“I think our approach is: making it better–improving the land every time we have a chance. We are benefited by the sweetness of the maple, right? So, that’s a source of sweetness for us and for the people to come after us. And hopefully the pawpaws will be. One of these days, somebody can enjoy that fruit. Yeah.” This week on the show we explore what it can look like to have a vision for your land that extends beyond yourself and even your family. We speak with Larry Gillen and Helen Vasquez abo...
Jul 18, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 29
" We get into a question based on life experience, based on the thoughts that have surfaced for everybody, what if anything are you wondering. What questions come to mind?" On this week’s show we talk with Laura Shepper and Kalie Dance about pairing food with art for socially distanced cultural events. We visit a teaching kitchen featuring Japanese food and talk with the chef and owner, Mori Willhite. And we have the story behind a chocolate cake recipe that some people are willing to share, and...
Jul 11, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 28
“ Throughout industrial history, the idea behind weeds is very political and it's very constructed. They are only weeds because they get in the way of ideas of how you think that a well kept clean, pristine area would look or like you're trying to reach a certain idea of class.” This week on the third SUMMER episode of our Eats Wild series, we harvest and cook edible weeds (also known as Quelites or wild greens) with Anthropologist Keitlyn Alcantara, and we talk about Indigenous foodways and how...
Jul 04, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 27
“I am a human who yearns to remember that she is part of nature, in a way that I think our culture is trying to make me forget.” This week on the second SUMMER episode of our Eats Wild series, we head out into the woods with two amateur mushroom hunters. Ileana Haberman shares her story of seeking solace gathering chanterelles in the woods during the worst of the pandemic, and Carl Pearson walks us through the basics for positive identification of edible fungi–in this case, a bi-color bolete. Th...
Jun 27, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 26
“Studying food is a way to study how we are connected to the world of life around us. Whatever we think about humans being so cerebral, so intellectual–it really breaks down because we are a part of everything else around us.” This week on the show we talk with the author of The Book of Yerba Mate, Christina Folch about how one plant can tell us so much about ourselves, and the world around us. Christine Folch is the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Environmental Sc...
Jun 20, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 21
“There is a beautiful Hindustani saying, ‘Kosa kosa per pani badle, chare kosa per vani,’ which means "Every two miles the water changes, and every four the language." So that, in fact, is the geography of taste and terroir in India.” This week on the show, we talk with sociologist Krishnendu Ray about place and food and caste in India and how identity can be defined as much by what you DON'T eat, as by what you DO eat. And we share a recipe for a home grown hot sauce that cannot be prepared ind...
Jun 13, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 24
This week on the show we’re questioning the traditions and assumptions around the role of family in farming. “When something goes wrong in the family relationship, it can really affect the farm business, and when something goes wrong in the farm business, it can really affect the family relationship–which has big implications for things like food security–although we often don’t look at it that way.” My guest is sociologist Dr. Ike Leslie, of the University of New Hampshire. Join us for a conver...
Jun 06, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 23
“I often say that the only choice we don’t have in such a connected world, the only choice we don’t have is whether to change the world--because every act we take and don’t take is sending out ripples and we’ll never know the impact of our choices.” This week on Earth Eats, a conversation with Frances Moore Lappé. She’s the acclaimed author of the groundbreaking book, Diet for a Small Planet , which turned 50 years old in 2021. She’s co-founder (with her daughter Anna Lappé) of the Small Planet ...
May 30, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 22
“Many of the farmers talked about the ability to be out in nature with other members of their family and other members of their community and several of them also talked about the benefits of being able to interact with people from other communities.” This week on the show, we talk with geographer Pablo Bose about innovative resettlement projects that help refugees connect with familiar foods from home, through gardening in community with others.
May 23, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 21
“There's a different time…what I would say–like a lifely, real time, and to be able to have, at least moments, periodically, in our lives, where we're attuned to that. And the attunement sometimes is also really pleasurable. It's like a deeply pleasurable attunement to ourselves--as not apart from, but in fact, in fact, life …as life.” This week on the show, we pick serviceberries with Ross Gay and contemplate abundance, time and connection with loved ones through foraging. Tracy Branam shows of...
