“I love cookies. They’re hands-on, there’s a lot of technique involved in them, they’re really fun and easy to do with kids, they bake quickly,they’re perfect for gift giving any time of year, and they’re great. Holidays and baking go hand in hand. Join us for a collection of favorite wintery stories for the holiday season with Earth Eats. We drop in on a cookie baking workshop with kids at a food pantry, we enjoy a hot cup of coffee on a chilly bike ride, and we toast up a batch of maple granol...
Dec 20, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 51
“Now, I love food! Let the people know–let the people in the back know, I–hey, I love food. I plan vacations around the top food spots. So, I love food. But I just don’t enjoy cooking” This week on the show we hear the story about a local business, Popcorn Kernels With a Twist. We speak with the owner, Virginia Githiri about what motivates her to run her own food business, since she doesn’t really like to cook.
Dec 13, 2024•49 min•Season 2024Ep. 50
“It’s not about simply that protectionism and nationalism–that we only want to make sure that we eat Lithuanian food. It is a much deeper sense of urgency that as a state–and its political sovereignty–depends on the ability to produce food and feed its population for a long time.” This week on the show a conversation with sociologist Diana Mincyte who studies food systems in post socialist Eastern European states like Lithuania.
Dec 06, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 49
“To know there is an invisible line between the index finger and that barely discernible trio of fruit swaying up in the canopy..” We’re honoring the fruits of the forests today, with a pawpaw piece from poet, Ross Gay. Plus, some favorite stories and recipes featuring persimmons. We also hear from Chef Freddie Bitsoie about creating pathways for Native cuisines.
Nov 29, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 48
“Apple cake is a very family specific recipe–I’ve never heard of it anywhere else, seen it anywhere else. My gramma started it–for as long as I can remember we had it on Thanksgiving. It was served in a very specific bowl and as a child, for Thanksgiving everyone would look forward to the apple cake. And when that blue bowl came out on the table it was just like –gasp!-- there’s the apple cake. And you knew that Thanksgiving had arrived.” This week on the show, a Thanksgiving special featuring a...
Nov 22, 2024•50 min•Season 2024Ep. 47
“So, I like to say that bees are just like us. So, bees have a society, and they live in a built environment, [they have a] little house, just like we have a little house, and they communicate through dance. I don’t know if we communicate through dance, but I think dance is also a thing that humans do…” This week on the show we’re talking with microbiologist Irene Garcia Newton about the beloved honeybee. We learn about the various roles within a hive, and how the diet of a bee determines…well, ...
Nov 15, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 46
“Imagine, we have dinner at 7, 8 pm–my baba would take all of the çörek to the bakery and have it baked and he’s back home at 10pm–doesn’t matter! Fresh tea, hot tea, feta cheese, olives, breakfast–that’s like your night breakfast the day before Eid.” This week on the show, we spend time in the kitchen with Derya Dogan. She is a PhD candidate in Education Policy Studies in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University. She walks us through the steps of making her version of Poğaça–...
Nov 08, 2024•49 min•Season 2024Ep. 45
“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...
Nov 01, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 44
"It really revolves around the environmental justice issues. These operations are popping up in communities of color, where they don't really have a lot of political clout. But these people have fought back." This week on the show a conversation with Sherri Dugger and Craig Watts with Socially Responsible Agriculture Project . We talk about the work they’re doing to support people living in rural communities dealing with the consequences of factory farming operations located in their neighborhoo...
Oct 25, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 43
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.
Oct 18, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 42
“As you walk through the doors, whether you like to cook or you don’t like to cook, you feel welcome, and things are accessible…” “What our vision is, is to make it a better world through breaking bread at the kitchen table, if you will.” This week on the show, we talk with co-owners of Bloomington’s independent, locally-owned kitchen supply store, Goods for Cooks. We hear some of the shop’s nearly 50 year history, as it has changed hands, updated, and maintained a commitment to quality goods an...
Oct 11, 2024•51 min
“As Greeks, we don't really shop from supermarkets. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who comes from a village and has access to olive trees and olive oil.” On today’s show, a conversation with Greek chef and anthropologist Nafsika Papacharalampous. She shares a recipe for Greek comfort food, and talks with me and Ogla Kalentzidou about the role of memory and nostalgia in contemporary Greek cuisine. Plus a story from Harvest Public Media about how prairies might be making a comeback in fa...
Oct 04, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 40
“We know that there are all sorts of good chemicals that come out of the dirt and working with land–working with plants–that are beneficial to our mood and our health. For refugee populations that have had to be on the run or had to live in refugee camps for decades, having a little piece of land that you can tend to that you can take care of and then see the results and not feel like you’re gonna be bombed out the next day–it brings a kind of peace of mind and a little bit of healing.” This wee...
Sep 27, 2024•51 min
“At least 100 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 outsize...
Sep 20, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 38
“And that’s why we call it a food value chain.You know, it’s a supply chain but it’s based on the values that you have as far as how the land is treated, how people are treated, what kind of nutrition contents in your food–all those things [that] people up and down–from the farmer to the consumer have an interest in. And so, this system that we’re developing is about addressing those values and making sure they happen.” This week on the show, an uplifting conversation about organizations and coa...
