Bite

In 2018, reporter Shane Bauer traveled to Syria to unpack America’s involvement in its bitter conflict. Hear an excerpt of a special Mother Jones Podcast series following in his footsteps. Then you’ll meet a Syrian refugee chef who couldn’t return to his homeland—but found a way to get a taste of it from New York.

What’s not to love about a meal prepared from scratch at home? Well, a few things actually, according to Joslyn Brenton, co-author of the new book  Pressure Cooker :  Why Homecooking Won’t Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It.  Brenton and her co-authors embedded with nine women to find out what it takes to feed a family today. They found that the expectation to return to the kitchen to solve the food system’s woes places an undue burden on busy parents. Tom talks to Brenton to hear more about the project. And assistant editor Yu Vongkiatkajorn makes some discoveries about what people mean when they use the word “authentic” in Yelp reviews.

If you’ve ever had trouble figuring out what to do with a bunch of vegetables, this episode is for you. Just in time for summer grilling season, Maddie talks to Abra Berens, author of the new cookbook  Ruffage: a Practical Guide to Vegetables . Abra dishes on the link between how plants grow and how they taste, what to do about bland, squishy zucchini, and how to make summer veggies the centerpiece at your next barbecue.

Lloyd Payne, 29, has been incarcerated since he was 14. In previous prisons, "we got made fun of for being Jewish, and for eating a certain way and practicing a certain life," he said. Now that he’s at California’s San Quentin State Prison, he can attend an annual Passover gathering with the Jewish community behind bars. We sent a reporter to this Seder to see what it was like.

The American taste for beef is on the rise again. Oxford University scientist Marco Springmann discusses the impact of a hamburger-heavy diet on the planet, and what it would take to make a dent in our food-related emissions. Then we look closer at the promises of grass-fed beef. And then, we asked you, our listeners, why you became vegetarians. Some of your answers were pretty standard—and some were totally wacky.