The Sporkful
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The Sporkful
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.
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What’s The State Of The Bagel?
Should bagels ever be toasted? Why does the restaurant industry have so many scandals? And what could possibly possess someone to feed their baby a st...
A Passover & Easter Doubleheader (Reheat)
We ponder the question that Jews have been pondering since they crossed the desert: Can matzoh be salvaged? We also discuss techniques for dipping you...
The Seafood Proxy Battle Between China And Japan
Last year, in the midst of a political spat between China and Japan, China enacted a ban on importing Japanese seafood and warned Chinese citizens tha...
Beer Serving Techniques (Reheat)
How much foam is too much? Bottles or cans? Pint glasses or tulip glasses? Plus we discuss beer-filled guitars and absurd beer packaging gimmicks.
What Happened When China Legalized Restaurants
In the 1980s and ‘90s, China went through a massive economic transformation. New government policies allowed everyday people to open their own busines...
Padma Lakshmi Was An Ice Cream Mule (Reheat)
Is Padma Lakshmi a model-turned-TV-star who's grown accustomed to the finer things? Or a down-to-earth mom who reuses takeout containers for her lefto...
No Somali Artifacts Were Harmed In The Making Of This Cookbook
Somali cuisine is a mixture of many traditions, from meat prepared according to nomadic customs, to a spice mix made possible by medieval Indian Ocean...
Breaking The Ramadan Fast In A Cab At 50 MPH (Reheat)
Dan fills a taxi full of food and takes it to JFK Airport at sundown to break the Ramadan fast with Muslim cab drivers. What could go wrong? Plus a Te...
Asma Khan Says Women Shouldn't Cook For Free
The London restaurant Darjeeling Express is the place to go for an outstanding mutton kebab, and for celebrity sightings. But the chef behind this hot...
Danny Trejo, From Lockup to Donut Shop (Reheat)
Danny Trejo is a Hollywood legend. He's been in nearly 400 films, often playing the kinds of characters you wouldn't want meet in a dark alley. When h...
When ICE Came, This Minnesota Restaurant Stepped Up
El Burrito Mercado has been a bedrock of West Side community in St. Paul for nearly 50 years. It’s changed a lot over that time, evolving from a small...
How To Read A Taco (Reheat)
Professor Steven Alvarez believes you can read a taco. Look at the meat, the spices, and the tortilla. Each ingredient has a story that unlocks someth...
Catching The Codfather
For decades, Carlos Rafael owned the biggest fleet of boats in the most valuable fishing port in America: New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was so powerf...
Till Pork Do Us Part (Reheat)
Dan and his wife Janie are both white and Jewish, both raised in the New York area. In many ways it's an easy fit. But not so much with food, because...
Is Halal Pork… Possible?
The writer Aymann Ismail, a practicing Muslim, grew up not eating pork. But as he got older, he became curious about why eating pork was a line that e...
Lunchtime With The Simpsons (Reheat)
Dan’s dreams come true when he visits The Simpsons writers’ room to talk about the role food plays on the show and behind the scenes. Turns out the wr...
Sporkful Dating Game: Suitcase Full Of Cheese Edition
This week, The Sporkful plays matchmaker! We put out the call for Sporkful listeners looking for love, and many of you responded. We used our propriet...
How Prison Ramen Saved My Life (Reheat)
When Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez was 18, he was sent to prison for the first time. When he arrived, the other incarcerated men wanted to know if they coul...
The Great Super Bowl Snack Debate
Michael Ian Black and Tom Cavanagh are great comedic actors and friends who love to analyze snacks in extreme detail on their podcast, Mike and Tom Ea...
2 Chefs And A Lie: Canadian Prime Minister Edition (Reheat)
Dan gives up the hosting chair and becomes a contestant in our most popular (and only) Sporkful game show, 2 Chefs And A Lie! The game is simple. Dan...
