François Clemmons, Soul Food

Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Rachel Belle

Music Interviews, Arts, Food, Comedy Interviews, Tv & Film, Film Interviews, Comedy, Music, Science, History

4.4 • 709 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

François Clemmons is best known for playing Officer Clemmons on Mr Roger's Neighborhood from 1968 to 1993 and he shares the story of his life in a new book called Officer Clemmons: A Memoir. François tells James Beard Award finalist Rachel Belle about his special relationship with Fred Rogers, the first man who ever told him, "I love you."

A resident of Vermont for decades, François' favorite foods are rooted in his family's southern upbringing. He got his local health food store to order him chitterlings and his favorite part of okra is its notorious slime.

Soul Food Scholar Adrian Miller joins the show to share the history of those African American dishes, many of which came over from West Africa during the slave trade.
One of the most controversial and divisive southern dishes is cornbread. African Americans tend to put sugar in their cornbread, while white southerners scoff at sweetener, arguing that cornbread shouldn't contain a speck of sugar. North Carolina food writer Kathleen Purvis pops in to share what she learned while writing the article, "Why does sugar in cornbread divide races in the South?"

'Your Last Meal' is a James Beard Award finalist for Best Podcast & has been the #1 food podcast on Apple Podcast several times. Each episode, award winning host Rachel Belle interviews a celebrity (Greta Gerwig, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Jenny Slate, Betsey Johnson, etc) about what they would choose to eat for their last meal. Then, she digs into the history/science/culture of that dish with experts from around the globe. Don't let the name fool you, 'Your Last Meal' is not morbid! We use food as a catalyst to learn about people.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Alaska Airlines has teamed up with Hawaiian Airlines to create new nonstop international flights.
0:05.8	Go to Alaskaair.com or Hawaiian Airlines.com and I'll tell you more details later in the show.
0:11.6	Cairo, Seattle.
0:30.8	I'm Rachel Bell, and this is your last meal, a show about famous people and the stories behind the foods they love most.
0:38.1	Today on the program, Francois Clemens, would you mind singing? There are many ways to say I love you?
0:47.8	Lord have mercy. I love those. There are many ways. There are many ways to say I love you.
0:54.2	There are many ways to say I care about you.
0:59.3	Francois Clemens is most famous for playing Officer Clemens on Mr. Rogers' neighborhood,
1:01.8	which he did for 25 years.
1:07.7	One of the most famous images of Francois and Mr. Rogers is the two of them sitting on the set with their feet in a little plastic baby pool. And at the time, that was
1:12.0	huge to have a white man and a black man with their feet in the same pool. And Mr. Rogers helped
1:17.7	him dry his feet when he got out of the pool. Francois is also an opera singer. He won a Grammy
1:24.4	for a recording of Porky and Best and was director of the Martin Luther King's spiritual choir
1:29.4	at Middlebury College until his retirement.
1:32.7	He just released a new book called Officer Clemens a memoir.
1:37.0	Many words to say
1:40.3	I love you.
1:49.8	Oh, it's so beautiful to hear you sing. Thank you.
1:53.9	Oh, you're very welcome, my dear. You're very welcome. I love that song, but I sang it too much.
2:00.6	Yeah, I bet. I bet. Also on today's show, the soul
2:04.7	food scholar, Adrian Miller. He shares the history of beloved African-American soul foods like
2:10.9	Okra and Chitlins. And we talk about how race factors in to how you make your cornbread.
	...

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