OXO, Cuisinart, and Julia Child: The Secret (Accessible) History Behind Your Kitchen

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Arts, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For many people with disabilities, the kitchen can seem a deeply unfriendly place. From counters that require users to stand and cabinets that are often out of reach, to ovens that can’t be opened in mobility chairs and tools that are hard to grip or difficult to read—cooking can seem like an impossible challenge. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, since the mid-1900s, researchers, designers, and people with disabilities have worked together to reimagine the kitchen in ways that have made it better for all of us. Listen in for this hidden history behind many of your favorite cooking tools, from OXO Good Grips to the Cuisinart food processor, as well as the inspiring stories of how today's blind and disabled cooks have hacked their kitchens to achieve both dinner deliciousness and culinary glory. All that, plus cameos from the household names who turn out to be accessibility legends: Betty Crocker and Julia Child! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	By the time I was in my early 20s, it had gotten to a point where I could not get out of bed.
0:10.4	I could not do anything.
0:12.2	So I went from cooking a bazillion hours a day to not even being able to get out of bed.
0:18.1	And it was really awful because I loved cooking so much. It's like my happy place.
0:24.4	It's very soothing. So yeah, I just, it was awful. Jules Sherrod suffers from a progressive
0:32.2	autoimmune disorder, and then on top of that, an untreatable spinal cord tumor is slowly
0:36.8	leaving him paralyzed,
0:37.9	and this all has severely restricted his abilities. His mobility and his dexterity are limited,
0:43.3	and he experiences a lot of pain and fatigue. And for a while, all of that ruined his relationship
0:49.7	with a room that, like he says, had previously been his happy place, the kitchen.
0:54.7	Oh, I hated it. The kitchen is a torture chamber.
0:57.0	Today, Jules not only is happily back in the kitchen, but he's the author of a cookbook called
1:01.4	Crip Up the Kitchen. So what changed? What adaptations and tools did Jules need to make
1:06.5	the kitchen work for him again? For that matter, what does it take for a blind cook to win master chef and
1:12.3	run a James Beard-nominated restaurant? This episode, Betty Crocker, Julia Child, and the butter
1:17.5	chicken lady all helped tell the story of how the kitchen became a more welcoming and accessible
1:22.4	place for everyone. And how the tools and techniques developed along the way have become key parts of all of our cooking lives today, even though most of us don't realize it.
1:32.3	This episode was supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the public understanding of science, technology, and economics.
1:38.3	Gastropod is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with Eater.
1:45.3	Being an adult sucks.
1:48.1	Adults, they have to work all day.
1:51.3	When adults get mail, it's always bills and bills suck.
	...

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