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Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

W. Kamau Bell: Dim Sum

Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Rachel Belle

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

4.4709 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kamau Bell has a long and impressive resume, including hosting seven seasons of the CNN docuseries United Shades of America, winning a Peabody Award for We Need to Talk About Cosby, and winning the third season of Celebrity Jeopardy, and he’s about to take off on his “Who’s With Me” standup tour.

Kamau wore a T-shirt on TV that read, “Not All Macaroni and Cheeses are Created Equal,” a political message and “insider Black conversation” that he explains to host Rachel Belle. We’ll also learn the true history of mac & cheese in America, a narrative that took 200 years to uncover, with James Beard Award-winning food historian Michael W. Twitty and Gayle Jessup White, a descendant of both Thomas Jefferson and James Hemmings, the enslaved head chef of Jefferson’s Monticello kitchen. 

Kamau tells host Rachel Belle about his experience traveling to Kenya with Anthony Bourdain, where his unadventurous eating tendencies were seriously challenged, and of course he shares his last meal. 


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Alaska Airlines has teamed up with Hawaiian Airlines to create new nonstop international flights.

0:05.6

Go to Alaskaair.com or Hawaiian Airlines.com and I'll tell you more details later in the show.

0:19.7

I'm Rachel Bell and this is your last meal.

0:23.4

The show where celebrities share stories about the foods they love most,

0:26.3

and we dig into the history, culture, or science of those meals with experts from around the world.

0:32.0

Today on the program, stand-up comedian, director, producer, and dad, W. Kamau Bell.

0:38.4

Kamau hosted seven seasons of the Emmy-winning CNN docu-series United Shades of America.

0:44.9

He won a Peabody Award for his Showtime docu-series, We Need to Talk About Cosby.

0:50.2

He co-authored the New York Times best-selling book, Do the Work, an anti-racist activity book.

0:55.8

And his new stand-up tour kicks off tomorrow in Boston.

0:59.3

It's called Who's With Me?

1:01.4

And today, we are going to talk a lot about macaroni and cheese.

1:05.4

You wore a t-shirt on TV once that said, not all mac and cheese is created equal.

1:09.1

Can you explain the message behind that shirt?

1:11.4

I saw that shirt and I just got it immediately.

1:14.5

All black people get it if you grew up in America,

1:16.9

but a lot of people aren't black.

1:18.4

They're like, I don't understand.

1:20.6

But I love wearing it because it's just a subtly political statement

1:24.2

that people don't even realize.

1:25.8

And it's also about insider black conversation,

1:28.2

which I love having things that are about that. Kamau will explain what makes his shirt statement

...

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