The Grounded Grub Podcast Guide
This collection of podcasts comes from the founders, Ben & Hannah, as well as our amazing contributors and community! If you have anything you think should be added to the list, reach out and let us know!
Kimchi and Cornbread - Gravy Podcast
by the Southern Food Alliance.
“Through the window of food, we glimpse how race, class, gender, faith, and environment play out in the region and across the nation. Gravy tells stories of farmers and food scientists. Of dishwashers and distillers. Of banh mi and barbecue shrimp. Of your grandma’s potlikker and your neighbor’s arroz con pollo. Of the mariachis singing in the fried chicken café. And the punk band playing the vegan joint. This is the South you know, and the one you have not have tasted before.”
Check out this stellar episode from September 2017 by following this link.
All My Relations
Photographer Matika Wilbur, who is Swinomish and Tulalip, and academic Adrienne Keene, from the Cherokee Nation, discuss what it means to be Indigenous in 2019, from the POV of two American Indigenous feminists. Recording from the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, they invite a roster of super-smart and relatable experts to join them on topics like native mascots, Indigenous food and feeding the spirit, sexuality, and whether DNA test results should be linked to identity.
Fake Food: The Billion Dollar Business of Food Fraud - Milk Street Podcast
by Christopher Kimball
“Chris Elliott, who investigated the horsemeat scandal in the United Kingdom, talks about fake oregano, cardboard in parmesan and the multibillion-dollar business of food fraud. Plus, we investigate the curious case of "Q" (a Taiwanese obsession with chewiness); we travel to Milan for risotto; we uncover clever culinary uses for yogurt; and Dr. Aaron Carroll asks whether cow's milk is nature's most nearly perfect food.”
Check out this stellar episode from March 2019 by following this link.
The Capstone from Prescott College
“THE CAPSTONE celebrates the creation of a more just and sustainable food system through interviews, stories, and experiences of students who are finishing up their MSFS degrees at Prescott College. You’ll also hear from their advisors, about the significance of their work in the context of creating food systems change.”
We love this podcast year at Grounded Grub because it a great showcase of new voices in food systems work and a great way to tune into what young people are interested in studying and pursuing to make change.
Guest Jack Harries: Do You Have To Be Vegan To Be An Environmentalist? - Talking Tastebuds
Venetia Falconer is a social media influencer that got her start in acting and then became an activist against fast fashion. She is also a vegan who created the Talking Tastebuds podcast. She interviews a variety of people and talks about food, sustainability and wellness with all of them. I love her perspectives and find this piece, with Jack Harries a really wonderful perspective for all of us on identifying as “vegan,” the gender dynamics around veganism and sustainability activism. Plus their British accents are wonderful. Please note that they say that you must be a vegan to be an environmentalist without mention of the privilege that it takes to go fully vegan, something that we think is essential to acknowledge.
“It’s difficult to talk about environmentalism without being a hypocrite. It’s almost impossible to leave the house without having some kind of negative impact on the environment - unfortunately that’s just the way it is. But I don’t think it should stop you being able to have these conversations if you’re not the most perfect environmentalist because then no one would have these conversations and nothing would change. You have to have these personal inner conflicts because it forces you to think about your own lifestyle.”
Check out this episode and other Talking Tastebuds episodes for perspectives on our food system. Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Crazy for Beans: Salads, Stews, Ceviche and Pies; Joe Yonan Goes Nuts Over Beans - Milk Street Radio
Christopher Kimball’s “The Washington Post’s Joe Yonan takes us on a tour of the world’s best and most creative bean recipes, from navy bean pie to bean ceviche. Plus, we try to find out if somebody actually paid $99,900 for a gorilla-shaped Cheeto; we make Palestinian Upside-Down Chicken and Rice; and Dr. Aaron Carroll asks: Is diet soda bad for us?”
The Culture of Drinking - The Splendid Table
The Splendid Table is an amazing NPR Podcast that looks at the intersection of food, people, and culture, and finds the common threads that connect us all. We love this episode about the depths and complexities of “drinking culture”!
Check out this episode and other episodes of The Splendid Table. Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
What Happens When Everyone Stays Home to Eat? - Freakonomics Radio
“Covid-19 has shocked our food-supply system like nothing in modern history. We examine the winners, the losers, the unintended consequences — and just how much toilet paper one household really needs.” This podcast does an awesome job of explaining our behaviors in this strange time! It also explains how much of an impact these behaviors can have on those that are less fortunate than others, and shed’s light on what we can all do to watch out for our fellow community members. Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
Mezcal: Everything but the Worm - Gastropod
“It’s nearly Day of the Dead in Mexico, which gives us the perfect excuse to get familiar with the country’s national spirit: tequila. Or wait, should that be mezcal? And what’s the difference, anyway? In this episode of Gastropod, Cynthia and Nicky travel to Mexico to explore the history and science of distilled agave, and get tangled up in a complex story of controversies, clones, and culture.”
