This is the Bill Press Show.

Yes, indeed. It is the Bill Press Show. My name is Peter Ogburn here for this podcast where we are talking to Mora Judkis. She is from the Washington Post. She is the food staff writer. Maura, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for coming in. You know, on this podcast, we don't always talk politics. We talk about a lot of different things. First and foremost, let me just say, because we haven't seen you since you won a James Beard Award. Congratulations on your James Beard Award. What was it that you won for? Thank you very much. I won for a story about pumpkin spice, of all things. All right. I dig it. First of all, I just want to point out, I am not anti-pumpkin spice. A lot of people are anti-pumpkin spice. I love pumpkin spice in certain

contexts. But you, like, you went off the deep end with a pumpkin spice. Oh, yeah. I did like

a week of nonstop pumpkin spice. It was like a full exploration of the pumpkin spice industrial

complex. It was very difficult. It was really hard. What was the nastiest pumpkin spice thing you ate? Oh, my God. It was this spray-on can of pumpkin spice flavoring, so you could make anything pumpkin spice flavored. It was like a can, like a hairspray can. And you could spray it to anything. That's a no for me. Yeah, it was terrible. It tasted like spraying an air freshener directly into your mouth. Oh my God, that's horrible. No, I don't want that. It was bad. I saw pumpkin spice hummus. Oh, I didn't try that. And I was like, no. I mean, it's only like a month away from one pumpkin spice in the food It's point comes earlier and earlier every year, like Christmas. Yeah, exactly. Well, congratulations to you on that James Beardeword. I'm surprised you didn't, like, wear it, like, on a huge chain, like, flavor-flame. I know. I should just wear it all the time. Yeah, totally. You totally should. but we did not bring you in to talk about pumpkin spice

and the dead of summer. We brought you on to talk about Mr. Rogers. There is a new documentary

about Mr. Rogers called Won't You Be My Neighbor. And you wrote about this from a position of someone who actually knew Mr. Rogers.

Your family knew Mr. Rogers.

You grew up around Mr. Rogers.

Like not the way that a lot of us grew up with Mr. Rogers.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Sure.

So I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

which is where Mr. Rogers lived and where the show was taped. And my dad is a freelance

photographer and one of his biggest clients over the course of about 25 years was Mr. Rogers.

And so my dad took photos of him for other publications. Some of his photos have ended up in

people or time or different magazines. And also, he took many of the photos for Mr. Rogers' books that he published over the years, all the books that he wrote for children about when a pet dies, going to the doctor, how to make friends, things like that. My dad was the main photographer for all of those books. That's so cool.

So did you get to meet him when you were again?

Oh yeah, definitely.

I was on the show, actually.

Come on, were you really?

What was that like?

...