3x James Beard Award winner. Named one of TIME's 100 Best Podcasts Of All Time. We obsess about food to learn more about people. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. Hosted by Dan Pashman, inventor of the viral pasta shape cascatelli. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of The Sporkful ad-free. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.
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Like palm trees, the Everglades, Disney World, and “Florida Man,” the orange is a classic symbol of the Sunshine State. But maybe not for much longer. Production has declined more than 95% in less than 25 years, setting off alarm bells across the industry. So what happened? It’s a produce murder mystery—and reporter Alex Sammon and our friends at Decoder Ring are on the case. The suspects include…
At the 1964 New York World's Fair, Belgian waffles were introduced to America. They became a sensation. But a half-century later, the woman who sold those waffles says her family's legacy has been co-opted. She joins Dan to share her memories of that World's Fair, and to explain why her mother still blames her father for everything that went wrong. Plus, we introduce her to an innovative, young…
The Rao family in Maryland knew that something was different about their younger daughter, Ayoni, almost as soon as she was born. But it took them until she was five to get a diagnosis of Prader-Willi Syndrome , a rare genetic condition that causes extreme, insatiable hunger. Food needs to be locked away from many of these patients, or they might eat until their stomachs actually rupture. Dan…
The musical Sweeney Todd is about a barber who goes on a killing spree and disposes of his victims by baking them into meat pies. In an off-Broadway production, they serve you an actual meat pie before the show begins. Dr. Pamela Dalton , a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center , helps us understand how food flavors and smells can affect our brains while we’re watching this kind of…
Mandy Naglich is an award-winning home brewer who also writes and teaches about beer. Now she wants to become a Master Cicerone — basically the beer equivalent of a master sommelier. There’s only a handful in the world, and the majority are men. If Mandy wants to join this rarefied group, she’ll need to pass a grueling two-day exam that includes identifying beers by taste and smell, pairing beers…
Why do our brains go crazy for the melted cheese on Philly's iconic cheesesteak? What is it about scrapple’s crispy fried goodness? How does surface-area-to-volume ratio make the roast pork sandwich more delicious? This week, we take a road trip to the City of Brotherly Love to feast on some classic Philadelphia fare. We also learn about the science of appetite with a researcher at the Monell…
Is there anything better than hearing the sound of an ice cream truck approaching? Today we’re bringing you two stories of ice cream trucks, past and present. First, Sporkful managing producer Emma Morgenstern tells the tale of her great-uncles, who owned a fleet of trucks starting in the 1940s — complete with sibling rivalries, California dreaming, and the exact right speed to drive a truck to…
Carla Hall is known for her quirky, energetic personality on TV. But in some ways she’s very different today from the woman who first appeared as a contestant on Top Chef almost two decades ago. "I didn't want to show up as my Blackness if it wasn't going to be accepted," the former co-host of The Chew says of her first foray into food media. When Carla started her career, she turned her back on…
We’re back with our annual game show: Two Chefs And A Lie! This year our contestant is Rachel Martin , host of the NPR podcast Wild Card and an old friend of Dan’s. The game goes like this: Rachel talks with three guests. Two of them are real chefs, one is an impostor. She can ask each of them just five questions, then has to guess who the liar is. You can play along too! Can Rachel, and you, spot…
Is the perfect burrito a feat of engineering or art? We debate burrito construction and the Los Angeles/San Francisco rivalry with Jesse Thorn (founder of Maximum Fun and host of Bullseye ) and Evan Kleiman (host of KCRW's Good Food ). Matt Yglesias (cofounder of Vox Media and author of the Slow Boring newsletter) compares Chipotle burritos to iPhones. And then, Dan and cookbook author/YouTuber…
