The Sporkful

The science of crackers... Ahead of the Jewish holiday of Passover, we nerd out on matzah with help from the man who runs one of the biggest matzah factories in the world. Turns out those little holes in the matzah cracker (and other crackers like Ritz and Saltines) serve a very important purpose...

The painter's recipes go up for auction... Sotheby’s is about to put a trove of Georgia O'Keeffe items up for sale. While the auction will include paintings likely to go for millions of dollars, we're interested in something less valuable, but to us, way more exciting — O'Keeffe's box of grease-stained, handwritten recipes...

Cooking and panicking in quarantine... Most weeks we plan on providing you with a nice distraction during these times, but this week, in a show recorded in Dan's basement, we're here with commiseration. For that Dan turns to two old friends. Marc Maron, comic and host of the podcast "WTF," may be an expert on panic. He's spent much of his life expecting the worst, and his new Netflix stand-up special is called "End Times Fun...

Why writing a simple recipe is complicated.....

Comic Maeve Higgins shares her Michael Fassbender Diet... Comic Maeve Higgins loves living alone in New York City, her home since she left her native Ireland in 2014. But sometimes, living alone leads her to eat foods she calls "bizarro." This week, she shares her solution to this so-called "problem." (Hint: Michael Fassbender is involved...

Comedian Fortune Feimster on using her body to get laughs... "I've always been a fan of food," comedian Fortune Feimster says in her new stand up special, "Sweet and Salty." She joined the swim team in grade school just for the snacks. As a chubby kid who became a chubby adult, she often played her body for laughs. But in recent years her approach to both comedy and food has evolved. In this week's podcast, she talks about struggling to hold back when you really love to eat...

One table can make all the difference... The owner of New York's Adda Indian Canteen has one table in his restaurant that's underperforming the others. And in a business with razor-thin margins, that's a real problem. In this special collaboration with Sally Helm and NPR's Planet Money, we enlist the help of a tape measure-wielding professor to try to turn the loser table into a winner. It turns out that how a restaurant treats its real estate is more important than how it cooks its food...

Home-cooked, glammed-up Korean food... In 2007, Maangchi was a single mother of adult kids, and was addicted to online gaming. Her son suggested she post a cooking video to YouTube. Today she has 4 million subscribers and has taught fans all over the world how to cook traditional Korean food. This week she tells us her story, and talks about cooking when you’re in an “immigrant time warp.” Plus we hear her take on a popular Korean dish that was renamed for the Oscar-winning film, Parasite...

Beef ribs + pizza = love... We're celebrating Valentine’s Day with Taz Ahmed, a writer, activist, and co-creator of the podcast #GoodMuslimBadMuslim. Over halal beef ribs at Big Al's Pizzeria outside L.A., Dan and Taz talk about Taz's #MuslimVDay cards, her efforts to recreate the Bangladeshi home cooking she grew up with, and her advice for sharing food on a first date...

From dyslexic kid to best-selling author... Despite being one of the best-selling authors in UK history, Jamie Oliver didn't read a whole book until he was 38. He's dyslexic, and writes by dictation. Growing up, school was a huge struggle for him. When he began cooking as a kid it was the first time he thought, "I'm good at something." Later, when he became a celebrity chef and tried to use cooking to help others, he was met with skepticism from the press, and his parents...