Welcome to Getting Here Yes. I am Jonathan Vaness Honey and every week you guessed it.

I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with the Burr Brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

Today's episode is a real gooey, ooey cheesy celebration. On today's episode, we are joined by a returning guest,

Lee Hennessy, who we love, and Carlos Yeskas, where I ask them, what's the story of cheese cultures?

Welcome back to Getting Curious Honey, if we got an episode for you. I think you all notice now that like every time we have a food expert on the show, whether it's Padma Lockshmi,

Sola, whether it's Patty Inni-Tunny, I'm always asking about cheese. And on an episode that's summarized with Lee Hennessy about farming, it hit me.

We had finally found our cheese expert. So we invited Lee back to the show to talk about all things cheese Lee Hennessy, as you all know,

unless you did listen to that episode in which case after this episode, you should go back and listen to that one.

Lee Hennessy is the owner, farmer, and cheese maker at Moxie Ridge Farm, a small farm in creamery, and rural upstate New York.

And he invited cheese scholar and caronicaler, Carlos Yeskas. He documents cheese traditions and stories and is currently researching raw milk use in cheese making around the world.

And today our guiding question is, can you say cheese? Welcome to the show y'all, how are you doing?

Good, thank you for having me back. Oh, yeah, it's literally our pleasure. Hi, Carlos. Hi, yes, we're very happy to be here.

Okay, so there are obviously like many types of cheese and many types of cheese experts. So Carlos, let's start with you. How do you work with cheese in your life?

I'm trying to understand why do we eat the cheese that we eat? This is something that I call in my life cheese politics. So normally there is a political decision, a policy decision, an environmental decision that ends up translating into the types of food that we eat.

I specifically look at cheese. And so that takes a different shape every time. So I either be talking to a producer or a distributor or a retailer.

And I want to understand, for example, if he's a retailer, why are you buying these type of cheese and not that pop cheese, right?

Or a distributor, why are you bringing these to the US or why are you sending this from Spain to the US? You know, there are all political questions. There are all economic questions. And so I tried to put that together to sort of understand what is happening in the world of cheese in given moment.

And then I turn around and tell that to the world, yeah, because there's so much mysticism about it. And I think that that only creates barriers for people that want to enjoy cheese or that want to sell cheese. And so I'm trying to break those barriers by the work that I do.

Where do you do that work? Like, do you got to like travel all over honey? You're doing like you going over to Spain to taste those cheeses and like ask people about it? Like you're going all over the place. I wish that I could go all over the place. But the reality is that most of the cheese culture is in Western Europe and the Americas. And because I'm Latin America, and I do a lot of work in Latin America.

I am going in a couple of days to Wales. I'm going to be judging the word cheese awards. I was two weeks ago in Switzerland judging the Swiss cheese awards. And I was in May in Brazil. I want to try to understand the cheeses of Brazil.

So I do travel a lot, but not all over the world. The cheese is a Brazil pitch.

The fuck what's the most popular Brazilian cheese?

...