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There's a new power broker in national politics, but it's not a politician. Art Cullen, editor of the tiny Iowa newspaper the Storm Lake Times , won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for his op-eds on Big Ag meddling in local communities. Now, presidential candidates make sure to visit him while on the campaign trail. Ahead of the Iowa caucus, Cullen talks to legendary food writer Michael Pollan about rural economics, climate change, and the presidential election. This interview comes to us thanks to the UC-Berkeley School of Journalism and the Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Fellowship.

Bite ’s special 100th episode is all about young farmers. You’ll hear from all kinds of folks—from a fourth generation Japanese American fruit grower in California to a “party farmer” in Brooklyn—about what’s keeping them up at night, and what’s giving them hope. Plus, Leah Penniman, farmer and author of the book  Farming While Black , weighs in on how young farmers are fighting the legacy of racism in American agriculture, and  Bite  listeners chime in with stories of the farmers in their lives.

Chef Tanya Holland is the owner of Brown Sugar Kitchen, a soul food restaurant in Oakland. She has written cookbooks, appeared on  Top Chef , and recently became the first black chef to run a restaurant in San Francisco’s foodie epicenter, the Ferry Building. Tanya talks to Tom about breaking into a white-male-dominated industry and preserving food culture amid the rising tide of tech cafeterias. 

Lately, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist known for his arch-conservative politics and views on masculinity, has been talking up the virtues of carnivorism. He’s not the only extreme right winger who has an unusual relationship with meat. In today’s episode, we talk to Kelly Weill, a Daily Beast reporter who wrote about the rise of the all-meat diet in the conservative fringe. Then, University of Colorado PhD student Alexis de Coning talks about her investigation into the disturbing history of veganism among white nationalists.

On the last episode of Eating in Climate Chaos, we explore the brave new world of lab-grown meat. First, we visit a startup called Finless Foods that’s making actual fish—without killing any actual fish. Then, we talk to Ben Wurgaft, author of the new book  Meat Planet: Artificial Flesh and the Future of Food , about some of the thorny philosophical questions swirling around this food of the future.