Tom Papa Quit Vegetarianism After One Visit To An Italian Deli
Veteran comic Tom Papa’s love of food began as a kid, when his dad recruited him for over-the-top food challenges — including eating a massive steak t...
Elle Simone Scott Brought More Compassion To The Kitchen (Reheat)
Elle Simone Scott recently died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49. This week's Reheat is our conversation with Elle from 2021.
Elle once said t...
At 90, Jacques Pépin Is Still Teaching And Learning
Jacques Pépin just turned 90, and he’s spent his career defying expectations. By 1958, at the age of 23, he had cooked for three French presidents. Bu...
Is It OK To Eat All Your Popcorn Before The Movie Starts? (Reheat)
The Sporkful Family Food Court is back in session. A husband and wife debate when to eat movie popcorn, and a mother and daughter argue over whether e...
Is It Wrong To Eat Popcorn At The Movies?
French podcaster Samia Basille loves going to the movies. And she enjoys popcorn. But she doesn't think the two should ever be combined. (Many other F...
Katie's Year In Recovery (Reheat)
We follow one woman's attempt to recover from an eating disorder and hear what it’s like to wake up each morning and have to fight a battle not only w...
Why Are Root Beer Floats Special? Because Science!
Should you rinse ice before you pour a carbonated drink over it? What’s the best way to store fresh bread? And is there a reason to drink room temp wa...
Cold Case: Office Fridge Food Theft Edition (Reheat)
It’s Elkhart, Indiana, 2001. Two inches of Heather Coleman's turkey club disappear from her office fridge. The thief is nowhere to be found. And Heath...
Stanley Tucci Always Keeps A Martini Kit On Set
Stanley Tucci nearly broke the internet in 2021 when he made a Negroni on Instagram. But long before that, the award-winning actor built his career ar...
A Hip Hop Track Inspired Bryant Terry To Go Vegan (Reheat)
“So often when we talk about veganism, we don't imagine Black people,” says Bryant Terry, the James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, chef, and edu...
New Year's Food Resolutions 2026
What foods do Sporkful listeners resolve to eat more of in the new year, and why? And what’s Dan’s New Year’s food resolution for 2026? All is reveale...
Elevating Airplane Food To New Heights (Reheat)
This episode is chock full of strategies for making your way in one of the world's most barren food wastelands. We cover both the airport and airplane...
How To Steal A Truckload Of Tequila: Salad Spinner Year In Review
From a moisturizer made of beef fat, to bartenders hating on Gen Z, to tariffs, a lot happened this year. (How do you get away with stealing 100,000 e...
Patti LaBelle Says She Cooks Better Than She Sings (Reheat)
Patti LaBelle is not just a music icon, she’s also a food icon. She’s written best-selling cookbooks, hosted a food TV show, and even cooked for Elton...
Samin Nosrat’s Success Looked Different Behind Closed Doors
It’s been eight years since Samin Nosrat published her smash-hit cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat. She says her whole adult life was on a trajectory towar...
Can We Go Viral On TikTok? (Reheat)
TikTok is the wild west of the food media world. It’s less professionalized than Instagram and YouTube, and it holds the promise of virality from the...
Seed Oils Are The Latest Battle In The Cooking Fat Wars
In America, the cooking fat you use — lard, butter, shortening, oil — has long been a signifier of health, virtue, and class. What is it about fat tha...
What Should Be The Last Cheese On Earth? (Reheat)
This week we’re reheating two call-in episodes from 2015. First: Two Sporkful listeners call in to debate the best way to make enchiladas: flat (lasag...
What’s It Like To Cook With A Brain Injury?
How does a traumatic brain injury affect the way you cook and eat? Filmmaker Cheryl Green, who has a brain injury, satirizes her own experiences in th...
Hosting Thanksgiving With Amy Sedaris (Reheat)
Amy Sedaris offers advice on dealing with family members who are drunk or confrontational at the holidays. Plus, Robert Krulwich (formerly of Radiolab...