I'm Brooke Gladstone with an O-TM podcast Extra.

This one's about food, which turns out is shorthand for sustenance, sex, race, identity, you name it.

I'm a typical Brooklynite.

Thus, my native cuisine includes sushi, falafel, free-range pastrami, Singapore chalmi fun, and kale. My culinary experience is broad, but also shallow,

oblivious to the profound personal and political implications of a person's cuisine. Dan Pashman, host of

the Sporkful podcast, has been exploring identity, inequality, cultural appropriation, and grub. In a special series,

he's calling Other People's Food. Welcome, Dan. Hi, Brooke. You're doing a special series

called Other People's Food. And I understand you were pulled into this because of something

that happened to you.

Partly that, I mean, I think our show in general has been going in sort of a direction of being more and more about obsessing about food to learn more about people.

So I think this is sort of part of a natural progression.

But, you know, we had an incident on the show a few months back where I, we were talking about

the Korean dish, Bibbibbop, which is like a mixed fried rice dish.

And I had suggested a way that I thought Bibbibbop could be improved.

And many people, including many Korean-American listeners, liked the suggestion a lot, but some

did not.

Some thought that it was offensive that I, a lot, but some did not. Some thought that it was offensive

that I, a white guy who clearly was not well versed in Korean food and culture, was suggesting

that he knew better how to do something. Touched a nerve with some listeners, and Nick Cho,

who is the Korean American listener that I spoke with, he made an analogy.

He said, now with Korean food so trendy, it's cool, but it's also super awkward.

It's sort of like my 90-year-old Korean grandmother suddenly becoming the hottest starlet in Hollywood.

...