Hey, it's Francis. Today's show is a rebroadcast of one of our favorite holiday episodes. It's all about celebration and the rituals of coming together.

Now, of course, the holidays this year shouldn't have nearly as much coming together in person anyway, but a little waiting now is going to make our gatherings soon that much more special.

Thanks so much for listening.

So the holiday season is in full swing,

and we hope you'll be spending time and meals

with people you love.

And maybe you're getting ready to have some of those people over.

Well, we've put together a show that's all about people coming together.

We've got an incredible story about the power of an invitation, and we'll hear about how

Julia Child helped to remake the American Dinner Party by insisting that the cook get to be part of the fun.

But first, we're going to go to Georgia, the country.

On the Black Sea between Russia and Turkey, it's got a fascinating cuisine, and it's

thought to be the birthplace of wine, so you know their feast traditions are for real.

Carla Capalbo spent years writing a book called Tasting Georgia, and she's here to talk with us about those

traditions. Carla, thank you so much for coming in today. It's really a pleasure to be here and to meet

you. The same, the same. So I would love to learn about the food of Georgia, the Republic

of Georgia. Now, if you look on a map, Georgia sits in a part of the world that's between

Russia to the north and Turkey to the south and also borders Armenian and Azerbaijan. But

it's fascinating to me because I don't think of Russian food or what I think of as

Russian food as anything really alike what I think of is Turkish food. So does the food of Georgia

sit in between those two and does it look like either of them? Well, Georgia is, I always think of

Georgia as this sort of beautiful creature that sits between Turkey and countries further south and that, of course, Persia or Iran as well, and Russia.

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