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During the pandemic, I learned to love cooking. I picked up a copy of the Art of Simple Cooking ad started experimenting with salad dressings, pie dough, and breads. My guest today is who I have to thank for that. Alice Waters built her restaurant, Chez Panisse, off of the food culture in France, where she visited at 19, and the values of Maria Montessori. Waters focused on organic, local, and seasonal produce and paid the farmers - not the distributors - the price for their crops. In 1995, Alice founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, an initiative that engages students in growing and cooking their own food as part of school curriculum. Today, Chez Panisse remains at its original location in Berkeley after 50 years. Since the last time we talked in March of 2021, Alice opened a new restaurant in Los Angeles called Lulu with the former head chef at Chez Panisse, David Tanis, announced the creation of the Alice Water Institute for Edible Education at UC Davis, and wrote a book. She shared with us today that she’s organizing an event called Climate, Food, Hope on the National Mall this October before the presidential elections. 

As you might have guessed, I won’t be publishing episodes as frequently as once a week anymore; I’ve gone into high school but still want to bring important conversations like this to you every few months.

Ezra


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Hi,

Technically we're off for the summer, but it's fun to break rules.

Today, a conversation about religion, parenting, acting, and comedy with David Cross. Cross is best known for partnering with Bob Odenkirk in the 1990s to create Mr. Show, and acting in shows and movies such as Arrested Development, where he played the Tobias Funke, and Alvin and the Chipmunks, where he played the villainous Ian Hawke. That might be true, but he’s also thought a lot about his place in religion from an early age when he began to feel doubt about Judaism. He also has a daughter and is currently on the Worst Daddy In The World tour. Just a note: my WIFI wasn’t too good, so apologies for any delays or sound issues.

Ezra


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Today we talk to forensic pathologist Werner Spitz. Dr. Spitz is 96 but shows no signs of retirement. As we’ll find out, he wouldn’t even want to retire on his 100th birthday in 2026. Spitz was born in what was then Germany and is now Poland in 1926 to a Jewish family and moved to France early in Hitler’s rise to power. The family moved to Israel, where Spitz would later receive an MD. After he moved to the U.S., Werner worked as a forensic pathologist in Maryland and in Michigan, where he’s based now. Over his career, Spitz has worked on the cases of JFK, MLK,  JonBenet Ramsey, Nicole Brown Simpson, and others. He’s also a coauthor of the textbook, Medicolegal Investigation of Death, an over 700 page tome written to help new forensic pathologists and the police. The book’s in its fifth edition, it now contains color photographs, and has gotten rave reviews from many, including David Sedaris. We’ll talk about the structure of forensic pathology, Werner’s family, and his career.

We'll be starting our annual summer hiatus soon.

Ezra


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-Ezra

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This week, the search for the perfect interview. Public Radio host Barbara Bogaev will join us to talk about her experience growing up in Philadelphia listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross to eventually guest hosting the show. Bogaev also hosted the radio documentary series Soundprint and Weekend America. She has also guest hosted Marketplace Weekend and programs at KCRW in Santa Monica. Today, we'll talk about the night in which she may or may not have been drinking and landed a job in radio, her thoughts on what makes radio good, and how she became a suspected terrorist and inadvertently helped to burn down a sheepherder’s hut in Morocco in a unseasonably strong blizzard.

Ezra


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I think it’s rare for a biography to be so well written that almost every aspect of a figure’s life is detailed. My guest today, Jonathan Eig, seems to have done just that and managed to keep my attention for more than 600 pages. Jonathan is the author of 5 other nonfiction books, as well as 4 children’s books. He was also a reporter. His upcoming book, King: A Life, chronicles the rise of Martin Luther King Jr., from his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father served as a preacher at the Ebenezer Baptist church, to his time organizing the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the March on Washington. Today, we’ll talk about King’s education, the father-son relationship, the events of the civil rights movement, and King’s legacy. Eig’s book will be published on the sixteenth.

Ezra


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