Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a very brilliant expert-tolerant all about something that makes me curious.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Aviaya, Liberth Hoptman, where I ask her,

what's on the menu for Arctic Indigenous Communities?

And before we jump into this episode, I want to give you a little bit of a little like story of how this episode came to be.

So basically we did our episode about cheese and the history of cheese, how cheese is made, and we got such a huge amount of feedback from some vegetarian and vegan friends, more vegan friends that were really, really angry, really, really instantly super upset.

And I do think it was interesting in the cheese episode because even though it was centered around cheese and yes cheese comes from the agricultural system, but a lot, it's like a whole thing.

There's a whole spectrum of cheese farmers, there's a whole spectrum of how cheese comes, there's a whole spectrum of the way that it's made in terms of scale.

And also in that episode, there was a lot about legalities in the United States about food systems in general that affect all of us, no matter if you're a meat, dairy eater, vegetarian, whatever.

If you've ever seen my comedy show, you know I talk a lot about duality.

While we do have a, I think out of control agricultural system in the United States, that does CS kill as Gabe Toddus, like 10 billion, I think he said sentient beans, but a huge amount of sentient beans a year between chickens, pigs, cows, well, a lot of it goes to food waste, which I think is horribly wasteful.

There's too much animal suffering in the United States and at the same time a plant-based diet does not work for everyone everywhere. There are so many indigenous communities around the world that cannot support that lifestyle.

I just think that's really interesting. I also think that we do eat too much meat in the US, we do not understand how to really be environmentally friendly with our livestock practices, but I actually think that there's a lot of learning to be had in the way that indigenous communities are sustainable with the food.

It's sustainable with eating animals and the way that they do and the way that they honor the animal and the way that it is so important to their culture.

So that's where some of the inspiration for this episode came from. If you are just like fuck off Johnathan, I cannot listen to that.

Then this is not the episode for you, but if you're interested in where this kind of curiosity came from, which is like what communities and what places like are not served and cannot have a plant-based diet.

Before the curiosity came from, this is an incredible episode. I loved meaning aviaya. Let's jump in.

In 2022, we spent a lot of time understanding that there is no perfect or universal way for us to enjoy food.

We also learned that colonialism has affected the kinds of foods that are available to indigenous peoples across the globe. Honey, did we ever?

Today, we're going to learn even more about microbes and food sovereignty in the Correosphere.

We're going to have so much fun today. Let's welcome our guest, aviaya, library, hoppedman, who is a microbiologist from Newt Greenland.

She is an assistant professor at the University of Greenland. She is currently interested in food sovereignty,

and she had fermented foods and understanding human connection to nature through microorganisms. What we're asking today is what's on the menu for Arctic Indigenous communities.

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