We love this podcast that pairs nicely with our Drinking Responsibly article about tequila y mezcal. Listen to the podcast here.
New Fire
Indigenous youth are at the forefront of Lisa Charleyboy’s podcast, where she gets frank on topics about music, identity and sex. Each episode, she moderates the conversation with a different group of millennials.
The Henceforward
Mutually respectful conversations about the relationship between Indigenous and Black people in Canada, touching on topics like reparations, Black Lives Matter, reconciliation, and gentrification.
How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War - Freakonomics
As an avid listener, I am a fan of nearly every episode, but this one really threw me for a loop. The intersection of political history and food and the impacts it still has on our system is amazing. I cannot recommend enough.
“Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the U.S. government’s battle for agricultural abundance against the U.S.S.R. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish — and we are still living with the consequences.”
Check out this episode and other Freakonomics episodes for economic analysis of our food system. Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Food and Farmworkers - Planet Money
“The empty grocery shelves are unnerving. While we're probably not going to starve in the long run, the farm system is going to be seriously stressed. Most of our fruits and vegetables are picked by hand. 73% of farmworkers in the U.S. are foreign born; half are undocumented. What happens when those workers get sick? How do we keep the food supply chain going when borders are closed over coronavirus concerns?
In this episode, to understand how the coronavirus is affecting and might affect our food, we talk to an economist, a farmer, and, of course, the people who really make farms go — the farmworkers.”
Listen here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
White vs. Wheat: The Food Fight of the Centuries - Gastropod
“White vs. wholewheat: this episode, we dive into the world's longest-running, highest-stakes food fight. Along the way: the invention of sliced bread, the science behind Wonder Bread's curious bounce, and a light dusting of eugenics. Listen in now as Aaron Bobrow-Strain, author of White Bread: A Social History of the Store-bought Loaf, unpacks the anxieties and values underlying the bread wars, while wheat breeder Steve Jones introduces us to the "approachable" loaf that he hopes will win the battle for once and for all.”
Check out this Podcast here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts!
The Secret Ingredient
In each episode of The Secret Ingredient, we chose one food to investigate. Hosts Raj, Tom and Rebecca talk with the people whose life's work has been to understand the complex systems of production, distribution, marketing and impact these foods have on our lives. Join us, and dig in! We won't tell you what to eat, but we will tell you why you're eating it.
Racist Sandwich
Racist Sandwich is an American food podcast hosted by Stephanie Kuo and Juan Diego Ramírez. The podcast was originally hosted by San Francisco Chronicle Food Critic Soleil Ho and journalist Zahir Janmohamed. The podcast focuses on race, gender and class within the food industry in the United States and abroad
Meet the Queen of Kiwi: The 96-Year-Old Woman Who Transformed America’s Produce Aisle - Gastropod
“The produce section of most American supermarkets in the 1950s was minimal to a fault, with only a few dozen fruits and vegetables to choose from: perhaps one kind of apple, one kind of lettuce, a yellow onion, a pile of bananas. Today, grocery stores routinely offer hundreds of different fruits and vegetables, many of which would be unrecognizable to time travelers from a half century ago. What changed, and how did Americans learn to embrace spaghetti squash, sugar snap peas, and kiwi fruit? This episode, we tell the story of the woman behind this transformation: Frieda Caplan, the Queen of Kiwi.”
Let’s Talk Chinese American Food - Splendid Table
”This week, it’s Orange Chicken, Shrimp Fried Rice & General Tso’s Chicken when we talk Chinese American food with Hong Kong-raised chef Lucas Sin of Junzi Kitchen and Nice Day. He talks to Francis about his first impressions of Chinese American food and how the time-honored cuisine inspires him today. He sticks around to answer your questions about Chinese cooking. And then we head to Kansas City and share the stage with the Ng family talk about their beloved restaurant, Bo Lings.”
How to be Happy - Freakonomics Radio
“The U.N.’s World Happiness Report — created to curtail our unhealthy obsession with G.D.P. — is dominated every year by the Nordic countries. We head to Denmark to learn the secrets of this happiness epidemic (and to see if we should steal them).”
Most of my friends know I am obsessed with Freakonomics and this weekly is just a new way to spread that obsession… That being said, I think this is a great podcast as we all are hyper focused on happiness and mental health and unfortunately GDP as well.
Listen here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Flipping the Table.
As a way to inform existing and new allies, ROC launched the Flipping the Table podcast dedicated to honest conversation on the future of food and farming. ROC Program Director Michael R. Dimock engages individuals from the business, nonprofit, academic and government sphere who are on the cutting edge revealing the future.
