This is Most Street Radio from PRX. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball.

Nathan Mirvald was the first chief technology officer of Microsoft, and he's also worked with

Stephen Hawking to uncover the secrets of the universe. But he is also passionate about food

science. In his latest three-volume encyclopedia, Modernist Pizza,

Mirvald dives deep into crust toppings,

why pizza margarita was not named after a queen,

and why you should be making more pizza at home.

Pizza is funny because it is much more widely eaten than it is made. Yet it's actually not that hard to make at home.

And it turns out even bad pizza made at home is pizza. It's not that bad.

Also coming up, we learn a Venetian recipe for pasta with radicchio and walnuts.

And Adam Gopnik

explains how to cook for your family when everyone has a different dietary restriction.

But first, it's my interview with journalist Larry Tai, about how the father of public relations,

Edward Bernays, made bacon and eggs the American breakfast of choice.

Larry, welcome to Milk Street.

Great to be on with you, Chris.

Edward Bernays is one of my absolutely most favorite historical figures.

Who was Edward Bernice?

He was a man who was so convincing as to what he was doing that he convinced the world and the New York Times that he was the father of public relations.

And if father means the first, he wasn't, but if father means the most inventive PR man that the world could have ever dreamed up, he was.

He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud,

and he took his uncle's ideas on why people behave the way they do and used them to make

...