May 16, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 20
“You gotta take the phyllo dough, put it down on your station. One person takes the butter, garlic, lemon juice mixture, wipes it down. And then someone else spoons on the filling, and then they fold it. And then the butter person butters the outside, puts it in the baking tin. And then you gotta immediately start the next dough...” This week on the show, Kayte Young hands the mic to producer Daniella Richardson for one special episode. As host, Daniella talks with friends about the foundational...
May 09, 2025•50 min•Season 2025Ep. 19
“I knew that this was gonna be a little bit of an adventure, because I’ve never done this before. And so, I’m sure I’m gonna make some stupid mistake that your listeners are gonna be laughing at me while I’m doing this.” From WFIU in Bloomington Indiana, this is earth eats and I’m your host Kayte Young This week on the show, just in time for the hot pepper harvest, we revisit a story from 2019 about a novice hot sauce maker and one from 2020 about tasting the hottest of the hot peppers. Plus, a ...
May 02, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 18
“We have about a four acre parcel of land here that’s subdivided into a whole bunch of micro-plots, basically, where we can isolate, you know, the Black Strawberry Tomato, or the Chinese Wool Flower or a gourd or whatever it happens to be. And we can make sure that those seeds stay pure. Purity is one of the biggest things that we do here. We do a lot of purity trials, so we maintain that the seed we’re selling [to] somebody–we wanna make sure that that seed is 100% true to type.” This week on t...
May 01, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 17
“Cooking came to me a little bit later in life. Holidays in my family were always a really big deal, especially around the meals. The meals were the most important part of the holiday gathering. And I was pretty much the least useful person in the kitchen. It wasn’t until–even into my mid twenties, at Thanksgiving time, my mom would be like, ‘Mark, you can take the premade Parkerhouse rolls out of the freezer and put them in the oven. That’s all we trust you to do’” This week on the show we join...
Apr 18, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 16
“I’ve been mushroom hunting before and you'll kind of squat down and look in between all of the low plants, and then you move to the other side and you look on the other side and all of a sudden you see like four, and they’re right there.” This week it’s the third installment of our special series, Earth Eats Eats Wild– a nine-part seasonal special all about foraging for wild food. We couldn’t wrap up our spring season without a morel hunt–where we share secrets that might help YOU spot a few th...
Apr 11, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 15
“She introduced me to Susan Weed’s books, and chickweed is in one of the herbal healing books. And it’s talked about as this star-shaped plant that kind of dances–that that’s it’s energy [laughs].” This week on our special series, Earth Eats Eats Wild , we’ll be talking chickweed with Stephanie Solomon, preparing purple deadnettle deviled eggs, harvesting spicebush and ramps in the woods with Jill Vance, and frying up crunchy fritters made with dandelion flowers....
Apr 04, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 14
“And you’re stepping into–sinking really–into this clay that’s surrounding your feet, and there’s also some sticks in there, and you know, there’s bugs and spiders on the water…” This week on the show we kick off the Eats Wild special series, all about foraging and edible wild plants. Monique Philpot, founder of the forest and folk school Soulcraft Bloomington, takes us out to discover wild food in unexpected places, and shares stories of growing up in two places with different food cultures. We...
Mar 28, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 13
“I had six different people’s donations of basil in my dish yesterday, and that’s what made it work.” This week on the show, we talk with Heather Craig of the Community Kitchen of Monroe County about cooking for a crowd everyday, improvising in the face of uncertainty, and sourcing ingredients from the community. Plus, stories from Harvest Public Media about rural grocery stores and the effects of the Trump administration USDA cuts on farmers and rural residents.
Mar 21, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 12
“At least a hundred years ago, the last robber barons, we got nice libraries out of it. This one, it’s like ‘oh, what is the family using its money for? To gut public education via charter school networks?’ It’s kind of Machiavellian–it’s Machiavellian in a really sad way” This week on the show, I’m talking with Austin Frerick, the author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry. Frerick uncovers the sometimes shocking facts about seven large companies who play an o...