The Green New Deal for Agriculture - The Secret Ingredient
KUT
““We need to change society so everybody can fit in and everyone can afford to live in a decarbonized society.” – Jim Goodman. In this episode of The Secret Ingredient host Raj Patel plays double-duty — he is not just a host, but joins Jim Goodman as a guest. The two discuss what A Green New Deal for Agriculture could look like with the rest of The Secret Ingredient team–Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy.” The Secret Ingredient can get a little jargon-y and can lean very academic, but we think this is an amazing episode and so relevant in our current political climate. Check out this episode and other The Secret Ingredient episodes for in-depth analysis of the global food system.
Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Slow Food Nations Special: Navajo Nation’s Junk Food Tax Points The Way To Health Equity - Flipping the Table
“Denisa Livingston, Dine leader from New Mexico tribal lands, shares groundbreaking victory in taxing soda and junk food to help heal her people ravaged by Type II Diabetes. It’s a brief and uplifting conversation!”
This episode is only 15 minutes long but covers a lot of history of our food system and the inequitable access and treatment that has led to extreme health disparities within tribal communities.
Listen here, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
Finding One’s Voice Through Food - Radio Cherry Bombe
This podcast focuses on and interviews some of the most incredible and creative women in the food world. This episode in particular takes a look at Sonoko Sakai: “Sonoko Sakai’s life changed when she started teaching her friends how to cook. Her classes grew in popularity and now those lessons can be found in her new cookbook, Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors. Sonoko stopped by Radio Cherry Bombe to talk about her interesting life, from her childhood spent moving to various cities with her airline executive father and housewife mother, to her time as a producer in the film industry. Today, Sonoko champions simplicity in her food, great ingredients, and heritage grains.”
LÄRABAR - How I Built This
How I Built This is an amazing NPR Podcast that interviews entrepreneurs from the guy who founded Spotify to Tom of Tom’s of Maine. We love this episode with Lara the founder of the simply and delicious Lärabars.
Check out this episode and other episodes of How I Built This for stories of entrepreneurship in and outside of the food system. Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
How Things Spread - Ted Radio Hour
“What makes an idea, a brand, or a behavior catch fire? This hour, TED speakers explore the mysteries behind the many things we spread: laughter and sadness, imagination, viruses and viral ideas.” We love the way that this podcast showcases the effect we have on others. The virus part happens to be relevant in these times, but we’d like to focus on the fun parts: laughter! Good habits! We think a lot of these concepts can be used to encourage those around you to think about food and sustainability as well. Even if it’s just a casual listen, we highly recommend it!
Listen to the podcast here, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
The Only Grocer in Town - The Journal
“Hundreds of people in Rich Square, N.C. are relying on Frank Timberlake's grocery store for their food during the pandemic. WSJ's Valerie Bauerlein explains how this independent grocer has confronted the coronavirus and kept his doors open.”
This episode is only 15 minutes long, but it delves into a story that sheds light on the small independent business that our communities rely on, and they ways they’re adapting to a sudden spike in community dependence. Listen here, or wherever you stream your podcasts.
Losing Ground - Reveal
“In the early 1900s, African American families owned one-seventh of the nation’s farmland, 15 million acres. A hundred years later, black farmers own only a quarter of the land they once held and now make up less than 1 percent of American farm families.
The federal government has admitted it was part of the problem. In 1997, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture said discrimination by the agency was a factor in the decline of black farms. A landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of black farmers, Pigford v. Glickman, was settled in 1999, and the federal government paid out more than $2 billion as a result. But advocates for black farmers say problems persist.”
Listen to this episode on Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting here.
Red Man Laughing
Hosted, created and produced by Anishinaabe comedian Ryan McMahon. Ryan’s storytelling comedy style is fast paced, loose & irreverent as he explores the good, the bad & the ugly between Indian Country & the mainstream on RML. RML dedicated its fifth season entirely to the theme of reconciliation, with conversations about the land, youth, education, the Indian Act, and more. Many episodes contain interviews with notable Indigenous personalities, and generally hilarious rants from Ryan.
1619 Podcast (episodes 2 & 5)
In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is time to tell the story.
Point of Origin
Point of Origin, the podcast and the notion is about deepening our understanding by going to the source. Each week we travel to a new place in the world to explore where the things we eat and drink come from.
Greener in the New Year - The Bon Appetit Foodcast
The Bon Appetit staff discuss a myriad of changes they’re making in their offices, in their test-kitchens, and in their recipes, to try and make a change toward more sustainable practices. Whether its sourcing your ingredients or making sustainability-driven swaps, the staff and test-kitchen chefs discuss the impacts of these choices, both on the environment as well as their food!
Listen to this episode by following this link, or searching the title wherever you listen to your podcasts.