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Wonder Cabinet

In Search of 'Real' Food

Wonder Cabinet

Wonder Cabinet Productions

Society & Culture, Wonder, Philosophy, Ttbook, Knowledge, Interview

4.81K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What makes food "authentic"? Do we need to feel close to where it's made? Know the complete history of where it comes from? Be able to diagram the chemistry of how it dances along our taste buds? How can we quantify the romance between eaters and the food they love?

In this hour, we talk about what it means to truly love what you eat and drink — and we ask why it matters.

Original Air Date: June 30, 2018

Interviews In This Hour:
The Frightening Sameness Beneath Hundreds of FlavorsA Little Grammy, A Little Bubbe: A Writer Embodies Family History Through FoodAnyone Can Cook—With the Right ElementsDoes 'Selling Out' Make a Difference You Can Taste?Two Dishes, Two Tastings: A Dinner Party with Simran, Michael, Samin and Josh

Guests:
Simran Sethi, Samin Nosrat, Michael Twitty, Josh Noel


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Transcript

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0:00.0

It's to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

0:04.0

What is real food and how far would you go to find it?

0:09.0

I sold my house, I quit my job, and I embarked on this journey across six continents

0:15.0

to go to the deep origins where our foods are born.

0:19.0

I want to reclaim what's mine. I'm Anne Strange Champs, and today we're

0:22.9

talking about authenticity in cooking and eating what it means and why it matters. In our family,

0:30.0

the highest compliment anything could get was that it tasted like Iran. How have you found your

0:36.5

identity in African American, Jewish, gay culture through food?

0:41.3

I'm a little, as we call my grandmother, Grammy.

0:44.3

So I'm a little Grammy, I'm a little bubby.

0:47.3

I'm a little queen mother of the house.

0:50.3

I'm all of those pieces.

0:52.3

Today we go looking for deep flavors, personal identity, and love in food.

1:02.6

Wisconsin Public Radio.

1:10.3

Okay, we left Michael Twitty about to pull something out of a bag.

1:14.6

I can tell you one thing that I do carry with me.

1:18.3

I've had several of these, and once they get old and weathered,

1:22.8

they kind of become their own kind of calcified artifact.

1:26.3

The one I have is relatively new now, and it contains

1:30.7

a fragment from a dish that was cast off from the big house at a rice plantation, South

1:39.2

Carolina, and it was found in the grounds in the area where enslaved people had their quarters.

1:49.1

So this was a dish that our ancestors ate from.

...

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