Mar 14, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 11
“So if you were a giraffe or an elephant you would go along in your world and you would consume things off of trees. And so we try to mimic, as best we can, what we call browse , which is edible tree material.” This week on the show, Toby Foster talks with Barbara Henry at the Cincinnati Zoo. She’s the one who figures out what each of the animals need to eat, where to source their food and the best ways to feed the animals to ensure that they thrive.
Mar 07, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 10
“In the first Trump administration, about 350 thousand people from Central America or Mexico were given these H2A visas to come in temporarily with labor contractors. And many of them seem to have overstayed their visas because their labor is needed . We can’t pick the crops in this country without them.” This week on the show, we welcome back geographer Elizabeth Cullen Dunn. She is the director of the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University and we’ll talk with her about how changes in...
Feb 28, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 9
“Our younger generation, and mainly the girls, have got hearing, and they can hear that high frequency squeals that the vacuum puts off, and man they can just go in the woods and start finding ‘em and you just cut that out put a connector in, put another one in and they can just run through the woods fixin’ holes. Older guys that can’t hear, you’re a strugglin’ trying to find ‘em [laughs].” This week on the show we head out to Groundhog Road Maple Farm in Bedford to learn all about the family bu...
Feb 21, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 8
“The goal with the collective is to bridge that gap–so then there is a lot more equity and a lot more opportunity. Because these coffees are incredible and most of the time when they’re coming from people of marginalized identities, those people are ensuring that they’re honoring the farmers as well–and so the farmers are then getting equitable pay. And so it’s creating that throughout the supply chain.” This week on the show we’re talking coffee with Korie Griggs about the Color of Coffee Colle...
Feb 14, 2025•50 min•Season 2025Ep. 7
“When the phorid arrive, the ants release a pheromone that tells their nest mates, all the other ants that are in the vicinity, their sisters that are in the vicinity, tells them ‘Careful! The phorid are here! You better go back to your nest or get paralyzed.’” This week on the show, we get to nerd out on insects with Ivette Perfecto who studies biodiversity and agroecology. She’s got some wild stories to tell about bugs on coffee plants and the importance of understanding the delicate balance b...
Feb 07, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 6
“A community is not resilient unless those benefits that we have from natural resources, like urban trees, are distributed in a way that all people are benefiting from them. And we do know that we have areas of the city that have lower canopy cover and some of those are associated also with lower income communities and marginalized communities. And arguably those are the people [who] would be most benefited by ecosystem services and the benefits of trees.” This week on the show, a conversation w...
Jan 31, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 5
“Studying food is a way to study how we are connected to the world of life around us. Whatever we think about humans being so cerebral, so intellectual–it really breaks down because we are a part of everything else around us.” This week on the show we talk with the author of The Book of Yerba Mate, Christine Folch about how one plant can tell us so much about ourselves, and the world around us.
Jan 24, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 4
“[It’s] the same old narrative that we hear, that it only happens to white folks and white women. And I argue that eating disorders not only don’t discriminate, but they target marginalized communities such as women of color.” This week on the show, a conversation with Gloria Lucas, the founder of Nalgona Positivity Pride We’ll be talking about her organization’s social justice approach to eating disorders that centers the specific needs of Black Indigenous and communities of color and she’ll sh...
Jan 17, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 3
“Filipino food is not really known like that, especially in Indiana, so we wanted to bring something new.” This week on the show, we visit with the owners of Pinoy Garden Cafe. They talk about what it means to them to bring authentic Filipino cuisine to Bloomington, Indiana and they share a recipe for vegetarian lumpia, a Filipino style spring roll that locals can’t seem to get enough of. Plus a story from Harvest Public Media about complications for farmers interested in growing hemp....
Jan 10, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 2
Have you ever had a hunch about something, tested it out and been shocked by the results? That’s what happened to pharmaceutical microbiologist Funmi Ayeni. She took a traditional Nigerian home remedy and applied the rigors of scientific research to test its efficacy. The results were nothing short of jaw dropping. This week on Earth Eats, food research that could end up saving lives.
Jan 03, 2025•51 min•Season 2025Ep. 1
A man obsessed with making pizza at home shares his secrets and a local home cook shares Clara Kinsey’s persimmon pudding recipe.
Dec 27, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 52
