200 years to uncover, with James Beard Award-winning food historian Michael W. Twitty and Gayle Jessup White, a descendant of both Thomas Jefferson and James Hemmings, the enslaved head chef of Jefferson’s Monticello kitchen. 

Kamau tells host Rachel Belle about his experience traveling to Kenya with Anthony Bourdain, where his unadventurous eating tendencies were seriously challenged, and of course he shares his last meal. 

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This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from musician and actor Sharon Van Etten, who is on the road touring her new album now! 

An educated wine lover, Sharon tells host Rachel Belle which bottle best represents her personality and which countries are often left out of the conversation when we talk about fantastic wines. Nicknamed “Snacks” by her bandmates, she reveals what she loves to nibble on when she’s on a road trip, on an airplane, hanging with her son or late at night, starving after performing a show.  

Listen to Sharon on last week’s episode of Your Last Meal. 

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Sharon Van Etten is on the road now touring her seventh album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory. But as much as she loves writing and performing music, she has considered a couple different career paths: therapist and sommelier!

Sharon’s love of wine started in high school, when she was an exchange student living with a family in Spain. So host Rachel Belle interviews the founders of Open That Bottle Night, a couple of former Wall Street Journal wine writers who created an annual holiday to encourage people to open the special bottles of wine that no occasion seemed to be special enough for.  

Sharon says she doesn’t like to cook when she’s in a bad mood because the food always ends up tasting bad. Rachel calls up cognitive neurologist Dr Rachel Herz, author of Why You Eat What You Eat, who says food actually does taste different when you’re sad, angry, depressed or happy.  

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This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-nominated singer and actor Josh Groban.  

Josh is getting ready for a string of shows in Las Vegas, so host Rachel Belle presents him with the most ridiculous, over-the-top, calorie-packed dishes she could find on Vegas menus (obviously Guy Fieri is involved) and asks him to pick which ones he'd eat.  

Josh and Rachel bond over a childhood love of New Kids on the Block, and he admits to loving a very trendy Los Angeles treat from a very trendy Los Angeles market (that he is still a little embarrassed to order). 

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now!

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Is Josh Groban’s best song about baked beans? 

Two foods Josh Groban’s dad turned him onto as a child: pickled and smoked fish and baked beans. So when Bush’s asked Josh to write them a commercial jingle, he took it a step further and composed a semi-autographical baked-bean power ballad! He tells host Rachel Belle the whole story.  

Josh learned to cook during the pandemic and developed a soft spot for ugly, misshapen farm produce. So Seattle chef Becky Selengut joins the show to talk about her cookbook Misunderstood Vegetables. Becky wrote it after countless encounters with folks at farmers markets and the grocery store who didn’t know what to do with produce like rutabaga, celery root and burdock. 

And Josh shares his last meal, a combination of a favorite childhood treat and a hearty British dinner he fell in love with when he started dating his English girlfriend.  

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now!

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This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Danielle Chang, host of Lucky Chow on PBS. And Rachel Belle takes a very special field trip to Seattle’s Mixed Pantry, a beautifully curated specialty foods shop that exclusively sells Asian and Asian American-made products.  

On last week’s episode of Your Last Meal, Danielle told Rachel she never goes anywhere without a little vial of high-quality soy sauce in her purse. 

So Rachel popped into Mixed Pantry for a soy sauce tasting, a fun activity open to anyone who visits. The shop sells soy sauces from several countries, but the tasting centers around the five standard types of Japanese shoyu, owner Tak Kunimune’s specialty. You’ll learn the difference between mainstream commercial soy sauces and traditional barrel-aged ones; how Kikkoman came to be America’s go-to soy sauce; and Tak’s tips on what to cook with each one.  

Then, a lightning round with Danielle Chang! She shares her favorite Chinatown snack (she's a big fan of the neighborhoods around the world), the Asian dessert she always wants for her birthday and so much more.

Season Seven of Lucky Chow premieres May 1 on PBS!

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season 2 out now!

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PBS's "Lucky Chow" host, Danielle Chang, has been using food as a tool to promote diversity since her family immigrated from Taiwan to Texas when she was 5, and she eventually turned it into a career!

Danielle tells host Rachel Belle which condiment she always keeps in her bag and Your Last Meal listeners call in to confess what flavor enhancers they have sneaked into restaurants, movie theaters and doughnut shops over the years.

First Beyoncé sang about having hot sauce in her bag, then Hillary Clinton talked about her spicy stash on the campaign trail. But Emmy-nominated journalist Myra Flynn says the habit of toting hot sauce started out of necessity with enslaved Americans.

Season Seven of Lucky Chow premieres May 1 on PBS!

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle (Season 2 starts April 3!)!

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This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from China Forbes and Timothy Nishimoto from Pink Martini! The Portland, Oregon-based band is taking off on tour this week to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Get tickets here!

China and Timothy reveal their perfect birthday cakes, the countries they most enjoy eating in when they’re traveling the world, and what foods they can’t wait to eat when they get back home.

Listen to last week’s Your Last Meal episode with Pink Martini!

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle! Season Two premieres today! 

Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings, coming April 2025!

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Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle!

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Pink Martini is celebrating 30 years of global music, and for the band’s pearl anniversary, China Forbes and Timothy Nishimoto dish on oysters (get it?!), the group’s unusual origin story and Thanksgiving dinner.

It may be March, but thanks to lead vocalist China Forbes’ last meal, we’re talking turkey! China is very particular about which seven dishes should appear on her Thanksgiving table, so host Rachel Belle consults with a food historian about what was eaten at the very first harvest feast.

Pink Martini is a Portland, Oregon-based band, but they sing in 30 languages and have played with more than 70 orchestras in the world’s best concert halls – which means they have eaten their way around the world! Timothy reveals his last meal, a spectacular feast eaten on one of those tours abroad.

Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings, coming April 2025!

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle (Season 2 starts April 3!)!

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From pear & blue cheese to bone marrow with bourbon smoked cherries, Salt & Straw has always been experimental, and eager to weave local products and ingredients into their flavors. On this delightful episode, we hear how the highly successful brand got started (the story involves Portlandia, an ice-cream maker from Goodwill and Cheetos), the grossest flavor head ice-cream maker Tyler ever developed and, of course, their last meals – both chose sentimental dishes made by their Grandma Malek.

Speaking of grannies, we’ll meet the owner of Enoteca Maria, a Staten Island restaurant where the food is cooked by a rotating cast of grannies from around the world. This month alone, the Nonnas of the World program welcomes women from 12 different countries, eager to share their unfussy homestyle cuisine.

It’s hard to imagine a world without ice cream. Food historian Sarah Lohman shares the history of the sweet treat, and says we have Black enslaved Americans to thank for the invention of the creamy, delicious ice cream (and scooping tool!) we know and love today.

Sign up for Rachel's new (free!) Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings, coming April 2025!

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Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle (Season 2 starts April 3!)!

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Support the show: http://rachelbelle.substack.com/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.