This is going to sign very funny and silly, but I was expecting the unexpected.

But I didn't expect the unexpected to be so unexpected.

I see.

It's more about a variation in kind than, yes, okay, got it.

I'm Dulan Thuris, and this is Atlas of Skira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we are talking to chef, author, and TV host, Patty Hinnich, about the communities and the people and, of course, the food that she encountered as she made her first travels on the Pan American Highway.

She chronicles it all in her new show. Patty Hinnich explores Pan American.

The Pan American Highway is considered the longest road in the world.

It stretches nearly 20,000 miles from Alaska all the way down to Argentina and connects this enormous variety of

cultures and foods and peoples and and throughout this series patty talks to the people along

this route about the different traditions the different ways they come to form their identities

and the surprising mixes of culture and history that happen all along the

route. She was partially interested in exploring this stretch of territory because of her own

cultural background. Patty was born and raised in Mexico City. Today she lives in Washington, D.C.

But before having this career as a TV

host and a chef, Patty was a political analyst, looking at the world in a very different way.

Take me through that period of your life where you're like a political analyst. And when you realize that food is not just something you're going to do kind of on the weekends that maybe

there's like a deeper path there for you. Absolutely. Yes. And I admit I was a terrible cook,

awful. I'm an incredible eater and I've always been.

I have a gigantic appetite, which people get shocked by when they meet me.

But I come from a family of four daughters.

I'm the youngest one.

And I was kind of tomboyish, and I was kind of a loner and my sisters jumped into the world of food very

...