On matters of African Americans and farming, many narratives have centered the ways in which enslavement, and an assumed progress “off the plantation” have contributed to the apathy or absence of black folks on the land. In this episode we hear from black farmers and scholars who are challenging those narratives, instead centering resilience, survival and activism at the core of historical narratives around African Americans and agriculture.

Cider in the United States is having an explosive moment. Bolstered by a new generation of growers in California and New York, plus a thirsty generation of millennials, it is the fastest growing among all alcoholic beverage categories. In this episode we meet the makers and protagonists of this emergent movement.

When we think about food origins, often we talk about the movement of people, plants, animals and ideas. But the study of humans would be an incomplete one without the study of the clay and ceramic vessels, one of humankind’s earliest innovations. If pottery is a conversation with the past, archeologists are our interpreters.

Meet our wine-making pioneers from this episode and learn from these disrupters about the pressures and pride that go along with being the first, or only one of your kind.

Hundreds of years ago, the indigenous American people called the Anishinabek, were visited by several prophets, two of which told them that people with white faces were going to be coming across the ocean and they needed to leave their homeland and travel westward to the place where the food grows upon the water, or risk being destroyed.

From the oryza glabberima of West Africa to the oryza sativia Eastern Asia, humans across worlds and lifetimes are bound the story of rice.

All fruit come from flowers, but not all flowers become fruit. Once you start to see the two as the same, the world of both grow more interesting. Dates, honey and saffron, we’re gettin sweet and spicy with stories from Egypt to Iran.

We continue on our theme of preservation, and bring you on a trip to Iceland where we meet a chef turned geothermal salt maker, and a farmer there who’s making an extremely regionally specific dairy product. Our second episode Icelandic foodways of yesterday and today.

The tale of two yogurts and the fight to protect Goa’s fishing villages and waters, it’s all about preservation. It keeps us alive and teaches how to live.