Sep 13, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 37
“When you have to make those decisions do you buy the nicest ingredients to make your food, since that’s why people are there? Or do you pay your employees two dollars more an hour? Or do you rent the building that’s gonna put you in the location that gives you the highest chance of success? I think that in many ways restaurant owners have one of the most complicated business owning ventures that you can think of. They are balancing so many different goals in one space.” Today we’re talking with...
Sep 06, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 36
"...one of which is sorghum sudan grass, and if you don't mow that, it gets to be like ten feet tall. And so we had pigs that were running through there, that reminded us of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park–you know, you can't see the animal, you just see the top of the plant waving back and forth. And so we were always on safari when we had to go out and do pig chores." This week on the show, we visit Nightfall Farm, a livestock farm in Southern Indiana focused on sustainable agriculture. We ...
Aug 30, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 35
“Animal agriculture creates more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined. Yet, as individuals we’re often told ‘you should take public transportation and ride bikes,’ all of which are good things but not very frequently are we told, ‘let’s reduce our consumption of animal products, and that will have a tremendous impact on the environment.’ This week on the show, Toby Foster talks with the creators of Planted , a local plant-based food truck and catering operation in Bloomingto...
Aug 23, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 34
“Speaking directly to Black women and wanting Black women to know that their bodies are not the problem. The way that our bodies are treated and problematized and pathologized, we’re often taught that it’s our fault, that it’s our problem to fix or we just need to love our bodies out of societal oppression.” This week on the show a conversation with dietitian and author Jessica Wilson about her book, It’s Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women’s Bodies She’s challenging us to rethi...
Aug 16, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 33
“I grow tomatoes at my house. My mom’s such a good shot, she was shooting cherry tomatoes off their stems” This week on the show it's back to school and into the garden. We meet kids in an after school garden club at Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Next we drop into a multi-age classroom in Bloomington where kids work with a chef to craft a garden-to-table snack for their whole classroom.
Aug 09, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 32
“When the phorids 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 phorids 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...
Aug 02, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 31
“When you think of literacy and you think of what does that mean and what are all the parts of it– think about reading a recipe. Think about measuring the ingredients. Think about learning how to cook. Think about planning a meal, or budgeting for that meal.There are so many things that are learning-through-play, learning-through-doing-it, in a teaching kitchen. That’s the reason why we call it a teaching kitchen. It really is about learning literacy as well as some skills that are very specific...
Jul 26, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 30
“We’ve been presented with problems today that we’ve never dealt with before as an agriculture industry–like climate change. And I don’t think that the approach we’ve taken, historically, is going to work here…As long as I’ve heard the words ‘climate change,’ I have heard that Indigenous practice is the solution.” This week on the show, a conversation with Michelle Hughes of the National Young Farmers Coalition. In 2019, the organization made a decision to put racial equity at the center of thei...
Jul 19, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 29
Have you ever had a hunch about something, tested it out and been shocked by the results? That’s what happened to public health scholar 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.
Jul 12, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 28
“As I started to think more about theories around food, and it’s a thing that we do every day without fail, and it really shapes the way that we interact with one another, it shapes the way we interact with our environments, the ways that we create networks of relationships–being able to name it has given it a power to be able to use it to tap into ways to think about social relationships in the present and propose alternatives.” This week we’re devoting the full show to my conversation with Dr....
Jul 05, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 27
“We use wood so that we give the various microorganisms sort of a place to colonize and live from batch to batch. And over time those colonies and those species that have taken hold will change, they’ll drift and so, you’ll develop a unique character to each tank that’s really interesting.” This week on the show we dive head first into a giant oak barrel full of aging beer. Okay, well, not literally. Producer Toby Foster pays a visit to The Woodshop, that’s Upland Brewing Company’s sour beer fac...
Jun 28, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 26
“The dominant vocabulary for talking about restaurants is ‘what food do they serve, what are the good dishes?’ People think that’s the only thing that’s important about restaurants.” Today on the show we talk with Historian Rebecca Spang, about the origins of restaurants, and what they mean to us today. “The experience just of knowing that there are other people and knowing that they have their own lives, they’re talking about their own things, but that you’re not completely alone.” Exploring th...
Jun 21, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 25
“When you begin to zoom out, you realize that in fact palm oil is all around us, and the world, in a strange way, is made of palm oil; and we’re all, in a certain way, made of palm oil–in the sense that we use it to reproduce our bodies and to clean our skin and to live the lives that we live in a globalized world.” This week on the show, a conversation with Max Haiven, author of the book Palm Oil:The Grease of Empire. He traces the history of palm oil production globally, examining its damaging...
Jun 14, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 24
“It’s a great thing to be outside, to have birds chirping, to be around green grass, and animals. But the problem has become, that you can’t really be a business unless you are a financially viable business.” This week on the show we explore the economics of small scale farming, and debunk some of the myths of the agrarian lifestyle. We talk with Beth Hoffman, author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Farming in America , and we hear from farmers across Indiana about how they’re “making i...
Jun 07, 2024•50 min•Season 2024Ep. 23
“There are a lot of people, they like the faux meats and they want to eat a Carne Asada that reminds of the actual, like, Beef Carne Asada. There are a lot of people who try to steer clear from the faux meats, so we wanted to have plenty of veggie items on the menu for them as well. We really wanted to represent different ingredients and different flavors that anybody can come and enjoy.” This week on the show, producer, Toby Foster visits with one of the owners of Tacotarian in Las Vegas, Nevad...
May 31, 2024•51 min•Season 2024Ep. 22
